"Therefore, the heavens will descend on people, and they must first suffer their minds, strain their muscles and bones, starve their bodies and skins, empty their bodies, and act chaotically, so they are tempted to endure and benefit what they cannot.

People are permanent, and then they can change, they are trapped in their hearts, they are weighed in their worries, and then they are made, they are in the color, they are made in the sound, and then they are said. If you enter, you will not be able to go home, and if you go out, you will be invincible to foreign patients, and the country will die.

Then he was born in sorrow, and died in peace. ”

In the silent mountains, there was a sudden sound of endorsement, followed by the sound of chopping wood with firewood knives, and the aunt who was turning over the potato vines was stunned.

"Chuanjian, what is Ming Han thinking?"

The uncle with inconvenient legs and feet could only do some light work, straightened up and listened to a few words, and said lonely: "Mencius's "Born in Sorrow, Died in Peace", hey, if the eldest and second men are half as sensible as him, I will be blinded when I die!"

The aunt didn't like to hear this, and retorted: "How can the eldest and second men be ignorant, don't you see that they all go home with books in their hands and see eleven or twelve o'clock at night?"

In private, the two husbands and wives did not have the demeanor in front of outsiders, and opened his mouth to scold: "What do you know? Read dead books, dead books, read and become pigs!"

The aunt who was spicy to the outside world asked the uncle to reprimand, but she didn't scold her, but said worriedly: "Chuanjian, if you don't send the eldest and second men to finish their third year of high school, we won't send them, right? Jiade will study the first year of high school in the year after tomorrow, and the third will read the first year of high school in the second half of next year, and the teacher said that they will definitely be able to get in, and we can't afford to send four." ”

'Hey', the uncle sighed, put down the hoe and took out the dry tobacco bag, squatted in the vegetable field and sighed, the endorsement on the opposite mountain has become 'charcoal seller, cut down and burn charcoal in the south mountain.' His face was full of dust and smoke, and his temples were pale and his fingers were black. What is the business of selling charcoal to make money? ’

The eldest sister on the opposite hill also heard the sound of Li Jiaming chopping wood while reciting the book, but she secretly scolded him for 'having no conscience', but there was nothing she could do about this stubborn cousin.

There was no firewood at home, the eldest sister kindly picked up a load of firewood from home and sent it over, Li Jiaming said that he didn't want anything, he picked up the firewood knife and brown rope and went up the mountain to chop, and the refusal was still the same sentence: 'Eldest sister, you can help me for a while, can you help me for a lifetime?' She thought it would affect his study, but he still refused: 'I'm tired and read a book, and then cut it after resting!'

In fact, Li Jiaming also wanted to accept the load of firewood, but he wanted his father to cheer up, and his father was the pillar of the family, if he didn't support this poor family, what would he do with his little sister? He didn't want his little sister to drop out of school, let alone go out to work in her teens, and use her hard-earned money to support his education and family expenses. These things should be the responsibility of the father and brother, not the burden of a little girl!

"Meet at night and jump up the mountain road. Bait the deer deer with flowers, and cast the fruit into the ape father. The bundle of wages is wet and wet, and the burden is in the twilight of spring. Why don't you live up to Tongwu, if you are mistaken by Xuan", Li Jiaming just finished reading "Qiaozi", and secretly laughed dumbly, the inertia of memory is really big, this poem seems to be in "All Tang Poems". Well, that's right, I also teased the poet's incomprehensible folk suffering.

Li Jiaming moved the cut miscellaneous trees and dead branches together, and then cut them into about fifty or sixty centimeters, tied them with mountain vines, and finally wrapped two harnesses with brown ropes. Yes, I haven't forgotten the skill of being a donkey friend before, and I guess there is no second one in the county to tie such a knot, right?

It's a pity that Li Jiaming still overestimated himself, seventy or eighty pounds of firewood was still too heavy for him as a twelve-year-old man. Even if he tied the firewood into a backpack, he was a leathery mountain man, and he still struggled to walk like a mountain with seventy or eighty pounds of firewood on his back.

