TWWEYELRM CH 19

Chapter 19 – Why Are There So Many “Whys”

Fu Jingyou’s voice was low, and for once he answered promptly: “No one would dare.”

The grain grown in the fields was collective property—everyone knew that. If someone came to steal, even if no one from the team noticed, people from another production team would report it. Once reported and discovered, the punishment afterward was strict and severe; very few would take such a risk.

Speaking of other production teams, Fu Jingyou lifted his chin toward the opposite side of the drainage ditch. “See the fields across the way? That’s Team Three next door.”

Lu Miao followed his gaze.

They were walking along the bank; on their right was the flood-discharge channel. Across the channel lay a patch of wild scrub, and beyond that she could indeed see some leveled and repaired fields.

Fu Jingyou turned his face again and lifted his chin toward the mountains not far to the left. “That’s Team One. Most of Team One are mountain folk… Anyway, if you run into people from Team One, it’s best to avoid them.”

Lu Miao made an “oh” sound and filed it away, then asked curiously:
“Why?”

Fu Jingyou raised his voice a fraction: “Just avoid them. Why do you need so many ‘whys’?”

Lu Miao let go of the branch in her hand, stamped her foot, and mulishly refused to move.

Fu Jingyou had no choice but to backtrack and coax her. “Mountain folk are hard to get along with. Avoiding them is safest. Come on, it’s getting scorching.”

Lu Miao grumbled twice and took hold of the branch he offered again. “If they’re hard to get along with, just say so. What’s the point of skirting around it!”

Fu Jingyou walked on in silence, not taking the bait.

The plot they were working was about two mu, divided into two adjacent strips: one row of corn, one row of soybeans, intercropped.

There was little broad, flat land in the south; these two mu were the exception. One end leaned against the foot of the mountain, the other sat very near the drainage channel, with only a bank about two meters wide in between.

With shade from trees and a nearby water source, it was indeed far better than working up in the mountain fields.

Hanging the bamboo basket on a tree, Fu Jingyou first took the shovel and hoe to the neighboring strip.

That side was more exposed, with basically no shade.

He set to work briskly, and Lu Miao—too embarrassed to dawdle—also picked up the hoe, scratching here and there as she worked.

The corn had been transplanted back in April; now it had grown past knee height. Because spacing had been left when planting, it was still fairly easy to tend.

As for the soybeans, they were sown a bit later than the corn; they were only a little over ten centimeters tall now. The spacing was closer, but since the main stems hadn’t spread yet, they were also easy to manage.

Lu Miao settled down and worked slowly.

Fu Jingyou, uneasy, glanced over at intervals. Seeing that she really was working steadily, a trace of surprise flickered through him.

If she behaved, that was good—she wouldn’t wear him out.

He looked at her once more, then, while the sun hadn’t fully climbed, lowered his head and kept working.

After about two hours of steady labor, Lu Miao finished the long furrow closest to the treeline at the mountain’s foot. By then she was a little hungry, and her palms burned where the hoe handle had chafed them.

She simply put the hoe down, planning to eat something and take a short break.

Fu Jingyou was tall; he’d hung the bamboo basket casually high on a tree. Lu Miao jumped and tugged at its bottom several times to bring it down, but failed. Her neck was craned so long it went stiff and sore, so she gave up.

Abandoning the idea of taking the basket down, she rose on tiptoe, braced one hand on the tree, and used the other to feel along the rim until she found the bag of peach crisps.

By the time she fished it out, she felt like she’d turned into a gibbon.

Rolling her shoulders on both sides, Lu Miao found a relatively clean spot to sit, tore open the bag, and nibbled a peach crisp in small bites.

A little grasshopper hopped past her side. Ants in the grass seemed to catch the scent of sweetness; now and then one or two crawled up her pant leg.

While eating, Lu Miao dipped her head and freed a hand to flick the ants off. Suddenly something stung her calf.

She hissed, sprang to her feet, and lifted her loose pant leg to find a whole patch of red bumps—and a large ant, ten times the size of the small ones from before, scurrying up and down.

“Stupid ant!”

Stamping her foot, she knocked the ant off and crushed it without mercy. When she looked back at her calf, the bite itself didn’t show much, but those red bumps itched terribly.

Lu Miao’s skin was pale and delicate; after just a few scratches, tiny red dots surfaced, with a hint of breaking skin.

“Tsk.” With water nearby, she tied up the peach-crisp bag, hopped along while scratching her calf, and bent over as she headed for the drainage channel.

The channel ran through many brigades and production teams; its headwaters were the river up-stream, and downstream it was the river’s tail as well.

Because it had been dug years before and was seldom maintained, there were frequent collapses along both banks. People from nearby teams came to irrigate their fields, drawing water from those collapsed spots. Over time, all that foot traffic packed the ground firm, forming gentle slopes.

Except during heavy summer rains and flood release, the water level in the channel was usually calf-deep in shallow sections and over the knee in deeper ones. Some places had deep pits, where the water ranged from one to two meters.

The water was very clear; the deeper sections looked darker, easy to tell at a glance.

Crouching by the water, Lu Miao first scooped some to rinse the sweat from her arms and face. She casually wiped off the water on her cheeks with her sleeve, took off her shoes and socks, sat on the bank with her shoes as a cushion, and dipped her legs into the tinkling current.

“Eee—”

Lu Miao shivered, then soon let out a light breath.

She hadn’t felt the chill when washing her face, but plunging both legs in made the cold bite.

Still, it was only the first shock; afterward, the heat in her body ebbed away and she felt much more comfortable.

She kicked her legs, splashing the water. On the other side, Fu Jingyou “scrape-scrape” removed a clump of interwoven weeds with thick roots. He wiped his forehead, ready to continue—then as if sensing something, he paused, lowered his head, and then looked up quickly.

The weeds he’d hoed lay wilting under the sun. His hoe was tossed to one side, its blade glinting faintly in the light. But a sweep to the left and right showed that the delicate, spoiled girl was nowhere in the field!

She’d been working right in front of him just a moment ago!

A cold sweat broke out on Fu Jingyou. He dropped the hoe and ran toward the fields by the trees.

This place was very close to the mountain folk’s production team. And why were they called mountain folk?

Because they lived coiled among the mountains.

They certainly knew the mountain well, but because they lived deep in it, transport and communication were blocked. Their ideas had not been properly enlightened; their thinking might be old-fashioned, and their behavior not necessarily by the rules.

If… if they had taken Lu Miao!

Fu Jingyou’s heart leaped to his throat. Under the blazing sun, a sudden shiver ran through him. “Lu Miao!”

He no longer cared about anything in the field. Running along the treeline, he called her name in a panic.

“Lu Miao!”

(End of Chapter)