Chapter 40 Chapter Thirty-Six

Moses led the Israelites forward from the Red Sea to the wilderness of Shur. They walked through the wilderness for three days, but found no water.When they arrived at Marah, they could not drink the water there, because the water was bitter, so the name of the land was Marah.Then the people murmured against Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?" Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. The grasshopper flew for three full days from the Harrow Mountain Range. Three days later, the villagers of the three surnames all collapsed in the rapeseed fields they guarded.

Dead grasshoppers covered the field like yellow leaves in late autumn.A sour stench began to permeate the mountains. All the crop fields are bare.There is no inch of corn leaves, and even the young corn stalks are very few.All that remained in the fields were maize stalks that died before the grasshoppers came.There was not even a single bean stalk in the bean field, but the grasshoppers had eaten them all.The willows, poplars, tung trees, toon trees, and saponins in the village have all lost a leaf, but the branches are still light green in midair.The pagoda trees around the village look like black bean fields harvested after autumn.The beans are gone, the leaves are gone, and only the stalks are withered in the field.The century-old green of the cypress and pine trees on the grave finally lost its color in this autumn.

A world bald and brown. Sanxing Village was dead for several days after the swarm of grasshoppers flew over. The tired villagers returned home and fell asleep on the bed.It seemed that after waking up, they looked at the suddenly bare fields, their hearts pounded, and they understood the seriousness and horror of the situation. The grasshopper flew away, but the disaster remained.What will you eat next year if you don't harvest grains? Will people starve to death? The faces of the villagers who came out of their homes were all pale. The village was dead quiet for half a month. Half a month later, a cloud slid over the mountain ridge and passed.

After the rain, the women frantically went to the field to grab wild vegetables.Sima Lanniang dug a basket the first day and dried it in the courtyard. When she went out to dig the next day, she was five miles outside the village and there were not a few green wild vegetables. The vegetables were poached by the villagers before they grew.She collected a basket of dead grasshoppers and walked back, and when she got home, she dumped the dead grasshoppers and wild vegetables together to dry. Sima smiled and said, "Can I eat it?" She said: "These are all 'green shoulder poles'. Green shoulder pole grasshoppers only eat bean leaves, and there is a piece of meat on their stomachs, which can be eaten as food next year after drying."

Sima Xiaoxiao was slightly startled in the courtyard. Startled, Sima smiled faintly, went to the old soap tree and rang the bell a few times, calling out to the sky above the village: "Listen to the villagers of the three surnames—there will be no crops. Next spring will be a famine year. From today onwards, the village will no longer work and farm. Every family will go to the hillside to pick up grasshoppers that can be eaten as food—" He called on that stone three times, and picking up grasshoppers started like grabbing wild vegetables.In the next few days, men and women, adults and children all carried baskets and bags, first went to the field of rapeseed to pick up, green poles, yellow scorpions, kicked down the mountain, flew an arrow, no matter what kind of grasshopper, as long as it is in the rainy day Afterwards, there is no retting, so they are picked up like ears of wheat and dried on the mats, bed sheets and the clean and clean gate.This season looks like a bumper harvest in autumn. Even the pan in the center of the village and the stones where people sit in front of the door are covered with dead grasshoppers.The sun was golden and scorching hot, and the grasshoppers were spread out in the sun, and they were scorched all day long, so that the village had a strong withered yellow scorched smell day and night, like burning live grasshoppers by the fire. If you peel off its belly, you can take out a drop of green meat that has shrunk into half a bean.

One day, six brothers from the Sima family went to pick up grasshoppers on the mountain ridge, and saw the seven daughters of Lan Baisui's family blooming like seven flowers beside a locust forest.At that time, Lan Jiushi, the eldest of the Lan family, was already sixteen years old. He led his six younger sisters to pick up grasshoppers as if they were harvesting grasshoppers. They could even pick out grasshoppers from the cracks in the ground, so the six Sima brothers hid in another mountain ridge. gone. But forty, the sixth daughter of the Lan family, jumped and ran over from the woodland.She called Brother Sima Lan, and no matter how unhappy and suspicious the other five brothers of Sima's family looked, she pulled Sima Lan to the foot of a cliff.

