In August 1987, after several days of cloudy skies, a sudden thunderclap sounded in the morning, and the sky seemed to be torn open, and it began to rain heavily. The rain was so bad that the farmers were filled with thirsty corn seedlings and potatoes in the fields that were in dire need of water.

Yang Liufang, who was working with the workers in the factory, was a little worried, and in the morning Li Tongfu and Wang Shan went to the countryside to sell goods, and the assassins did not know whether they were in the village or on the road. In fact, the weather forecast on the radio these days says that there is rain every day, but it never comes down, and for several days in a row, the forecast is finished like "the wolf is coming", and gradually everyone is not taking the weather forecast seriously. But today is really here, and the rain is getting heavier and heavier, the heavy rain will cover the surroundings, as if it is dark, although the factory has lit four horse lanterns, but the dry joinery is still a bit of an eye-wrenching. Yang Liufang simply stopped and waited for the rain to stop before working.

When it was raining, Wang Shan and Li Tongfu had just left a village and walked onto the main road, and they were in a place where there was no shop in front of the village and no store behind the village. Because of the thunder, they did not dare to take shelter under the trees, so they had to cloak their horses, and they both hid in the carriage with a plastic sheet on their heads. It lasted for half an hour, the rain kept falling, and it didn't mean to stop, the two of them were cold, and Wang Shan was worried about the villagers in the sand washing factory who were rotated today, so he simply hurried up the carriage and slowly returned.

At this time, the rain mixed with the loess on the road, which soon turned the road surface into yellow mud soup, and the road became more and more muddy. On an uphill road, the horses' wheezing grew heavier and heavier, and the carriage stopped moving, despite the struggle.

Li Tongfu and Wang Shan had to get down to push the carriage one left and one right, and finally pushed it, and the two of them had already become soup chickens. But it is better to be able to move than to be left in the middle of the road, and the two were afraid of being stranded, so they had to follow the carriage and continue to move forward.

At the sand washing factory in Wangshawan, the workers had just washed a few truckloads of sand, and when they saw that it was raining, they shut down the machines and went into a simple shed to shelter from the rain. As the rain became heavier, the reservoir upstream of Zhaomagou also began to release water, the sluice gate opened, and the river water and rainwater rushed downstream with the dead branches and leaves in the river and the floating soil on the riverbed.

Over the past few months, the yellow mud has raised the riverbed, and the water level has reached the willow roots on the bank in an instant, and gradually spread along the river bank to the sand washing plant over time. The water level grew deeper and deeper, gradually reaching the calf, and then attacking like a wild horse.

The villagers who participated in today's rotation of sand washing also panicked when they found that the river was overflowing, threw down their tools and machines, and ran towards the village. Wang Shan was not there, everyone was like a headless fly, one foot deep and one foot shallow, and ran in the direction of Wang Shawan in the dark rain, I don't know who shouted: "Run to a high place, run to a high place." Everyone was in a mess, and some of the timid ones were so frightened that they cried out loud. For a moment, the sound of rain, thunder, cries, and shouts blended together.

Yang Liufang, who was anxiously waiting in the factory, paced back and forth to relieve his anxiety, and suddenly the door of the factory rang, Yang Liufang hurriedly ran over to open the door, and saw that it was the stone village chief wearing a raincoat and a horse lantern.

"Wang Shan, have they come back?"

"No, Brother Stone. I'm dying, this damn weather forecast. ”

"Ouch, something happened!"

"What's wrong, Brother Shi."

"Something happened at the sand washing plant. The worker ran away and lost one. ”

"Ah, did you go find it?"

"I've already gone, it's his father-in-law, Village Chief Zhao, who sent someone to drive a tractor to deliver the letter, I'm not in a hurry to think they're back, hurry up and look for him!"

"Oh, what can I do? Brother Shi, should we follow along to find it? ”

"It's raining hard, it's useless for us to go, we can only wait for Wang Shan to come back. Eda first comforted the missing family members, and waited for the rain to stop before looking for them. Hopefully it's okay. ”

"Alas! Let's hope it's okay. Yang Liufang rubbed his hands and sighed. Then he asked, "Is our village okay?" ”

"No, I walked around when I came, and everyone who didn't go out was hiding in the cave."

"Oh, that's good, Brother Shi, you can inform me, if there is difficulty at home, you can come to the factory to take shelter if the rain is leaking."

"That's what I mean, too."

