Chapter 254: The Sewing Class Roster
Lin Sanniang felt extremely ashamed.
She had failed to pacify Xu Sanniu properly, causing the Manor Owner to be scolded right along with her.
Jian Xingxia patted Lin Sanniang’s hand. “You did beautifully.”
With a little wolf pup like this, being able to pin her down just to wash her hands and face was already a miracle, alright?
Standing on the lawn in front of the academy, Jian Xingxia and Lin Sanniang tilted their heads back to look at Xu Sanniu up on the pavilion roof, explaining with endless patience.
“I am recruiting apprentices here, and meals are provided. Once you master the craft, I can even purchase the things you make. The only issue is that you cannot stay here overnight.”
“I promise you can come every single day until your training is complete. If you are willing, you can even work for me here at that time.”
Jian Xingxia and Lin Sanniang talked until their mouths were completely dry, but Xu Sanniu offered no reaction whatsoever.
It was only at the very end when Jian Xingxia added, “One more thing—your puppy cannot come here. But if you return home every day, you can bring some leftovers back to feed your puppy.”
Xu Sanniu finally moved a fraction.
She looked down, highly skeptical, yet every single hair on her body desperately wanted to believe.
“Really? You’ll let me bring food back to feed my puppy?”
“One hundred percent real!” Jian Xingxia cupped her hands around her mouth, shouting like a megaphone.
Xu Sanniu stared at her for a moment, and finally climbed down from the pavilion.
Jian Xingxia and Lin Sanniang watched with their hearts in their throats. The pavilions standing on either side of the academy were four to five meters high, yet Xu Sanniu climbed up and down as smoothly as if walking on flat ground.
Climbing down, Xu Sanniu pulled the steamed bun she hadn’t eaten earlier out from her clothes. “I’ll take this back to my puppy.”
She stared intently at Jian Xingxia. “You said I could.”
Jian Xingxia looked at the bun, which had already turned a dusty gray. “…You can.”
Cradling the bun, the little wolf pup squatted down to one side.
In truth, her stomach felt rather uncomfortable.
Going two days without food wasn’t just limited to these past two days; ever since her simpleton mother was alive, the two of them frequently suffered through a pattern of one meal today and starvation the next.
Since her mother passed away, she had virtually no memory of ever being full.
Having just downed a cup of sweet soy milk, a bowl of golden, sticky millet porridge, and a steamed bun larger than her face, her tiny, flattened stomach felt painfully bloated.
Yet she allowed none of it to show on her face.
She had managed to become an apprentice with great difficulty and didn’t want anything to go wrong at a time like this. In case these two people thought her health was poor and refused to keep her, she would have no backup plan left.
She squatted there without speaking, her expression completely flat, save for the fierce intensity burning in her eyes.
Lin Sanniang and Jian Xingxia didn’t dare provoke her either.
They simply waited for the other students to arrive.
The subsequent students arrived very quickly because their names had been provided by Lin Sanniang and Shaoyin.
Lin Sanniang had reported the names of all seven of her close sisters, excluding herself, to Jian Xingxia.
It was the same on Shaoyin’s side; of her fourteen close sisters, excluding herself and Ruan Xiang, she had written down all the remaining names, even including the name of her wet nurse.
They all hoped their companions could also come to witness this manor that could alter one’s destiny.
However, flipping through the names of these people didn’t go quite so smoothly for Jian Xingxia.
For one thing, the roster was simply too long—it stretched across hundreds of pages with no end in sight.
Secondly, after scrolling through, Jian Xingxia discovered that the sewing level of an prospective student had to be lower than the instructor’s. They could only be at Level 0, Level 1, or Level 2, and could not exceed Lin Sanniang’s Level 3 Professional Worker tier.
Consequently, people like Lin Daniang, Hehua, and Yuxiang—who specifically made a living by sewing clothes for others—had no way of coming.
Conversely, the sisters on Shaoyin’s side were included. Likely because their primary expertise lay in song, dance, and music, their sewing levels were lower, allowing Jian Xingxia to locate the names of Fan Shishi and Qin Hua.
Lin Sanniang felt extremely ashamed, feeling that she had held her sisters back.
If only her own sewing skills were better, her sisters would have been able to come.
Jian Xingxia, however, wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. She said with a cheerful chuckle, “I see Tao Ya and Xing Ya’s names.”