"Therefore, the heavens will descend on people, and they must first suffer their minds, strain their muscles and bones, starve their bodies and skins, empty their bodies, and act chaotically, so they are tempted to endure and benefit what they cannot. ”

Li Jiaming encouraged himself while carrying a book, while carrying heavy firewood, grabbing the branches and vines next to him and moving home step by step. Even if he walked a few dozen meters and put down the bundle of firewood to rest, in the end, he fell into the thorn bush due to physical exhaustion, and was covered with blood.

The burning pain on his face and arms, as well as the soreness in his lower back, made Li Jiaming smile bitterly, and secretly laughed at himself: You can't be ambitious, you have to judge the situation!

The embarrassed Li Jiaming struggled to get up, went to the stream halfway up the mountain to wash the blood on his face, and then returned to the bundle of firewood to break it into two piles and carry it home in two parts. Back at home, Li Jiaming picked out the dry firewood and sent it to the kitchen, and piled the wet firewood on the few remaining firewood stacks under the eaves. The freshly cut firewood will take more than ten or twenty days to burn, and you need to find more dead branches, and you can't ask for more miscellaneous trees, otherwise you will really have to go to the second uncle's house to ask for firewood.

If there are no pigs at home, there is no need to cook pig food, and there is much less firewood to burn. Adults have 1340 pounds of firewood per load, and they can cut several loads a day; Li Jiaming, who also supervises his two younger sisters' studies, can only carry 30 or 40 pounds at a time, and can only carry them two or three times a day, and most of the firewood he carries back is wet. As soon as the air dries, there are only twenty or thirty catties of dry firewood left for thirty or forty catties of firewood. Rao is like this, the stack of firewood at home is still slowly rising, and it can keep up with the speed of burning at home.

After a week, Li Jiaming finally accumulated firewood that could burn for a week, but this was still not enough, and he had to chop more firewood. The firewood stacks of the mountain people should be kept for at least half a month, and more should be kept in winter. The winter in the mountains is too cold, if there is rain and snow, if there is not enough dry firewood, how can everyone survive the winter?

Father's luck is very good, he helped the third cousin finish the dowry, and the very good craftsmanship made the people in the village praise, and took the carpenter work of the two families, and asked someone to send a message, so that the second aunt could help take care of Li Jiaming and their brothers and sisters, and he would come back after finishing the work of the two families.

The base of the fourth uncle's house has finally been leveled and the foundation ditch has been dug, waiting for the reinforced concrete bought by the second bertos to be in place. In these years, reinforced concrete is a scarce material, and it doesn't matter if you can't buy it at all.

Li Jiaming didn't care about the fourth uncle's new house, and in his opinion, spending 20,000 or 30,000 yuan to build a three-story small western-style house in the village was useless except to satisfy the vanity of the fourth uncle and the fourth aunt. If his family has so much money, he must find a way to let his father go to the countryside to build a house, and now the foundation is cheaper, as long as it is a brick house with more than three floors, the township government will almost give away the house base for nothing. Build a three-story house on the street, make a shop downstairs and live upstairs, even if the descendants have no interest in the future, opening a small store to buy Nan Grocery Department Store is enough to support the family!

However, even if Li Jiaming went to tell the fourth uncle, it would be useless. The men in the mountains must build a house in the village for the rest of their lives, which is already an obsession for them.

"Jiaming, the fourth uncle is idle now, do you want me to help you chop firewood for two days?"

Li Jiaming, who was carrying a small half bucket of dung, stopped, turned his face to the fourth uncle who was standing on the base of the house, and joked: "Fourth uncle, I don't have any vegetables or rice to invite you to dinner!"

"Get out! If the fourth uncle is happy today, he won't bother with you, otherwise he will slap you twice. ”

"Fourth uncle, you don't have anything to eat, can you still help?"

Li Jiaming joked again, and carried half a load of dung water into his vegetable garden.

This guy is stubborn, the fourth uncle sighed secretly, and scolded with a smile: "Don't help, even if you don't have meat to eat, you don't even have to eat, do you think I'm a cheap bone?"