Morning light like shattered gold streamed through the wooden window’s simple lattice, casting mottled shadows across a coarse-cloth pillow. Jingyi half-leaned against the headboard, her fingertips unconsciously tracing the slightly rough corn-stalk pattern on the pillowcase—the most common "home textile" material in the Serenitea Pot sanctuary, made using the straw-weaving technique promoted by Limeng.
Outside the window, a rhythmic "clatter-clatter" of plowing drifted from the distant experimental fields. It was the sound of the improved draft-animal plow churning up newly reclaimed marginal land, occasionally mixed with the crisp, playful laughter of children chasing one another, brimming with the vitality of those who had narrowly cheated death.
Yet this commotion was like a fine needle, gently pricking Jingyi's heart. The doctor's advice still rang in her ears: rest easy, stay in bed, think and worry less. But for someone like her, who was used to bustling among book pages, at the lectern, and beside restoration tables, doing nothing was more exhausting than physical labor. Every little while, she couldn't help adjusting her sitting posture, her gaze tracking the slanted shadow cast by the window frame as it slowly crept across the earth wall, counting silently in her mind—this was her second day of quiet recuperation, and the final day strictly ordered by Doctor Baizhu. While her body was forcibly kept to the bed, her thoughts had long since flown to the mountainous p…
Chapter 57