Chapter 65
After dinner was ready, it was brought into the warm room. Sitting on the bare kang, Qiao Sheng wanted to sigh. How could things get worse and worse? All her belongings were gone. How could she sleep at night?
Li Mu told her not to worry. He would make a mattress and blanket with rabbit hair. They would put them together for the night. Tomorrow they would solve the problem of cotton wool.
The two of them quickly ate and moved boxes and cabinets in the storage room. They finally found the boxes containing fur, cotton and ramie. After
the boxes were moved out, Qiao Sheng squatted in front of the boxes and searched. The rabbit hair was definitely enough to make two mattresses, but the cotton was definitely not enough to make a quilt. Li Mu did grow a lot of cotton before, and later made cotton clothes. He was going to take it out bit by bit to exchange for supplies.
Qiao Sheng thought the business had already started, but when she looked through the box, she realized that there were still dozens of cotton clothes in it.
"It's getting cold, why haven't you taken these cotton clothes out to exchange for supplies?" Qiao Sheng wondered.
Li Mu told her that it was not the right time yet. The few low-value clothes she made had already been exchanged for some supplies, and the ones he made would have to wait a little longer. The weather was not cold enough, and there would always be people who were lucky enough to think they could get through it and pay a higher price. He was doing this just to get a higher value for the cotton clothes.
After taking twenty rabbit skins, cotton, cotton cloth and some needles and threads, Qiao Sheng went upstairs and sat on the bare and slightly hot kang to sew a mattress. Li Mu stayed in the storage room to tidy up the messy boxes. Now he could see the benefits of the storage boxes. Not only could they hold a lot of things, but the materials inside would not fall out. Otherwise, the workload would be too much.
After a busy time, Qiao Sheng finally made two rabbit fur mattresses and two new pillows before going to bed. At least he didn't have to sleep on such a hard kang. With pillows, he wouldn't get a stiff neck. If he had to cover himself, he could cover himself with his cotton clothes. He added a little more firewood to the stove and closed the door of the greenhouse to make it through the night.
After Li Mu cleaned up the storage room downstairs, he went to the bathroom on the first floor to wash up before returning to the warm room. When he came in, he saw a rabbit fur mattress and pillow placed at the end of the kang where he usually slept. Qiao Sheng had not slept yet, and was sitting on his blanket rubbing his almost useless arms.
After taking off his shoes, getting on the kang and closing the door, Li Mu sat on the other side of the kang table and said that in fact he didn't need a mattress, and it was okay for him to lie on it all night with his clothes on, so why not make her an extra rabbit fur blanket to cover her.
Qiao Sheng hit his sore arm and said, there is no difference in treatment, let him sleep on the bare bed, can I really sleep well with the blanket on?
Li Mu smiled and asked if she needed a massage service. Looking at her condition, if she didn't massage, she would not be able to lift her arms tomorrow.
Qiao Sheng was still very happy to accept this suggestion. After hitting her arm for a long time, her arm was still very painful.
After moving the small table away, Li Mu asked her to turn over. He started from her shoulders and pressed along the shoulder blades a little bit, then the arms, and finally did a set of muscle relaxation. Qiao Sheng was in pain but happy. Fortunately, there was no one else on the boat. She turned her back to him and screamed, making Li Mu behind her blush.
After the massage, she turned back and saw it. Qiao Sheng didn't understand it. She asked him if the kang was too hot, why did his face turn red. Li Mu smiled and shook his head.
"Your skills are amazing. It's comparable to the blind masseur at the entrance of our community. Come on, turn over and I'll give you a massage too." Qiao Sheng moved her shoulders, which were much looser, and pushed him.
Seeing that she was in high spirits, Li Mu turned around and sat in the warm room. They had taken off their cotton coats long ago. Both of them were wearing T-shirts. Qiao Sheng felt that this job was not easy as soon as he started. The meat was too hard and he couldn't even pinch it. He had no choice but to keep asking him if he wanted more strength.
The person in front could only say "yes, yes, yes". Qiao Sheng's hands were sore from pinching, but the eldest brother didn't feel any pain.
"Your shoulder is too hard. I can't even pinch it. Wait a minute, I'll try another way. If it hurts, just tell me. I'm going to be really hard." Qiao Sheng changed from sitting cross-legged on the kang to kneeling, pressing him with her elbows. This time, the strength was much greater. Li Mu was also tired and didn't react. He just sat there and let her press.
After rubbing, Qiao Sheng patted her arm and praised her, saying that she looked thin when dressed and had muscles when undressed. Fang Yueyi even said that she was a weakling and should let her touch her muscles and slap her face.
Li Mu refused directly, saying that anyone could touch her casually, and she should not even think about it. Qiao Sheng laughed at him as a model of male virtue, while opening the door, getting off the kang and going to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face.
When she came back, Li Mu had already lain down, and there were two cups of hot water on the small kang table, ready for them to drink when they got up at night. When Qiao Sheng lay down, he grumbled that the temperature in the warm room was higher and the spicy taste was stronger.
When they woke up in the morning, they did not slack off in bed at all. They got up as soon as they opened their eyes and prepared to grill corn for breakfast on a simple grill. They found that the grill was broken. Li Mu went downstairs to get the ingredients and made a new one. He moved the old one to the terrace and put the new one in the kitchen. Only then did he grill the corn.
After washing up, Qiao Sheng went into the kitchen and cut some radish and ginger, and cooked some radish soup. She slept without a quilt last night, and her body was quite hot. This morning, she woke up with a stuffy nose. She couldn't figure out whether it was because the kang was too hot or because she didn't have a quilt and got cold. She drank some radish and ginger soup. One can clear away heat and reduce internal heat, and the other can treat colds. At least one of them should be related.
