Inside the blacksmith's shop, in the back room.
"Li Xing, add more fuel! Work the bellows!"
Angie Turner placed the sword blank he had shaped in the furnace and watched it closely.
Beside him, Li Xing added charcoal and began working the bellows.
When the sword blank began to glow red, Uncle Angie Turner picked up the tongs, placed the tempered blank on the anvil, and began hammering it. After a brief round of hammering, he put it in iron sand to cool.
Then he repeated the process!
Throughout it all, Li Xing was a tireless operator of the bellows, a practitioner of adding charcoal to the fire, and the power source for the grinding wheel!
As time passed, Li Xing's work as a helper came to an end after the midday meal.
After Li Xing left, Angie Turner sat down by the furnace to drink the fish soup Li Xing had made.
"Oh! That smells pretty good."
Remembering how Li Xing had arrived carrying several fish, Angie Turner couldn't help laughing.
"He could've just come, but he had to bring something too. He tried to tell me Little Jerry gave them to him. That little fellow can't even cast a line, and he caught fish? What a joke! Besides, it's not like I've never dealt with Pandaren before. Does he really think I don't know about gifts for taking a master?" As Angie Turner muttered to himself, he recalled a few things from his time learning from the Pandaren.
Perhaps Li Xing had forgotten something because he was too tired. After his break, Angie Turner found the wooden board left behind in the shop.
Angie Turner was about to pick it up and take it to Li Xing when he happened to glance at the charcoal drawings on it.
As an old fellow who had traveled far and seen the world in his youth, he recognized what the drawings depicted at a glance!
While Uncle Angie Turner was wondering why Li Xing had drawn them, one of the charcoal drawings caught his eye!
"This..."
Silence echoed through the blacksmith's shop.
In contrast to the silence, Angie Turner's excited eyes were fixed on every detail of the charcoal drawing!
"If this is real... that would be wonderful!"
After leaving the blacksmith's shop, Li Xing remembered that Little Jerry was still in Lucy's care, so he immediately headed toward her house!
At Lucy's house.
A knock sounded at the door.
After calling out an answer, Lucy quickly tidied the house, then hurried over to open the door with quick little steps.
When the door opened, Li Xing's tall figure came into Lucy's view!
"Why did it take you so long to get here?"
Faced with Lucy's question, Li Xing could only scratch his head and smile awkwardly. "Sorry! Sorry for the trouble. How's Jerry? And if there's anything you need help with, just ask! I'll help if I can!"
With that, Li Xing was welcomed into the house by Lucy and sat down on a chair at the dining table.
"Jerry's fine. It's not his first time coming here to play, so he's been very happy. He and the other children just tired themselves out playing and fell asleep."
"That's good!" Li Xing smiled and continued awkwardly, "While I'm helping out at the blacksmith's shop these days, could I leave Little Jerry in your care?"
After hearing him out, Lucy got up to attend to her chores and silently considered it.
After a while, Lucy said to Li Xing, "For the sake of the fish Little Jerry gave me, I'll agree."
Seeing Li Xing breathe a sigh of relief, Lucy hurriedly added:
"But I have one more condition. You'll take care of dinner today. How about it? You can accept that, right?"
Lucy prepared drinks as she watched him with a sly look, making a request that seemed full of traps.
Sensing something particular in Lucy's tone, Li Xing immediately detected that something was unusual.
"Can I ask how many people this meal is for?"
Just as Lucy had instructed the children at the tavern the night before, Li Xing slowly raised his right hand and asked his question.
Noticing Li Xing's somewhat uneasy expression, Lucy parted her lovely lips in a smile and gave him the astonishing number.
"Including Little Jerry and me, thirty-six in total! But don't worry. Most of them are only children, so food for around twenty-five people will be enough!"
Seeing that he had been startled by the number, Lucy smiled, set a glass of water on the table, and pushed it in front of him. "Well? You can do it, right!?"
Li Xing: ...
"Why aren't you saying anything? You can't really have been scared, can you? Hey!"
As she asked, Lucy waved her right hand in front of Li Xing's eyes.
When she saw her waving hand snap Li Xing out of his daze, Lucy remarked with feeling and amusement, "Come on, it can't be that bad! I thought you were really scared."