"My father said that it was your father who let the grasshoppers eat up all the sorghum in the village." Sima Lan looked at Lan Shishi's face, and he found that her eyes were black and bright, like wild grapes that had grown by the ditch in previous years. "What else did your father say?" "If rapeseed can't cure the diseases of the villagers, he will let your father hang himself if he doesn't live to forty without throat problems." Sima Lan stood still in front of five-year-old Lan Shishi.He saw a ladybug crawling on her hair, it almost reached her neck and he didn't try to catch it for her.He waited for her to scream suddenly, and when she turned pale with fright, he caught the ladybug for her, but the ladybug flew away suddenly on the end of her braid.He turned his eyes away from the flying ladybug, jumped onto the dirt cliff, and called to the three dwarf brothers and two younger brothers, telling them to go pick up the grasshoppers first, and he would follow in a while.Then, without answering Sima Sen's question of what he was doing there, he dragged Shi Shi to the nearest rapeseed field.

This is the rapeseed field guarded by Du Yan's family. It was also ruined by grasshoppers, but after a rain wash, it became prosperous again.The disabled leaves have recovered, and the rapeseed flowers are as bright as a fake.Standing in this field and looking around, the devastated fields seemed to have been washed by a tornado, and red dry soil was everywhere.There is a layer of dust and smoke, as long as the sun shines, it will cover every field in the mountains, thinking that the world is going to be famine. But in that field, Leng Dinger prospered one piece after another of rapeseed, which made some vitality appear in the mountains.Butterflies and insects came from nowhere, flying over the rape blossoms like folk music, making a subtle sound like flowing water.The dead grasshopper corpses around the vegetable field were rotten and then completely scorched, scattered here and there like crushed wheat straw, leaving behind a residual smell, but the fragrance of rapeseed flowers became more intense and sticky. This kind of floral fragrance has already pulled your nose and the corner of your clothes repeatedly.Sima Lan led Lan Shishi to the rapeseed field, and said, look, wouldn't the rapeseed grow so well if it wasn't my father?And what else did your father say?Lan Shishi turned his head to look at the five sisters and one sister on the hillside, but when he turned around, he was still silent.

Sima Lan pulled Lan Shisi into the bed of rapeseed flowers, the flower branches swept over them, butterflies and flying insects flew past their hair.The dead grasshoppers under my feet creaked and cracked when stepped on, as if walking on the leaves of the winter forest.Sima Lan was half a head taller than Lan Shishi. In the rapeseed field, he saw her head buried under the flower tree swaying like a black crow falling down.When he reached the deepest part of the rapeseed field, he let go of her little hand. "Tell me forty," he said, "what else did your father say?" "My father said," Forty paused for a while, "that he will be the head of the village as soon as your father dies. He said that it's our turn to be the head of the village, surnamed Lan."

Sima Lan's lips were tightly closed.He was suddenly a little nervous, as if a fight was about to start between his father and Lan Baisui.The sun is shining brightly in the rapeseed field.The small wind blowing along the hillside passes coolly under the rapeseed trees.A hare ran across the rapeseed field.Sima Lan was startled for a moment, and the imagined fight was stopped.He stretched his eyes over her shoulder, staring at the hare and looking at his third brother and second brother on the other side of the hill. She said, "Brother Lan, what are you looking at?" He said, "I don't care about it. I think I want to be the village head when I grow up."

