With the end of the rainy season, the weeds on the Beigou grassland gradually withered yellow, the water level in the Beigou waterhole drops significantly every day, the villagers of Wall Village want to store enough pasture grass here before the winter comes, this waterhole will eventually dry up to the bottom, some finger-long silver-scaled fish swim in the water in groups, at this time of year, there will be young people from Wall-Village who run to the edge of the waterhole to build a dam, as long as the water in the dam is scooped dry, barefoot in the muddy water can pick up this annual silver-scaled fish.

The surface of Mount Paglos is a huge limestone formation, and because of this special rock formation, rain quickly seeps into the ground, and there is almost no vegetation growing on this rock formation, so it is called the barren land of Mount Paglos.

Although some silt has gathered at the bottom of the waterhole in Beigou Grassland, it still can't stop the water from seeping into the ground.

A herd of yellow sheep gathered on the edge of the pool to drink, and a four-wheeled carriage loaded with volcanic ash slowly drove along the edge of the Beigou meadow, and the coachman waved his whip to startle a flock of copper-billed finches hiding in the grass.

Five or six older children were catching fish at the edge of the waterhole, and one of the older children saw the coachman in the four-wheeled carriage, and quickly pushed his companion next to him, and whispered, "Hey! Conan, the man up there is your father......"

Another child, who was fishing in the mud pit, hurriedly raised his head, saw the figure on the ravine, showed a very surprised expression, and hurriedly said: "Ah! He seems to have said that he was going to drive to the mountains today to pull the volcanic ash. ”

Several older children stood in the mud in unison, waving to the coachman on the ravine.

At this time, the coachman also noticed a few older children fishing at the bottom of the ravine, so he stopped the carriage and stood on a high place and shouted to the older children at the bottom of the ravine: "You must pay attention to safety!" ”

"Got it!" The older kids responded enthusiastically.

In the coachman's field of vision, several neighboring villagers with simple luggage on their backs hurried along the road towards the village of Wall, and their eyes were full of envy as they passed the Beigou grassland, which could raise cattle in this barren land.

Old Conan drove past the people of the neighboring village, and because the road led to the village of Wall, he could not help asking, "Everyone...... Are you going to Wohl Village? ”

The neighbors paused and replied cheerfully, "Yes, we have heard that the chief of Wall Village, Bright, has recruited bricklayers to build a cistern in the village and pay them every day, so we are going to try our luck in Wall Village, and it is better to find a job here than to go to the city of Highland." ”

Looking at the wrinkles on their dark faces, Old Conan hesitated a little, thinking about whether to use a horse-drawn carriage to carry them for a while, but the car was already filled with a whole cart of volcanic ash, and Old Conan hesitated for a moment before he said, "Oh, it's indeed to build a reservoir......"

He hesitated, after all, he didn't carry those neighboring villagers.

As it turned out, Old Conan made such a wise choice, and the carriage went a little further ahead, and he saw four or five groups of villagers from neighboring villages who had gone to Vol Village to find odd jobs, and these people would ask Old Conan about the construction of the reservoir.

……

The stonemasons of the village of Wall Village rode directly to the sulfur mine of Pubao Mountain, and the remaining young people would walk first, and then the stonemasons would send the horses back to the Pubao Mountain, and then these young people would ride to the Pubao Mountain, and the sulfur mine alone would occupy almost all the men of the village of Vol Village, so almost all the craftsmen who built the reservoir came from several surrounding villages.

The specific candidates were personally selected by the old village chief, and just after the harvest festival, these craftsmen came to the village with simple luggage.

The old village chief made a simple arrangement for the craftsmen, and the craftsmen led the old village chief to the place where the cistern was to be built upstream, where the general outline had been planned with white lime in advance, and the white lines on the ground were still clearly visible, and then the old village chief described the general size of the cistern to the bricklayers.

There are already some volcanic ash and limestone powder piled up on the construction site here, and the mechanics first sift these volcanic ash and lime powder, and then mix them together according to the proportion required by the old village chief, and combine them into cement, and the other part of the laborers began to dig a deep trench around the white ash marking line of the reservoir, and then the steel bars bought by Surdak were beaten into a ground cage, put into the trench, and then poured cement to lay the foundation......

Selena's notes clearly recorded the specific requirements and practices of each step, the old village chief was the organizer of the construction of the cistern, he had to direct nearly one hundred and fifty craftsmen to operate efficiently, Surdak had to pay these bricklayers and laborers eighty-five silver coins a day, so he had to make use of every labor, and the whole cistern construction site became lively for a while.

Unforeseen problems followed, such as the serious shortage of volcanic ash and lime powder that had been hoarded, the conflict between the craftsmen who weaved the cages and the laborers who dug the stone trenches, the trenches dug out by the laborers were not wide enough, and the limestone dug out of the trenches had to be ground into stone powder, etc., even if the old village chief was accompanied by his right-hand man Selena, these trivial matters kept him busy with almost no feet touching the ground.

The old village chief pinched his waist with one hand, and his voice was almost hoarse at the hot construction site.

……

At this moment, Surdak was passing through the mountain pass on horseback, and the corpses of the robbers hanging on the cross on the top of the mountain had obviously increased by a few more.

The surrounding villages are very resolute in their attitude towards robbers, and the effect is very obvious, although these robbers are a group of ruthless characters who are used to licking blood from the knife edge, but they are disrupting the inherent rhythm of life of the villagers living in the barren land, although most of the villages here are poor, and the villagers are struggling to make ends meet, but this does not mean that they are a group of lambs to be slaughtered.

On the contrary, the mountain people who can survive in this barren land have a kind of ruthlessness in their bones.

And after all, the robbers are foreign invaders, if they gather into a team, or they can use the scimitar in their hands to slaughter these natural villages, but because Surdak killed a bandit group by himself in the mountain pass, these robbers are scattered into pieces in various natural villages, and now they are slowly found out by the villagers, and they are broken one by one, and the robbers killed will be sent to the top of the mountain here.

All of a sudden, the wooden cross on the top of the mountain pass had been turned into an artificial jungle, and the effect of the villages in stopping the robbers was so good, which Surdak never expected......