In the open space not far from the house, Tao Hu was peeling the dead wolf pierced by the javelin with two men, the servants were talking and laughing, and Tao Hu looked at the room where Liu Wei and Tang Ji lived from time to time.

"You have a wound on your foot, and I'm afraid you won't be able to travel until the injury is healed." Standing at the window and looking out for a while, his eyes glanced at Yuanfu's residence, Liu Wei turned to face Tang Ji, and whispered to her: "You sit down, I will help you untie the wrapped cloth on your feet, so that your feet will not breathe, and it will heal very slowly." ”

"Husband, the concubine will come by herself." As soon as Liu Wei was about to squat down to help Tang Ji take off his shoes, Tang Ji hurriedly took two steps back, and said to him timidly: "Along the way, the concubine was already panicked, how dare you ask the husband to help you solve this filthy thing?" ”

"Okay." Liu Wei, who was already half-squatting, looked up at Tang Ji, who was full of panic, and said: "Remember to let your feet dry for a while, and then find a clean cloth to wrap on it, and don't get contaminated with dust." ”

"The concubine knows." Tang Ji bowed slightly, answered in a low voice, and stood aside with his mouth pursed, but did not immediately untie the cloth wrapped around his feet.

"I'm going to take a look." Seeing that Tang Ji just responded, but did not move to untie the cloth wrapped around her feet, Liu Wei knew that she was a little restrained, smiled at her, and explained: "Don't move around at will, sit in the house, and I'll be back later." ”

Tang Ji answered and watched Liu Wei leave the house.

Out of Tao Hu's house, Liu Wei turned his head to look at the door of Yuanfu's house, only to see that the door of the small adobe house was closed, although everyone in the village was busy peeling and plucking the prey, and the noise was very happy, Yuanfu had no intention of going out.

didn't see Yuan Fu, Liu Wei walked straight towards Tao Hu, who had already skinned the wolf and was dismantling the wolf meat with the two men.

Walking up to Tao Hu and the others, Liu Wei squatted next to the wolf meat that had been cut into pieces, pointed to the piece of wolf meat that was about to get bloody, and asked Tao Hu: "The wolf meat is picked like this, isn't it going to be boiled and eaten?" ”

"The guests didn't expect it badly!" Tao Hu nodded, and while continuing to pick the wolf meat, he said: "There are too many people in the village, although there are a lot of prey today, but if it is roasted and eaten, it is not enough for the whole village. ”

While several people were talking, a woman's laughter came from the entrance of the village.

Liu Wei, who was squatting next to the wolf meat, raised his head and looked towards the entrance of the village, only to see more than a dozen young village girls walking towards the village with a wooden basin in one hand and an empty bucket in the other.

The empty bucket they were carrying was exactly the same as the little girl who Liu Wei saw wrestling just now, and they should have brought some water to pour in the field after washing their clothes.

Entering the village, it was the group of village girls who were washing clothes by the river before, Tao Hu's sister was also among them, it may be that the people in the village are very familiar, the village girls are not very reserved, they talk to each other very loudly, and from time to time they let out a series of silver bell-like laughter.

When they passed by Tao Hu and the others, they found Liu Wei who was squatting there and turning his head to look at them, only then did he remember that there were guests in the village, so he quickly stopped laughing and trotted home one by one.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" The village girls scattered and ran home, Liu Wei turned his head, looked up at Tao Hu who was standing aside and was still picking wolf meat, and asked him.

While picking the wolf meat, Tao Hu glanced down at Liu Wei and said to him: "The guests just have to rest, since they have come here, the villagers have stuttering, and the guests are indispensable. ”

"Ugh!" Liu Wei didn't expect that as soon as he offered to help, he was rejected by Tao Hu, so he had to smile wryly, stand up, and walk towards the dirt slope at the entrance of the village alone.

On the way to the entrance of the village, Liu Wei looked at the cracked land, and couldn't help but think of the little girl who had fallen to the ground just now in order to water the field.

Having lived in an era more than 2,000 years later, Liu Wei knows that the hardships of the villagers here are not because they are lazy, but because their productivity is too low, and the labor effort is far from proportional to the return.

If they also have hybrid rice seeds with a yield of 1,000 catties per mu, they can also use electric pumps to pump water for irrigation when there is a shortage of water, just like the farmers of later generations, and there is absolutely no need for the strong laborers in the village to risk their lives to hunt wild animals in the mountains and forests.

Many peasants in later generations went to the cities to work, and endured all the hardships and sins in order to make their lives more prosperous. But the villagers in this small village in front of them have not even reached the level of food and clothing.

Thinking that the land in the village is difficult to irrigate, and that men can only rely on men to hunt in the mountains to make a living all year round, even if they hunt a big prey like a wolf, the whole village still has to rely on bran and grass roots to fill their hungry stomachs, Liu Wei feels very uncomfortable.

