The pace of spring suddenly became very fast, the plum flowers had already withered and emerged green fruits, the tadpoles had lost their tails and grown four legs, the seedlings had changed from a single one to a dense cluster, and the small lotus had quietly revealed its sharp horns.

Fu Shun opened his eyes and stretched. The delicate sun reached his bed at six o'clock in the morning through the cracks in the wall. "Shufen, eldest sister, get up and go up the mountain," Fu Shun shouted to the three sisters opposite through the bamboo wall that Yang Shuzi had built a few days ago!

This is already the eleventh day of the construction of the Shikan Road. Yang Laosi got up early and was sorting out the tools for road construction—a sledgehammer for opening stones, a hammer for chiseling stones, a few rusty wedges and chisels, a shovel, and three hoes. This is all the belongings that the old four families can find to build roads.

In order to get the support of the big guys, Shufen invited the wizard grandfather to do a ** thing.

Wizard Yang and his eldest son Yang Zerong lived in the old mansion of the Yang family, and the wizard was resolutely opposed to road construction at first, and he fell seriously ill for this. Shufen knew that the old wizard's illness was their idea of building a road to "offend the mountain god", and it seemed that it would not work with his old man. Shufen waited in her grandfather's bed and served in front of the water medicine for a morning, and she had two dreams: one was a dream from her grandmother, who had been dead for many years, saying that the imps in the East were pestering the Yang family, and to get rid of the imp's entanglement, Maoershan had to be cut off, and the Yang family couldn't go in that direction; One is that the land grandfather of Mao'er Mountain has appeared, and he also made a dream that the land master got lost in Mao'er Mountain, and he can't go back to the real body of the land master of the Jade Emperor Temple, so he asked the Yang family to help him. The little girl also said that in order to cure her grandfather's illness, she deliberately went to the Jade Emperor Temple to kowtow and burn paper, and specially brought back a few grasses in front of the shrine dedicated to the land lord - in fact, Shufen specially picked herbs in the mountains.

As soon as Wizard Yang heard that the old woman had a dream, the land lord asked to open the way, where could he still sit still, and climbed up with a fight, first went to the statue of the old lady and the statue of Taishang Laojun and put on three pillars of incense, and then summoned several sons who lived in the village, as well as the apprentices who followed the "learning art" to hold a "conference". The old wizard is a person who has seen a big scene, and his speech is a quote from the scriptures and inspiring: what to say that in the past, there was a fool who moved mountains, and now there is a Yang public road; What to say, build bridges and build roads to accumulate virtue for children and grandchildren, and know yin and yang to let the mountain gods go home; Say what you can't say without accumulating steps, you can't reach thousands of miles, and you can't achieve a great road without accumulating group strength. This time, the crane-haired and childish old wizard was more serious than he was in the temple chanting, sitting in the middle of the courtyard of the old house gushing and energetic, although most of the people present did not know what he was chanting, but the theme was very clear - give me Wizard Yang a face, build the road!

The old wizard's face must be sufficient, except for a few apprentices of the old gentleman, everyone else went home to do their own housework after they agreed. The old gentleman took his disciples to spend an hour inviting the land grandfather, worshiping the Taishang Laojun, and offering to the Buddha, and after everything was done, the old gentleman looked at the well-behaved Shufen, smiled, and drank a big bowl of medicine!

But in less than ten days, there are fewer and fewer people who build the road, and the Fushun family who persists, as well as a few children who have dropped out of school at home at the same age as Shufen. But Shufen is still thankful, at least, there is no one to stop them from building the road.

This has long been expected by Yang Zegui, not to mention his understanding of the brothers, just because of the farm work under everyone's hands after the land was distributed to the households, few of them originally intended to toss on this so-called "mountain god road", not to mention, this road does not affect their travel.

Yang Zegui said that there are two dilemmas in building this road: first, to pave the stone road, there must be large stones that can open slates, and there are many stones on the mountain, but it is not easy to find shale mountains that can open slates; The second is that you have to cut down trees to build a road, and a road leads to the top of the mountain, and there are not only five groups of trees, but also three or four groups of trees, who will let you cut them. If these two problems are not solved, this road cannot be repaired. Regarding the problem of cutting down trees, Wizard Yang's own family is okay to say that he will continue to give face, but what about the people from other families, who will give this face?

Yang Laosi asked: "Fushun, how do you think these two problems should be solved?" ”

Fushun said: "The first problem is actually the problem of labor, as long as someone contributes to it, it is easy to do, the stone is not found farther, the mountain is not found at the bottom of the mountain, the big stone field where the stone is good to open the slate, and then ask someone to carry it up the mountain." I don't know how to deal with the second question! ”

"What's the deal? I said it's easy to do, it's up to my parents to say yes," Shufen snatched the words.

Yang Laosi put the wrapped leaf cigarette into the pipe, did not light it, and looked at Shufen's mother. Shufen's mother also put down the sieve in her hand and came over.

Shufen continued: "I know that our family has suffered too many losses, and my father used to be an accountant, no matter what he shared, he would give others a full count, and his own family would try to calculate as little as possible. Later, my father's foot pole was broken, and the team felt indebted, so it was dozens of zhang more when we contracted the mountains and forests for our family, didn't it? But we still have to suffer this loss, if we don't want to, we will take out our own mountain and exchange it with others! ”

"What to change, where is your little mountain enough to change," Shufen Niang was anxious, her own family has always suffered, this extra half an acre of mountain forest was originally the village's compensation for Yang Cripple, "The road built is not our family, he is an old man, you are not capable, your second old man Yang Decai is the captain, no one has shouted to repair the road, you have a fart to repair the road!" "Captain Yang Decai is the cousin of the old wizard.

