Chapter 11
As the sky grew darker and the afterglow of the setting sun covered the entire village, more and more people gathered outside the shed.
Yang Ye sat in the white plastic chair. She looked up from her phone and surveyed the various devices in the room. There were many different types, all complicated to operate, but she didn't know how to use any of them. After nearly an hour, she grew tired of the games on her phone. The screen went dark again, and she suddenly felt something missing in her stomach, a sense of emptiness and discomfort. She hadn't felt it before while working or playing on her phone, but now, as soon as she stopped, her stomach started to growl, churning and stirring.
Come to think of it, it seems like I haven’t eaten much for almost ten hours.
Yang Ye stood up and stretched her back. She couldn't sit in a car for long, nor could she sit on a hard bench for long. Her back would tense up after a while, and it would take a day or two to recover.
This was a problem she had developed decades ago when she was fleeing.
Looking at Li Cheng who had called her over, Yang Ye turned her head and stretched her stiff neck a few times. She heard the sound of joints turning. She asked Li Cheng bluntly, "I came all the way here, and you don't provide food?"
Li Chenggang had just finished explaining the details of the subsequent arrangements to the students and hadn't had time to open the newly received documents on his desk. He heard Yang Ye's voice and looked up to see someone stretching out in front of a plastic chair out of boredom. Glancing at the time on the lower right corner of the computer, Li Cheng smiled innocently, "I forgot. I'll take care of it, of course I have to."
"Then what to eat?" Yang Ye asked.
Li Cheng thought for a moment and said, "There's a barbecue restaurant in the village. I went there once when I first arrived. The food was pretty good. Do you want to try it?"
"Okay," Yang Ye agreed. She was so hungry that she wasn't picky about what she ate. "A few more bottles of beer, would you like some?"
"Drink!" Xiao Xiao was actually also feeling hungry, but she didn't want to say it out loud. When she heard them start discussing dinner, her eyes blurred as she looked at her phone. When faced with Yang Ye's question, she answered decisively.
"I'll forget it." Li Cheng walked out from behind the table and picked up the coat on the back of the chair. "I won't drink anymore. I have a video conference tonight."
Yang Ye nodded, turned around and asked Zhou Yiheng, "What about you? Can you drink?"
"Can"
Yang Ye said to Li Cheng, "Then let's drink together, three of us."
"You're old, drink less of these," Li Cheng advised kindly.
"It's just two cans of beer, what's the big deal?" Yang Ye smiled. Only at times like this would she feel that she couldn't get older. In fact, it was a good thing. At least she didn't have to worry about eating too much of these things and causing any irritation or burden to her stomach.
On a summer evening, time seems deliberately stretched out. The orange-yellow sunset still lingers in the sky, casting a hazy shadow. The mountains rise and fall, their peaks bathed in the gentle, lingering afterglow, a vibrant expanse of color. The lower mountainside gradually fades into hazy shadows, a crisscross of light and dark, a distinct layering of distinct layers.
"No wonder the ancients said that dusk is the best time of the day." Looking at the changing colors in the distance, Yang Ye sighed with rare emotion.
"Why?" Xiao Xiao walked beside her, replying to the message on her phone while doing it for her.
"Because only at this time can you see the sun"
"What?" Xiao Xiao raised his head, but didn't understand what she meant.
Yang Ye glanced at her, then looked at the setting sun in front of him. "Although the sun is bright in the early morning, it is too far away from us to see clearly. At noon, it is too bright and too dazzling. Only in the evening and dusk, the sun is clear and not too hot."
Perhaps a person's life is similar to the sun, full of vigor in the morning, warm at noon, and fading at sunset.
Open your eyes and see one day, close your eyes and look forward to a new day.
Xiao Xiao squinted her eyes and looked towards the place where the sun was setting. There was only a fiery red sunset glow left. "Why can't I see it?"
"The sun has already set, what else can we see? Let's wait until tomorrow."
Xiao Xiao then reacted, "Boss, you are getting old in disguise."
“I’m not old yet”
"Not old," she blurted out.
Yang Ye was amused by this straightforward reaction. She stretched herself and sighed as she watched the sunset approaching and then going away, "But I want to grow old again."
She was fed up with this aimless and boring life.
