"You’re the one who’s a total freak."

Gu Jiaojiao didn’t think her imagination was running wild. She refused to admit it.

I mean, how could a twenty-year-old know how to carve, design buildings, teach, build cars, and now even restore cultural relics?

’Is he even human?’ 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Gu Jiaojiao thought no one had heard her quiet muttering.

But Leng Yuan had been trained since childhood and had much better hearing than the average person.

He’d caught every single word of her complaint.

’A freak?’

The accusation made Leng Yuan laugh in exasperation.

He snatched her up from the pile of scraps and made her look him in the eye.

"I’m a freak, hm?"

Gu Jiaojiao was speechless.

She gave a dry laugh.

"No, no, it was just a metaphor for how incredibly capable you are. I was actually praising you."

"Like, you’re not just inhumanly good, you’re a god."

Leng Yuan raised an eyebrow.

"Is that so?"

Gu Jiaojiao nodded furiously, slowly prying Leng Yuan’s hands off her.

His stare was too intense.

She immediately backed down.

After spending so much time with him, Gu Jiaojiao knew that Leng Yuan was the type to hold a grudge and be incredibly petty.

If anyone crossed him, he wouldn’t get angry right away. Instead, he’d secretly keep a tally and find all sorts of creative ways to get even later.

Gu Jiaojiao hadn’t realized it after one or two times.

But after it happened enough, she finally understood.

The man was a walking vat of vinegar. If she so much as exchanged a few extra words with another man, she’d be thoroughly tormented that night.

’Heh!’

’It’d be weirder if I *didn’t* back down.’

For once, Leng Yuan didn’t give her a hard time.

Instead, he just smiled and said,

"Then Jiaojiao is a freak, too."

Gu Jiaojiao was speechless.

’Heh!’

’I’m a freak, the biggest freak of all!’

’There, happy now?!’

She secretly rolled her eyes.

Gu Jiaojiao went back to searching through the scrolls. She pieced the fragments together, keeping the complete ones and discarding those with too many missing parts.

Leng Yuan also found two scrolls. Staring at the fragments in his hands, he couldn’t help but think of the famous paintings that used to hang in his family’s old estate when he was a child.

They were much older than these fragments, and each one was priceless.

He used to copy them often as a boy.

His grandfather had even taken down two of the original paintings, stored them in a box, and hung up his copies instead. His grandfather claimed his artwork was so good it was indistinguishable from the real thing.

Unfortunately, the situation later took a turn for the worse, and many of the paintings were destroyed.

Thankfully, his family’s circumstances had still been quite good back then, so Leng Yuan could do whatever he wanted.

He loved calligraphy and painting, so someone was hired to instruct him. That person also passed on the art of restoring calligraphy and paintings to him.

He was an incredibly skilled old master.

But he was later sent down to the countryside.

To this day, Leng Yuan still didn’t know where he had been sent.

A shadow of gloom flickered in Leng Yuan’s eyes as he recalled these old memories, but he quickly concealed it.

Gu Jiaojiao knew Leng Yuan came from a very good family and had probably been through a lot, so she immediately changed the subject.

"It would be great if we could find a hot water bottle. We could use it right away."

Looking at some of the old items, Gu Jiaojiao was suddenly reminded of the hot water bottles wealthy families used to use. If she could buy a couple to take back, she could give them to Sweet Girl and Xiao Yang.

Nowadays, you even had to pull strings just to buy a little bit of coal. People in the countryside all burned firewood, and the ration for coal blocks in the city wasn’t much either.

There was no way to buy any on short notice.

If they had hot water bottles, the two little ones could stay a bit warmer.

"Let me see if I can find any."

Leng Yuan walked over to a pile of old objects and began to rummage through it.

Gu Jiaojiao was also looking for her own textbooks and newspapers.

In a short while, she had found most of what she was looking for.

Just then, Leng Yuan also dug out three hot water bottles. They were made of copper; two were in good condition, but one was broken.

Besides those, Leng Yuan also happened to pull out a food box.