In the blink of an eye, it was the fourth day. Because Chu Ye was in good health and had little strength, she didn't go to the fields to earn work points for the past two days. It was precisely because of this that she was able to think carefully about the way to go next.
In the evening, Chu's father and Chu's mother came home from work, and Chu Ye consciously took on the task of cooking.
The stove at home is made of bricks and earth. It has been used for many years and looks dark. Chu Ye first put some dried cow dung in the fire hole, then put the straw, picked up a handful of dry leaves, lit it with a match, threw it into the fire hole, and finally picked up the cattail fan next to it and gently blew the air.
After the leaves are burned, sparks will appear on some dried cow dung and straw. When the cattail fan is blown, the sparks will rise up and form small flames. Wait for a while and the fire will gradually become bigger. Then add some firewood and you can start cooking. .
This kind of skill is necessary for any rural child, not to mention that Chu Ye has been cooking for many years after getting married in his previous life, and he is already familiar with it.
Then put a little lard into the cooking pot, and when the oil is hot, pour in the minced garlic. At this time, the strong fragrance permeates the whole room. Chu Ye adds freshly cut carrots into it, and stir-fries a little. Red and green, and looks shiny.
Then add water, bring it to a boil, and add the sweet potato noodles. After a while, the noodles float, and the originally clear soup becomes white and viscous. Sprinkle some salt and chopped green onion, and take it out of the pot.
Chu Ye scooped out three bowls and brought them to the dining table. An incandescent lamp hung above the table. The warm yellow light illuminated the room and made the noodles in the bowl particularly attractive.
There are some crystal yellow oil splashes on the soup surface, and the shredded carrots are mixed with chopped green onions, which looks particularly eye-catching. Chu Ye wasn't too hungry, so he put more noodles in Er Lao's bowl.
Noodle soup is not a rare thing, but after working outside for a day, drinking a hot bowl of it when you go home warms your heart and stomach.
After dinner, Chu's father brought up the matchmaker again. Chu Ye just laughed and said it was too late now and we would talk about it tomorrow, and coaxed the two elders to go to bed.
Their home is a spacious courtyard surrounded by mud walls. There are two wooden doors at the door. When you open the wooden door and walk into the courtyard, you will see a three-meter-high tree on the left and a well on the right.
The house is divided into a main hall and a side room, both with earth-tile roofs. When entering the main hall, there is a dining table and a stove built against the wall. There is a room on the left and right. There is no door. Only a piece of cloth is hung on the door opening as a shield. sight. She and her parents lived in two rooms respectively.
Next to her parents' house, there was a small single room, which was regarded as a side room of the family, and her brother Chu Guangyao lived in it. Now I am in the first grade of junior high school. I have not been back to the middle school in the countryside these days.
In the past, her three sisters were not married yet, and Chu Guangyao was still young, so her parents were worried about her, so they slept with them. At that time, the eldest sister and the second sister often slept in a side room, and the third sister slept with her.
I think back then, the Chu family was also very wealthy. Chu Ye's grandfather was the party secretary of the village. Because of this, their yard was big and spacious.
It's just that when she came to her father's place, the family was not as good as before. Her father couldn't study well. He could only finish elementary school and clamored to go home and farm. In his opinion, his father was so awesome as the village party secretary. , it’s just farming with the villagers. Then when he comes back from studying, he still has to farm!
It is better to plant the land early than to plant it late!
Later, her mother gave birth to four more daughters in succession. Because of this, people in the village spread gossip that Lao Chu was incapable of giving birth to sons. Chu Ye still remembers that when she was a child, Chu's father smoked a dry pipe and scolded her mother angrily, "It's all because of you, a chicken that can't lay golden eggs! You can't even give birth to a son! You make me lose face in the village!"
Such words once frightened the women in the family. After the younger brother was born and the sisters grew up, Chu's father hurriedly looked at the families with good conditions and married his sisters one by one.
Because of this, the family received a lot of betrothal money, and her father's back straightened up again. Now that I heard that the wealthy Zhao family had chosen Chu Ye, my mind became active again.
