"Brother Zhuang, my sister-in-law is working over there. I'll bring a watermelon for them to eat."
Er Mao didn't look up. He skillfully picked a watermelon, held it in his arms, and tightly gripped the bag containing the hedgehog.
"Work? What kind of work? Aren't you a scientific expedition team? Why are you doing work?"
Zhuang Rui was somewhat confused. Shouldn't men be hired to do the work? Judging from Er Mao's words, it seemed that women were the ones doing the work.
"They paid fifty yuan a day to help them dig the pit. I did it for a day, but the second day they didn't need the men to do it anymore; it was all the old women from the village who were there."
Er Mao seemed somewhat dissatisfied. For them, as children, they wouldn't see fifty yuan all year round. He considered himself stronger than those old women.
Chapter 239 Trouble Comes from the Mouth
As the saying goes, "Looking at a mountain makes a horse run itself to death." This saying is absolutely true. Although the distance didn't seem very far, Zhuang Rui and Er Mao walked for almost an hour before finally reaching the mountain ridge, which was entirely made of yellow earth. If Zhuang Rui hadn't secretly channeled spiritual energy into his legs, he probably wouldn't have been able to walk any further.
Looking at Er Mao, who was full of energy and no different from before, Zhuang Rui couldn't help but sigh inwardly. He was a grown man, yet he was not as stamina-suppressive as this teenager.
Standing on the ridge, Zhuang Rui realized that this ridge, which was more than ten meters above the ground, did not seem to be an extension of the mountain range, but rather looked more like a mound of rammed earth.
Rammed earth is a term used in archaeology, which Zhuang Rui often encounters in related books.
In ancient times, there were no building materials such as cement or lime, so city walls and foundations were often made of rammed earth.
Rammed earth is compacted layer by layer using logs, resulting in a dense structure that is generally harder than raw soil. Its color is not as uniform as raw soil, and it contains ancient artifacts. Its most distinctive feature is its layered structure, much like paper. Rammed earth pits are visible on the surface, often with fine sand particles on top.
The rammed earth layer is essentially the same as the modern foundation. In ancient times, palaces and other buildings were often constructed on the rammed earth layer. Around the palaces and the rammed earth layer, there were often the tombs of emperors. In the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, there are still nine-tiered rammed earth buildings that are more than 30 meters high.
Zhuang Rui once read a report that on a unique and desolate grassland at the foot of Helan Mountain, there was the mausoleum of the Western Xia emperors and the burial tombs of princes and nobles. Among the vast and magnificent mausoleum ruins, the tallest and most eye-catching building was a 23-meter-high rammed earth mound, shaped like a steamed bun.
Compared to that, the rammed earth layer beneath Zhuang Rui's feet was not as high, but its area was much larger. Historical records say that soldiers wearing heavy armor rode their horses across the rammed earth layer to make it thicker and denser. Perhaps more than a thousand years ago, such a grand scene once existed here.
"Brother Zhuang, look, all the people from our village are over there..."
Zhuang Rui looked in the direction Er Mao was pointing and saw a simple shed about a hundred meters away from them. Next to the shed was a large pit, which shouldn't be very deep. Standing on the rammed earth mound, Zhuang Rui could see more than ten people squatting in the pit, busy at work. Because of the distance, Zhuang Rui couldn't see exactly what they were doing.
About ten meters away from those people, there were four fully armed armed police officers. They also saw Zhuang Rui and Er Mao and were looking over at them warily.
"Aren't those people just trying to take the treasures out of the ground? People from our village have tried to dig them up before, but they were arrested by the government. These people aren't afraid; they even have soldiers standing guard for them."
Er Mao was somewhat indignant. In his view, things in the land naturally belong to whoever digs them up. Why should others be able to dig them up, but they couldn't?
"Are there tomb raiders in your village too?"
Zhuang Rui was unaware of this matter and asked with some curiosity.
Upon hearing Zhuang Rui's words, Er Mao angrily retorted, "That's not grave robbing! It's just our own farmland. We dug things up while digging, how is that grave robbing? The government is being unreasonable; they even sent people to confiscate everything..."
"Hehe, Er Mao, there are regulations. Excavated cultural relics belong to the state and cannot be privately kept. Although the farmland you cultivate belongs to you, it doesn't mean that the things underground belong to you..."
As Zhuang Rui walked toward the expedition team, he casually explained to Er Mao.
"Then they can just dig openly, right? Who knows if they'll dig it up and hide it themselves?"
Zhuang Rui didn't realize that Er Mao was actually a young angry man.
Er Mao glanced around and whispered to Zhuang Rui, "Brother Zhuang, let me tell you, one of the people caught stealing oil in the county town this time is from our village. He's also a relative of ours. Yesterday, his wife even went to Brother Changfa to plead for him."
Zhuang Rui now understood that someone in Er Mao's family had been arrested. He stopped explaining and headed straight for the group of people.
"Stop right there, what are you doing?"
