Chapter 34 Propaganda Poster: Consort Li is damp, yet undeniably beautiful. ...

Actually, drawing promotional posters isn't easy either. You're still working under the blazing sun all day long. But doing what you're good at makes it feel a bit easier.

Zhong Ying thought to herself that although running away was shameful, it was indeed useful.

However, she wasn't entirely shirking her work; she simply changed her job, switching from harvesting wheat and picking corn in the fields to painting propaganda posters.

Zhong Ying took a paintbrush made of strips of cloth and twigs, dipped it in yellow paint, and made a stroke on the lime wall.

After Xie Jixiang finished painting the river high up, he came down the ladder, took a few steps back, and looked at the painting on the wall from a distance. What was originally just a black and white sketch had now been filled with most of the colors: blue sky, white river, and yellow wheat field. Only the figures and details were missing. It has to be said that this progress was even faster than when Jia Genwang was there.

His gaze fell on the girl on his right, who was intently drawing a haystack. A feeling of "appreciating talent" welled up in his heart. Xie Jixiang shook his head regretfully, "What a pity, she's a girl..."

If it were a young man, Xie Jixiang could have recruited him into the painting team, but he really didn't dare to take an unmarried woman with him to different production teams.

Zhong Ying didn't hear the regretful remark; she was busy painting and whispering to her aunt.

Floating in mid-air, Cao Fang looked at the painting on the wall with admiration, "My dear niece, you painted so well! This wheat looks exactly like the wheat growing in the field!"

Zhong Ying used the same excuse, lowering her voice and slightly moving her lips, "I see them in the fields every day, and their appearance is etched into my mind, which is why I can draw them so realistically."

“That’s not how it works,” Cao Fang disagreed. “Everyone who toils in the fields sees these things every day, but who can actually draw them? My dear niece, you’re being too modest.”

Zhong Ying smiled awkwardly but politely, and changed the subject, "By the way, Aunt, have you seen Li Linshi recently? I haven't seen him for quite a while."

Speaking of this, Cao Fang also found it strange, "No, I haven't seen him recently either."

"Could it be that it went to be reincarnated?" Zhong Ying murmured, feeling both happy and unhappy.

We've worked together for our cousin, and now he's being reincarnated without even saying goodbye?

However, Zhong Ying thought about it and realized that even if Li Linshi really came to say goodbye, there didn't seem to be much for her and him to talk about.

With this thought, Zhong Ying's initial unhappiness dissipated, leaving only happiness.

Great! Finally! That ghost is gone!

After all, the dead ghost is a pervert, but Zhong Ying isn't. Who would want a perfectly normal person to have a ghost lurking in the shadows, watching them menacingly? And this ghost has a terrible temper, unpredictable, getting angry one minute and unhappy the next—

Zhong Ying suddenly shuddered, feeling as if she were being stared at from behind, like thorns in her back. "No way, can't I even say bad things about ghosts in my mind?"

She turned her head slowly and stiffly, as if afraid of disturbing something.

It wasn't those deep, dark eyes and pale, handsome face.

Instead, he had a pair of slender, dazed eyes and a sallow face with a rosy blush.

Zhong Ying was inevitably a little disappointed, after all, the difference was quite large. Putting everything else aside, Li Linshi's face was still very pleasing to the eye.

Consort Li was undeniably beautiful, Zhong Ying thought to herself. She glanced at the young man who was still staring at her in a daze and added to herself, "She's different from ordinary people."

Ji Yuanchang snapped out of his daze and realized he'd been caught staring at Zhong Ying. He hurriedly avoided her gaze, his face turning even redder. Embarrassed, he looked around, asking, "Do you...do you need some more yellow paint?"

They used homemade clay pigments. Red was made by grinding red clay into powder, adding water and glue, black was made by mixing soot from the bottom of a pot with water and glue, and yellow and white were made by mixing yellow mud and white lime water. Only blue and green were relatively difficult to obtain, and most of the time they were made by mixing plant juice.

Zhong Ying could easily see through the young man's shallow thoughts and didn't want to give him any room for imagination, so she said coldly, "No need, I still have some here."

Ji Yuanchang's gaze followed her as she turned her head, his eyes flickering as he became lost in her profile.