She looked at him worriedly: "Will you let me work in the fields as the village head?" He asked, "Do you know how to cook?" She said, "Yes." "You know how to sew?" "meeting." "I married you, will you warm my bed in winter?" "warm." He added: "My favorite is radish stew." She said, "I'll cook a pot of radish stew for you right now." So, she squatted down, rolled up her sleeves on her arms, found a stick and a tile among the rapeseed trees, and dug a small hole to make a pot and stove on the ridge of the vegetable bed, and put the tiles on it. On the pit, I picked a few pieces of rape leaves and threw them into the tile nest, saying it was water, stuffed a few sticks of firewood into the pit, made a gesture of igniting the fire, and said it was lit, lying on the mouth of the pit and blowing a few times to say fire When it is booming, make an action of uncovering the pot, saying that the water is boiling, grab a few dead grasshoppers and throw them into the tiles, saying that this is meat, and throwing in a few more to say that you eat meat and I will cook more for you.Finally, I cut off the rapeseed branches one by one and piled them on the grasshopper, saying that the radish had also been put in, and it was time to cover the pot and turn on the fire. On the ground, the right hand stretched and retracted to pump the bellows, and the left hand held a small stick and kept poking the hay in the stove until there was sweat hanging on the forehead. Then he lifted the pot cover and sucked his nose. Sima Lan said it was delicious, you can eat it. Sima Lan sat beside her with her chin raised, watching from the side without moving. She said, "Eat it, stewed pork with radish." He said, "That's a dead grasshopper. Why do you tell me to eat it?" She said: "You pretend to eat it, and you say it's really delicious after eating it?" He said: "The daughter-in-law always puts the rice in a bowl and serves it to the man." She found another small tile, put the vegetable branches, leaves and grasshoppers from the big tile on the small tile, and brought it to him and said, eat it, stewed pork with radish, you have worked all day.He took the tile and acted like he was gobbling it. After three or five mouthfuls, he poured the contents of the small tile under a rapeseed, handed the empty bowl to Lan Shishi, and said it was delicious, give me another bowl.She put the small tiles on the field border like a bowl, took the big tiles like a pot, poured everything on the small tiles, and then picked up the small tiles and handed them to Sima Lan, saying that you ate them all Well, while the kids aren't home. "Are we having a baby?" he asked. She said, "Just pretend." He took the small tile and ate a few more mouthfuls, carefully placed the small tile on a flat ground, and said to keep it, we have to save half a bowl for our children.Lan Shishi was a little moved, and sat down in front of him. "I am full?" He patted his stomach and said: "full." She asked, "What should I do?" He said, "It's getting dark, it's time to sleep." He asked again, "Is the bed warm?" He wiped the sweat off his face and said, "It's warm, it's a cold day." She went to a large open space behind him, made a movement of making a bed and pulling the quilt, fell down on the ground, and closed her eyes with her arms on her pillow. He said, "Are you going to sleep without taking off your clothes?" She opened her eyes, sat up, unbuttoned them, took off her plaid shirt and her black trousers with red stripes, spread the clothes under the rapeseed tree, curled up and closed her eyes closed.Sweat flowed from her face into her neck, she said that the quilt was really cool, and she picked a few rapeseed leaves and put them over her eyes to block the sun, saying you should go to sleep too, as it would be wasteful to sit there and light the lamp.He didn't say anything, and he looked like he really fell asleep. Sima Lan sat on the vegetable border, her heart pounding for no reason.He has six brothers, no sister, no sister, never seen a girl's naked body be so bright, so tender, red and white, like a small cloud piled up in the sunset sky.Sitting there staring at her, he saw patches of sunlight exposed from between the rapeseed trees, floating round and round on her body, like silver elm coins on an elm tree in early spring.He wanted to go over and touch the silver coin on her body, thinking maybe the sunlight would really come off her body like a coin.But when he stretched out his hand to her side, he remembered that it was not a silver elm coin, but a bright ball of sunlight, so he withdrew his hand from her shiny side.She turned her back to him, and the spine on her back was buried under her white skin. Every time she took a