Chapter 23
Seeing this, Huo Yanci's temper immediately flared up: "Why weren't you this attentive when you designed my courtyard? Were you just going through the motions?"
"..." Ning Qingxi: "Tell me your reasoning. Was the one I gave you bad in meaning or bad in design? What are you unhappy about? Tell me, and I'll fix it for you once I'm done with this busy period."
Huo Yanci said, "What a coincidence, I also have a piece of land like that..."
Ning Qingxi: "..."
If she remembered correctly, Huo Yanci's payment was a hairpin, which was worth the design blueprints for an entire garden.
Ning Qingxi asked with concern, "Are you alright?"
Seeing that things were going badly, Zhang Fuhu immediately stepped between the two and tried to mediate: "Alright, alright, it's a wonderful day, don't fight."
Ning Qingxi and Huo Yanci asked in unison, "Who's arguing?"
Zhang Fuhu: "..."
Ning Qingxi casually made a promise: "When I have some free time, I might hire a couple of people to design with me. When you come, I'll make sure you have a comfortable stay."
Huo Yanci: "...Do you have money?"
Ning Qingxi: "..."
That damned jerk who always brings up the most sensitive topics!
Zhang Fuhu didn't understand the situation between the two of them and felt somewhat confused: "Miss Ning, you don't have any money?"
"No, we need to get another batch of seedlings. I reckon it'll be around the beginning of next spring. There are a lot of expenses to cover."
"Hey, why would you need to pay for it yourself? We don't need that little bit."
Zhang Fuhu was wealthy and powerful, and with a wave of his hand, he threw out hundreds of taels of silver.
Looking back, Ning Qingxi realized that she had relied entirely on charity during this period of travel, and a wave of sadness washed over her, making her unwilling to recall the past.
However, Zhang Fuhu, lacking any sense of propriety, suddenly said with a blushing face, "It's like this, a few days ago I heard you talk about using those notebooks to manage people, and I thought it was quite convenient. I had someone make a batch these past few days, and now they're all like this. Therefore, consider this batch of seedlings money as an idea to buy them from you."
Ning Qingxi: "Cheers to our friendship!"
After a few drinks, Ning Qingxi felt a little dizzy and feverish, and her reactions slowed down. She let Zhang Fuhu cling to her neck and brag. After listening for a while, she suddenly felt her neck lighten. She turned her head and saw that Huo Yanci had sat down there at some point.
Where is Boss Zhang?
Ning Qingxi bent down to search for someone under the table.
"Didn't you hear what he was saying? His old flame is here, he went to find her."
Where to?
Huo Yanci pointed behind her, to the pavilion in the corridor, where pink gauze curtains fluttered in the wind and silvery laughter rang out.
Ning Qingxi looked at the shadowy figures behind her, feeling as if the laughter was right next to her ears, annoying her. She shook her head, trying to shake the sounds away.
"What's wrong? Drunk?" Huo Yanci asked.
Ning Qingxi patted her ears: "No, but it's so noisy."
Huo Yanci sneered: "Serves you right, you won't learn your lesson until you suffer."
You can't expect ivory to come out of a dog's mouth.
"What did you say?"
Huo Yanci didn't hear her muttering, and clicked his tongue as he looked at her: "Ning Qingxi, are you still awake?"
Ning Qingxi was even more impatient than him: "I didn't drink too much."
She wasn't really drunk; she was just a little mentally unstable and needed a moment to process what people were saying.
Huo Yanci estimated that this amount of alcohol probably wouldn't be enough to make her drunk, but she still ordered a pot of hangover soup and couldn't help but nag, "Don't drink so much when you go out drinking alone with other people. You dare to get drunk when you're drinking with Boss Zhang. You're really fearless."
Ning Qingxi lay leaning against him, listening to his constant muttering, when suddenly an idea struck her, and she asked, "And what about you?"
"Um?"
"Can I drink more with you?"
Huo Yanci chuckled lightly: "You can know a person's face but not their heart. I didn't realize you trusted me so much."
As Ning Qingxi listened to him speak, she could feel the slight vibration of his chest as he spoke. Her ears felt a little itchy, so she raised her hand to rub them, but it didn't seem to help. The itch felt like someone had gently scraped her heart with a feather, making her heart itch.