*
After walking along several muddy paths that crossed the ridges of the fields, they arrived at the village that Li Cheng had mentioned. The village was small, perhaps even the cultivated fields outside the village looked larger than the village itself.
When they arrived, it was dinnertime in the village. Every household was busy, and wisps of smoke rose from the chimneys on the roofs. They passed a house with its door open. An elderly woman, perhaps in her sixties or seventies, squatted at the courtyard washing pool, collecting vegetables from the gentle stream while waiting for the water on the nearby coal stove to boil. Her yellow and white puppy now lay obediently behind the old woman, tongue out, watching her eagerly, occasionally getting a few leftovers from washing vegetables.
When the puppy saw strangers passing by the door, he quickly stood up and shouted at them.
The old lady looked over and happened to meet Yang Ye's eyes outside. She nodded and smiled at them politely.
"Go away, stop barking." The old lady dusted her hands, and the water particles on her hands splashed onto the puppy's face, and it ran into the house.
A childish voice came from the main room, "Grandma, is the meal ready?"
"It's burning, stop playing games, grab someone and watch the water." The old lady picked up the basket of washed vegetables. She had been squatting on the ground for too long and couldn't straighten up immediately, so she bent her back and went into the house to call for help.
Seeing this familiar scene that he had not seen for a long time, if Li Cheng had not mentioned it, he was afraid that he would never see it again in his life.
This was unlike the artificially contrived nostalgia of the city outside. Its scent emanated from the earth itself, from the moss-covered old walls. Most of the houses were adobe, built in the 1950s and 1960s. They were short, usually one or a half stories. Even the more capable villagers who had demolished their old houses and rebuilt them were usually two stories. The exteriors of most of the old houses had long since been eroded by wind and rain, stripping away their vibrant whitewash. Only black and gray remained, crumbling walls. If you touched them, you could still feel the protruding wood fragments and the caulking Yang Hui had put inside.
The scattered setting sun fell on the roof and the old locust tree in the village that had been growing for many years.
Tao is the flavor of human life, and it soothes the hearts of ordinary people the most.
When they entered the shop, no one was there yet. The boss had just moved the tables, chairs, and benches out and arranged them. He wrung out a rag and carefully wiped the tables and benches. The boss's wife squatted at the door. The faucet was oddly placed, with only a small outlet. She hunched over, bent in the corner, the back of her hand bumping against the stone next to her as she washed. She quickly washed the vegetables in the basket, propped herself up on her knees, shook off the remaining water droplets, and emptied the basket. The waste water from washing the vegetables flowed through a chiseled crack at the bottom into the stream ahead.
The barbecue restaurant isn't large, having been converted from a family home. It consists of two floors, with a raised mezzanine floor serving as the entrance, where the owner and his family eat. Despite the small size, the owner is a meticulous keeper, meticulously cleaning the cement floor. He sprinkles water on the floor before sweeping to prevent dust from rising.
Li Cheng had eaten here once when he first arrived and had met the boss before. Seeing that he was busy, he greeted him and walked to the counter as if he was familiar with him. He picked up the iron plate on the table and started to put things on it.
"Just take whatever you want to eat, don't be polite with me," he turned and said to the three people.
When Yang Ye, Xiao Xiao and Li Chengmu were treated to a meal, they naturally wouldn't be polite. They took the iron plate and stood in front of the freezer to start choosing carefully.
Zhou Yiheng, on the other hand, was a bit embarrassed. Faced with the dazzling array of items in the freezer, he couldn't make up his mind for a moment. He had just picked up something when Li Cheng had already selected everything and was ready to grill it for the boss. Glancing at the vegetables and a few skewers of meat on his plate, Li Cheng joked, "Young man, eat more so you have the strength to work. When I was your age, I could eat a whole cow when I was hungry."
He moved the plate to his left hand, opened the freezer door in front of him, took out a handful of unthawed meat skewers and put them on Zhou Yiheng's plate, saying, "Don't be polite with me, eat more."
The weight of the plate increased instantly, and Zhou Yiheng was shocked to see the pile of meat. Li Cheng took it out so quickly that he couldn't even see whether it was mutton, beef, or both.
Yang Ye walked past them with Xiao Xiao, carrying a plate. When she heard Li Chenghao's words, she stopped and looked at him with a fake smile, "You are a cow. You can eat a lamb leg and make yourself vomit. You still have the nerve to brag here?"
