Daily Life in the Countryside After Being Reborn
Chapter 100 - 73: The Seed Assembly (Second Night Watch)

Chapter 100: Chapter 73: The Seed Assembly (Second Night Watch)

"Mr. Zhu, I was just thinking of discussing with you, when to my surprise, Duoduo had already brought people over," the village chief relayed Secretary Qian’s words to him.

"How foolish, how could you be so reckless," it was too late for Zhu Shijun to stop anything now, the people Qian Duoduo had brought back weren’t any construction crew. They were a group of mountain opening workers, all crude in nature, who would treat anyone who paid them like bosses, and when it came to mountain blasting for stones, they would resort to any means necessary.

What infuriated Zhu Shijun even more was that these people complained about the numerous trees on the hillside, insisting on clearing all of them.

"That tree over there with its trunk broken, cut it down too because it’s an eyesore," Qian Duoduo pointed at the Dragon Juniper lying across White Dragon Pond, and several mountain opening workers took out homemade explosives, arranged the detonators, and shooed away both the village chief and Zhu Shijun with their shouting.

The suspension bridge swayed with a pendulum-like regularity, waves on White Dragon Pond stacked layer upon layer, pushed in the direction from Black Mountain towards Bailong Mountain.

The trees on the hillside were blown away, their branches scattering, and the rising smoke clouded the eyes and hearts of those blinded by greed. The bare brick-red soil under the morning light looked as if stained with blood.

The White Dragon Pond, shaped like a reclining dragon, quietly transformed its shape amidst the haze of explosives, slowly changing from the pose of a lying dragon to a dragon soaring towards the sky.

Little Hai and the others were walking on the repaired iron chain bridge when Xiao Xian suddenly felt a slight shake under his feet. Two little boys ahead were running and playing, crossing the bridge, their stomping footsteps making the bridge shake even more violently.

Xiao Xian put a hand to his ear, feeling like a mosquito was buzzing inside, a persistent humming noise. Listening closely, it seemed wrong, as if there were bursts of thunder from the other side of the mountain. Upon closer listening, the sound had disappeared, "Xiao Xian, hurry up." Little Hai was standing at the other end of the suspension bridge, his voice carrying far.

After that day, the villagers began to construct a dam. Because they had to keep it a secret from the Miao people, only a few in the village knew about it.

The village chief was not overly anxious at the beginning. Fall passed and winter arrived, but even after several months of building the dam, there was no reaction from White Dragon Pond or the Miao Village on the opposite side. The Red Locust Great Wizard was busy cultivating the Golden Cicada Poisonous Insect, and none of the other Miao people thought to go over the mountain to check on the small actions of the Ge Village people.

In order to save on cement and labor, the Qian family father and son, after hiring the mountain opening workers to level the forest, constructed a water channel at the waist of the mountain, forcefully diverting the water from White Dragon Pond upwards. It was precisely at the spot where Mr. Zhu exercises that they dug a reservoir more than ten meters deep and over four meters wide.

Inside the pool, they haphazardly used about a dozen bags of cement, pasting it together like porridge, to prevent the mountain soil from collapsing.

Zhu Shijun warned Secretary Qian and others several times, they should not dig pools on the steep slopes, as there is little rain in the Southwest during autumn and winter, but once spring comes, after the first spring rain, it will rain continuously for several months, and such a pool, without the surrounding trees, will collapse sooner or later.

The Qian family father and son simply said Zhu Shijun was jealous of the money they had gotten and spread the word in the village, Zhu was so infuriated that he threw his hands up and stopped inquiring.

The matter of the dam does have one advantage, with the dam, the village can ensure sufficient irrigation water for the rice fields during the seasons of scarce rainfall.

One evening after the autumn harvest, the village chief announced through the loudspeaker at the village broadcasting station that at six thirty p.m., a village meeting would be held, and all villagers including the toothless eighty-year-old elder and the babies in swaddles were to gather under the big locust tree at the village entrance.

Mr. Zhu and Xiao Xian had also lived in the village for over a year. Apart from not having received any grain subsidy, they were already familiar with everyone in the village, practically becoming a part of Ge Village.

After dinner, Xiao Xian carried a bamboo chair and followed the crowd towards the village entrance.

The village chief’s wife had already set an old-fashioned desk under the big locust tree in the village, not sure if it was Little Hai’s desk for writing, with two porcelain teacups placed on top.

The village chief had a pack of his signature Yunnan Hongta cigarettes set aside. Xiao Xian had seen the village chief secretly stuffing cheaper cigarettes into it, no wonder that pack of cigarettes had lasted from the beginning to the end of the year.

All the villagers of Ge Village sat down under the big locust tree at the village entrance, totaling three hundred and seventy-one people. Some families had only one person staying behind, while the family with the most members had five.

Secretary Qian, before speaking, spit on the ground, then pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his shirt pocket: "Fellow villagers, tonight under the bright moonlight, looking at everyone’s eager faces..."