Her face was itchy, so she raised her hand to scratch it. For some reason, she felt like she was grabbing something. She looked up and saw that she was holding a corner of the bed curtain. Night had fallen outside.
Ning Qingxi sat up, somewhat bewildered, and began to recall how she had returned.
She only remembered that she was having a victory celebration banquet, and Zhang Fuhu was bragging to her. As he was bragging, for some reason, Huo Yanci was sitting next to her. Huo Yanci was like a giant human-shaped cushion, with a slightly higher body temperature than hers. It was very comfortable to lean against. She hadn't wanted to sleep at all...
It was probably Huo Yanci who brought her back.
The embarrassing thing is something you get used to after a while. She got up and soon accepted it, put on her shoes and went out to find something to eat.
Just as the wet nurse finished cooking, Ning Qingshan and Ning Qingyuan returned from school, chattering excitedly about the interesting things that happened there.
Ning Qingxi realized how impatient her mother must have been when she used to chatter on and on about the trivial things at school when she was little.
However, she couldn't dampen the children's enthusiasm, so she kept giving feedback with "uh-huh" and "ah-ah" sounds. While she was talking nonsense, she suddenly noticed that the two children had changed into thinner summer clothes.
After they finished speaking and went to copy the poems left by the teacher, Ning Qingxi asked the nanny, "Where did they get their clothes?"
"It's been hot these past few days, so I changed their clothes twice."
Ning Qingxi was a little embarrassed, and opened her purse: "How much is it? I'll pay you back."
“No need. Looking at them is like seeing the prince when he was a child,” the wet nurse said with a hint of melancholy in her eyes. “The prince loved reading when he was a child. He didn’t like anything else but reading. He wasn’t even interested in the swings that other children his age loved.”
Ning Qingxi listened, finding it hard to imagine.
It's truly rare to find someone like Huo Yanci who has no interest in anything other than reading.
Mentioning Huo Yanci, Ning Qingxi couldn't help but be curious about his past and asked, "Was he really like this before? It seems like he had quite a few hobbies?"
"When he was a child, around eight or nine years old, his tutor would praise him every few days. It was only later, after his master and mistress died in battle, that he was left as their only son..."
Huo Yanci was, after all, a member of the royal family, so he couldn't say anything casually. In short, there was a power struggle, and no one could say exactly what happened during that time. In any case, Huo Yanci survived and became the only one alive in the family. He put down all his books and spent his days playing with cats, dogs, and crickets. He always dressed up in a flamboyant manner when he went out and became a well-known good-for-nothing in the capital.
Ning Qingxi initially found it quite interesting, as if there really was a silent and stubborn child in front of her, eating, studying, and sleeping alone.
But the more I listened, the more my heart ached, and I felt a dull ache and couldn't breathe properly.
Under the dim oil lamp, Ning Qingshan's shadow seemed to transform into another person, contemplating a way to survive.
The wet nurse changed her tone and said in a lighthearted manner, "Fortunately, the master and mistress are watching over us from heaven."
After hearing this, Ning Qingxi felt a strange urge to hug Huo Yanci.
The next morning, Huo Yanci, who came to pick her up in a horse-drawn carriage, looked bewildered, wondering what Ning Qingxi was up to this time, and asked in confusion, "What's wrong with you?"
"It's nothing, I just wanted to hug you."
Huo Yanci seemed unaccustomed to this atmosphere, and chuckled twice: "You're making me feel flattered."
Ning Qingxi sniffed: "Then you should cherish this while you can, because you won't get this treatment again tomorrow."
Early in the morning, people come and go, and the aroma of steaming food and noisy hawking cries mingle together, squeezing into every corner as if trying to find a crack.
Ning Qingxi hugged him for a while, but then felt more and more eyes on her, which made her a little embarrassed, so she let go of him.
Huo Yanci promptly handed over a handkerchief: "If there's nothing else, shall we go back?"
Ning Qingxi nodded, then strolled around the city, buying a bunch of snacks before returning home satisfied.
Huo Yanci found her to be quite interesting. When she was outside, she seemed like she would never do any work, but as soon as she returned to the construction site, she immediately transformed into a workaholic, wanting to eat, drink, relieve herself, and live in that tiny hut that was less than five steps from north to south and less than fifteen steps from east to west.
