"Impossible." Liu Nanyang immediately denied it. Seeing her face fall, he quickly comforted her, "It's not that you can't carve such a good piece, but rather, this isn't your style. This carving technique requires a lot of wrist strength; it's probably carved by a man ninety percent of the time, right?"
"Then tell me, is this one good?"
"Of course!" Liu Nanyang sat down opposite her. "Lanlan, tell your uncle quickly, where did it come from?"
"Look closely, don't you see anything?"
"What?"
"It's carved by Fang Zidu."
Liu Nanyang paused for a moment, then said, "Yes, it's him, you sculpted him. But this one, I've been captivated by those eyes, I don't remember what he looks like."
Xiang Lan was even more heartbroken. Her uncle was unreliable, but he had a good eye for art. His blunt reaction said it all.
"It was carved casually by someone else."
"How could it be carved casually? This must have been done by a genius, someone who had experienced the wisdom of life, to be able to create something so simple and unpretentious—"
"Really. When I was carving, Zidu got a little itchy and helped me make one. Of course, he's not a complete novice. He studied it for a while when he was a kid, and when he was in the US, he would sometimes carve wood to relieve stress when he was under a lot of academic pressure."
"What did you say?" Liu Nanyang looked utterly shocked.
The uncle and nephew stared at the statue for a while, and after a long time, Liu Nanyang said, "Does such a genius really exist in the world?"
“He was a genius to begin with.” Xiang Lan rested his chin on his hand. At the age of 22, he had published several impressive papers and had been invited back to work by a leading academic figure multiple times. He had already achieved what most people could never reach in a lifetime.
"You actually found him? And you even managed to get your hands on him?"
"What the hell?" she said, dissatisfied. "It's so vulgar—"
“He actually went off to do some scientific research. He’s got the makings of a master, what a waste.” Liu Nanyang squinted. “His father committed a terrible crime against him, and I must correct that mistake.”
"What do you want to do?" Xiang Lan began to have a bad feeling.
"Hehe, how can I just watch an artist be buried?" Liu Nanyang said earnestly. "Xiang Lan, you'll have to take better care of things at home from now on. Don't let trivial matters distract him or hold him back. I'm determined to push him onto the stage of artistic masters. Such talent can't be wasted—"
Xiang Lan sneered, stood up, and put the two statues into her backpack.
"Oh dear, let me ponder this for a few days!" Liu Nanyang wailed. "Don't take it away, please, leave it for your uncle!"
She raised her hand and held up the statue. "What about my graduation project?"
"Do as you please." He was afraid she might drop it and break it on the ground, which would be such a waste.
"I would like to attend your art exhibition."
"Come on, come on, I'll arrange the best seat for you, all you have to do is give me this." Liu Nanyang's mouth was practically watering.
Xiang Lan gritted her teeth and shoved the statue at him, which he immediately locked in a drawer like a precious treasure. She looked down at the statue in her hand, overwhelmed with grief, and smashed it to the ground, shattering it into pieces.
"Why did you smash it?" Liu Nanyang was startled.
"I'll redo it." Xiang Lan slung her backpack over her shoulder and straightened her clothes. "I have a better topic. Can you extend my time a bit?"
Xiang Lan fell in love with a genius, but was unwilling to be trapped in marriage. She also couldn't find any shining moments in her career to match him, so she became somewhat depressed.
Chapter 35
Xiang Lan returned home, placed the remaining large piece of obsidian on the coffee table, turned on all the lights, and curled up on the sofa, staring at it for a long time until she fell asleep from exhaustion. She was awakened by hunger, opened her eyes, looked out the window, and saw that it was already dark. She took out her phone to check the time: eight o'clock in the evening.
It seems that the prescription had dealt her too much of a blow, and her rationality had been reduced to instinctively using sleep to escape the harm.
The refrigerator was full of various ingredients they had delivered, but Xiang Lan didn't want to cook for herself at all. She scratched her hair, picked up her bag, and went downstairs to find something to eat.
The shopping mall outside the apartment complex was indeed only a few minutes away. She went down to the basement level and walked around, feeling a little dizzy. She went straight upstairs and chose a noodle shop. After slowly finishing her dinner, she had no desire to go shopping. She bought some fruit and prepared to go home to sleep, feeling a tightness in her chest.