He never expected to meet his ideal woman in such a small mountain village.

Beautiful, serene, aloof, and extremely talented.

Ji Yuanchang could create countless paintings with Zhong Ying as the main subject simply by looking at her.

Every day after work, the members of the production team would come to see the propaganda posters at the village entrance. Just like the ongoing harvest in the fields, the propaganda posters were also changing every day.

"Wheat field! It's a wheat field! It looks so beautiful when drawn, all golden!"

"This is the Ganlin River, right? Yes, yes, we can't forget this."

"I finally managed to draw a person today!"

"Zhong Lao Er, Zhong Lao Er's daughter, your daughter's drawing of you two looks just like you!"

Faced with the envious praise from others, even the shy Zhong Chunsheng couldn't help but show a smug smile, not to mention Deng Xia, whose head was held high and whose smugness could not be hidden.

Miao Suyun pointed to the line drawing of a character on the wall, which had already been sketched but not yet colored, and asked, "Little sister, is this me?"

Zhong Ying nodded, "I'll draw you and Xinzi tomorrow."

Zhong Xin, who was standing to the side, couldn't help but smile.

The little boy, Zhong Guoqiang, who could only see the drawing on the wall by clinging to his mother's back, was unhappy and asked a series of urgent questions, "Auntie, what about me? Where am I?"

Zhong Ying glanced at him and deliberately said, "This is a painting of people working in the fields. You're so young and you've never worked in the fields, so of course you're not in the painting."

Zhong Guoqiang pouted, his eyes welling up with tears, "Tomorrow, tomorrow I'll be all grown up! Tomorrow I can come and work in the fields!"

Miao Suyun could easily tell that Zhong Ying was teasing her son, but she had also been "corrupted" and deliberately said, "The seedlings in the field don't grow tall overnight, but you can grow tall?"

Zhong Guoqiang was extremely anxious, "Then I'll eat more!"

In a child's mind, eating more food will help them grow taller.

“The number of steamed buns we make each day is limited. If you eat too many, what will your grandpa and uncle eat?” Deng Xia also put on a stern face and deliberately teased her grandson.

The little boy looked at Zhong Chunsheng and then at Zhong Xin, feeling utterly perplexed.

Zhong Ying couldn't help but laugh out loud, letting go of the "torture" of the motherland's flowers. "Don't worry, I'll draw you on your mother's back. Everyone in the family can draw, except your father, since he's not home right now."

Zhong Guoqiang was relieved. As for his father not getting a share? That's not important.

Ji Yuanchang was also surrounded by villagers asking him all sorts of questions. When he turned his head and saw Zhong Ying's cheerful smile, his heart felt as if it had been struck again. He realized that she was so radiant and gentle when she was with her family.

He couldn't help but sink even deeper into despair, and he also wanted to be the one who received special treatment from her.

As the days passed, the propaganda poster celebrating the bumper harvest was nearing completion. Most of the figures in the picture had been drawn, and Xie Jixiang had begun to draw grids to prepare to write the slogan at the bottom of the poster: "Go all out and strive for a bumper agricultural harvest." He silently calculated in his mind that he could finish the poster in two more days, which would be four days earlier than originally planned!

As evening approached, people who had finished work came to see the paintings again.

Lin Shuhong exclaimed "Huh?" and pointed to the figure walking at the front of the picture, asking, "I thought this was going to depict our production team leader, but why is it Yingni'er from Zhong Lao Er's family?"

When the others looked, they realized it was true!

Zhong Ying was also taken aback when she heard the sound. Her task was to draw a series of figures and wheat fields on the right and behind her. In addition, she deliberately kept her distance from Ji Yuanchang, so she didn't notice that he was actually drawing herself.

In the center of the propaganda poster, a female commune member with two braids is walking at the front, carrying a grain basket with the character "丰" (abundance) pasted on it. Others follow closely behind, their faces beaming with the joy of harvest. The golden grain is piled up basket after basket around them.

When everyone looked again at Ji Yuanchang, who was still sketching the details of the female employees' hair, they thought, "Tsk, what else is there to not understand? This kid has ideas!"

Under the many meaningful gazes, Ji Yuanchang couldn't help but blush and lower his head, feeling extremely embarrassed.