After breakfast, Qiao Sheng cleaned up the kitchen. All the clay pots were broken and needed to be remade. One of the iron pots was cleaned and used yesterday, and the other pot was deformed because it was bumped somewhere.
She threw them all onto the terrace and asked Li Mu to see if he could smash and repair them. If not, she could try to reuse them. After all, they were iron products.
Fortunately, she had put the two baloney pots into the storage box, and even the baloney was still there. The jar for pickled cabbage and the jar for pickled mustard greens were also hit. Qiao Sheng took a look and found that they were only broken in a piece. The marinade inside had drained out, but the vegetables were still there.
It seemed that the pickle jar had to be remade as well. It was a good time to pickle a new batch. These would be shared among a few friends later.
After a busy day, the kitchen was finally cleaned. Just as she entered the bathroom to wash her hands, Li Mu came up with something that looked like neither a bow nor a stick.
After asking, I found out that it was used to fluff cotton. As for how to use it, the two of them had to cooperate. Cotton fluffed up too much cotton wool, so the two of them covered their mouths and noses with cotton cloth.
The diabolo bed in the cabin was moved to the third deck. Qiao Sheng first spread a large piece of cotton cloth on the bed, and then spread the cotton on it. Li Mu pulled the cotton fluffing tool on it, and Qiao Sheng took a piece of wood and hit the bull's eye again and again, and the cotton was slowly fluffed and softened.
One of them kept raising his arms high, and the other bent his waist to fluff. It didn't work after just fluffing the cotton on the bed. This is definitely not scientific.
After moving a chair up, the two of them studied the cotton. Qiao Sheng had never seen cotton fluffing before. She had only seen it in a small video and her mother's description: "My mother said that it was a one-person job to fluff cotton, and two people were needed to bundle the cotton. In the video, it seemed that the master was holding the tool with his left hand and fluffing it with his right hand. The labor loss for us is too great."
Li Mu only knew the principle. After listening to her description, he began to improve the tool. First, he had to set up the bow-like tool. This was easy. He tied a taller bamboo pole to the two diagonals of the bed and connected it with a bamboo pole in the middle. Then he tied the cotton-fleshing tool loosely on it with a rope so that it could slide on the crossbeam. In this way, one person could fluff the cotton while the other rested.
While studying this, it was already noon. Li Mu was working on the cotton-fleshing tool on the third floor in the low temperature. Qiao Sheng went downstairs to make lunch. In this weather, they had to prepare hot soup after staying outdoors all day.
In the trading system, I actually received an order for pepper. The item they wanted was not too much, just a few cabbages. Qiao Sheng took the order and traded it directly. When he got it, he found that it was a mixture of black pepper and white pepper. He went upstairs to ask Li Mu, and he set aside some for planting, and the rest could be ground into pepper powder.
Since he had pepper powder, he had to prepare the vinegar and pepper soup today. He took a few pork chops and grilled them on the grill, mixed them with cucumber and jellyfish, cut two pig ears, and stir-fried some vegetarian cabbage with some red peppers. It was very delicious.
After finishing, she called Li Mu down to eat first, and asked him how the cotton-flossing upstairs was going. He said that it was all done, and he had finished fluffing all the cotton on the bed. It was indeed more time-saving and labor-saving than the way they did it at the beginning. He would go and fluff it later. After finishing a cotton cover, Qiao Sheng could take it down and sew one first. With division of labor and cooperation, the work could be done faster.
In the afternoon, the two of them started to get busy. After fluffing the cotton, they started to tie the cotton with fine cotton thread. At the beginning, they didn't cooperate well and tied it crookedly, but later it was fixed. Qiao Sheng said it was almost the same as the cotton cover her mother brought back before.
A lot of new cotton was added to the newly-made cotton, after all, there was a lot of cotton stained with oil before. After Qiao Sheng finished sewing a quilt, he went to the kitchen to make ginger soup. Li Mu had been outside for too long and was prone to catching a cold. He had never seen cold medicine in this game, so he should drink more ginger soup to get rid of the cold.
This resulted in Li Mu sewing two quilts and two mattresses of cotton, and Qiao Sheng fed him three bowls of ginger soup. If he didn't drink it, it was out of his heart, but if he drank it, he really felt uncomfortable, it was spicy, and it was really tormenting. The weather was still cold, and he didn't sweat much, so he went to the bathroom several times.
After Qiao Sheng took the fourth cotton-cotton cover down, Li Mu quickly dismantled the cotton-cotton cover, put the bamboo bed back in place, put the other tools in the storage room on the first floor, and filled the trough for the livestock on the first floor with food. Then he went into the warm room. He didn't want to stay outside for even a minute, for fear that Qiao Sheng would force him to drink ginger soup again.
Sitting in the warm room and watching Qiao Sheng sew the last stitch, Li Mu suddenly remembered that the rabbit fur blanket and mattress that he had washed yesterday were still on the drying rack. He quickly went out to get them back, and the two began to make the bed. The cotton that had been fluffed was really too soft, and the quilts were all thick, and there were no hard lumps to the touch. Qiao Sheng even lay down for a while after making the bed. It was really too comfortable.
She also smelled the rabbit fur mattress and blanket that had been dried in the sun. They were washed very clean and had no odor at all. This set of blankets made Qiao Sheng want to lie down and sleep right away.
However, she hadn't eaten dinner yet, and the quilt in the bathtub hadn't been washed yet. There was still a lot of work to do, and no one could rest.