As she walked outside the mall, she passed a roasted lamb restaurant. The greasy smell hit her nose, and she couldn't hold her breath any longer. Food churned up in her throat, and she immediately ran to the roadside and vomited.
Xiang Lan always went out looking her best and had never been so rude before, much less been the target of strange looks. She was stunned, unsure whether to apologize or run away. A girl on the street handed her a bottle of water to rinse her mouth. Xiang Lan took the bottle, gripping it tightly, and instinctively wanted to offer her some fruit as a thank you. Only after the girl waved her away did she realize how irrational her actions had been.
With a flushed face, I forced myself to rinse my mouth despite feeling uncomfortable, and staggered across the traffic light intersection to return to my house.
The monitoring system was still off, but she still felt a bit irritated. She took off her clothes and went into the bathroom to take a bath. As a result, she could still see a camera on the ceiling outside the shower room. Although it wasn't directly facing the toilet and the shower room, it still made her very uncomfortable.
She took off her clothes and looked down at her lower abdomen. It had only been a little over a month, and her body hadn't started to change shape yet, but her lower abdomen was slightly undulating, and she was beginning to feel its presence when doing daily activities. Touching her belly, she was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness—she hadn't imagined her life would change so drastically.
Xiang Lan took a shower with red eyes, thinking that in a few months she would become a fat woman with limited mobility, a woman with excessive emotional needs, a woman who would be forced to give up her profession due to negligence, and a woman with no talent who could only stay at home and rot.
After showering, she ran out of the bathroom, still soaking wet. She curled up on the sofa, staring at the dark stone on the coffee table, and fell asleep without realizing it.
She woke up in the middle of the night with a sore back and aching muscles. Still half asleep, she grabbed her phone and checked the time. It was already 3 a.m. There was an unread text message: the prescription had arrived safely. She thought for a moment and then dialed the number.
The call was answered quickly; Fang Zidu's voice sounded too distant.
"Xiang Lan, aren't you asleep yet?"
"I woke up in the middle of the night. Have you arrived yet? I'd like to video chat with you."
"We're still on the road, so it's not convenient to video chat," Fang Zidu said. "You should go to sleep right now."
"No, I have a few things I must tell you now, otherwise I won't be able to sleep."
"you say."
Fangzi seemed to be getting out of the car; there were foreign language announcements on the phone, as well as the sound of a car passing by.
“I really don’t like the system you installed in your home,” Xiang Lan said seriously, “especially the one in the bathroom.”
Fang Zi was taken aback. "Didn't we already reach an agreement?"
“No, it’s just that Yifan was there at the time, and I didn’t want to argue with you.” Xiang Lan’s long-term experience with men was mostly about flirting and making demands. She rarely had a serious and calm discussion like this. “I didn’t want my friends to think that my choice was stupid.”
"Okay, I understand. So, do you have a better idea?"
"Of course I didn't, and besides, you didn't discuss it with me beforehand."
"Okay, it's my fault." Fang Zidu apologized casually, but it didn't seem very sincere.
"Xiang Lan, I want to know why you feel uncomfortable. I will consider ways to improve." Although his tone was gentle, he was unusually assertive, showing no intention of giving up on what he wanted to do.
They really won't give up.
"First, I'm not used to being monitored in my life, with no privacy at all; second, I always feel that you treat me with coldness and lack of emotional communication between people, such as the monitoring system that manages me; third, it may also be partly my own fault, being too idealistic, thinking that being in a relationship means being together every day."
Xiang Lan tried her best to calm herself down. In fact, the biggest blow to her came from Liu Zewen and Hu Li. Although they didn't say it directly, she could feel that their attitude was telling her that marriage was like this and that she shouldn't have too many fantasies and expectations.
"Let me think about it. The bathroom camera can be removed, and I'll replace it with a voice chat system or a button alarm when I get back. Secondly, I assure you, the surveillance system is just a supplementary measure; it won't reduce our contact. If possible, you can give me a detailed task list, and I promise to meet all your needs. What do you think?"
Dating has become just a task to be completed; it's completely meaningless.
“I was too autocratic. I thought it was my own life and I could make all the decisions myself. I want to apologize to you.”
Regarding your time management—
"Do you think eleven hours is too short?" Fang Zi was a little embarrassed.
