On the vertical day, the sunlight shines directly through the window, and the support rods on the wooden window divide the sunlight into a line, and if you look closely, you can see the dust in the light rolling in the air. The birds on the mountain are calling, happily looking for insects to eat.

The time was about eight o'clock in the morning, and after a long period of hot weather, the heat on the ground began to rise, and the earth began to slowly heat up under the sun. Zhang Rui, who was sleeping in a daze, wanted to get up and turn on the air conditioner to cool off, but when he got up, he found that he probably couldn't enjoy the life of air conditioning in this life.

A burst of loss and depression instantly occupied my heart, although the man bleed and did not shed tears, but it was only not to the point of sadness. Suddenly, I thought of my family, I thought of my friends, and I thought that I would never be able to live my previous life again. This is not a trip to the countryside, outdoor camping, and you can go home to the harbor to rest when you are tired. Although the work used to be a little hard and tiring, it was a thousand times better than now. Thinking about it, Zhang Rui found that he couldn't control his tears, and couldn't help but shed them.

There used to be a saying that life is like being raped, if you really can't resist, just accept it, and do whatever you want! Since Zhang Rui has no way to change the status quo, he can only accept it. Without sleepiness, he just got out of bed and greeted his next day.

After eating the pheasant meat and wild vegetables he cooked last night for breakfast, Zhang Rui found that the first thing he had to do now was how to find food for the afternoon and tomorrow. There are only a few wild vegetables left in the house, but many of them have begun to rot because they were not put away last night, and the hot weather has made them rot.

The saying that people who have no foresight must have near-term worries, this is a very good saying. If you don't get something to eat, you'll probably be hungry again after noon. Zhang Rui closed his eyes and recalled Zhang Liu's memory, trying to see if he could find something useful, but he was very disappointed, except for his six acres of rice fields with poor yields, there was no place where he could find food in his memory. The only place left to find food is the wild vegetable patch that I accidentally found yesterday. However, after picking it myself yesterday, it is estimated that there will be no three or five days that should not be able to recover. As for eating wood leaves and grass roots, with his understanding of Zhang Liu's memory, that kind of painful taste, Zhang Rui felt that there was really no way to accept it, it was better to kill himself, and maybe he could wear it back.

"Since I don't have anything to eat, cut the rice in the field and eat it, anyway, it's almost ripe now, and one step at a time." When he really couldn't think of other food sources, Zhang Rui could only say the last word, and after speaking, he picked up the sickle used to cut the grain next to the corner of the wall and went out.

There was no shade all the way, and the heat wave on the ground began to surge slowly, and under the sunlight, Zhang Rui clearly felt the sweat on his body begin to emerge. Fortunately, the rented rice field is not far from home, and it will not take long for Zhang Rui to arrive. Along the way, I saw some shyness of rice with their heads down, as the so-called rice rice, how many good grains can be produced by rice without water, I really dare not think, especially now this is not a hybrid grain, there is no chemical fertilizer and pesticides.

Zhang Rui, who was looking at the edge of the field, suddenly found that his next-door neighbor Li Si was also cutting his own rice. So with Zhang Liu's memory, he naturally said to Li Si in the local dialect:

"Fourth Uncle Li, hurry up, don't you come to cut the harvest (a kind of Hakka dialect: Fourth Uncle Li, so early, did you also come to cut the rice?) ）”

"Yes, dog, Mofa, don't eat Karma. The short dog and the little sister both called the food, so they came to cut the drop and went to wait for food. Eat it slowly and you should be able to eat it until the grain is cooked! (Yes, dog, there is no way, there is nothing to eat, my dog and my little sister are crying to eat, so now cut some back and make it for them to eat, if you eat slowly, you should be able to eat until the rice is ripe!) (For the convenience of dialogue, the rest is directly translated into Mandarin) After hearing the voice, Li Si stretched out his bent waist that was working in the field, looked at Zhang Liu, that is, Zhang Rui explained

"You're here to harvest rice, too?"

"yes, there's really nothing to eat, there's no way."