breath, the spine would swim up and down like a fish.He also saw her ribs, picking up her flesh under his arm like chopsticks.He thought of the tents he had seen, and he thought her spine and ribs were the frames of that tent, and the leather was just the tents on the frames.He wanted to see if her front was the same as her back.As soon as he thought this way, she turned over to face him. She said: "The bed is warm, I'm sweating, it's time for you to go to bed." He saw at a glance that her front body and back were not the same, and he realized with a cold shock that men and women were different except for their hair and clothes, and more importantly, their legs were different. His heart jumped up violently, and sweat fell from his head to his shoulders and the ground. She said: "Brother Sima Lang, my bed is warm, why don't you go to bed yet?" He lay down a foot away from her. She sat up suddenly and looked at him angrily. "I'm your daughter-in-law, you don't take off your clothes." He hesitated to unbutton himself. She said, "Take off your clothes and spread it on the floor as a bed." He just took it off.Stripped.Stripped he thought she would find something like him, but she looked at his front, at his back, at his skinny ass when he made the bed, and at him dangling between his legs The chick and the lantern who went there looked like they hadn’t seen anything, and asked plainly: "What should I do?" "It's time to close your eyes and fall asleep." She closed her eyes again. He closed it too.But he closed it for a while, but he couldn't help opening it again, and his eyes fell on her white cloud-like body, on the rapeseed tree overflowing with fresh fragrance.He heard the milky white sound of the sunlight falling on the rapeseed flowers, like catkins flying, and saw the needle-like white hairs falling from the wings of butterflies, flying around in the pillars of sunlight passing through the trees. It went, flashed, and then fell on her white silk-like body and disappeared.He also smelled a milky milky smell emanating from her body, thinly and faintly mixed with the strong fragrance of rapeseed flowers, and slid past under his nose.He sucked it hard, and when he caught the smell again, he inhaled it hard into his stomach like adults smoking. She opened her eyes, "You have to pretend to be asleep." "I fell asleep and woke up," he said. She smiled at him, "Then I'm awake too." They all looked at each other and stopped talking.His body is dark and strong, with a thin layer of blue in the sunlight, like a pile of smooth and smooth willow sticks of uneven thickness piled there.When she looked at him, he felt a sense of inferiority, and he squeezed his legs and arms tightly, clamping his legs as if closing a door.She stared at the little thing between his legs for a long time, and seemed to understand when she had seen enough, and touched it carefully with her hand, and he quickly covered it with both hands, saying that she could only look at it, but not touch it. He retracted his hand and smiled, saying that it looks like dried green peppers. The green peppers hanging in front of our house are the same as yours when they are not dried.Sima Lan's face turned red, she let go of her hand and took a look for herself, and it was indeed the same as a freshly sun-dried green pepper, so she looked at Lan Shishi's body and asked, what do you look like?She sat up and faced him, saying that I don't have a chick, I'm a girl and you are a boy.As if to make him understand, she let him take a closer look between her legs before lying on her clothes again. He said, "Your place looks like a walnut leaf." She said, "It's not like that." "Kind of like," he said. "The leaves are all blue," she said. "It's all smooth and round like that, with a sharp corner," he said. She hooked her head and looked to confirm his words.After confirming, he moved the clothes to him and put his little hands on his shoulders.He took her hand off, and she said you forgot that I am your daughter-in-law?He didn't say anything else, and let her put her hand on his shoulder.The sun has turned from the other side of the village to this side, and the sunlight is shining on their naked bodies.It seemed that they really fell asleep, and they all closed their eyes again, and they were naked next to each other, with their arms They wrestled with each other, chattering one sentence at a time. She said, "Brother Lan, are you really going to marry me as your wife?" He said: "As long as I become the village chief, I can marry whoever I want." She said, "How many do you marry?" He said, "Two." She asked, "Who is that?" He said, "I don't know." He also said: "No matter who it is, you control her. You are the boss and she