Stepping on the grass, Li Heng walked on the ridge outside the village, his right side was a bud rice field, the oval slender leaves hung on the green poles, and the ripe bud rice sticks were wrapped inside, leaving only a lock of "yellow hair" exposed.

This bud rice field is not very green and lush, the ridges of the field seem to be scattered and loose, and the leaves on many straws are yellow and green, shrunk by half, and do not look very well cared for.

There was no one in the field, Li Heng reached out and peeled off a stick that was relatively full and not much eaten by insects, peeled off the beard on it one by one, and then continued to walk towards the field.

Strictly speaking, this kind of behavior is called stealing, which is illegal, and although this loss is not punishable, it is at least a criticism and education.

However, in the countryside, this is not a big deal, it is very common.

In the scorching summer weather, the villagers who had been busy in the fields all morning walked on the dirt road under the scorching sun and hunger, passed by the melon fields of other villagers, touched a ripe watermelon inside, knocked it on the spot, and gnawed two mouthfuls of melon flesh to relieve hunger and thirst; After picking water and fertilizer for a long time, the farmers who couldn't lift their waists sat down in the field to rest, picked the tomatoes in the vegetable field of individual households, wiped them casually with the corners of their clothes, and stuffed them in their mouths to taste fresh and relieve fatigue; There is no seasoning for stir-frying at home, so I use two garlic seedlings in another vegetable garden......

These are quite common phenomena in the village, not too reasonable, but they are quite reasonable.

A tacit understanding and agreement between rural people is acceptable to each other as long as it is not deliberately destroyed or taken in large quantities.

This is a kind of internal rule in the circle, which is very concise and simple, but it cannot be ignored, and it represents a simple social concept called "everyone looks up and doesn't look down".

In the city, this is basically not the case, it is normal for neighbors to borrow things from each other, but it is absolutely not possible to take away things that belong to others quietly, even if it is only as small as a needle and thread and a garlic seedling.

This is because the objective environment of the two is different, the naturally generated order will not be suppressed, and there is no difference between right and wrong, because there is no right or wrong in the environment.

Strand by strand of corn on the cob, all the corn whiskers were peeled off, and Li Heng stroked the plump and round corn kernels.

There was a smell of burnt paste not far away, Li Heng looked up and saw black smoke slowly curling up in another field, and Li Heng walked towards that side with his thoughts.

Wildfire burning is the most common way to deal with crop straw and weeds in rural areas, and although policies are being implemented in various places to rectify rural straw burning, it is still difficult to fully implement them.

This wildfire is obviously also used to burn the remaining bud straw in the field, and by the way, a wave of weeds is cleared, and the main component of the burned ash is inorganic salt, which is also a good nutrient for the next round of cultivation.

The person who set the fire has left, and this fire is now an "ownerless fire", Li Heng hurriedly stepped forward and dug a pit in the soil with the remaining embers, buried the ashes that were still on fire, and then threw the bud rice stick in his hand into the fire with a roll of leaves.

Grilled corn on the cob!

He crouched beside the wildfire at the edge of the field, rubbing his hands together and looking at the fire expectantly.

I haven't done this kind of work in many years, and it seems that I haven't been cooking much in the fields since I was in middle school.

I still remember when I was a child, I picked taro, broke corn, and peanuts, turned over other people's vegetable gardens, dug my own ridges, and used the ashes of the earthen stove to roast taro, roast corn, and roast peanuts to eat, and ate a circle of "black beard" on my mouth.

The ashes of the wildfire gradually extinguished, and Li Heng dug open the ashes that were still hot and warm, and turned out the dried and blackened leaves from the soil pit, and a unique sweet fragrance mixed with burnt paste burst out.

The expected baked paste, Li Heng is not surprised, he hasn't done this job for too many years, it's hard to grasp the heat, it's almost half scorched, and only the lower half is cooked.

opened his mouth and took a bite, the sweetness of cooked corn had a hint of bitterness and astringency of charcoal, Li Heng nodded, Well, that's right, that's the taste.