Tang Ji's foot injury has not healed, if they leave the village tomorrow morning, they will not be able to walk too fast, with Tang Ji with a foot injury, but will delay the trip, walking in the field near Luoyang for one more day, he and Tang Ji will be a little more dangerous, it is better to stay in the village for a few more days, and help the villagers to find a way to solve the difficulty of irrigating the land.

Walking to the entrance of the village, Liu Wei chose a relatively high dirt slope to climb up, and sat down on the top of the slope.

Looking at the river for a while, Liu Wei first raised his hand to measure the position of the riverbed, then measured the nearby fields, measured the direction, he picked up a small pebble from the side, and drew it on the ground.

He was very attentive in his paintings, and before he knew it, the sun had set over the mountain.

The orange sun spread over the land, and the clouds in the sky were also reflected in the setting sun.

Liu Wei sat cross-legged on the top of the slope, holding a stone in his hand, still concentrating on painting. Just as he was about to finish painting, Tao Hu walked up from the bottom of the slope and stood beside him.

"Guest, the food has been cooked, you make it easy for me to find! Come and eat with me. Standing in front of Liu Bian, Tao Hu tilted his head and greeted him with a sentence that the meal was ready, and when he saw the picture drawn by Liu Bian on the ground, he exclaimed with admiration: "The guest is a noble person who can make paintings!" ”

"Noble?" Lowering his head and drawing the last stroke on the picture, Liu Wei first looked up at Tao Hu, who was looking at the picture on the ground with admiration on his face, and then turned his head to look at the small river that shone golden in the sunset, like a golden streamer, and said: "I'm not a nobleman, I just can draw two strokes casually." What I'm drawing is just a diagram of the waterwheel, as long as we can build a waterwheel, we can bring water from the ditch to the fields, and we don't have to suffer from God's idleness in the future. ”

"Such a round thing, with a few sticks, can lead water to the field?" Tao Hu licked his lips with round eyes in disbelief, squatted down, caught up in the afterglow of the setting sun, looked at the picture drawn by Liu Wei without blinking, stretched out his hand to touch the waterwheel pattern on the ground, and then hurriedly withdrew his hand as if he was afraid of damaging the pattern, and muttered in his mouth: "Guest, don't make me happy with the fools in the mountains." ”

Liu Wei turned his head, smiled at Tao Hu, and said to him: "It must be useful, just to build a waterwheel, it is best to use bamboo, I just looked around, there is no bamboo around here, so it can only be replaced by wood." There are two major disadvantages of wood, one is that it needs to be dug hollow when building, which is more troublesome, and the other is that it is soaked in water all year round, and the wood will be soft and corroded, and it is necessary to replace the waterwheel accessories frequently, which is also an annoying thing. ”

Tao Hu stared at Liu Wei for a long time without blinking, and then lowered his head, looked at the waterwheel pattern on the ground, and said nothing.

Throwing away the pebbles in his hand, Liu Wei said to Tao Hu in an unusually resolute tone: "The waterwheel cannot be built by one person, I need help, and it takes at least twenty strong laborers to build it in two or three days." ”

Tao Hu hesitated for a while before he nodded, and said to Liu Wei in a very uncertain tone: "I can talk to a few brothers and let them think of a way." It's just that the old people in the village will not be too easy to agree to this matter, and twenty strong laborers will build a waterwheel, and the hunting manpower will not be enough, and if they are unlucky, the villagers will have to go hungry for a few days. ”

The moon is bright and the stars are scarce, except for those little babies who are still bare-chested and shaking the crotch of their legs to pee and play with mud, all the men in the village gather in the open space in the village.

The men were waiting for Tao Hu to distribute the wild things he had hunted during the day.

Tao Hu divided the wild animals into multiple parts evenly while whispering something to a few young men who were helping beside him.

Standing not far away and watching Tao Hu distribute prey, Liu Wei understood why he could become the leader of the young and middle-aged people in the village. He distributed it evenly, piles of meat were stacked, and even the offal was divided into equal pieces.

With such a fine distribution, Liu Wei thinks that he will never be able to do it himself, and even if he can do it, it is not as meticulous as the idle division. It is not surprising that such a person was elected as a leader by the villagers.

"What?" After a while, a man who was talking to Tao Hu exclaimed, "You mean you can bring the water from the river to the fields?" ”

The man's exclamation was not very loud, but for the villagers who have suffered from drought all year round, this sentence was tantamount to a thunderbolt in the sky, and it also ignited the dream that many people had been longing to achieve, and everyone turned their attention to Tao Hu and others.

Seeing that the eyes of the villagers were shifted to him, Tao Hu, who usually talked a lot, was also a little nervous, and he hurriedly waved his hand at the exclaimed man, signaling the man not to continue.