Liang Qiaoshi died, her body was only about fifty pounds, thin like a child, but with a happy and satisfied smile on her face, she was content to die next to men and children.

When it was dark, Liang Mao picked up his wife's corpse and set out on a journey with his son, who had been in the company of wild beasts in the depths of Daqing Mountain, and his sense of smell and hearing had become extremely acute, and he could avoid the dark sentinels of ambushes.

The masses were also mainly playing soy sauce, they were so hungry that they couldn't walk, they couldn't see the road clearly in the night, no one had the strength to search for them, the people's commune and the big canteen were lazy, and some people heard that it was the production captain and the basic militia who were helping to help the gang that were killed, and secretly clapped their hands and said that it was too late.

After walking for three nights, I finally entered the Daqingshan area, the state implemented the policy of asking for fertile land from the mountains and forests, and the previous mountains and forests became terraced fields, but with the increase in altitude, the mountains and forests became more and more dense, and the people became less and less.

Liang Maocai carried his wife's body on his back and walked like a fly, and his son followed behind panting, wiping his sweat from time to time, and asked, "Dad, when will it come?" ”

Liang Maocai didn't speak, stretched out his hand and pointed forward, reckless mountains and forests, and there was a faint tiger roar.

Liang Pan gritted his teeth, let's go, the deeper you go, the safer it is.

There was no road in the mountains and forests, so it was all up to Liang Maocai to open the way with a knife in front, and after trekking for more than ten hours, he finally came to the bottom of a hillside, and Liang Mao moved away a clump of branches, revealing the entrance to the cave.

This is a man-made nest, which can shelter from the wind and rain, protect from wild beasts, store grain and dried meat, and a little salt, Liang Maocai dug a pit nearby, put his wife in it, piled it into a small round grave, and took his son to kowtow in front of the grave.

"Old woman, I owe you the most in this life, and I can only repay it in the next life." Liang Maocai's voice was low and he didn't cry. Instead, the son cried.

"Cry a lot! Shedding tears is not my Liang family's species. Liang Maocai scolded.

Liang Pan hurriedly stopped his grief, helped his father set up the stove, and cooked some porridge to eat.

While eating, Liang Pan suddenly found a person standing on the dirt slope not far away, wearing a grass-green military uniform, holding a five- or six-type semi-automatic rifle, the muzzle of the black hole hole was aimed at them, and there was a hound beside him.

Liang Pan's cold sweat came down, the chasing soldiers are still coming, the top soldiers have arrived, the large army must be not far away, and this time they will definitely not be able to run away.

But Liang Maocai was not afraid at all, but beckoned the man to come down and eat together.

The man put away the rifle, came down with the hound, sat down cross-legged, took out a dry tobacco and asked Liang Maocai to smoke, looked at Liang Pan, and said, "Your son?" ”

Liang Maocai said: "Yes." Pointing to the grave in the distance, "My wife." ”

The man nodded, took a bag of salt from his satchel and placed it on the ground, and walked away with the hound.

Liang Pan asked, "Dad, who is that?" ”

Liang Maocai said: "It's a hunter." ”

In the days to come, the father and son took root in the depths of the mountains, the life in the mountains was very hard, but it was still stronger than the village, at least not starvation, nature provided endless food, birds and beasts, wild fruits, mushrooms, mountain spring water, Liang Maocai also planted some wild millet, he had a gun, but the bullets were rarely reluctant to use, hunting with primitive bows and spears, and traps and other things.

The hunter would come every other month, bringing salt, needles and threads, and once he sneered and said, "Tenth Master, the case you did is quite big, and you have injured five lives, aren't you afraid that they will go into the mountains and arrest you?" ”

Liang Pan wondered how this hunter called his father the Tenth Master.

Liang Maocai said two words: "It should be killed." ”

The hunter said nothing, put down a tarpaulin, and left.

When he walked away, Liang Mao said to his son: "This person's name is Cheng Xuanzhu, and he was also the number one person back then. ”

Autumn goes to winter, the most difficult winter comes, after a heavy snowfall, there are fewer and fewer things to eat, Liang Maocai also got seriously ill, ten years in the mountains, boiled down his body, and finally reached the point where the lamp ran out.

For three days in a row, Liang Maocai was talking nonsense with a high fever, intermittently telling previous stories, about the days when he sat in the tenth position in the King Gai Dawang Cottage, about the days when he was an officer in Chen Zikun's mixed brigade, and about the awesome years when he swept Shanghai Beach with Thompson in his hand, about his sojourn in Japan, spending all his time drinking, and about his return to the anti-Japanese resistance and bloody battlefield.

Cheng Xuanzhu came and sent some herbs, but to no avail, Liang Maocai was already terminally ill.

Before he died, Liang Maocai said to his son: "You can't learn from your father, hide in the deep mountains and old forests for a lifetime, you have to go out, the world of flowers outside is wonderful." ”

After saying this, Liang Maocai, the top ten masters of Daqingshan in the past, closed his eyes.

Liang Pan buried his father and mother together, and prepared to go down the mountain with his relics, in addition to the knife, his father also left him a shell gun wrapped in oil paper, and twenty rounds of ammunition.

At the beginning of spring, he finally walked out of the mountain, looking at the spring earth, Liang Pan fell into confusion, where should I go?

……

Five people died in the production team of Liangjiazhuang in Kushuijing Commune, and the case has never been solved, causing a very bad impact among the masses, and the higher authorities are very angry, and some cadres have been punished, and some of the anti-bad rightists in Liangjiazhuang have been dealt with and sent to the Salt Lake Farm to be reformed through labor.

