Indeed, there were scattered white clouds drifting high and far in the sky, but Cheng Luanluan did not think this was a sign of impending rain.
The village chief solemnly said, "With my many years of farming experience, it should be sunny today. It definitely won't rain."
"But the book says, the higher the clouds, the more likely it is to rain," Zhao Tiezhu said seriously. "What's written in the book can't be wrong, so then A-jie must be wrong. But A-jie has never been wrong before, so where exactly is the problem...?"
Cheng Luanluan: "..."
You foolish boy, no one is wrong, you just can't read.
Daha Village had been farmers for generations. Occasionally, a few promising individuals would go to town to do business, but there had never been a single scholar.
The reason everyone in the Cheng family village could read was because an old scholar there had opened a school, taking in many students, some of whom were naturally good seeds.
Daha Village didn't even have a school. No matter how good the seeds were, they couldn't be discovered.
If parents wanted their children to read and write, they had to send them to the school in town. It was said that a certain amount of silver was needed to apply for admission. No wonder the Cheng family exploited the original owner for money; they were raising a scholar, and that was truly no ordinary expense.
After half an hour, the group arrived at the valley between the two mountain peaks.
As soon as they stepped in, cool water vapor blew in with the wind, making everyone feel refreshed. Zhao Anjiang strode forward, and when he saw water trickling down the rock wall, drop by drop, he couldn't help but exclaim excitedly, "There really is water! There's always been water here, why didn't anyone discover it before! Heavens! Daha Village is saved!"
The village chief trembled all over. "Because there was no shortage of water before, no one bothered to come here to look for it. If it weren't for Dashan's mother, I'm afraid more than half the people in Daha Village would have died this year."
Zhao Anhe, carrying a shovel on his shoulder, stepped forward and began to dig without a word. He had only dug a small trench when a clear stream gushed out from the ground, and everyone drank joyfully. Zhao Anjiang was extremely embarrassed. "Zhao Dazaozi, at first I thought you were deliberately lying to my father. I apologize to you here."
"We're all one family. Saying such things makes me feel like an outsider," Cheng Luanluan said, not minding being misunderstood. She changed the subject. "If we divert this water down the mountain, the rice will be saved."
The village chief counted on his fingers, calculating based on the usual harvest season. It should have been the time for the rice to ripen, but due to the prolonged drought, most of the rice in the village was only just flowering. This was the time when a lot of fertilizer and water were needed, so the water needed to be diverted down the mountain as soon as possible.
But the water source was too far from the foot of the mountain. Going back and forth would take more than an hour. Even if they treated people like livestock, they couldn't irrigate all the rice fields within ten days. This was a bit difficult to solve.
The village chief took two puffs of his dry pipe and slowly said, "Dashan's mother, do you have any ideas?"
He didn't know why, but he always felt that Dashan's mother would have a good solution. This feeling came from nowhere.
Cheng Luanluan smiled and looked at the second eldest. "Ergou, tell the village chief the method you thought of yesterday, so he can give you some pointers."
Zhao Ergou immediately regained his composure: "Our Dahe Village has thousands of mu of fields; we definitely can't rely on human labor alone. I was thinking, I wonder if we could dig a ditch from the mountain down and then channel the water into the fields."
Before he could finish speaking, Zhao Anhe immediately shook his head: "Ergouzi, do you know how many li it is from the foot of the mountain to here? It's more than ten or twenty li, even longer than a flood control dike..."