"That was an accident," Li Chengli immediately retorted.
"That time in Inner Mongolia, were you also in an accident?"
"The alcohol in Inner Mongolia is too strong. I was busy drinking. Besides, I wasn't the only one who vomited that time. Liu Guoxing vomited even more violently than me." Li Cheng was not convinced. He argued with her as they walked. He was determined to figure out who vomited first and who couldn't hold it in and begged for mercy first.
The two walked up to the counter and the owner took their plates and asked, "Want some chili?"
Li Cheng was still talking to Yang Ye, without even turning his head, "No, put less cumin. The smell makes me want to sneeze."
A few people found a sturdy wooden table in the yard. In this awful weather, it would be better to sit outside and sweat out a headache rather than stay in the house and sweat all over.
The proprietress saw them sit down, packed up her things, and took out a bright red plastic tablecloth from the counter drawer. She pulled it apart as she walked, blowing on it to flatten the disposable tablecloth, and then she grabbed the extra cloth and twisted it into a small knot.
The stove had just been lit, so they had to wait a little longer before the few side dishes they ordered came up first.
The village was windy at night, so Yang Ye put on a shirt over her short-sleeved shirt before going out. She rolled up her sleeves and grabbed a handful of the salted edamame closest to her, eating while occasionally responding to the conversation next to her.
We chatted about this and that and before we knew it, we were talking about this village again.
"This was not originally included in the demolition plan." Li Cheng took a sip of tea and looked around. "Originally, only the area behind the mountain was included."
Xiao Xiao peeled a soybean and asked, "Why?"
"It's because they think it's too far," Li Cheng said. After a few days here, he's truly felt the frustration of living here. "You should have seen it when you drove up. This place is too remote. The road to the village is circuitous. The entire village is hidden in the mountains, and the mountain roads are difficult to navigate. There's no transportation nearby, and the nearest bus stop takes over half an hour to walk. With such conditions, who would want to come and develop it?"
Xiao Xiao, however, has a different idea. "There's so much land in the village, and the air in the mountains is so good. It would be so comfortable to open a farm and run a special B&B."
"Who would come to open a B&B here?" Li Cheng asked in surprise. "The village is full of elderly people, and the young people have long since left. The elderly don't want to leave, and the young people don't want to stay. There's actually no point in developing here. The mayor and the higher authorities applied to build a road into the village, connecting the areas in front of and behind the mountain. This way, people from outside can come in, and it will be more convenient for villagers to go out and do things."
"Then you have a heavy burden on your shoulders." Yang Ye crossed her legs, her hands still peeling edamame. She joked, "If you don't finish sorting, the construction team won't be able to start work."
Li Cheng couldn't help but sigh when he thought about it. "I ran into the village chief on the road yesterday. He asked us when it would be finished. The villagers have been looking forward to that road for a long time, and they are anxious for the construction team to start work as soon as possible. I said quickly, but I didn't know for sure. When I saw the scan report they sent me in the first two days after I arrived, I thought there shouldn't be much down there. But look at it now, there are more and more graves, and the things that come out are more and more complicated. I don't think it will be finished in half a year."
Yang Ye asked, "You brought so many machines, but none of them work?"
"It's really strange, many machines are showing errors," Li Cheng said with a sigh, "the deepest pit I've found is four meters, and the shallowest is fifty centimeters. Fifty centimeters, if I dig deep enough with a shovel, I can dig one out."
The more she listened, the hungrier she became. Yang Ye finished the last edamame in her hand, held her stomach, turned her head to look behind her, and waited anxiously for the boss to serve the food.
"Hey, young man," Li Cheng looked at Zhou Yiheng who was playing with his phone, and suddenly thought, "Where did you hear about that double tomb you just mentioned?"
Zhou Yiheng heard Li Cheng's question, he raised his head and turned off his phone, "In the novel..."
"Which novel?" Li Cheng continued.
Yang Ye raised his eyebrows and asked jokingly, "Didn't you say before that these unfounded things were all unorthodox?"
Li Cheng corrected, "What unorthodox methods are there? As long as he can use them, then they are the right way."
"You've been doing this for forty years. Who has more experience than you?"