Li Si's family and Zhang Liu have the best relationship in the whole village. Not only because the two families live close to each other, but more importantly, both families are rare single-family families in the village. Zhang Liu's grandfather is a single passer, and so is Zhang Liu's father, and they are all in Zhang Liu, so there are no relatives up there. In addition, people are poor and relatives do not like to move around, but they rent land, and the liquidity is relatively large. This can also make people understand why the people have been so persistent in their love for the land since ancient times, and there is no way to live a stable life without their own fields, let alone words such as returning to their roots.

Zhang Liu's mother was bought by Zhang Liu's grandfather from the hands of human traffickers with three loads of rice, she was only eleven years old at the time, and she was a little sick, so it was so cheap. Listening to her mother say that she cherished that her family lived in a place called Jiaomu Village in Hunan, her mother's surname was Zhu, her name was Zhu Caiwei, and her father's name was Zhu Dachang, who was literate and could read. There is a plane tree in her yard that is very beautiful when it blooms. In addition to her father, she also has a younger brother who is a few years younger, that is, Zhang Liu's uncle, he loves to laugh very much, and he looks very good when he laughs. Originally, the family lived a very happy life, but the younger brother was sick when he was two years old, and the family really had no money for treatment, so her father could only sell her to the youngest daughter of a local landlord as a maid with tears in his eyes, in exchange for the price of five quintals of rice, two chickens and three hangings of money for his brother's treatment.

She was abducted by traffickers when she was helping the young lady go out to buy something, and then she met Zhang Liu's father. Zhang Liu's mother said: She does not resent her father for selling her, nor does she resent her brother for getting sick, or even resents the abduction and sale of her to human traffickers. Because meeting her husband made her feel that it was God's favor for her, her husband was really good to her, never beat and scolded her, left her with anything delicious first, and thought of her first when there was any good thing. She only resented the world, why no matter how hard they tried to be thrifty, they could only barely survive. When Zhang Liu's mother was sick and dying, she said that she really wanted to go home, go back to see her father, see her brother, and see the plane tree blooming at home again if she could. Although her husband promised her that as long as she had a little spare money, he would accompany her back to realize her dream. But she knew that this was no longer possible, and she was only worried about what would happen to her husband and son after she left. In the end, she resented this world, but she had to persuade her husband and son to leave this world with a smile. And Zhang Liu's father also died soon after becoming ill because of longing.

The successive departure of the two closest relatives made Zhang Liu, who was only fourteen or fifteen years old, at a loss and at a loss, but it was Li Si's family who helped to handle it and comforted Zhang Liu. Listening to Li Si's family, the reason why the two of them are so good is because when Li Si's family first moved over, Zhang Liu's father gave them a place to live and helped build a house, so the two families have always had a good relationship.

Approaching Li Si in the field, Zhang Rui felt inexplicably sad in his heart. Maybe it's from some memories of Zhang Liu, this man in his thirties was oppressed by life and became like a fifty-year-old. The skin that has been exposed to the sun all day is black and shiny, with shriveled skin, and there are heavy wrinkles on the face, and even the short pigtail of the hanging pig can be seen gray hair. Thick calluses can be seen in the palms of the hands, and the feet without shoes can be sandwiched between the soles of the feet and the deep cracked dead skin from the soles of the feet almost all the year round, but it is such a man who supports a family for a while.

Li Si's family originally had four children: the eldest dog Mao was a few months younger than Zhang Liu; The second child fell ill shortly after birth, and died because he was not well cared for; The third dog is ten years old, and there is a daughter, Xiaomei, who is only six years old. Originally, the eldest was about to grow up, and it would be easier to have an extra labor force in the family. As the so-called children of the poor are in charge of the house early, they can help the family do everything they can, such as carrying water for cooking, picking manure and manure fields. But one day last year, Gou Mao went to the town to ride the market (dialect: the meaning of rushing to the market) and never came back, and later found his hanging body on a tree, or Zhang Liu put it down and carried it home with Li Si to bury it.

Aunt Li, who knew the bad news, fainted directly from crying, if it weren't for the two little ones at home to take care of, I don't know how she would survive. Zhang Liu also cried for several days, in this village, it is a good relationship with him, especially when Zhang Liu's parents died, they were all accompanied by Gou Mao, and usually came to help him work after doing his own work, really like a brother, but now he died so tragically, so how can Zhang Liu not be sad.