The two men were only twenty or thirty meters away from the dug pit when they were stopped by an armed policeman. This combination of two men and a dog was a bit of a mystery to them. Er Mao was naturally a villager, someone they had met before, but judging from Zhuang Rui's clothes, he definitely wasn't. Moreover, even these soldiers were intimidated by that big dog.
“My sister-in-law is working over there, and I came to deliver a watermelon. This is our honored guest, not someone who is stealing. Why won’t you let us pass?”
Er Mao shouted at the top of his lungs. He wasn't afraid of these soldiers. He had a gun too, and he even had an old cannon at home for hunting wild boars.
The armed police officers exchanged glances and nodded, indicating that they could go over. When they were assigned to this post, they were instructed not to have any conflicts with the locals unless they were disrupting the archaeological excavation site. Although Zhuang Rui was not a local, he did not look like someone who was there to rob.
Upon closer inspection, Zhuang Rui realized that the pit wasn't shallow at all. It had been dug into a stepped shape, descending layer by layer, and was very flat, so it didn't look deep. In fact, its diameter and depth should be three or four meters.
The pit was about forty square meters in area. More than a dozen middle-aged women were there, some using small shovels the size of their palms to dig, and others even using brushes to slowly brush away the soil. Zhuang Rui was dumbfounded. The tools they were using looked like children's toys. How had they dug such a big pit?
Er Mao seemed to sense Zhuang Rui's confusion and said from the side, "Brother Zhuang, we men dug these pits. After we finished, they chased us away as if we were trying to steal something. They just openly took what they dug out. Why should they do that..."
Er Mao still harbored deep resentment over that fifty yuan a day, and kept thinking about it.
Zhuang Rui was too lazy to explain to Er Mao, who was only a teenager, and casually said, "What they did was official theft, what you did was private theft, they're not the same."
Before Zhuang Rui could finish speaking, a clear voice rang out from beside him: "How can you talk like that? We were commissioned by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage to conduct a rescue excavation. How did we become government thieves? Explain yourself, or I'll never forgive you..."
Zhuang Rui heard a crisp Beijing accent and inwardly groaned. What he had meant as a joke had been overheard. This was truly a case of loose tongues causing trouble.
Judging from the voice, she seemed to be a young girl. However, the girl was wearing a straw hat and was facing away from the sun. Zhuang Rui didn't care about her appearance at first, and thinking about what he had just said, he realized that it was indeed inappropriate. So he decided to go down and explain to the girl.
"Don't come down! This is an archaeological excavation site. Not just anyone can come in."
The girl raised her hand, leaving Zhuang Rui in an awkward position, unsure whether to go up or down.
"Ma'am, our Brother Zhuang didn't say anything."
Er Mao couldn't stand it anymore and spoke up to explain for Zhuang Rui.
"Who's the eldest sister?! Pshaw, pshaw, I'm an invincible young beauty."
The girl was upset by the word "big sister," so she climbed out of the pit and took off her straw hat.
"Big sister, what do I mean?"
Er Mao only understood the word "呸" (pǐ), but he didn't understand the meaning of the following words.
"I told you not to call me 'big sister' anymore, and whatever you mean is exactly what I mean."
The girl stomped her feet in anger, but she couldn't do anything about Er Mao. She turned her anger on Zhuang Rui and said, "You just called us government thieves, and we haven't settled the score with you yet."
It wasn't until the girl turned to him that Zhuang Rui could see her face clearly. He couldn't help but admire her in his heart. She was indeed an invincible beauty. She had big eyes, long eyelashes, and a slightly upturned nose. Her pouting lips, which were a little angry, added to her cuteness. Her feigned anger was actually quite pleasing to Zhuang Rui's eye. However, this was just pure appreciation, because the girl seemed a bit young, probably only eighteen or nineteen years old.
"What are you looking at, Brother Cuo, Brother Yingning? Someone's here to cause trouble!"
The girl glared fiercely at Zhuang Rui, and the words she uttered almost made him trip over his own feet.
"Disrupt the event?"
Zhuang Rui didn't have that intention; he just wanted to come and see for himself.
"I told you not to call me Cuowei, my name is Fan Cuo!"
As the voices spoke, a tall boy walked up from below.
"Hehe, Fan Cuo's full name is Fan Le Cuo, so it's not wrong to call you Brother Cuo Cuo."
The girl had completely forgotten about Zhuang Rui at this point, and started joking with the boy with a smile.
"Swing, you're bullying people again. If your grandpa finds out, you'll definitely get a scolding."
The girl called out two names just now, and the one speaking now must be Ying Ning. These two names are really unique, Zhuang Rui thought to himself.
There are indeed people with the surname Ying, and they are quite famous. There was a former Minister of Culture with the surname Ying, and two of his younger relatives are doing very well in the entertainment industry. Zhuang Rui often sees news about them.
"I didn't bully anyone, Brother Yingning. This person said we were government thieves..."
The girl named Qiuqian only then remembered why she had called out to the two of them, and turned her anger towards Zhuang Rui.