"That's just my formal experience. Now, isn't it all about adapting to local conditions?" he said, then fell into deep self-doubt. "You say this is so strange, it couldn't have been robbed before, right? The tomb robber must have been quite skilled."
"It's actually very simple," Yang Ye was about to say, but he first smelled an enticing aroma wafting from behind him. The boss placed the barbecue they ordered on the table, and everyone's attention was instantly captured by these plates of barbecue. The beef and mutton, sprinkled with cumin and chili powder, were freshly grilled, the surface still sizzling with oil, and a few drops of hot oil slowly dripped along the plump texture of the mutton, just looking at it was enough to make people's mouths water.
The hunger that had just been suppressed was brought up again, and Yang Ye's eyes were filled with surprise and desire. She grabbed a few skewers and ate them while they were still hot. The tempting barbecue and the cold, bubbling beer were simply the best counterattack against the summer.
Smelling the aroma of barbecue, Li Chengye couldn't help but grab a few skewers and stuffed them into his mouth. The corners of his mouth were stained with cumin and peanuts. He ate for a while, and when he was about 30% full, he remembered to ask Yang Ye, "What do you have to say?"
Having something in his stomach was much better than being completely empty just now. Yang Ye said, "Ask the village chief to borrow the family tree of this village and look through it to see if there are any powerful people. I think the feng shui of this village is quite good for gathering wealth. It shouldn't have become like this."
"What is a family tree?" Zhou Yiheng suddenly asked.
Yang Ye paused, her hand that had just picked up the skewers also stopped in mid-air. She turned her head in surprise, looked at Zhou Yiheng in disbelief and asked, "You don't know?"
Zhou Yiheng answered honestly, “I don’t know.”
"What about you?" she asked Xiao Xiao again.
Xiao Xiao also nodded a few times. Like Zhou Yiheng, she had only heard the name of this family tree in some places, but had never actually seen it.
"Ancestral hall, ancestral temple?" Yang Ye reminded again.
"I think I heard the locals mention it when I was traveling in Guangzhou before," Xiao Xiao replied.
The expression on Yang Ye's face gradually froze, and the barbecue skewers in her hand no longer smelled good. Even though her stomach was not full yet, she could not eat anything else. She stared at the skewers in front of her, her eyes distracted as if she thought of something. She closed her eyes and sighed, feeling helpless and annoyed.
"A genealogy, as the name suggests, records the development of the entire family, serves as a guide for the behavior of future generations, and provides them with an education." Li Cheng pulled out a few napkins, wiping the cumin from his mouth and the oil from his hands. He glanced at Yang Ye, who had just raised his head, and adjusted his tone. "To put it simply, if you meet a relative in your hometown and don't know what to call him, a genealogy can do just that."
"Of course, family genealogies were very important in the past, especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties. There were even genealogists who specialized in revising family genealogies."
"People who live in the village are generally from the same clan, the same family, and the same clan." Yang Ye put down the bamboo stick she had broken. "Ask a villager, or find the elders in the village. If they are still confused, they will probably remember these things."
A village that has been passed down from generation to generation is closed off and only its own people are left. The continuation of the clan is the continuation of history.
The boss brought up the last two plates of vegetables. When he put them down, Xiao Xiao asked him cleverly, "Boss, has your village ever produced any great people?"
"A powerful person?" The boss was shocked by her question. His cloudy eyes rolled around in his sunken sockets. He thought carefully, "Is there someone working at the police station in the city? Does that count?"
"No," Xiao Xiao laughed awkwardly. Perhaps she had misinterpreted the situation, so she changed her approach. "Did the older generation hold official positions or achieve top marks in the imperial examinations?"
"You mean the older generation? I really can't remember." The boss thought for a long time, but couldn't think of anything. "Why don't you go ask the village chief, or Aniu's great-grandmother. She's over a hundred years old and must know more than us."
They looked at each other, and Li Cheng asked, "Where do the village chief and the grandmother you mentioned live?"
"The village chief's house is easy to find, it's right down there," the boss pointed. "There's a vegetable patch in front, that's the first house. As for Grandma Aniu, it's hard to say. She lives halfway up the mountain. Why don't you go find the village chief and ask him to lead the way?"
"Okay, thank you," Li Cheng hurriedly thanked him.
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