The full name of Salt Lake Farm is the fourth model labor reform farm in Jiangdong Province, because it is located in the barren beach saline-alkali land and next to a swamp, so everyone calls it Salt Lake Farm.

The establishment of this place was originally for the needs of suppressing the rebellion, and to imprison the Kuomintang military, police, gendarin, and reactionary Taoist associations, and so on, and then gradually improved, and the provincial ***, rightists, criminal offenders, and juvenile offenders all came here to the labor camp, and after nearly ten years of construction, it has changed from a barren land and a few shacks to a modern labor camp surrounded by barbed wire.

Xiao Lang and Liu Youjin have been working here for nearly ten years, they came in during the anti-rebellion movement, and in five or seven years, they opposed the right, and their old friend Gong Zijun also lived in the prison of the Salt Lake Farm, and now they have been in prison for three years.

Strictly speaking, the farm is not a prison, but a place for labor reform, so the management is not too strict, especially some prisoners who have been imprisoned for ten years are still quite free to move, and even can go home for the Spring Festival.

Xiao Lang is a graduate of the Department of Civil Engineering of Tsinghua University, has designed and built the Huaijiang Iron Bridge and municipal engineering, and is very experienced in infrastructure construction.

During the natural disaster, the rations of the cadres and the prisoners were cut a lot, the farms were located in remote areas, the prisoners who had suffered from various diseases due to lack of food and drink died frequently, and the corrections were powerless, and there was no food in the city, not to mention the farms, not to mention that their own legs were also swollen.

That afternoon, Xiao Lang staggered into the No. 3 prison cell, where Liu Youjin and Gong Zijun lived, Gong Zijun was seriously ill and bedridden, and Liu Youjin was carrying a bowl of water to feed him.

"Mayor Xiao, you're here." When Liu Youjin saw Xiao Lang coming in, he put down the bowl and greeted him, his eyes flashed with hope, he thought that Xiao Lang had brought something to eat.

Xiao Lang said: "Lao Liu, you come out with me." ”

Liu Youjin came out with him and walked to the back of the prison cell, and Xiao Lang saw that there was no one around, so he took out two big carrots from his pocket.

"Lao Xiao, thank you so much." Liu Youjin held the radish with tears in his eyes, he hadn't eaten anything real for a few days, he used clear soup to coax his belly, and he walked with a loud noise, he wiped the radish with his sleeve, and he was about to bite it down.

"Wait, isn't this radish for you?" Xiao Lang stopped him.

"What's the matter if you don't give me food?" Liu Youjin looked puzzled.

Xiao Lang said: "It's for you." ”

Liu Youjin smiled bitterly: "How to use radish, I'm not a woman." ”

Xiao Lang said: "Where do you want to go, this is what it means to use it for you." He looked around again and whispered a few words in his ear.

Liu Youjin's face turned extremely pale: "This, this, this, this?" If you catch it, you'll have to be shot. ”

Xiao Lang said: "I have to starve to death, there is only this way to go,"

Liu Youjin said: "Let me think about it." ”

Xiao Lang said: "If you don't have time, it's okay, if it doesn't work, you can't do it, either you agree now, or you go to the discipline to report me, and you can do it." ”

Yoo Youjin was silent, it was clear that he was engaged in a fierce battle of ideas, and five minutes had passed, but it seemed like a long century to him.

"Okay, I'll do it with you." Liu Youjin finally made up his mind, and at this moment he seemed to be back to the past, the young man who forged documents and went to Nantai to be a fake county magistrate.

Xiao Lang said: "I still need someone to help, Gong Zijun." ”

Back in the prison cell, Liu Youjin whispered a few words in Gong Zijun's ear, and Gong Zijun, who was seriously ill, was in good spirits, struggled to get up and said, "Okay, I'll join." ”

The reason why he is more resolute than Liu Youjin is very simple, he was sentenced to fifteen years, only squatting for three years, and he can't survive the long sentence at all.

Xiao Lang said: "We are a trinity, we want to live together, we want to die together,"

He stretched out his hand, and Liu Youjin and Gong Zijun's hands also reached over and shook each other.

"You take this first, and you must be careful when you use it, so as not to be discovered." Xiao Lang took out two carving knives from his personal body and handed them to Liu Youjin.

Liu Youjin is a well-known gold and stone expert in Jiangdong Province, who has collected ancient seals and is also quite accomplished in seal carving, and this kind of thing is a piece of cake for him to engrave the official seal with radish.

Xiao Lang was a "senior" prisoner who could go in and out of the farm manager's office to clean up, and that morning he came to the office as usual, and when no one came, he threw open the filing cabinet with a wire and tore up a few blank official letterheads with the head of the labor camp and hid them on his body.

After cleaning, Xiao Lang returned to the prison and sorted out the waste manuscript paper written by the field manager that he had accumulated during this time, which he picked up from the wastepaper basket, and now it finally came in handy.

Gong Zijun's calligraphy is very good, and he is especially good at copying other people's handwriting, which is also one of the keys to success or failure.

Xiao Lang also stole a fountain pen tip dipped in water, there were some ink blocks condensed in the nib, and it could be written when it was melted with water, under a dim electric lamp, Gong Zijun wrote a quasi-fake note and a letter of introduction on the letterhead, and in the back Long Feifeng Wu signed the name of the captain, and then Liu Youjin took out the engraved radish official seal, dipped it in the ink mud, and covered it.

"Whether you can escape or not depends on this piece of paper." Xiao Lang blew the letterhead and sighed with emotion.