"Sir, you know the terms 'official thief,' so you must be quite knowledgeable about archaeology, right? Isn't it a bit inappropriate for you to speak like this?"
The boy named Ying Ning looked to be about twenty-two or twenty-three years old, like a student, but he spoke with a rather mature and somewhat intimidating manner.
Chapter 240 Boss Yu
The village where the third brother, Liu Changfa, lives is called Liu Family Village. It is said that people have lived here since the Tang Dynasty. Although thousands of years have passed, most of the people in the village are still surnamed Liu, with only two having different surnames.
One of the families, surnamed Zhang, is said by the older generation to have been a soldier under Li Zicheng during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. After his defeat, he came to the village in hiding. Zhang is the second largest surname in the village, accounting for about one-fifth of the families.
There is another family with the surname Yu. There is only one family with this surname in the village. They are also from outside the village. The older people still remember that in the 1960s, a young couple fled famine and came to Liujiazhuang.
In that fervent era, Liujiazhuang, due to its remote location, was not greatly affected. The couple settled there. Since both were educated, they taught the village children to read and write in their spare time. The villagers were very honest and respected educated people. Over time, they came to regard this family as one of their own.
The couple seemed to have resigned themselves to their fate. They had two sons here. Except for the 1980s when the husband took the eldest son out to find relatives, the husband stayed in the village to teach until the 1990s. The couple were the first teachers of the third son, Liu Changfa.
However, after the couple retired as private school teachers, they suddenly fell ill in the mid-1990s and both passed away. This saddened the villagers, who rallied to give them a grand funeral.
Their two sons, the elder named Yu Ku and the younger named Yu Hao, married girls from the village back in the 1980s, making them sons-in-law of Liu Family Village. Thanks to their parents' connections, no one in Liu Family Village treated them as outsiders, and they were even related to several other families.
The eldest son of the Yu family went to work outside for seven or eight years after getting married. I heard that he didn't earn much money. After returning, he stayed at home and honestly farmed. He was a good person. It's just a pity that he later had a mentally challenged son who is now over eight or nine years old and can only smile foolishly when he sees people.
The eldest son, Yu Ku, was calm and composed, and usually behaved very honestly. He didn't earn any money working, so after returning home, he would work diligently to support his family. However, every now and then, he would go out for a trip, which was not short, sometimes lasting three to five months. He would tell the villagers that he had found his parents' relatives in Henan and was going to visit them.
Although the Yu family wasn't exactly living a good life, they had enough to eat. The second son, however, was rather frivolous. Although he was also married, he was always thinking about getting something for nothing and frequently went to the county town, where he made a bunch of shady friends.
The case of the stolen cooking oil at the county's grain and oil station involved Yu Lao Er, who is currently being held in the county's detention center. Yu Lao Er's wife, who has some relatives with Er Mao's family, contacted Liu Changfa last night, thinking that Liu Changfa, who works in the county, could help. However, it turns out that Lao Er is just a low-level civil servant and has no right to get involved in this matter.
"Brother, you have to think of something to save our second son! If he gets convicted, how are we going to survive..."
Unlike Liu Changfa's joyous celebration, Yu Ku's house was filled with mournful cries, and Yu Lao Er's wife was even singing a drawn-out lament.
“Sister-in-law, you go back first. I’ll think of something else. Crying won’t help. Honey, you go home with your sister-in-law. Take our son with you too. He can stay there tonight and not come back.”
With a smile on his face, Yu Laoda saw off Yu Laoer's wife, who was crying her eyes out.
"So who's going to cook for you today?"
My wife asked me this before she left the house.
"If you're not going to starve, then don't ask."
A cold glint flashed in Yu Laoda's eyes, making his wife's heart tremble. She quickly pulled her mentally challenged son and walked out with her head down, accidentally tripping and falling as she crossed the threshold.
Others may not know, but she knows better than anyone that her husband, who seems like an honest man, is actually ruthless. The reason her son is mentally challenged is because she was beaten so badly by Boss Yu when she was pregnant that she almost miscarried. However, after her son was born, he also became mentally challenged.
Yu Laoda's wife had considered divorce, but Yu Laoda threatened to kill her entire family if she dared to even think about it. This terrified her, and she never dared to mention it again, as long as she didn't provoke him. Yu Laoda usually treated her and her daughter fairly well, occasionally giving her a few hundred yuan from who-knows-where to spend.
"Yu brothers, the second brother is already in jail, aren't you going to do something instead of buying meat to eat?"
After seeing his mentally challenged son and daughter-in-law off, Old Yu wandered to the village store, took out fifty yuan, and bought a few cooked dishes.
"Brother Liu, I'm so worried about my second son's situation, but our relatives from Henan are coming. We can't just not entertain them, otherwise they'll say that Liu Family Village has no manners, won't they? Don't you think that makes sense?"
Old Yu had a bitter smile on his face, which made people feel a little sorry for him.
"Yes, that makes sense. Don't be too hasty. The second son brought this upon himself. Here, take this."