The rain was still dripping, and Liu Manzhu was lying in the ditch, soaking in the rain, his stomach "gurgling" for a while, and he felt unbearable hunger and bitter cold.

He thought: "Since I saw Hongxing the morning before yesterday, I have been in great pain, I don't think about tea and rice, and I haven't eaten a mouthful of food until now. Originally, I was going to go to the Netherworld to drink Meng Po soup, but I don't know if Lord Yama slept and ignored me, or the soapy ghost neglected his duties and deserted and didn't come to arrest me, anyway, he didn't arrive at the Netherworld Mansion, and he slept a lot and came back. To return to the world and continue to be a human being, you must first eat to fill your stomach. But where are you going to find food?"

He did not dare to stand up, so he could only crawl in the cornfield, like a snake, wriggling and crawling against the ground, looking left and right for food.

He crawled several plots along the ditches where the yellow muddy water flowed, but he could not find anything to eat, and he was really hungry, so he crawled into the ditches and drank a few mouthfuls of the dirt and manure mixed with the rain.

Then he crawled to the edge of the ground, crawling, crawling, and through the gaps in the dense stalks of corn stalks, he could see the curving pumpkin vines on the edge of the ground in the distance. He thought, "There must be pumpkins on the pumpkin vines, and this season, the pumpkin should be the size of a bowl, so let's eat a raw pumpkin to satisfy my hunger." ”

So he crawled along the ditch towards the pumpkin vines, shaking his head and tail like a crocodile to move his center of gravity, crawling forward in the ditch with his limbs and alternating left and right, and with each step forward, the yellow muddy water in the ditch splashed around, and he was covered in muddy water, drenched, and crawling in this way consumed more physical strength, so he only climbed a short distance and couldn't climb, panting, and his limbs were limpable.

He lay down to rest for a while, then continued to climb again, and finally climbed to the edge of the vine, reached out and grabbed the pumpkin vine, and pulled the pumpkin on the vine with the sound of the vine "salsa". He reached out and plucked a bowl-sized pumpkin from the vine, held it in his arms, and slowly crawled back to its place, hiding itself.

He rested for a moment, breathed a sigh of relief, then sat up again, and with both hands he strained to break the pumpkin, which was too hard to break. So he propped up his knees again, hugged the pumpkin with both hands and knocked it on his knees fiercely, and immediately grinned in pain, covering his knees for a long time, but he didn't dare to make a sound.

After a while, he crawled to the ground again, looked for a rock, and crawled back to smash the pumpkin open. He grabbed the pieces of pumpkin that had been smashed open, devoured them, and ate most of the raw pumpkin in a row, feeling not too hungry, and then curled up on his side and lay down, and began to think: "What should I do next? How to escape quickly?...... It was still light and I couldn't move, so I had to lie quietly so as not to expose my target, and wait until it was dark. ”

In the evening, the rain fell a little lighter, but it was still dripping and did not stop. He huddled in the ditch and shivered with cold, and he had nothing to shelter from the wind and rain, and he did not dare to go to a place where he could take shelter from the rain, so he had to lie in the ditch and let the dripping rain continue to water.

He raised his wrist to look at his watch for a while, this time passed too slowly, as if he was frozen, he felt that he had been staying up for a long time, but when he looked at his watch, it had only been ten minutes.

The more he watched it go slower, and it was only at this moment that he really realized what it meant to "live like a year".

Finally, he struggled to stay up until ten o'clock in the evening, he estimated that now that everyone was closed for sleep, it was raining again, and there should be no pedestrians outside. So he stood up with all his might, gently brushed away the corn leaves, crept out of the cornfield, came to the river, looked left and right, and there was no one, so he squatted down and put his head into the river, washed his head full of mud and blood, took off his coat again, rubbed and washed the dirt and blood on his clothes in the river, and ran towards the side of the road with his coat......

After running a few steps, he turned back and thought, "It's inconvenient to run with clothes like this, and it's not fast to run." Then he returned to the river, sat down on a rock, put the watery garment on his body again, and then slipped down the road with his feet down.

When they got to the side of the road, they ran to a larger poplar tree, and then stood behind the stump to peek at the passing cars on the side of the road, ready to flee out of town.

Because of the rain, there were few cars on the road, and he ran over and waved and shouted when a car came by, but none of the cars stopped him. After more than an hour, a tractor came, he ran to the tractor and begged the driver to give him a ride, saying: "Master, please give me a ride, I accidentally fell into the river when I went out, you see I am drenched, the wallet has fallen into the water and cannot be found, I have no money to buy food, and I have no money to stay in a hotel, so I have to hitchhike home at night." ”

The tractor driver was older, raised his eyes to observe Liu Manzhu, and saw that he was drenched in water, like a chicken in soup, thinking that he had really fallen into the river, so he was moved with compassion. So he said, "All right, come up." ”

Liu Manzhu quickly climbed onto the tractor, and as soon as the tractor driver stepped on the accelerator, "bang, bang, bang", emitting black smoke, carrying Liu Manzhu far away from the village at the bottom of the mountain, and fled to the field.

The tractor carried Liu Manzhu for more than 100 miles in the vast dark night, passing by a fork in the road, and the driver was about to turn on the road leading to their village, so he told Liu Manzhu: "I won't go forward, you can come down and stop a car again!" Liu Manzhu thanked the driver and jumped off the tractor.