"Okay, then you can go and inform me quickly."

After a while, the radio sounded, "Comrades of the green onions, the rain is relatively heavy, and if there is a difficult leak at home, you can come to the village to hide from the rain or go to the village carpentry factory." All pay attention to safety. ”

When Wang Shan and Li Tongfu came back, the rain had not stopped, and the horses were so tired that they lay on the ground as soon as they entered the factory, and they couldn't pull up. And Li Tongfu and Wang Shan were so tired that they took off their wet clothes and lay directly on the ground, Yang Liufang was afraid that they would catch a cold, so he asked the canteen master to boil ginger syrup for them, and boiled two pots of hot water, so that they could quickly wash and change into clean clothes. Yang Liufang was just about to tell Wang Shan about the loss of a person in the sand washing factory, and the village chief of Shi brought two families to the factory to take shelter from the rain, saying that the cave at home was in disrepair and the rain leakage was serious.

Seeing that Wang Shan had returned, he told him about the sand washing factory, and when Wang Shan heard it, he said, "It's broken!" He was about to rush out and was hugged by Yang Liufang.

"Third brother, there is no way to rush now, more than ten kilometers of road, such heavy rain, you run back? It's too dangerous. Let's wait for the rain to stop. ”

"We must have appeased the missing people's family, you calm down, let the horse rest, make the worst plan, and see if people can't find it, how can we compensate others." The head of Stone Village also said.

"Alas! I regret not listening to Brother Xiao Yang. Wang Shan sighed and muttered.

"There's nothing I can do if I listen to me, the peasants want to eat, they want to earn money, and when the machine starts, all they wash is money." Yang Liufang said.

The rain still didn't stop at night, Yang Liufang asked the canteen to make noodles, Wang Shan didn't have the heart to eat, so he took two bites and went to sleep. Yang Liufang heard him like a pancake, and he didn't sleep much after tossing and turning all night. When it was almost dawn, he heard the sound of the rain quietly, so he got up and put on his clothes and was about to leave, Yang Liufang and Li Tongfu also hurriedly got up to join him. Before the three of them drove the carriage out of the village, the stone village chief also followed, because he was worried about them and the people in the village, and the stone village chief didn't sleep all night.

The four people drove the carriage along the muddy road back to Wangshawan, and just out of the village, they met the tractor that came to pick up Wang Shan, at this time the carriage and people were burdensome, Wang Shan asked the village chief to drive the carriage back to the village first, and then send it back to Wangshawan when the road was clear. They got on the tractor and went back. Wang Shan roughly learned about the situation from the master, and the master said that when he came out, the search team organized by the village was already looking for it in three groups, and Zhao Machuan also sent a team to look for it on the other side and in the sand pit, and he didn't know what to take.

"Go straight to the sand washing plant." Wang Shan was anxious.

"Okay."

The tractor pulled them, and before they arrived at the sand washing factory, they heard people nearby faintly shouting: "Wang Cheng......" It turned out that the lost person was called Wang Cheng, and he had not yet started a family, so he wanted to make some money by washing the sand so that he could beg his daughter-in-law.

The tractor drove up to a team of people who were looking for them, and Wang Shan came down and asked, "How is it?" Have you found it in the sand pit or in the river? ”

"I found it, but I didn't find it for five or six kilometers along the river."

"What's the big one?"

"The village chief is in Wang's house."

"Let's go, I'll look for it with everyone." A group of people with sticks followed the direction they ran in near the sand factory, all the way down, until they reached the village, but still found nothing. When the other two teams came back, Wang Shan saw that everyone was very depressed, and it was fruitless. Accompanied by the family, Wang Cheng's mother was already crying without a sound at this time, her eyes were red and swollen under her unkempt white hair, and she was silently crying, but she couldn't say anything when she opened her mouth.

"How?" The old village chief asked Wang Shan about them.

Wang Shan shook his head. When the old lady saw this, she covered her face with her hands and turned her back on her anger. Everyone was in all hands, pinching people, pouring water, after several tosses, the old lady was relieved, and after waking up, she opened her mouth dryly, and there was no sound.

The old village chief asked his mother-in-law to accompany him with a few elderly women in the village, and he called Wang Shan and several cadres from the village to a meeting at the village headquarters to discuss the aftermath. Yang Liufang and Li Tongfu couldn't help much, so they said goodbye to Wang Shan and the village chief, and went out of the village to hire a tractor and go back to the factory.