The afternoon sunlight generously flooded Jingyi's new home, carrying the faint scent of freshly brushed tung oil and lime water in the air. The snow-white walls and smooth cement floors made everything look clean and spacious.
A wide desk stood against the wall, covered with a clean piece of coarse linen. The tabletop resembled a precision operating table: tweezers, bone knives, bristle brushes, mixed corn glue paste, and various shades of printing ink were meticulously arranged. An open copy of *Flora of Old Sumeru* occupied the center. On its yellowed pages, a fierce tear was being carefully mended, under Jingyi's extremely delicate fingertip control, with mending paper as thin as a cicada's wing. She lowered her head slightly, a few strands of loose hair falling against her cheek, her expression so focused that she seemed isolated from the entire world.
Her gaze, as if guided by an invisible thread, would occasionally leave the fragile, yellowed pages for a moment to cast toward the window. Right outside the window was the half-mu of lean farmland belonging to Limeng's new home, enclosed by a simple fence. The newly turned soil presented a warm, dark brown; at this moment, countless points of tender green had stubbornly pushed through the thin covering of soil, timidly poking their heads out to stretch their slender stems and leaves in the sunlight. Xiao Chen was busy in the fields with several young assistants. Some bent down to carefully measure the height and spacing…
Chapter 77