Although his recipes have been specially adjusted, they are all carefully balanced with nutrients, energy, and microelements, and this roasted half-charred corn cob is not only not nutritious, but also produces toxic substances due to excessive heat.

But today, he is going to eat this poisonous "junk food", not only that, but he also picked a cucumber from another vegetable garden to replenish water, and he doesn't care whether the vegetable field has just finished spraying pesticides.

I don't know if it's his psychological effect, but I always feel that the cucumbers grown in this vegetable garden taste different from those sold in supermarkets in the city.

Nibbling corn and chewing cucumbers, Li Heng continued to walk all the way, passing through the fields and land that he was very familiar with when he was a teenager.

The roar of a diesel engine could be heard in the half-muddy soil, as if an old man was about to die and screaming angrily, and the tractor it was pulling was deep in the mud, and a pair of wheels rolled and slid weakly in the muddy water.

The tractor is also operated by an old farmer of half a hundred, who is as old as this machine, and his condition is not much better than this machine.

Both hands put the strength of the tractor handrail to feed, the green tendons burst out, the face was flushed, the left and right swing was pulling the clutch and the gear, the front and back left and right right, but this damn wheel just stuck in it and couldn't climb up.

At this moment, the old farmer caught a glimpse of a young man coming behind his tractor, as if he was going to help him push the cart.

"Thank you, but you have to use it, the wheels are deep and one person can push it, at least two or three people, I'd better go down and call someone......"

Then he felt the body shake violently, as if it was being pushed forward quickly, and the roar of the diesel engine was no longer as unpleasant as before, and soon a pair of wheels were pulled out of the mud.

The old farmer was overjoyed, and hurriedly grabbed the handrail, pulled the clutch, changed gears, and suddenly got out of this difficult dirt road.

As soon as he stepped on the brakes, the old farmer hurriedly turned around and planned to get out of the car to thank the young man who helped him with the cart, but there was no one to be seen at a glance.

The old man was so dazed that he fanned the straw hat on his head, his face quite confused.

Li Heng, who had already left along another ridge, finished nibbling the last bite of corn and said to himself: "It should be the reward for eating your corn cob and cucumbers."

Throwing away the corn cob, Li Heng watched a group of short figures slowly walking on the country road, and they came from the sound of constant frolicking and fighting.

I saw a boy with a schoolbag on his back kicking his feet along the edge of the grass, as if looking for something.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up and he picked up something from the ground in three steps and two steps.

It's a slender branch that's quite straight and well-proportioned!

The young man with the artifact in his hand seemed to have found his mission in an instant—there would never be a standing grass in front of me!

Li Heng watched him hold the "Divine Soldier" in his hand, like a "god descending from heaven", and after slashing horizontally and vertically and discounting the arrogant backbone of more than a dozen artemisia grasses, he finally smiled with satisfaction as if he had completed his life mission.

Then he found that his little friend had left far away and left himself behind, so he was taken aback and threw down the artifact in his hand and hurried to catch up.

The artifact left behind by its owner lies alone in the weeds, waiting for the next destined person.

Li Heng, who was destined to be a person, walked to the grass and bent down to pick up the branch.

Looking at this "artifact" and the dozen or so artemisia grasses beside him, Li Heng couldn't help but shake his head.

"Hehe, naïve"

A few minutes later, Li Heng continued to walk away from the path.

Within a radius of nearly a few tens of meters behind him, only a single intact grass and a broken branch could not be found......

He continued to walk along the road, across the bridge, over the dirt slope, through the bamboo forest, and saw a ploughing ox tethered to a wooden stake at the edge of the forest.

In recent years, mechanization has been more popular, and there are tractors and rotary cultivators, and there are really not many cattle now.

"Huh? This cow ......"

After approaching, Li Heng's eyes widened slightly, and his gaze fell on its neck, where a handful of hair was missing, leaving a white rough scar.

"It's you."

Li Heng showed a smile and walked to the lying cow and squatted down, and the old cow seemed to sense that someone was approaching, so he raised his head lazily.

"Moo-moo-"

The voice was old and a little weak.