Chu Ye knew all this.
When she heard snoring next door, she looked at the time, put on a thin cotton-padded jacket, and walked out of the house.
The countryside is silent late at night, and the moonlight spreads like flowing gauze on the dirt road, making it possible to see your feet clearly at night. Chu Ye followed the route in his memory to the place where the accident was about to happen. Occasionally, there were domestic dogs barking on the roadside. When people passed by, the sound soon disappeared.
A few steps away, there were people who were still asleep. The lights were shining through the windows. There were mountains in the distance, and the wind blew through the dense trees, making a whistling sound.
Chu Ye walked towards the river bank with all her heart. She clearly remembered that in her previous life, a sudden river flood washed away two old houses.
Those houses were the old addresses of Lao Zhang's and Lao Li's families respectively. They were good places that the elders of the two families had snatched up, and they were also used to show off in the village. But later, in response to the call, a river embankment was to be built in the village to collect water and nourish the source, and the villagers joined the work team in large numbers.
As a result, the originally good place has become bad. Besides, other people in the village live in the east, and the two of them seem to have been abandoned. He simply moved back to the village, and the original house was left idle.
In her impression, these two families rarely go back, and she doesn't know what is going on. They go back together without saying anything, and they are unlucky enough to encounter such a thing.
On this night in a previous life, two people were washed away by the flood. When the villagers heard the noise and rushed over, they found the two people on the river bank. Although they looked embarrassed, their lives were not affected. At most, he was hit by rocks and wood in the water, leaving some skin injuries.
One of them, Uncle Zhang, was overjoyed when he saw the visitor. He eagerly led everyone to a place with rapid water flow. Only then did everyone discover the male educated youth who was also washed away by the water. It's just that they arrived a step too late, and a large amount of river water rushed into the educated youth's mouth. He was no longer breathing. Before he died, he was still holding tightly on the hanging branches of the willow tree nearby.
When everyone fished him out of the river, they all looked sad. This educated youth was not yet twenty years old, so he was really young. But Uncle Zhang in the crowd knelt on the ground and kept kowtowing to him, with tears streaming down his face.
After Uncle Zhang cried and complained, the villagers knew that it was this educated youth who had quick eyesight and quick hands who caught him when the flood broke through the house.
The two of them were rushed into the water together. As they floated down the river, the educated youth stared at the willow tree on the side of the road and quickly reached out to grab it to prevent the two of them from being swept further down.
But this was not a problem. The educated youth couldn't get up even after dragging Uncle Zhang, so he swung him to the shore and let him go up first. When he got to the shore, he turned back to save him, but found that he was not strong enough to save him. The grown boy fished it out of the water.
After all, Uncle Zhang is over sixty years old.
Under this situation, the educated youth asked Uncle Zhang to go first and call more people over, if he could persist.
But he didn't want to wait until he called someone over. He had already lost his strength and drowned in the cold river water.
——
Half an hour later, Chu Ye saw the dim light of a house in the distance. About two hundred meters away, there was another lighted hut, and excitement flashed in her heart. It's not that she didn't think of coming over to tell this matter in advance in the past two days, but it was too unbelievable that these words came out of thin air. Besides, the three families usually didn't have much contact. If she suddenly came out to say such a thing, others would only think it was bad luck.
The flood in her previous life happened in the early morning of March 5th, so tonight she watched the time advance, but she didn't want to underestimate the difficulty of walking at night. She looked up at the moon, feeling that there was not much time left for her.
Thinking of this, she started to run towards the house above.
The night air was cold and humid, and she could feel her nose and face freezing. The road under her feet was not easy to walk on. There were arched haystacks in the dirt from time to time, and there were potholes everywhere.
She didn't dare to delay. When she was not far from the small house, the sound of wind in her ears was gradually replaced by the sound of water. Suddenly, there was a "bang" in the distance, and then it seemed that a giant beast from the abyss was released, with an unstoppable momentum. Coming in waves.
