Half an hour later.

Before Huai Yu and Zhou Qian had finished taking inventory of the supplies to be sold, they saw a clean, new house, neatly stacked firewood piles, and a square special-purpose freezer by the pond.

That was an artificial freezer that Lin Xuefeng had built by diverting water from the pond and compressing it into ice bricks, paving the ground and building walls. It was energy-saving and did not consume electricity. Lin Xuefeng had already put in the fresh meat ingredients that he had frozen along the way, and was now slowly wiping his hands and returning.

Zhou Qian remained silent.

Huaiyu was stunned.

She had originally planned to spend an afternoon and an evening to clean up her home after not returning for several months, but now...

It’s only been half an hour! “Superpowers are so useful.” She cried with envy.

"Don't think like that." Zhou Qian didn't know whether to comfort himself or Huai Yu: "Fang Ze has been here before, think about what he helped do in my house."

It can be said that nothing was done.

Huaiyu: ...

She suddenly became happy again and couldn't help but give Lin Xuefeng a big smile: "Lin Xuefeng, you are so amazing! The others I know are far worse than you."

No one could remain indifferent to Huai Yu's sweet words and sincere flattery. Lin Xuefeng couldn't help laughing, and then he also stepped forward: "Zhou Qian, now that the temperature has risen, the freezer may not be able to keep it like this for too long. If it's convenient for you, can you change some insulation cotton or hay when you go to the defense army to inquire about the news?"

Zhou Qian's face tightened: "Xiao Yu calls me brother, is it appropriate for you to call me by that name?"

Lin Xuefeng paused and looked back quietly.

Zhou Qian felt weak for a moment - this was his former idol, General Lin!

But at this moment, he only cleared his throat and then tightened his face.

After a moment, Lin Xuefeng remained calm and his voice remained as calm and gentle as always: "Brother Zhou Qian."

Zhou Qian's tense expression suddenly relaxed, but what surged into his heart was not joy, but a strong sense of guilt, so much so that he was not in a happy mood at all, and even stammered:

"So... this... from now on..."

Huaiyu sighed, with an embarrassed look on his face: "Brother Zhou Qian, do you like me too?"

Zhou Qian subconsciously replied: "Of course I... Bah! Don't think that you can get carried away with your confidence just because you have Lin Xuefeng as your boyfriend. Not everyone will like you that much!"

He snorted and said disdainfully: "Girl!"

Huaiyu is so angry!

He threw a handful of dried black fungus back into the bag: "I'm just asking! Why are you making personal attacks? I saw you making things difficult for Lin Xuefeng, and I thought you were jealous."

Girls are extroverts! Girls are extroverts!

Zhou Qian originally felt a little embarrassed that his former idol called him brother, but now he was ready to give it a try. He glanced at Lin Xuefeng again:

"Tell me, what should we call each other?"

Lin Xuefeng remained calm: "Brother Zhou Qian, I am younger than you, and you and Xiaoyu are the ones who make the decisions at home, so just call me by my name."

"See?" Zhou Qian raised his chin: "Don't look at your love manual for no reason. What do you learn every day?"

He proudly put down the things in his hands, and now casually took out the bicycle that had been cleaned by Lin Xuefeng and tried it out. It was obvious that he had accepted the fact that his former idol called him brother.

"I'll go ask the defense army first. If the materials there are suitable, I'll bring them back first. If they're not enough, I'll go to the Jinyuan Community. I happen to have some small amounts on hand, so I should be able to buy a few bales of hay."

After he said that, he pushed hard on his feet, pedaled the bicycle, and quickly went away on the overgrown path.

Huaiyu stared at the fungus in his hand and wondered, "I thought Brother Zhou Qian would be a little disappointed when he saw your ability. I didn't expect him to be so easily happy?"

She didn't hear Lin Xuefeng's reply after she finished speaking. She looked up curiously, only to see him sigh helplessly, "I thought you noticed his awkwardness and tried to smooth things over."

Huaiyu: "? What's unnatural about that?"

She reacted and said as a matter of course: "Aren't you only 30? Brother Zhou Qian is already in his 30s, so there's nothing wrong with calling him that?"

Lin Xuefeng didn't know what to say, so he just nodded: "No problem."