Xu Sanniu, Tao Ya, Xing Ya, Fan Shishi, Qin Hua, plus a Sun Dongniang who had yet to arrive—the roster of students for the sewing class was fully assembled!
The Great Liang Dynasty, inside the city of Yuzhou.
Tao Ya, Xing Ya, and little Brother Shu formed a grand procession as they cradled their broken bowls, shattered pottery fragments, and bamboo tubes, walking along Jintian Lane.
Every neighbor they encountered along the way offered praise: “How filial! They’ve come to deliver food to their grandmother again today.”
“Exactly. Thank goodness these young ones from the second branch are filial. Just this morning, I heard the eldest branch’s daughter-in-law cursing at the old woman again.”
“And she deserves the scolding! The old woman wailed the entire night yesterday, keeping all the neighbors awake.”
“Sigh, don’t put it that way. I asked around this morning, and they said the old woman soiled the bed again yesterday. See? The bedding is hung out to dry in the courtyard again today.”
“Truly… a pitiful person must have a hateful trait.”
The neighbors discussed it without the slightest concealment, and the three young ones caught every word.
An epiphany dawned upon Xing Ya. “Big Sister, no wonder you said we should line up to fetch congee first today before coming to see Grandma.”
Nowadays, Tao Ya and Xing Ya didn’t go to fetch congee every single day. The fields were yielding more greenery, so even without grain, mixing in some melons, fruits, and vegetables to fill themselves with water worked just fine.
But if there was a day Tao Ya didn’t want to show up at her eldest uncle’s house so early, she would go to line up for congee first.
Right in front of people they knew and didn’t know, she would say, “Could I trouble you to ladle it a bit thicker? This is specially for my grandma. She’s fallen ill and is staying at my eldest uncle’s house, so we must deliver food to her.” The other citizens in the queue never failed to praise her.
Occasionally, they would run into a kind-hearted soldier distributing the congee who would give them an extra scoop or make it slightly thicker.
Xing Ya would drink half of it on the road, unless the congee that day was contaminated with sand and unclean, in which case she wouldn’t touch it.
The three children, cradling the congee, walked slowly. It took them a full fifteen minutes to traverse Jintian Lane before finally arriving at Tao Ya’s eldest uncle’s house.
Tao Ya whispered, “Yesterday, Eldest Aunt had just laid out dried bedding for Grandma. I bet Grandma soiled the bed during the night…”
If they arrived too early, they would have to clean up after Grandma.
It was far better to line up for congee, giving them a perfectly legitimate reason to arrive late.
Brother Shu didn’t understand. “When I wet the bed, it feels uncomfortable to sleep. Why does Grandma insist on wetting the bedding?”
Tao Ya pursed her lips. “Because the bedding Eldest Aunt laid out for Grandma was that exact stinky set stained with feces and urine.”
Madame Sun Zhang would never wash the bedding for Old Madame Sun.
If it weren’t for the fact that Old Madame Sun would grab wet feces and hurl them out the window, she wouldn’t even hang the bedding out to dry for her!
Drying it under the sun made it slightly better; at least dry feces wouldn’t fling everywhere.
And since she refused to wash it, Old Madame Sun found the filth and stench of the bedding even harder to endure. Every single time it was dried and laid out, she would inevitably soil it again that very night.
Brother Shu fell silent.
His tiny mind couldn’t yet comprehend such a dense sequence of tactical maneuvers.
Xing Ya, however, wished nothing more than to clap her hands and laugh out loud. “Serves her right! That blanket still belongs to our family, doesn’t it? Back when Father died, they wouldn’t leave us a single set of bedding, claiming Grandma needed to use it and that it was Father’s duty to show filial devotion…”
In the end, they snatched it away, yet failed to sleep comfortably themselves. They completely deserved it.
Tao Ya let out a quiet “Shh.” “Alright, stop talking. Once we step through the door in a bit, keep your mouth shut. The moment Grandma, Eldest Uncle, Eldest Aunt, Jinbao, or Yinbao start cursing at us, we bolt. Have you got that memorized?”
Xing Ya and Brother Shu nodded repeatedly. “We remember. We also have to cry as we run, crying loudly enough for all the neighbors to hear.”
“Correct.”
With that, the three young ones knocked on the door of Sun Dade’s house.