“No,” Xiang Lan said, “It’s just that I’m not used to you arranging everything like a task. My feelings for you, or your feelings for me, should come from the bottom of my heart, not from being forced like this, where you have to do something for me, or I have to do something for you. It’s too cold.”
"Hmm, anything else?"
"Today I showed my graduation project to my uncle, and I'm going to redo it."
"Why?"
Xiang Lan was a little dejected and a little unconvinced, and said, "I'm not satisfied with myself."
“Of course, if you think it’s necessary, I support you,” Fang Zidu said. “You should pursue your profession or hobby to the extreme so that you will have no regrets and achieve the results you want.”
“Art isn’t like that.” Xiang Lan was reluctant to admit it, but talent was a limiting factor, and Liu Nanyang’s deliberately restrictive approach was simply to stimulate her potential and maximize her talent. “I also showed your little things to my uncle, and he insisted on taking them. He thinks you’re extremely talented, and doing scientific research would be a waste—”
"That's just my hobby—"
"Of course. I'm furious right now. The work I put so much effort into is no match for the haphazard thing you just made for fun."
Fang Zi was silent for a while. From childhood to adulthood, he had always been different from others. This wasn't just a concept instilled in him by his family, but also a fact he discovered himself. He learned things exceptionally quickly, had remarkable self-discipline, and excellent execution skills. He could complete his schoolwork with ease, leaving others far behind. At first, it was his peers who fell behind, then classmates a few years older than him, and now his colleagues who were more than ten years older than him.
When we were young, everyone praised this boy's genius. Later, we began to envy him, then became jealous, and now, we feel fear and alienation after seeing his brilliance and how unattainable he is, as well as cautious admiration.
Only Xiang Lan, completely unaware of anything, jumped in front of him, unabashedly breaking down emotional barriers and pulling him into the intimate, physical realm of human connection. This filled him with both novelty and excitement—
"Are you unhappy?" Fang Zidu asked cautiously. His unintentional sharpness always managed to hurt people inexplicably. "I won't do it anymore—"
“How can that be?” Xiang Lan refused. “You may have some talent, but your professional research is insufficient. I don’t believe I can’t even compare to an amateur. My uncle was laughing at me today, saying, ‘What’s the use of being pretty? If you’re so pretty, go make handicrafts.’ He’s so annoying; he never speaks properly.”
"Mmm." His voice softened, and she seemed unharmed by his words.
"And—" Xiang Lan sighed. She didn't know whether she should talk to him about such a private matter. But as Xiang Yuan said, should she always maintain a beautiful appearance in front of him and not let him see her swollen body or any other unsightly appearance?
“I threw up again today,” she said. “It’s really bad, I feel dizzy from throwing up, and I don’t want to keep throwing up until I’m three months pregnant.”
Are there any ways to relieve morning sickness?
"I don't know." Xiang Lan shrugged. "My mom said she vomited all the way until she gave birth when she was pregnant with me. I hope I don't inherit that condition from her."
"I don't think I can really help you."
"You're responsible for comforting me, so your surveillance system can't do that. Oh, and I might become ugly—"
Fang Zi paused for a moment, then said, "No, you look younger and prettier without makeup."
"It's not a makeup issue. I noticed today that my stomach has become a bit loose, and a tiny black dot the size of a pinhead has appeared on my face."
"Of course, this is a normal change; your body is starting to prepare for motherhood."
"I'm in so much pain right now, you know? My body is changing, and my mind is changing too. I want to achieve something great in my graduation year, and I don't want to become an idle housewife. I might even become ugly." Xiang Lan became more and more upset as she spoke. "I originally wanted to solve these problems myself, but I found that I can't. It's so embarrassing to have morning sickness in public. While my classmates are still looking beautiful, my belly is already big. You told us before that we should be strong, that this is a test from Mom and Dad, but I'm going to hold you back. What should I do?"
"Xiang Lan, listen, our lives are both facing huge changes. You won't hold me back, we're together now."
"What if you walk too fast and I can't keep up?"
"Then I'll stop and wait for you?"
"No, that looks too bad."
“I fully support your work. You can do what you want to do. There’s no requirement for you to stay at home.”
“My uncle’s attitude was awful; he told me not to drag you down.”
"These are other people's opinions. Would you let others affect your life?"
"Of course not, so I smashed that unsatisfactory piece and started over."