Later, after many inquiries, I learned that day that dog hair took the wild bamboo shoots dug up to the ruins and exchanged them for a good trinket with the little lang who sold the goods, and on the way back, he happened to meet the mountain and came down to rob. One of the bandits took a fancy to a trinket of dog hair and asked him to hand it over. Dog hair hesitated for a moment and was cut down by him, and the dog hair, which was bleeding and unable to move, was hung on a tree and bled to death, and a fifteen-year-old child died unwillingly.

Li Si, the bandit on the mountain, knew that the ruthless characters who only came over a few years ago looked like twenty or thirty people, and everyone was armed with a steel knife. often go down the mountain to rob, and kill people and goods when they are unsatisfactory. They also know what they can and can't move, and they only rob civilians and passing merchants, and they never get the local squires, and the government knows that they also turn a blind eye to make them more indulgent.

After knowing the cause and effect of the whole thing, Li Si and Zhang Liu went home and picked up the kitchen knife to help Gou Mao take revenge, but Aunt Li hugged Li Si and didn't let them go. Because where can the bandit den of twenty or thirty people go to the two ordinary people who can deal with it, and if they go, they must be sent to death, if the main pillar of the family, Li Si, is dead, how can the three of them live! The helpless world made Li Si have to stop thinking about revenge. After thinking quietly for a night, Li Si still felt that he couldn't swallow this breath, so he decided to go to the county government to complain. As an ordinary person, he has encountered such a thing, and he can only pray that the county yamen can be like those parents and officials in the opera, make decisions for the people, and send people to suppress the bandits on the mountain to avenge Goumao.

At the entrance of the yamen, open to the south, don't come in if you have no money. People in this era understand this, and with the only dozen copper plates at home, Li Si and Zhang Liu went to the county yamen together, thinking that when they arrived at the county yamen, they would beat the drum and sound their grievances. As a result, I just saw the drum at the entrance of the county office, and before I could walk over, I was stopped by the official at the door. After Zhang Liu and Li Si kept kneeling and talking, and handed five copper plates to one of the officials, they decided to make an exception to report to the county lord for them. As a result, they came out with a black face, tell them to leave quickly, don't make trouble here. Zhang Liu and Li Si had never encountered such a thing, and they didn't know what to do, so they could only continue to kneel at the door of the county government. The number of people watching the excitement gradually increased, and the official at the door couldn't get rid of the two of them with a stick, and there were more and more people talking at the door, so they had to go in again to report it.

This time, the official came out and let them in, saying that the master beside the county lord promised to see them. Then they were to be brought in, and at the same time dispersed the crowd of onlookers. When they saw the master who stood with his hands in his hands, he was only drunk by the master as soon as he knelt down and bowed, and the people should not make trouble, the county was peaceful under the conscientious governance of the county lord, how could there be bandits, and they also killed people and goods. Then the officials beat them with ten boards to make an example, and even the ten or so copper plates on their bodies did not let go, saying that they were the price to pay for making trouble, and warned them that if they were stubborn and continued to make trouble, they would be imprisoned, and it was difficult to say whether there would be two more graves in which mass grave.

Zhang Liu and Li Si, who were hit hard physically and mentally, limped out of the county yamen and supported each other. After being kindly reminded by some people who understood through it, they finally understood. It's not that the county yamen doesn't know that there are no bandits, it's just that these bandits are very smart, they don't touch the interests of the local squires, and sometimes they even give gifts to the yamen, so the county yamen also turns a blind eye to the well water and does not interfere with the river water. You must know that it costs money to suppress bandits, and Wenqu stars like the county lord have to do big things, so that they will not do thankless things for a few untouchables, and the most important thing is that they do not use oil and water to fish. It doesn't matter how many untouchables die, after all, untouchables grow fast, like leeks, and if they cut a batch, they will soon grow another. Especially under the leadership of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, the number of people will only increase, not decrease, and there is really no need to care about the life and death of a few untouchables.

After listening to the kind reminder of the well-intentioned person, Li Si went home and was silent for a long time, and when he went out again, white hair appeared on the rat tail on his head. Li Si told Zhang Liu that he would forget the revenge of the dog hair! He won't blame Zhang Liu, and he also said that Gou Mao won't complain about Zhang Liu, so that Zhang Liu can live a good life. He only complains that he has no ability, and only complains about this evil world.