Since he was his apprentice, Xie Jixiang stepped in to help him out of the predicament. "It's not like that saying, that young people are a part of the whole society, the most active and vibrant force. Young people are full of vigor and in their prime, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. That's why we put young people at the very front and in the center of the picture when creating this propaganda poster."

Of course, Zhong Ying wasn't the only young person in the production team. Both Ji Yuanchang and Xie Jixiang had their own ulterior motives for drawing her in this position.

Ji Yuanchang was in love with the beautiful woman, while Xie Jixiang was thinking that if Zhong Ying could really marry Ji Yuanchang, then he could take the young couple to paint propaganda posters elsewhere.

With this in mind, Xie Jixiang stepped in to smooth things over, looking at Li Ming, "Captain Li, you don't mind, do you?"

Li Ming waved his hand. He was getting old and had long planned to let the younger generation take over. He had originally thought that once his youngest son came back... Thinking of this, Li Ming couldn't help but feel a little lost.

Hu, always eager for a good spectacle, quipped, "Our Yingnier is beautiful, and she looks great in paintings too. This is so lifelike; you must have had a keen eye for detail, right?"

Nie Ying felt a little jealous. "I remember the Ji family is from the county town, right?"

"That's wonderful," Auntie San said with satisfaction. "It seems our production team will have another girl who 'leaps over the peasant gate'..."

In their view, drawing people so obviously is no different from a public confession. Which girl wouldn't be moved? Even these old women were touched. They had lived most of their lives and had never seen a man draw them so meticulously!

Deng Xia's expression was not good. With a sullen face, she pulled Zhong Ying and said, "Are you finished drawing? Let's go home."

Zhong Ying nodded. She had finished what she was supposed to draw today, but she hadn't washed her brush yet. "Mother, I still need to wash my brush."

"Go home and wash it, then bring it over tomorrow." Deng Xia pulled her away without further ado.

Watching the mother and daughter leave, everyone looked at each other in bewilderment, and then went home as if nothing had happened.

Ji Yuanchang stared at the direction where the figure had disappeared from sight, his heart aching. Had he gone too far? Should he have drawn her in the center? He wondered if her mother would scold him when she got back.

"Tsk tsk, you're not exactly a tough guy."

Upon hearing the voices, Ji Yuanchang turned to look at the speaker.

Liu Fengshou stood with his arms crossed, looking down at the young man who seemed "outrageously bold" in his eyes.

What he just said was exactly what he meant. Among the boys who were beaten by Zhong Ying when they were young, he was beaten the most. There was no way around it; his older brothers were either too old to understand or were just honest people. All the bad habits were transferred to Liu Fengshou. At that time, he was the most disliked child in the entire production team.

"Don't you even bother to find out what kind of person Zhong Ying is?" Liu Fengshou asked, inwardly marveling. Besides his fourth cousin from his aunt's side, another brave soul had appeared, but he didn't know if this one was a brave soul or just a reckless fool.

Ji Yuan frowned. "What do you mean? I don't need to ask others. I have my own eyes; I can see for myself. Zhong Ying is beautiful, serene, and talented; she's both aloof and gentle—"

Liu Fengshou listened, increasingly dumbfounded, and couldn't help but interrupt him, asking, "Who are you talking about? Are you sure you're talking about Zhong Ying? Are you seeing things? She's not like that at all! Zhong Ying has a fiery temper, she explodes at the slightest provocation! When she curses, her mouth is like poison, she never holds back!"

As Ji Yuanchang listened to his "slander," his brows furrowed deeper and deeper. Suddenly, he realized something and abruptly relaxed his brows. "I know! You must also have feelings for her! That's why you deliberately came to me and said these things!"

Liu Fengshou's eyes widened in shock, and he pointed at himself, "Me? Do you want to die?!"

When they were kids, he was the one who got beaten up the most by Zhong Ying. He likes Zhong Ying? He's not out of his mind to want to be beaten up for the rest of his life. Haven't you seen how he always avoids Zhong Ying?

Liu Fengshou looked Ji Yuanchang up and down. This man not only had poor eyesight, but he probably wasn't very bright either!

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Author's note: Li Linshi: Why do new "flies" appear whenever I try to be quiet?