dognovel Chapter 984: Just
Chapter 984: Just
When Shen Zhiyi of Jinxiu Pavilion woke up, she was lying on a bumpy mule cart. The coarse linen bedding rubbed her cheeks sore, and the scent of mugwort and sweat lingered at her nose. The wind blew the curtains open a little, and she saw yellow dust rising from the dirt road. Smoke curled from the distant village, and the green tile and earthen walls looked like a faded ink painting in the twilight. "Get off as soon as you wake up," the driver said gruffly, cracking his whip. "Your uncle is waiting for you at the village entrance." Only then did she remember what happened before she time-traveled—a fashion designer who had been working overtime until the early morning hours was hit by an out-of-control truck while crossing the road, and when she opened her eyes again, she was reborn as this fifteen-year-old body. The original owner was an orphan. After her parents died of illness, she was taken to town by her distant uncle, but she caught a cold on the way and died. A middle-aged man in shorts stood under a locust tree at the village entrance. It was the original owner's uncle, Shen Laoshi. He saw Shen Zhiyi get off the car, rubbed his hands and led her to the village: "Our house is small, you and your aunt will squeeze into a room first. I asked someone to find you a job, cutting thread ends in a cloth shop, you can earn two hundred coins a month." The Shen family's adobe house was low and dim. Aunt Li was squatting in front of the stove kneading dough. When she saw her come in, she didn't even raise her eyelids: "Are you here? Fill the water tank first." There were two coarse porcelain bowls on the stove, one bowl of brown rice with a poached egg, and the other bowl only with pickles - obviously left for his uncle and cousin Shen Shitou. Shen Zhiyi didn't say anything, picked up the shoulder pole and went to the well. Her modern body, pampered and comfortable, wobbled even when carrying half a bucket of water. In the yard, Li, turning over the bamboo baskets used to dry grain, muttered, "City girls are so precious; carrying a bucket of water feels like breaking their backs." Lying on her creaking wooden bed at night, Shen Zhiyi touched her washed-bleached coarse shirt and suddenly remembered her studio—a wall of fabric swatches, an imported sewing machine, and the blueprints for her newly completed modified cheongsam. She turned over, the bed creaking. Li's hushed voice echoed from next door: "This girl eats too much and works too little. It's better to send her to the cloth shop early." The next day, she went to work at the cloth shop. The shopkeeper asked her to sit in a corner and cut the threads. A mountain of various fabrics lay, the coarse linen as stiff as cardboard, the fine cotton thin and brittle. As Shen Zhiyi cut her third piece, the needle pricked her fingertip, and a drop of blood dripped onto the royal blue silk, creating a tiny red dot. "What a shame about this piece of brocade," the shopkeeper sighed regretfully. "It was commissioned by the county magistrate's daughter for a pomegranate-red wedding dress. You've stained it a little, so you'll have to pay half a tael of silver." Shen Zhiyi stared at the bloodstain on the silk and suddenly said, "I can fix it." She remembered her grandmother's Suzhou embroidery manual, which included a method for "covering stains with embroidery." She picked up a pair of scissors and cut a tiny pomegranate flower from scraps of fabric. Then, using red silk thread, she embroidered it along the edge, just enough to cover the bloodstain. She also embroidered a circle of gold thread around the edge of the petals, making it even more delicate than before. The shopkeeper's eyes lit up. "Can you embroider?" "A little." Shen Zhiyi's fingertips were still trembling. Her body was too weak, and her arms felt sore after just a few stitches. At the end of the day, when they finished work, the shopkeeper gave her an extra fifty wen: "This is a reward for you. If you'd like, come embroider with me next time. I'll give you one hundred wen per foot of embroidery." Passing by a general store, Shen Zhiyi bought a pack of the cheapest embroidery needles and half a bundle of silk thread. When she got home, Li saw what she had in her hand and immediately snatched it away: "You spendthrift! You just earned some money and you're wasting it!" She threw the needle and thread on the table and said, "Don't go to the cloth shop tomorrow. Come with me to the fields to