Chu Ye froze on the spot, then quickly reacted, rushed forward and slammed the door, shouting anxiously, "People inside come out quickly! It's flooding!"
After shouting, he continued to slam the door vigorously and repeated it again.
The roaring river was getting closer and closer, as if thousands of horses were galloping right next to my ears. The next moment, the door opened.
In the room, Uncle Li was about to go to sleep. When he had taken off his coat, he heard an urgent knock on the door, shouting that water was coming.
The disturber was unclean, so he put on his coat and planned to see what happened. As soon as he opened the door, he was dragged by people outside and ran ten meters away. He was already very old, and his heart almost jumped out of his throat when he ran so fast.
He just took a breath and wanted to see who was playing tricks on the old man like this, but he heard a loud "rumbling" sound. He turned around and saw that most of the house he was in had been washed away by the river.
"Oh my God! How come there is such a huge flood!" Uncle Li shouted, and then he patted his chest for the rest of his life. Fortunately, he was pulled out, otherwise the consequences would be disastrous.
I'm looking around me. Isn't this the fourth daughter of the Chu family?
"Si Ya, why are you here?" Li Bo was confused, but Chu Ye didn't have time to elaborate.
She pointed to the house with lights on not far away, "Uncle Li, is there anyone there? The water is going down!"
Looking along, Uncle Li clapped his hands, "Hey! There is Lao Zhang and an educated youth there! Hurry up! We have to save them quickly."
"Uncle Zhang, go back to the village and call more people over. I'll run over to see if I can save them."
After saying that, the two of them quickly split up.
The distance between the two houses was not far, but when Chu Ye arrived, it was still a step too late, and half of Zhang Bo's house was washed away.
She called to the ruins, but no one answered, so she walked down the river.
——
Earlier, Uncle Zhang had settled in the educated youth's residence and was about to leave. It's not that he wants to go back and forth like this, it's mainly that the old houses here have been vacated and there is no place for him to live.
It is true that all the educated youth who went to the countryside originally lived in the compound, which was a two-story hut made of mud and tiles. This educated youth lived well on the second floor. Who knew that his roof collapsed and the repairmen It will take a lot of time for the roof to dry.
The village chief simply said that he would make do with living in a villager's house first. Unexpectedly, he pointed his finger and took a fancy to two old houses by the river.
So after work this afternoon, he and Lao Li brought people over. The educated youth took a look and said they lived in his family's old house. He naturally agreed and helped to pack things for the educated youth, and he has been busy until now.
Unexpectedly, just when he was about to go home, the educated youth grabbed him and said that he heard a loud sound of water outside. He still didn't believe it, so he was pulled out by the educated youth. As soon as he stepped out of the house, what a good guy. Swept away.
The water hit the two of them, and in the blink of an eye they were several meters away from the house. When he came back to his senses, he realized that the educated youth was still holding on to his wrist. With quick eyes and quick hands, the educated youth grabbed the willow branch hanging down by the shore.
The two of them were swimming in the water for a while.
——
Here at Chu Ye, the riverside at night was full of water vapor. She walked quickly on the bank, with many marks on her face being wet by the water.
It's hard to find someone at night, let alone someone who's been swept away by the water. She remembered that the male educated youth died clutching a willow branch, so she began to pay attention to the trees by the river.
This, no.
This is not either
While Chu Ye was carefully staring at the trees on both sides of the river, she sharply observed that a figure seemed to be crawling behind a clump of dark trees not far ahead.
She ran over in a hurry. The closer she got, the clearer she could see. Even closer, even closer, she could see clearly! It was a wet man crawling from the river to the shore.
She found it!
When Chu Ye ran over, Zhang Bo had just climbed onto the shore. Just like the water ghost came ashore, she stretched out her hand to pull Zhang over and away from the shore.
Looking into the river again, a piece of weeping willow was held by the man in his hand, holding it firmly to prevent it from floating away. At this time, he was looking at Chu Ye steadily.
(End of chapter)