"You know it in your heart, why don't you say it?"

In a thatched mud hut surrounded by four walls, a woman in her twenties stood in front of the earthen kang and slapped the dust on the quilt heavily.

In front of the earthen kang, a thirty-year-old man sat on a wooden pier, lowered his head, shook the bamboo strips, and only cared about weaving the dustpan in his hand, and only held back a sentence after half a sound:

"It's already unfilial piety to split up, so why not be humble!"

"Let me let let go, when are you going to let go?"

The woman smashed the quilt in her hand on the earthen kang, turned her head to look at the man's back, and scolded:

"The separation was proposed by the old man, and we are not unfilial! When the family was separated a month ago, the eldest and the third family were divided in the old house, but we were assigned to this bullpen, obviously there are ghosts! Now that the rice at home has been exchanged for brown rice, there is only so much to be distributed to us, which is obviously not right, and it can't even last for a month, do you still want to let it? Do you have to see me and Yu'er starve to death before you are willing? ”

The woman was a little hoarse, and when she had finished speaking, tears welled up in her eyes.

The man didn't say anything more, just blushed, and a pair of rough hands knitted the dustpan a little faster.

Looking at the two people arguing in the room, Zhao Yu, who was standing by the wooden door, watched quietly, and the seven or eight-year-old body exuded a quiet that did not match his age.

Crossing over here, crossing through this childish body, he couldn't do anything at this time, and he couldn't interject.

"Just wait for us to starve to death!"

Seeing that the man was indifferent, the woman angrily ripped off the apron from her waist, threw it on the man's back, wiped the corners of her eyes, and strode out of the inner room.

Feeling the woman swaying in front of him like the wind, Zhao Yu moved his gaze to the man, looking at the father of his life, the second child of the Zhao family, Zhao Yongzhuo.

Zhao Yongzhuo still didn't make a sound, but the speed of weaving the dustpan was faster, and even because it was too fast, he made several mistakes in succession.

Seeing Zhao Yongzhuo's trembling hands, dismantling and re-arranging the mismade places, Zhao Yu pursed his lips, and then looked at his mother Hu Shi in the outhouse.

This small pen is divided into two parts.

Part of it is the inner room, that is, where Zhao Yu stands, where the family of three sleeps.

The other part is the outhouse, which is separated from the inner room by a door, and is the kitchen and the place where the firewood is stacked.

After Hu Shi came out of the outhouse, he walked to the large clay pot in the corner with an iron pot, carefully grabbed two handfuls of brown rice from it, put it in the iron pot, and prepared to cook.

It's just that when I grabbed the second handful of rice, I may have grabbed too much, and I let go and put some brown rice back into the big clay jar.

And when he put the brown rice in his hand into the iron pot again, Hu Shi may have grabbed it too tightly, and a few grains of rice jumped out of the tiger's mouth and fell to the ground.

Hu Shi hurriedly put the brown rice in his hand into the iron pot, then squatted down and picked up the few grains of rice with his eyes wide open.

It's just that not long after the bullpen was converted into an earthen house, there were still untamped soil particles on the ground, and the brown rice fell between the soil grains and was immediately mixed together.

Hu Shi was afraid that the brown rice would not be found if it was stained with dust, so he knelt on the ground with his originally squatting body, picked up a small wooden stick from the side, and carefully scratched away those soil grains by the dim light to find the rice grains.

When Zhao Yu saw this scene, his nose was sour, and he immediately rushed over, and went directly to the ground to look for it together.

It's just that as soon as Zhao Yu lay down, Hu Shi pulled him up:

"You stinky boy, where is there so much water for you to wash when your clothes are dirty? Stand honestly! ”

scolded Zhao Yu, Hu Shi waved his big hand and slapped Zhao Yu.

However, although Hu Shi looked very heavy, he was very good at proportion, and every time he slapped on Zhao Yu's clothes full of patches, he didn't shoot the meat.

After patting the dust off Zhao Yu's body, Hu pulled Zhao Yu away a little, and then knelt on the ground with one foot, tried his best to lower his body, and continued to look for rice grains among the dust.

Looking at Hu Shi, who was half-kneeling in front of him looking for rice, Zhao Yu didn't make any more movements, but his lips were pursed on his delicate face.

After a while, Hu finally found the few grains of brown rice out of the dust.

The grains of brown rice were stained with dust, but Hu Shi was afraid of losing them again, so he didn't clean the dust on them, so he put them directly into the pot, and then didn't wash the rice, added water to the pot and put them on the fire pit, and started to make a fire.

Seeing that the two people in the inner and outer rooms were busy working, Zhao Yu quietly walked out of the earthen house.

Outside the earthen hut is a small courtyard fenced with bamboo.