Li Heng suddenly had mixed feelings, stretched out his hand to rub it on its head, and then reached out to stroke the white scar that had lost his hair.

Lighting torches, an ancient traditional custom, every August 15 Mid-Autumn Festival night, adults will take children out to tie straw, straw and wooden sticks into a handle to light it, and then shake it around in the wilderness at night to turn spark tricks.

It is said that this is a folk custom handed down from the late Yuan Dynasty to imitate the Red Turban Army uprising and raise fire, and it is deeply loved by young people.

Li Heng was also a creative genius when he was a teenager, and he decided to give the whole job to his fellow villagers on the night of August 15.

Young Li Heng has a skill that most children no longer have - bull riding!

In the era when there was no need to herd cows, this skill has gradually become useless, but Li Heng once learned this skill out of curiosity and fun.

It just so happened that his family bought a young strong cow not long ago, and it was Li Heng's father who specially cultivated the water terraces on the mountainside that the tractor could not handle.

So the ruthless job he came up with was - riding a bull and making torches!

When that time came, in the wilderness on the night of the full moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15, when he calmly rode the ox out when a group of friends were playing on the ground with torches, and then raised the three-layer cotton torch he had carefully built to light the blazing holy fire, he was the most beautiful boy in the whole village.

So he secretly took out the family's cattle when his father went out, and walked to his own ruthless road with his torch on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

And that night, he did win the attention of all his friends and left an enduring name, but the process was not what he expected

The sparks splashed during the waving of his torch burned the bull's eye, and then the cow under his crotch ran in a hurry, Li Heng couldn't keep his balance, and the torch in his hand was even more out of his hand and directly burned the hair on the cow's neck.

The runaway old cow also ended that year's torch festival with an unprecedented "laughter" and "joy".

Afterwards, he also felt the extremely "warm" father's love like never before, which made him dare not fall off the bench for almost a week.

But even if he endured the pain in his buttocks, Li Heng still ran to the cowshed every day with scald cream and anti-inflammatory drugs, and applied medicine to his buttocks while applying medicine to the cow's neck, and slowly the cow's neck and his ass got better.

But not long after that, the cow was sold by Li Heng's father, and Li Heng only remembered that on the day of the sale, the cow with a burn scar on its neck did not leave, and mooed in his direction for several minutes before being dragged away.

Many years later, touching the same scar, Li Heng seemed to see the past years at this moment.

The boy who played with fire has become an ordinary young man in the world, the strong ploughing ox of the past is now too old to plow the field, and the person who left a deep memory on his ass back then is long gone......

"It's all my past, the most ordinary past"

Li Heng stood up, his expression suddenly clear, suddenly confused, and vaguely seemed to be found.

At this moment, a big car drove slowly from the side of the dirt road, and a person from the car came to the stump: "Little brother, please excuse me, we are going to lead this cow." ”

"You are ......"

"This cow was temporarily tied here before, we just called the cart, and now we are going to take it to the beef cattle factory"

"Beef cattle farms? Isn't this ploughing oxen? ”

"It's too old~" The man untied the cow rope as he untied it, "This kind of old cow has long been out of strength to go to the ground, so it will naturally be sold." ”

Li Heng was silent, this kind of old cultivated cattle entered the slaughterhouse and killed for meat was the final destination.

The old cow obediently followed the leash man and slowly got up from the ground, and slowly walked up the ramp of the truck with his rotten hooves.

Bang Bang –

The door to the rear of the carriage closes, and the car engine starts.

The cart is about to depart, pulling the twilight cow to the slaughterhouse, where it is slaughtered and automatically broken down into pieces of meat on the table.

Li Heng stood quietly and watched, without any intention of doing anything.

The tires of the car turned slowly, and the old cow slowly raised its hooves in the bar.

"Moo-moo-"

Suddenly, the sound of the cow came from the carriage, and the old cow's old cry rang slowly like a string of old bells.

In a trance, Li Heng seemed to see the afternoon when it was sold again, and shouted at himself like this.

"Wait a minute"