The house was completed.

After hearing this, Old Liu nodded in agreement, a faint smile on his lips. “I have been blinded by being too involved, while you see things clearly as an outsider. Now that you’ve put it this way, I feel much more at ease. Come over tomorrow night—I plan to divide the family property, and you can write the document and serve as a witness.”

Grandpa Qi responded with a grunt. “All right. I’ll come by around six tomorrow evening, after I’ve had dinner.”

Old Liu let out a sigh of relief, as if the weight in his heart had been lifted. “Then it’s settled.”

“By the way, don’t think of giving up your breakfast stall. I’ve grown used to your noodles,” Grandpa Qi reminded him.

Old Liu shot him a sidelong glance. “Aren’t noodles just something you boil and top with some sauce and side dishes? You’re not addicted to my noodles, you just like the extras I give you.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t worry, I won’t be giving up the breakfast stall any time soon. Soon, I plan to teach Xiaofei how to make noodles. If you want someone to be truly capable, you have to let them learn a bit of everything.”

It must be said that every elder holds a deep affection and desire to teach the next generation.

Half an hour of horse stance can feel both long and short. When Liu Fei finally called time, Xie Yihuang let out a breath of relief; her hands and legs were trembling, still unaccustomed to such strenuous training.

“Not bad, you’ve got a solid foundation. Your talent may not be first-rate, but you’ll have no trouble learning some self-defense,” Old Liu declared. “From now on, come here every afternoon to learn boxing. And keep up your morning exercises.”

“Yes, Grandpa Liu, I’ll come on time,” she promised earnestly.

Old Liu nodded. “Everything is evolving these days. Most people don’t understand our traditional martial arts and prefer to learn foreign stuff—taekwondo, judo, or things like yoga. They’re all forms of physical training, none inherently better or worse. But don’t ever use foreign things to belittle our own traditions. If you ever do that, I’ll personally see to it that you lose your martial arts.”

He was utterly serious as he spoke.

Xie Yihuang understood well that for their generation, these traditions were sacred. She nodded at once. “Don’t worry, Grandpa Liu. If that ever happened, you wouldn’t have to do a thing—I’d already be worthless.”

Old Liu nodded in satisfaction and turned to Grandpa Qi. “It seems your granddaughter is a sensible one.”

Grandpa Qi chuckled. “Of course. If she weren’t, would I have bothered to raise her like this?”

Old Liu clearly approved of Grandpa Qi’s judgment of character.

From that day on, Ye Wanqin’s mornings were spent exercising and learning from Grandpa Qi, her afternoons in martial arts training with Old Liu, and her evenings practicing calligraphy and painting. From five in the morning onward, she was always hard at work.

Time passed quickly; forty days flew by in a blink, filled with minor events. Old Liu divided his family property, sending his son and daughter-in-law away but keeping his grandson with him. In another instance, Liu Xiang’er announced in the group that she had found a boyfriend—the very man she once thought was a playboy, only to realize that was just a superficial impression.

In any case, things turned out well. Around this time, Xie’s father sent word: the new house was finished, and they were moving.

On moving day, Xie Yihuang naturally went home to help. Grandpa Qi brought Qi Jianshe along to lend a hand as well.

The Xie family didn’t own much—just a few tables, some cabinets, and several beds. With the move, the old beds were placed in spare rooms; the new bedrooms all had brand-new beds, custom-made by a carpenter to fit the rooms, following the latest trend of high-and-low rattan-strapped beds.

The new house and its courtyard covered over two hundred square meters; the yard alone took up more than thirty. Upstairs and downstairs each measured about eighty square meters, and the house was built with three rooms per floor. Actually, two and a half rooms would have been more suitable, but Xie’s father insisted on three, even if that made each room a bit smaller.

Downstairs, the central room was the main hall; to the east was the master bedroom for Xie’s father and mother, while the west side was divided into two small rooms. Upstairs, the three rooms had the middle one set up as a living room, with the east and west sides each split into two bedrooms.

The three siblings each got their own room—Xie Yuanfeng and Xie Yihuang took the two west rooms, and Xie Yunfeng had the east room.

The rooms were all about the same size and had similar furnishings: a bed, a set of desk and chair, and a small bookshelf.

Except for the master bedroom, all the rooms upstairs and down were more or less identical. The old beds from the previous house were placed in the two guest rooms downstairs and the extra room upstairs; all other rooms had new beds.

In this, Xie’s father and mother were very fair—every child’s room was furnished the same, and the rest was left for them to decorate as they pleased. Xie’s mother hadn’t even put up curtains, reasoning that since each child had their own tastes, making them all use the same curtains would only make them unhappy. Better to let them choose for themselves—she was quite open-minded that way.

There was no notion of interior decoration then; the rooms were simply whitewashed, but all the windows were fitted with double-pane glass, which was the current fashion.

Xie Yihuang’s room had one of these double-pane windows, and she planned to find time to hang a curtain, since she knew her years at home would be fewer than those at Grandpa Qi’s. She decided she’d just get a piece of blue or green fabric for a simple curtain to block out the sunlight.

Other than basic furnishings, the children were free to arrange their own rooms. At that time, having a white-walled tile-roofed house was already a luxury—let alone a two-story home.

There were three bathrooms in total, upstairs and down—a concept suggested by Grandpa Qi. In those days, most rural households had their own dry latrines: a simple shelter over a pit, with a large jar to collect waste and a wooden seat above for comfort.

Every household had such a latrine, as this was the countryside and everyone had their own fields. Fertilizer was never chemical—once the waste jar was full and had fermented, farmers would carry it out to fertilize their crops. These toilets, while relatively clean, still gave off a strong odor.