With Lin Xuefeng here, their original plan was greatly shortened. Huai Yu hesitated for a moment and said, "Why don't we take it directly to Boss Tang after we finish sorting it?"

"This way, I can pay back what I owe, and my psychological burden will be relieved. In addition, I can also deliver the news that Uncle Zaozi has been waiting for. The sooner he and his wife receive it, the sooner they can accept it."

After she finished speaking, she saw that Lin Xuefeng had easily picked up a bag with one hand and moved to another position. When he rolled up his sleeves, his forearm muscles were tense, and his lines were bulging and particularly smooth.

Huaiyu couldn't help but take a few more glances.

It's so strange. I'm with Brother Zhou Qian every day, and he only wears a vest when working in the summer, but I don't think there is anything wrong.

But Lin Xuefeng was always dressed tightly, and if he moved a little and exposed himself, she would be drawn to the spotlight.

Huaiyu thought about it and decided that it was not her fault, it must be because of her hormones.

The next moment, he saw the forearm that he had just looked at for a few more seconds stretched out in front of him. It was white and strong, with faint blue veins visible on the inside.

"Want to touch it?"

Lin Xuefeng's smiling voice was right beside his ear: "I just saw you staring at me for a while."

Huaiyu's face turned a little red.

but!

She reached out and pinched it: "The muscles are so strong! When can I train to be like this?"

Lin Xuefeng thought for a moment and said, "Why don't we start with plank support tomorrow? If we stick to it for a year, my arm muscles should look pretty good."

Huaiyu pulled his hand back as if he was burned: "Forget it, it's too hard. Last time I slept in the tree cocoon, it hurt my neck."

Lin Xuefeng said helplessly: “Xiao Yu, do you want me to remind you that you slept soundly last time.”

Huaiyu said seriously: "Don't talk about these things while working... We are so poor now, we should just focus on making money."

As she spoke, she picked up the pile of wild chrysanthemums in her hand and said, "Do you want to sell all of these? I brought some cuttings. If you want to drink it, we can grow it ourselves."

Lin Xuefeng smelled the unique slightly bitter fragrance of wild chrysanthemums and nodded: "It's up to you to decide - I'm relying on you for support now."

But he was a little curious: "How do you dry these wild chrysanthemums?"

It’s more like air drying than hanging it to dry.

Huaiyu gestured: "Put them flat in a large gauze bag, tie both sides to the top of the car, and when the car starts moving and there is wind on the road, they will slowly dry."

A lot of things were collected slowly in this way.

but……

Huaiyu looked up at Lin Xuefeng who was sorting in silence. His expression was less gloomy and more solemn than when he looked in the wilderness. That is -

“What a pity.”

She felt a little pitiful: "You are such a good person, but now you can't even say your name casually, and you can't walk on the street openly... I feel that this world is so unfair to you."

“No.” Lin Xuefeng picked up a bunch of wild chrysanthemums with stems in the bag - perhaps he was in a hurry when picking them, so he pulled them off with force.

The wild chrysanthemum with a dry stem was pinned gently to Huaiyu's ear. It had a very light weight, a very subtle bitter fragrance, and an exceptionally obvious presence.

Lin Xuefeng's answer was just like the wild chrysanthemum, gentle yet powerful: "This world has been very good to me."

"If it were before, I would just be an ordinary art student. Now I am either thinking about how to build a career or considering the burden of starting a family."

"But now, I have started from the beginning and worked hard. I have been an ordinary person and a hero. Just like the martial arts books I read in my childhood, the hero's destiny is to retire to the mountains and forests."

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

"Xiaoyu, don't you think this is romantic?"

He gently touched Huaiyu's hair and said softly:

"Especially in this world, I can still meet someone who will firmly choose me no matter what. I think God is so good to me. So I always work diligently and do more good things for others along the way..."

"My life is really too perfect. I am overwhelmed and flattered."

Huaiyu said nothing.

After a while, she raised her head silently again, with stars twinkling in her eyes, and her voice was as soft as a cloud of mist: "Lin Xuefeng, you... don't have a father or a mother either?"

Lin Xuefeng was stunned, then burst into laughter——

"Xiao Yu, are you afraid that your loud voice will irritate me?"

He shook his head: "It's very expensive to study art. Without my parents' support, it would be difficult for me to make any progress on my own."