After coming to his senses, he looked at Lucy with a complicated expression.
"You haven't been living like this all along, have you? Isn't it exhausting?"
Hearing Li Xing's words, Lucy nearly sprayed out the water she had just drunk.
Then she patted her chest repeatedly, coughing and gasping as she laughed.
"Hahaha... cough, cough... haha... cough, cough, cough... hahahaha... cough! Uh! I can't help it! Hahahahaha..."
Lucy clutched her stomach and rested her head on the dining table, pounding it as she roared with laughter.
Seeing this, even an idiot would have understood that what he had just said was indeed inappropriate and had made him a laughingstock!
"Sorry, I said the wrong thing again!"
Hearing his words, Lucy merely raised a hand to gesture!
"It's all right! Let me catch my breath! Just a moment!"
Once Lucy had gotten her breathing under control, she wiped her tears with her handkerchief and smiled at Li Xing.
"Before, Yilaikesi and the others guessed that you were a young noble from another continent! I didn't really believe it before. Today, I believe it!
"Li Xing, do you know that even the nobles of the Stormwind Kingdom wouldn't say what you just said so lightly?
"Yet a traveler of questionable origins like you asked it!
"Tell me! Do you have some purpose in coming to our Hunter Town?"
Hearing Lucy tease him like that, he could only plead with her:
"Keep your voice down, Lucy! If the children hear you, I really won't be able to explain myself!"
"Don't worry. Children play hard, and they sleep just as soundly! They were already asleep before you came."
Seeing Li Xing breathe a long sigh of relief, Lucy started teasing him again.
"What's the matter? Is our noble lord afraid of what children might say too?"
Li Xing pressed a hand to his forehead and said helplessly, "Lucy, you know I'm really not a noble. Please, spare me!"
But Lucy stared at him from across the table.
"Yes! You're not a noble, but your perceptions are even more... honestly, now I'm even more curious about your life before!"
Li Xing now understood what his problem was.
The difference in perceptions after transmigrating had made him a laughingstock.
Thinking back to before he had transmigrated, his understanding of how men and women got along, and what he had seen and heard, had mostly been that men took care of everything and cherished women as their princesses. That was the common understanding shaped by the environment at the time. So in Li Xing's life back then, he had rarely seen women his own age doing physical labor, and the working women he saw and heard about were mostly his own mother or other people's mothers.
Among Li Xing's generation, most people learned about the world through the internet and film and television. But at some point, female laborers had gradually disappeared from Li Xing's view, replaced by more and more exquisite "vases." Many people had subconsciously come to believe that women were supposed to be that way, and that taking part in labor meant they had failed in life.
The reality of the world he had transmigrated to had utterly shattered the lies fostered by that abnormal social outlook, such as the notion that a woman who could cook was as rare as a man who could dunk.
Under normal circumstances, a person's social standing corresponded to the amount of labor they performed. The most direct example was that, in the feudal dynasties before his transmigration and even in the new era, in the allocation of a family's resources, people could go hungry, but livestock doing strenuous work could not!
In this world, the setting was a Western idealization of the Middle Ages.
Though the people of this continent had enough to eat and wear, many commoners still lived difficult lives. Thus, labor by women of the commoner class was normal. No one thought there was anything wrong with labor, much less considered it a shameful and pitiful thing to do!
At this moment, having realized this difference, Li Xing felt helpless at his own stupidity.
"My life before was pretty dull. The circumstances there were complicated, and I can't really say whether they were good or bad, so I won't go into detail!"
As Li Xing gave Lucy a perfunctory answer, a complicated, indescribable emotion showed on his face!
"How could it be dull? A place that produced someone like you—I'd really love to see what your homeland looks like."
Lucy expressed a strong curiosity!
It looked as though Lucy was about to press him for answers.
Li Xing hurriedly changed the subject.
"Didn't you say you wanted me to make dinner? About thirty portions, right!? I'll go now! Just wait."
Then, without waiting for Lucy's response, he picked up the scabbard beside him and headed out the door.
Before Lucy could react, Li Xing had already disappeared from the house!
"Honestly, do you really not want me to know about your past?"
Muttering to herself, Lucy went to prepare the cookware for dinner!