The fourth child scuffled several times with an old-fashioned kerosene lighter on the flint, but it didn't ignite. "The captain also agreed to our road construction, and Shufen received a message, "He didn't pay attention to his mother-in-law's opinion."

"Oh, Dad, Mom is also reasonable, the road is not our family, in fact, the road has been repaired by the third team and the fourth team is more convenient than us, let's go to do people's ideological work first, maybe people will let us cut down trees and let us build roads!" Shufen looked at her mother and walked over and took her hand.

"Okay, I'll do the work with Shufen, her mother is still doing work at home, Fushun and Shufang continue to repair the road, by the way, I went to ask the young man of the Xie family, can you come to help for a few days after the farm is done, after all, it is their craft to beat stones, and it would be great to be able to help!" The fourth child finally lit the lighter, lit a leaf cigarette, and tied the hem of the broken leg with hemp rope.

Don't underestimate the group of children who built the road, in less than ten days, five groups of moving mountains and forests, trees have been cut down, the mud roadbed has been basically dug up, and the places where there are hidden dangers have been rammed with gravel to stabilize it.

Yang Shuzi took his old guy - abacus to go from house to house to beg for people, because he calculated such an account: for the five groups of villagers, the doll goes to school and goes to the village committee to do things in their own hands saves time, the most important thing is the economic benefits, the village committee organizes the collection of silkworm cocoons and the handing over of grain, whether it is to go to Shiqiao Township or the Jade Emperor Temple, it takes two hours to walk the old road, and half an hour to repair the new road, the original two days to memorize, the road is repaired in one day, each person has to run hundreds of times a year, and the family is hundreds of thousands of times, The time saved in a year accumulates to one month, and one month is equivalent to an extra 50 catties of silkworm cocoons, 200 catties of rice, and 100 catties of wheat for the farmers in Shiqiao Township.

Shufen did not settle accounts for the villagers like his father, he went to three and four groups of more than a dozen families who needed to occupy the mountains and forests, and several reasonable families also expressed their support when they heard about such a good thing, after all, they also had fields next to five groups, and it was much better to have a stone road to pick up grain from the family during the harvest season than a rugged dirt road. For those who disagreed, Shufen told them the true stories of two doctors: first, a doctor in the third team was in a hurry to go to the fifth team in the mountains at night to treat the disease, and broke his leg; Second, there is a well-known doctor in Xie Jiaba, and his methods of treating diseases and saving people are becoming more and more shrewd, if the road is repaired, the time from Xie Jiaba to the third and fourth teams will only be an hour, and this doctor will be able to treat many people if he rushes over to prescribe medicine.

But after all, there are still a few who are unwilling, for example, the "Li Guangzhuan" in the third group is dead or alive, his family has no land in Mao'er Mountain, and his family only has half an acre of mountain forest there. For this, Yang Shuzi and Shufen really had no choice, so they could only hide from Shufen's mother and exchange their own mountains and forests.

After ten days of ideological work, the children stopped working for a day, and the road was finally able to be repaired up the mountain unimpeded.

"Hurry up, go up the mountain," Fu Shun dragged Shufen and ran up the mountain, "You are so good, why did these people let you cut down trees?" ”

"Shhh

"Brother Fushun, Shufang, hurry up, I'll go to this side of the mountain!" Xie Guoqiang and his third brother stood on the opposite side of the mountain carrying his family's "advanced" steel drills, big ropes, and lifting bars.

"You go up the mountain to cut down the trees first, we dig the road at the foot of the mountain, and we will meet at Erniang's house to eat!" Shufen shouted and walked in the direction of the road with the big guys.

Yang lame followed behind with a hoe and limped, Fu Shun glanced back, and suddenly faintly felt that this old man might really have an indescribable power.

Wizard Yang went to the house of a few sons who did not go to the road repair and scolded him, returned home alone, and once again gave the deceased Mrs. Yang three pillars of incense, and then sat quietly in the courtyard basking in the sun.

The hard-working road builders really carried forward the spirit of "no accumulation of steps, no thousands of miles", Shufen, who did not do much work, felt blisters on her hands and grinded them into cocoons; Fushun and the Xie brothers insisted on carrying stone slabs and carrying stone slabs from the bottom of the mountain to the mountain, and paved stone ladders one by one; Yang Laosi dragged his broken leg and smashed and rammed the stones on the road with a pickaxe; The kind-hearted aunts of the Yang family delivered the batter to every road builder at noon.

The children threw off their arms and opened their voices, singing mountain songs, infecting many Yangjiawan people and even Xie Jiaba people, silently carrying tools and walking to the place where the mountain songs were sung.

"There's a big road, hey—built up to the mountain beam,

What about the cats on the hill - climbed up the slope,

The Yang family's twists and turns - bypassing that fateful place,

The babies of each family - carried their schoolbags to school. ”

Seeing, watching, this "ladder" without planning and design, nor without any name, leads to the foot of the "Jade Emperor".