"But..." He thought of the past, and it always seemed like something from a previous life, distant and shrouded in mist: "The year I was about to graduate from college, they fell ill, and they went around looking for all kinds of folk remedies to cure the disease."

"But my body couldn't take it anymore, so I had to stay with him all the time. All the results of my college years were lost at that time - no thesis, no classes, no graduation..."

He missed the art exhibition that his tutor had carefully arranged, and was forced to cancel the original project along with his co-operating classmates. He paid the penalty but lost everything.

Even a simple request for leave was not possible.

He was hastily taken into the car by the couple who had lost their minds in order to survive. They forced him to worship, made him believe in things he shouldn't believe in, and finally tried all kinds of folk remedies himself...

In just one short year, all his energy and spirit were worn away.

However, these so-called sufferings of the original family that could have been written about in great detail are not worth mentioning to Lin Xuefeng after experiencing the disaster.

There's no need to even bring it out and ruin Xiaoyu's mood.

So even his voice was faint.

"Then, when they insisted on going to an unexplored hot spring deep in the mountains, the catastrophe began."

Lin Xuefeng downplayed these past events, but Huaiyu keenly grasped a lot of information from them - some families are rich, but they don't necessarily care about their children, right?

However, since Lin Xuefeng was unwilling to mention it, it must be something he was unhappy about, so she didn't want to ask about it. Unless one day he wanted to tell it, she would be willing to listen to the story.

So she shook her head and said, "How pitiful! If I had known you earlier, would we have been together?"

Lin Xuefeng thought for a moment and said, "I don't know. But... it shouldn't be the case."

"Why? Don't you like the old Huaiyu?" Huaiyu was a little curious: her spiritual food clearly said that if you love someone, you will accept her completely! Lin Xuefeng shook his head: "In my eyes, you have always been different individuals. Everyone's experience and life will shape her character, and the me you met earlier was not what I am now."

He stared at Huaiyu deeply: "But, Xiaoyu, if you can appear in front of me before the disaster in your current state, I think I will continue to like you."

“Even the darkest plants will always seek the sun.”

Huaiyu looked up and saw that his eyes were full of hope and vision, as if such a wonderful thing had really happened before, and that they supported each other and had an exceptionally bright future.

…

Zhou Qian didn't come back until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. His powerful legs and feet pedaled the 28-inch bicycle like a Hot Wheels, with a thick bundle of things tied to the back.

"This is the insulation cotton we brought back from the defense army. There is no such thing in Hay Jinyuan Community. We have to go to Hongsheng Trading Market to buy it."

"Xiao Yu, have you guys packed up? If you have, let's load it up and go."

Huai Yu nodded: "It's sorted, and the things to be sold have been put in the car. Brother Zhou Qian, please get in the car and rest for a while. Lin Xuefeng will put on a mask and drive for you later."

Zhou Qian did not refuse - in order to save time, he really did not stop at all. At this moment, he took the kettle handed to him by Huai Yu and got in the car.

Meanwhile, Lin Xuefeng was still talking to him: "The insulation cotton is already very good. Let's buy some hay. As long as we can ensure that the freezer can last for more than 20 hours in the summer, it will be fine. Otherwise, we will have to worry about reinforcing it at night, which will be a bit troublesome."

Zhou Qian gulped down his saliva and asked curiously, "Don't you dig a cellar in the summer?"

Lin Xuefeng said helplessly: "Xiao Yu likes to eat fresh food very much. Even if we dig a cellar, it's better to store more ice in it to keep it fresh. These are always necessary for insulation."

Zhou Qian nodded: "Okay, we'll discuss the specific house layout later. You come back to sleep with me tonight, is that okay?"

He was like a concerned old father, strictly preventing the two from being alone together in inappropriate places.

Lin Xuefeng now showed no aggressiveness at all, as if the solemn and oppressive look Zhou Qian had seen in the surveillance camera was just an illusion.

"No, Brother Zhou Qian."

Lin Xuefeng said sincerely: "This is what I should do, but I haven't cleaned up the room over there yet, so I'll come back in the evening."

These are all small things.

Zhou Qian raised the corner of his mouth. Hearing this name again, he felt relaxed and not uncomfortable at all.

He thought about it, and for a moment he didn't know how to act like a big brother, so he could only say awkwardly: "Well, let's do this for now."

(End of this chapter)