"Oh, there is such a thing?"
Sun Zongyuan had never heard of such a thing before. He thought carefully and wondered if there was a cave in that place, and an underground river in the cave, with the sound of flowing water spreading out. That place might be very close to the cave, so there would be the saying that the mountain can sing as Uncle Xu Shitian said.
In a forest, everyone sat on the rocks below. Although it was October, there were high mountains all around and the valley in the middle was still covered with green trees. Everyone had walked on the mountain road for a whole morning and was tired and sweating.
After resting for more than half an hour, the people arranged by Xu Qingjun came with food on their shoulders.
The wet pancakes were wrapped in white cloth and then put in a plastic bag, along with a plastic bag of boiled salted duck eggs, a few heads of garlic, and a dozen bottles of mineral water.
At the other end of the shoulder pole was a large bag of buns.
Everyone sat on the ground and after a simple meal, Sun Zongyuan asked Zhu Yukun to note down the location of the yellow broom tree and draw a schematic diagram of the plank road on the sketch.
When you are almost at the end of the cliff, the relative height of the cliff is only twenty meters.
The stream at this point had become a pool of clear, irregularly shaped water, over 80 meters wide at first glance, its length obscured by a mountain ridge. Steam rose from the surface of the water upstream, and the rumbling sound of falling water could be heard from afar.
Elder Sun Jinlong introduced Sun Zongyuan:
"This is the Xianyuzi Reservoir. It was originally a very deep and long pond, 1,958 meters long. The commune provided us with 1,000 kilograms of wheat and 100 kilograms of steel drills. I led over 30 laborers from the village and built the reservoir into what it is today over the winter. The reservoir is over 640 meters long, the dam is 27 meters wide, and 8 meters high. The widest part of the reservoir is at the corner, over 200 meters wide. I remember it occupied over 110 mu of land."
The old man's expression darkened again, and he said softly:
"One person died during the reservoir attack. My cousin was killed by rocks falling from the mountain."
He pointed to a hillside and said:
"When he saw the rocks falling, he pushed the people around him into the ditch. He couldn't dodge in time and was hit in the chest by the rocks. There was no way to save him and he was dead. He's buried right there. Wait a minute, I'll go take a look."
"Let's all go together. He's a hero after all!"
There is no road, and it is blocked by yellow broom, hawthorn, Chinese elm, and mulberry trees.
Old man Sun Jinlong led everyone, avoiding clusters of trees, and arrived in front of a small tomb in more than ten minutes. Everyone found a lot of small stones around to fill the tomb, and then used shovels to dig soil and pile it around to make it look bigger.
Then the old man took out a roll of straw paper from the basket he had brought and lit it in front of the grave, muttering:
"Four, second brother, I'm here to see you. It's all my fault. I haven't seen you in two years. I miss you. I'll come back to keep you company in a few years!"
As he spoke, tears began to fall.
After watching the paper money burn, the old man knelt in front of the grave and kowtowed three times solemnly. Sun Zongyu also knelt down and kowtowed. Everyone kowtowed after seeing Sun Zongyu kowtow.
The old man stood up and said:
"Secretary Sun, you don't have to kowtow."
"Grandpa Sun, I should kowtow to you for both public and private reasons. Publicly, your brother died while working for the people to build a reservoir. Privately, his last name is Sun, too. Maybe we were a family five hundred years ago!"
"Don't tell me you all have the surname Sun. Secretary Sun's grandfather is called Sun Baicheng. He used to be the old Party branch secretary of Liuzhuang Village. I wonder if you know him?"
"Oh, you're his grandson. I was wondering why you looked familiar. Before liberation, when we were fighting the Japanese devils, our Honghua Township and Liuzhuang Township were both under the Sixth District of the Anyang County Committee. At that time, we were both underground Party members. We were both in the district squadron, often fighting together to support the main force against the Japanese and the Kuomintang. He even came to our mountain to avoid the Kuomintang's search."
"Hey! Hey! We are in the same family tree. We have discussed generations before. He should call me grandpa!"
"Really? Then I should call you great-grandfather, or I should call you great-grandfather!"
"Great! Great! Our Sun family is honored to have a cadre like you!"
"I just had an idea. We're going to develop tourism here in the future. More and more people will come here to enjoy the mountains and rivers. Since my great-grandfather sacrificed his life for the public, how about moving him to the town's Martyrs' Cemetery before next year's Qingming Festival?"
"That's great. His father is also buried in the Martyrs' Cemetery in our town!"
The old man spoke with tears in his eyes.
(Among my ancestors, one was killed by the Japanese invaders, and another by the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek's bandit army. My grandfather worked as a laborer, supporting the Battle of Menglianggu, the Huaihai Campaign, and the Crossing the Yangtze River Campaign. He served as a squad leader for his entire life and became a forest ranger in his old age. Another served as a squad leader in the Eighth Route Army. During the liberation of a city, he stormed a fortress when the reactionaries threw a grenade into it. He was the only one left in a squad of ten and was seriously injured. After recovering, he returned to his hometown for resettlement. Due to his low education and unwillingness to burden the country, he resigned and returned home to farm for the rest of his life. He was my grandmother's second brother, whom I called Second Uncle. When he was alive, he often told me stories from that time. He was a kind and amiable man, and you couldn't tell at all that he had once been a hero who wielded a steel rifle to fight the Japanese and the Kuomintang. He has been dead for nearly twenty years. My grandfather had seven brothers, but because of the war, only my grandfather survived until liberation.)
As Sun Zongyuan continued to move forward, listening to his great-grandfather's legendary stories, he seemed to see his own grandfather hiding in this mountain from the Kuomintang's search.
A mountain with stories. Not only fairies have visited here, but grandpa has also been here!
After turning the ridge, we saw a waterfall cascading down the mountain. Comrade Lao Sun said:
"This stream comes down from the mountain more than 30 meters high. There's no noticeable water from the time the wheat seedlings emerge until the wheat is ripe. It flows like this the rest of the time. During the dog days of summer, when it rains heavily, the water is massive, more than ten meters wide."
"Where does the water above come from?"
"There's a mountain above the cliff, covering a large area. Two miles above the water, there's a large pit covering 70 to 80 mu of land, but it's very deep, over 20 meters at its deepest point. Before building the Xianyuzi Reservoir, we also blocked the large pit on the mountain and built a dam. Otherwise, if it rained heavily, the Xianyuzi Reservoir wouldn't be able to hold the water, and the flood would destroy the farmland."
"But the mountain not far above the dam is no longer part of our village, nor does it belong to our Fushan Town."
Xu Qingjun added.
"Oh, can we climb this mountain?"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