Ning Qingxi explained, "It's precisely because I don't like it that I want to finish everything right away so I can avoid seeing it and getting annoyed!"
Huo Yanci chuckled and picked up a large straw hat, placing it on her head: "Let's go. We need to deal with those guys who are unsure how to build your design. They're about to start fighting."
It was Ning Qingxi's first time designing a garden, so she was inevitably flustered and overwhelmed. She sighed and resignedly went out to take a look. She thought to herself that she should hire more people in the future so that she wouldn't have to worry about the engineering work.
The drawing that left everyone confused was of a courtyard, but it was divided into four courtyards. For a moment, they didn't know whether to build it as one or four courtyards. In addition, Ning Qingxi's drawing was indeed abstract. At first glance, all four courtyards were made of stone, which made it even more confusing. Now that the land needed to be leveled, they didn't know how big to build it.
When Ning Qingxi stepped onto the land, several people were arguing fiercely, which was very gratifying to see. A quick glance revealed that they were all young people, all promising talents who could be poached by other companies.
"What's wrong? Is there anything you don't understand?"
Upon seeing her arrive, a group of people swarmed around her.
"Young Lady Ning, look, if all four courtyards are calculated at this size, isn't this piece of land too big? It takes up almost half of the land!"
"But since we've installed partitions, if they're too small, you'll walk to the other end in just a couple of steps. If there are a lot of people, it's questionable whether they'll even fit!"
Ning Qingxi glanced at the blueprints and said, "This is a courtyard that represents a theme. Just follow the dimensions I marked. As for how much it can accommodate, this garden shouldn't be open to the public. Mr. Zhang is only bringing a few friends, so it should be able to fit them."
The garden is divided according to the four seasons, arranged in a circle in the order of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. You enter from the spring garden and exit from the winter garden.
Each time you walk through a door, you see a completely new view. The first garden, the Spring Garden, is a bamboo forest landscape with sharp, bamboo shoot-shaped stones hidden among the grass, like tender bamboo shoots breaking through the soil in spring. The Summer Garden features Taihu stones stacked together, with a lotus pond below and a pavilion built on top, making it feel like summer all year round. The Autumn Garden uses yellow stones extensively, with many strange pines and cypresses in the garden. The space is open and desolate. The Winter Garden is the most wonderful, with fluorite placed to make artificial mountains. When the sun shines on them, it looks like a layer of snow covering them. Behind the green trees and mountains, there are holes in the wall. When the wind blows through, it sounds like the north wind whistling in winter. [1]
Ning Qingxi gave a general overview of the garden, and everyone present couldn't help but sigh. Ning Qingxi said she was keeping a low profile, but in reality, she was practically strutting around with her tail between her legs.
After leaving the construction site, Ning Qingxi asked, "Do you think it would be possible for me to set up a garden design studio?"
Huo Yanci, unusually, didn't reply with "Do you have money?" Instead, she thought carefully for a moment and asked, "What are your thoughts now?"
Ning Qingxi shrugged: "My only idea right now is to set one up, otherwise it would be too tiring to do everything myself."
Having worked tirelessly day and night for days on end, Ning Qingxi was utterly exhausted, both physically and mentally. Every day she would go home and fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but she still couldn't sleep well. Every morning, she would be seen yawning and sitting in a chair, looking utterly hopeless, chewing on a steamed bun while looking at pictures.
Huo Yanci noticed the obvious dark circles under her eyes and felt that continuing like this was not a solution, so he suggested, "How about I provide the money and land, and you find suitable people? We can share some of the profits with you."
Ning Qingxi looked at him and said, "You really trust me. If I don't do a good job, you'll lose everything."
Ning Qingxi feared that when that day truly came, she would have no face to face Huo Yanci.
However, Huo Yanci said, "Is there anything in the world without risk? Or are you afraid that you'll want to take the lion's share of the profits?"
Ning Qingxi blurted out in rebuttal, "How could that be?"
"That's settled then?" Huo Yanci said. "Ning Qingxi, you can lose money in any business. I just admire your skills and I will never let you lose everything."
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