At this time, the sky was already slightly bright, the clothes on his body were still wet, and the cold wind of the early morning pierced him like countless sharp steel needles that made him tremble. He jumped around the side of the road like a monkey, and then crouched on the side of the road with his neck bent, his whole body like a sifting chaff, his teeth chattering.

He was going to stop another car and run a little further. He was hungry and cold on the road, fidgeting, and eagerly waiting for the vehicle to pass. However, a car drove by, and he didn't dare to reach out to stop the good car, only staring at the coal trucks or tractors.

After squatting for about half an hour, I looked at a big truck full of black coal face, and came panting. Liu Manzhu hurriedly ran to the front of the car and waved his hand, and the truck stopped abruptly. The driver stretched out his head and scolded Liu Manzhu: "Look for death, you, how can you run to the front of the car!" Liu Manzhu hurriedly accompanied the smiling face and said: "Big brother, I'm sorry! My money was stolen by thieves on the road, I don't have money to take the car, please give me a ride!"

The driver glanced at him, waved his head and said, "Climb up, catch it!" Liu Manzhu hurriedly said, "Thank you, big brother!" and hurriedly climbed into the big truck and sat on the coal pile.

The big truck drove for several hours on end, and finally took him to a large, boundless city. He jumped out of the car and rolled black soot, his face, nose, and mouth covered in black coal face.

It was his first time in such a big city. He looked at the endless streets of buildings, the flow of bicycles like a tide, and the crowd as black as ants, and felt his head grow for a while.

He stood there in a daze, not knowing what to do. Penniless, unaccompanied, frightened, hungry, and unsure of where to go.

After a while, watching the coal truck he was riding stopped at the door of a unit not far away, an older man came out, opened the iron railing gate, and let the car drive in. So he plucked up his courage and walked boldly through the great iron gate.

He asked the old man who opened the door, "Uncle, do you need anyone to work here?"

The old man replied, "No."

Liu Manzhu said again: "Uncle, I don't want to be paid, you just need to give me food." I'm here to go to my relatives, but I accidentally lost the note with the address of my relatives on the way here, I'll stay with you for a few days, and I'll leave when I find my relatives, please! The old man looked Liu Manzhu up and down, looking at the soil, it was dark and not slippery, and he felt that he could use him to do something stupid and lively. He said, "Okay, you can help me get out the ashes for a few days!"

Liu Manzhu was overjoyed, and followed the old man in. It turned out to be a large boiler room, and the coal truck he was riding in was here to deliver coal. The old man was a boiler burner.

It's already 12 noon. The boiler master led him to the canteen of the unit, and as soon as he entered the canteen, he saw that this was a very large place, almost half the size of his mountain bottom village, and the windows in the hall were bright and clean, and the lights were brilliant. It was bustling with people inside. There are multiple rice windows on the east and west sides, and all kinds of food are displayed in the windows. The kitchen was filled with oil smoke, flickering fires, pots and pans, and ping-pong. Men and women lined up in long lines, some with a rice bowl in their arms and a book or magazine in their hands, reading with relish as they moved forward. Someone is reading a book while eating at the dinner table.

Liu Manzhu thought: "The cultural atmosphere in this city is different, people pay so much attention to learning, no wonder the people in the city are educated!" The boiler master arranged him at a table and asked him to sit and wait. He didn't dare to sit because he had a black mouth and gray face, and his clothes were in tatters, and he looked extremely incongruous in such a high-end restaurant in such a metropolis, and he wanted to make himself smaller and drill into a gap like Monkey King, so that people's eyes could not be reached. However, when he peeked left and right, he found that no one was paying attention to him. He relaxed a little, put his ass lightly on the chair, and sat down in a proper manner, not daring to move. The boiler master took two large bowls and melted into the crowd, standing behind the long line and lining up to eat.

After a while, the boiler master came over with two large bowls of steaming noodles, placed a large bowl in front of him, and said, "Eat, young man!"

At this moment, he was dumbfounded! He couldn't believe that it was for him, and he had never eaten such a large bowl of white noodles at home since he could remember. At home, three meals a day are stick noodles, nest in the morning, stick noodles at noon, and nest in the evening.

And this stick noodles are not common, often run out of food, once the food is cut off, only go up the mountain or go down to the field to dig wild vegetables and come back and cook them in the pot to satisfy hunger. There are 365 days a year, only on the day of the New Year, when eating New Year's dumplings on the morning of the first day of the New Year, a little white flour is mixed with cornmeal, and a meal of two-sided dumplings is eaten, which is considered a good meal. In addition, it is that the person who talks about it has rubbed the white face twice when he entertains the object, and other than that, he has never enjoyed this kind of mouthful of pleasure.

And at this moment, this large bowl of white jade-like noodles, with bright red tomatoes and golden eggs on top, is placed in front of him, delicious and fragrant!

He thought, "How nice it would be if this bowl of noodles was brought home and eaten by the whole family!" Thinking of this, two lines of hot tears welled up from his eyes.

The boiler master saw that he didn't eat, and stood stunned and wept. He asked, "What's the matter, young man, why are you crying without eating?" Liu Manzhu hurriedly raised his sleeve and wiped his eyes, smiled bitterly and said, "It's okay, I'll eat!" After being hungry for a few days, he rushed over frantically and swallowed a large bowl of noodles in three bites.