is the second." She opened her eyes with great satisfaction, and Qingshui jingled a smile. He said, "You still have to cook for me and do my laundry." She said: "There is also water for washing feet." He said, "Who's emptying the urinal?" She said, "I'll do it. But you have to grow the land and take care of the two daughter-in-laws to eat." He said: "I will let you eat well, wear well, and live to the age of forty, and live to the age of seventy or eighty." She said: "The grown-ups say that next year will be a famine year where people will starve to death." He said: "With me, how can I starve you to death." She asked, "Brother Lan, what's the taste of radish stewed with white meat?" He paused for a while and said, "I haven't eaten." She said, "Then how do you know it's delicious?" He said: "My uncle ate it in the county, and he said that after eating it, it would last for several days." She said, "Let's go have a meal sometime." He said: "When I get married, I will sell a piece of skin from my leg, and I will take you to the cafeteria to have a good meal of stewed pork with radish." She licked her lips and smiled at him for a while, like rapeseed flowers falling on her face. But at this moment, her elder sister, Lan Jiushi, called out on the hillside, Forty—forty—where are you? ──Called with anxiety, as if she was really lost.When they heard the call, they all sat up from the ground in shock.When she was about to open her mouth to agree, he hurriedly covered her mouth with his hands.Amidst the screams of rushing water, after they hurriedly put on their clothes, they all woke up from the game, obeyed her eldest sister's call, kicked over their pots and bowls and chopsticks, and headed out of the rapeseed field. run over. He watched her run out of the rapeseed field, the regret of being woken up from a dream hung on her face, and when she was about to turn around to look for her brother, she suddenly turned around again, looked at him and said: "You really want to marry me. I'm naked, and you've touched me and looked at me." He nodded heavily at her like a mountain top. She added: "I can't starve to death in a famine year, but let me eat a meal of radish stewed with white meat." He not only nodded to her again, but also bit his lips.Seeing her floating towards her sisters on the hillside like a butterfly, he began to wander out of the rapeseed field, looking for his third brother and two younger brothers.The sun is warm and pleasant, shining brightly yellow on the head, and the hair and scalp are whispering comfortably.He wiped his hands on his head, and the murmuring sound disappeared, but before he walked out of the rapeseed field, another voice sounded in front of him—— "I've seen it all, you and Lan Shishi, she will be your wife." It was his cousin Du Zhucui who was talking, she was kicking on the head of the vegetable bed, she was thin and thin like a rape leaf that was about to shrink. Sima Lan said, "Why are you here?" She said: "This is the rapeseed field that my family guards." "If you dare to tell people, I'll tear your mouth apart." Sima Lan threatened Zhu Cui, who was forty and a half years younger than her, and then ignored her, strode past her, and walked towards the other road. On the mountain ridge, bend over and climb straight.He has already seen Sen, Lin, Mu and his younger brothers Deer and Tiger, like five young goats hanging on a grassy slope that is just turning green, picking up grasshoppers.He briskly walked towards them, but Xiao Zhucui followed behind him like a shadow and said, Cousin, if you become the village chief, marry me as a daughter-in-law too. Didn’t you mean marrying two daughters-in-law...he heard that Seeing the begging taste like bitter medicine in her words, she stood down sympathetically. "You are only a little bit, don't pester me." "Didn't you say you want to marry two daughters-in-law?" "I didn't say, don't pester me." She squatted on the ground and began to cry, crying loudly and sadly, as if she had been wronged so much.Seeing her crying, his sympathy disappeared, and he simply walked quickly towards the slope, leaving behind her crying like a stream passing through the dry sand, and finally slowly died away.Not only was it gone, but she also picked up a stone from the ground and threw it at his back, saying cousin, you are not a good person, and you are not a good person at forty, you are shameless in the rapeseed field, and you want to eat stewed radishes Pork. He faded away with some worry. Zhu Cuihuan: "If you marry me, I won't tell people that you are shameless." Then he walked a few steps in front of him and said, "After you marry me, I will ask my mother to make you a bowl of real radish stewed pork." .”