weed." Shen Zhiyi didn't argue. She waited until the whole family was asleep at night and secretly lit the oil lamp. She took out a piece of fine cotton cloth she had picked up from under her pillow and began to embroider it in the dim light - not ordinary flowers and birds, but a lotus pattern she designed. The lines were smoother than the traditional style, and the edges of the petals were added with wavy circles, like petals covered with dew. Three days later, she took the embroidered cotton cloth to the cloth shop. The shopkeeper looked at it over and over again, and suddenly slammed the table: "The county magistrate's niece wants to make a cloak. If you embroider it according to this pattern, I will give you one tael of silver!" One tael of silver was enough to buy half a stone of rice. Shen Zhiyi returned home with the order in hand. As soon as she entered the house, Li stopped her. "Shitou's going to town to study. Give me your wages first." She reached out and grabbed Shen Zhiyi's cloth bag, spilling the embroidery thread on the floor. "This is the money I need to exchange for rice," Shen Zhiyi held the bag in her arms. "Shitou should spend money on his studies, but you can't take my hard-earned money." Li was stunned—the girl had always been timid and never dared to talk back to her. Shen Laoshi emerged from the inner room and, with a sigh, pulled Li away. "Let her go. It's a way to make a living." Shen Zhiyi moved her embroidery work to the small woodshed in the backyard of the cloth shop. She trimmed the threads during the day and embroidered in the moonlight at night. Seeing how hard she worked, Zhang Ma, the cloth shop's embroiderer, secretly taught her the technique of gold embroidery: "This method saves effort and the embroidery looks brighter." Zhang Ma had worked in an embroidery workshop in Suzhou in her youth. Seeing the novelty of Shen Zhiyi's patterns, she couldn't help but give her some advice. "Your pattern is extraordinary." Aunt Zhang touched the lotus on the cotton cloth, "It looks like it came out of a painting, but more vivid than a painting." Shen Zhiyi smiled - these are the improved patterns she designed in modern times, which incorporate the Western three-dimensional tailoring concept and fit the human body curve better than traditional patterns. She suddenly thought of an idea: "Aunt Zhang, can we make clothes and sell them ourselves?" Aunt Zhang shook her head: "Where is the capital? It costs five taels of silver to rent a shop." Shen Zhiyi was not discouraged. She handed the embroidered cloak to the shopkeeper, and in addition to the labor fee, asked for a few feet of leftover silk. She cut it in the woodshed at night, sewed it using the ancient method taught by Aunt Zhang, and embellished it with buttons she embroidered herself. Three days later, a moon-white jacket was freshly baked, with half a magnolia embroidered on the collar. When she walked, it looked like a magnolia slowly blooming on the lapel. "Go to the market and try." Aunt Zhang sewed a cloth bag for her. "There are many people at the market in the east. Maybe you can sell it." On the day of the market, Shen Zhiyi stood on the street corner holding the jacket and was surrounded by women who came to watch the fun. "The stitches are so fine!" "The flowers on the collar look so real!" Amid the discussions, a young man in a green shirt stopped - he was Gu Yunzhou, the young master of the largest restaurant in town. "How much is this jacket?" His eyes fell on the magnolia buttons. "Five hundred coins." Shen Zhiyi's heart was beating fast. This price was enough to buy three dou of rice. Gu Yunzhou did not bargain and took out the money directly: "My mother is in need of a decent dress for her birthday. If you have any new styles, you can send them to the backyard of Jufulou." The money from selling the jacket..." At three o'clock in the morning, the window paper was knocked twice. She opened the window and saw a little eunuch handing her a brocade box: "Your Majesty said that copying books hurts the eyes. "Inside was a sheep-hair brush with a non-slip soft cloth wrapped around the pen holder. At dawn the next day, she went to reply with the copied medical book in her hand. As soon as she walked into the corridor, she was bumped by someone. The medical books were scattered all over the floor, and some of them were stained with ink - Shen Qingyao's maid deliberately knocked over the inkstone. "I can't complete the task now." The maid smiled proudly.