Zhao Yu walked out of the courtyard and came to the big dirt road outside the courtyard.

Zhao Yu's house is in the west of Zhaojiagou, Zhaojiagou is built by the mountain, the dirt road in front of his house is the road leading to the outside of the village, and under the soil slope more than ten meters away on the opposite side of the road, it is a large paddy field of more than 20 households in Zhaojiagou.

It's just that the climate of Chongzhen for three years is too weird, and now it's still the beginning of May, and the sun is making people's scalps numb, and the large paddy fields under the soil slope are so dry that they are covered with soil skin, and there are cracks like spider webs everywhere.

The seedlings that have been planted in the field for a short time are even more sick.

And this kind of weather is said to have started last year.

Zhao Yu didn't know what it was like before, and he didn't know what Changning County outside Zhaojiagou was, or Hengzhou Mansion or even the whole Huguang like, anyway, since he crossed into this mountain col two months ago, he heard that since last year, it rarely rains in this small mountain col.

It is precisely because of this that Zhaojiagou reduced production by half last year, and now when the green and yellow are not available, it is even worse, and every household is worried and white, and there are a lot of troubles.

For example, the old Zhao family in the west of their village.

The three brothers of the old Zhao family, the eldest Zhao Yonglin, the second Zhao Yongzhuo, and the third Zhao Yongliang, the eldest and the third are more active, and under the instigation of their respective daughters-in-law, in order to live a better life, they even instigated their sons to split up.

As a result, Old Man Zhao really agreed to split up, and he took the initiative to mention it.

In the end, the three brothers divided the family's land.

When they arrived at the house, the eldest and the third family didn't know what means they used, so they were assigned the east and west rooms of the old house, and lived in a yard with the old man, and their second family was assigned to a mud house renovated from a bullpen.

Later, the old Zhao family still has dozens of catties of rice, in order to eat longer, the old man Zhao decided to change the second-class brown rice and then divide it three times, so that he can get more food, and let the old family do it.

It is not until today that the exchange of rice for brown rice has been completed.

When the family was separated, Zhao Yu had already crossed over, and he also saw his uncle's thoughts of separating the family, but he also preferred to split the family in his heart, and he wished to stay away from those two families, so he was just a bystander during the whole process, and it didn't matter if he lived in the bullpen.

It's just that I didn't expect that when the brown rice was divided today, their second family would only get about 30 catties.

More than 30 catties of grain!

It's only the beginning of May now, even if God appreciates the face and has a harvest, the autumn harvest will not be until July and August, and there are still about three months to go, how can this bit of food be enough for their family of three to survive until that time?

What's more, they have just broken up, and the family is so poor that they don't even have a big son.

"Alas......"

Thinking of his mother who was kneeling on the ground to pick up rice and his father who was knitting a dustpan in a panic, Zhao Yu sighed softly and turned his head to look west.

If he can easily find an edible wild vegetable and dig a loach within the boundaries of Zhaojiagou, it will be an insult to the one hundred and eighty people in Zhaojiagou.

Now if you want to get food, the best way is to go to Changning County in the west.

The county seat of Changning is the seat of governance for these 180 miles, and as a county city, there will naturally be no less to eat, and there are more opportunities to eat.

Although Zhao Yu is an ordinary young man in the 21st century, he has hundreds of years of knowledge compared with today's people, and it is not difficult to get some food in the county.

It's just that Zhao Yu is still young, and the world is chaotic, Zhao Yongzhuo and Hu have never let him go to Changning County until now.

"I have to find a way to go to Changning County to have a look!"

With a deep groan in his eyes, Zhao Yu withdrew his gaze from the dirt road to the west.

However, as soon as his gaze was withdrawn, Zhao Yu's afterglow caught a glimpse of something, and he turned his head to look east.

The dirt road on the east side is the direction of the village, and on the side of the road 100 meters away from Zhao Yu's house, there is a 'one load of firewood' type civil engineering house, which is the kind of 'concave' shape.

There, it is the old mansion of their old Zhao family.

At this time, in front of the house there was a woman with a thick waist and a wide back, washing her clothes.

The woman was very water-saving, and the water she used to wash her clothes was collected in a bucket, but while she was washing her clothes, her eyes glanced at Zhao Yu's house from time to time.

Seeing Zhao Yu looking at her, the woman suddenly smiled at Zhao Yu:

"Yu'er, the big sun, why are you standing outside in the sun? Isn't it hot? ”

"No! Great Auntie! ”

Zhao Yu responded.

That woman is the eldest lady of the Zhao family, Zhao Yu's eldest aunt, the Chen family.

But after replying, Zhao Yu thought of Chen's eyes that he kept glancing at before, and suddenly thought of something, and suddenly his eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to yell at his own earthen house:

"Mother!!"