novelraw Chapter 125 The beauty and joy of youth are truly simple.
Chapter 125 The beauty and joy of youth are truly simple.
Tong Yuheng: Won't doing this bring back Liu Fengyi's soul? What will happen to my father if he comes back? And isn't this memorial day a bit dangerous?
Tong Yuyao: Could it be that Uncle Liu respected Mom so much that he buried his own clothes as a sign of respect for Dad and a promise to treat us well?
Linglong: This is so strange! This scene is so weird! But since my older sister didn't say anything, we just did what she said!
Tong Yuhan: Perhaps I'm right, this body does indeed contain my father's soul, which is truly unbelievable. So where did the original person's soul go?
Yu Xuan and Yu Qi: Adults are so strange. Why do we bury Uncle Liu's clothes on Dad's death anniversary? Doesn't he think it's unlucky?
Tong Jiahui saw the curiosity and confusion in her daughters' eyes, but didn't intend to explain to them. After returning home, she simply made breakfast early. After everyone finished eating, the younger ones stayed at home, while the older ones prepared to go to work. Liu Fengyi, of course, went back to work.
This is the hottest time of the year, and the bell rings at five o'clock in the morning to start work.
Flood prevention measures are in place here every July and August, but the period most prone to flooding is actually mid-to-late August. Especially after two heavy rains a few days ago, there are concerns that the upstream areas might not be able to hold up and will have to release water.
The commune assigned tasks, and each village mobilized villagers according to their population to fill sandbags and raise the river embankment. Some villages even fenced off their own villages to minimize the risk of flooding.
Tong Yuheng and her three younger sisters all signed up, put on their old, worn-out clothes, and went to the riverbank to meet with the young and middle-aged men in the village. By the time they got there, it was already 5:30.
Chenjiatun was assigned a task that had to be completed within seven or eight days. At the village chief's request, Tong Yuyao calculated a rough estimate and then distributed the workload among the workers. Each person was to pack and carry about forty bags a day, which was quite a lot of work.
Some people were unhappy that the four girls from the Tong family were working and still had to earn full work points, feeling that they were taking advantage of everyone, and they started grumbling behind their backs.
Tong Yuheng just couldn't understand it. Most of the people here were men, so why were they being so petty? Some women were much more straightforward!
Take Tan Suyun for example. For the past few years, she has participated in this kind of labor assigned by the commune every year. Although the labor intensity is high, the work points are high, and one day's work is equivalent to two days' work before. She is not so short of money or food now, but she still feels more at ease if she saves a little more.
Half of the educated youth didn't come to participate, simply because they didn't get work points. Those who couldn't endure the hardship didn't have to come. So, she was the only female educated youth who came to work every year just to earn her food rations.
The Tong sisters came mainly because Linglong was also an educated youth. She rarely had time to work at school, so these days of working was a message to everyone that they didn't go to school to avoid labor.
On the other hand, practicing ancient martial arts requires strengthening one's muscles and bones, and what could be better for building strength than heavy physical labor? Especially since it also pays work points. In short, they would utilize every available resource to improve themselves.
Tan Suyun rushed over to team up with the young ladies, and the Tong sisters readily agreed. She certainly couldn't match their stamina, but she wasn't lazy and was a great teammate.
There were also five or six women in their thirties in the village participating in the work. None of them had strong laborers in their families, but they didn't want to be in a group with the young girls. They had already formed their own groups.
The brigade leader gathered the villagers together to prepare to distribute woven bags, forty bags to each person, as this was the task for the day. The sand-collecting site was in the riverbed, on a rather large sandbar, where several villages were collecting sand and filling bags.
The filled sandbags need to be transported to the side of the village they are responsible for and stacked tightly to form a waterproof wall. The accountant and scorekeeper count the sandbags here and supervise whether the stacking is up to standard.
A group of five or six people, with two iron shovels, five people could make two hundred bags. Tong Yuheng and Tong Yuyao first used shovels to shovel sand, while the other three people made bags. They would work for a while and then switch hands.
After filling more than a dozen bags, they took turns carrying the sandbags to the riverbank to reinforce it. The girls chatted as they worked, and didn't seem too tired.
The girls were exquisitely beautiful, naturally attracting a lot of attention. Young men from other villages who came to work also kept glancing their way. When the girls looked at them, some of them quickly lowered their heads and blushed.
Tong Yuheng shook his head, thinking to himself: The beauty and joy of youth are so simple, regardless of environment or wealth, only for the longing and excitement in one's heart.
They had no intention of paying attention to these people's opinions and thoughts, but some of the less obedient ones started causing trouble!
Every village has its share of good-for-nothings. They always try to take advantage of any collective work, so every commune-organized work session is like a gathering of good-for-nothings.
They deliberately worked around the sisters, spouting lewd jokes. Tong Yuheng and the others pretended not to hear them and ignored them. Seeing that they didn't respond, these men became even more brazen.
"Little sister, how can I let you do this work? Just call me brother and I'll take care of it!" A young man in his twenties reached out to take the shovel from Tong Yuheng's hand.
"You'd better get lost!" Tong Yuheng dodged, and he missed his target.
"You little brat, how can you be so ungrateful! Changlin is trying to help you, why are you so ungrateful!" Another boy chimed in, and a few others gathered around.
"Who do you think you are, to deserve our gratitude? Get the hell out of here!" Linglong retorted without any politeness.
"Come quick, everyone! People from other villages are being harassing our village's girls!" Tan Suyun saw several strong young men and, fearing they might get hurt, started calling for help.
"Who the hell is being a pervert? You shameless brat, are you looking for a beating?" The one called Changlin swung his arm and struck Tan Suyun.
"Anyone who hits a woman is scum!" Linglong rushed over and kicked him in the buttocks with both her left and right feet at the same time, sending him sprawling to the ground with a mouthful of sand in his mouth.
"Hahaha! A live demonstration of a dog falling flat on its face! This scoundrel from Xisan Village didn't even bother to find out if the Tong family girls are easy to mess with?"
The people of Chenjiatun didn't lend a hand; they just came to watch how the Tong sisters beat people up, and they felt a sense of satisfaction every time they watched.
"You people from Chenjiatun, are you trying to bully us? You just wait! I'll send men right now!"
Li Changlin is the son of the village chief. Spoiled by his father, he has some influence in the village and quickly gathered more than twenty young men from the surrounding area.
"What? You want a group fight? Let's get this straight, you deserve to be beaten for using foul language, and now you're instigating a group fight, so it's not our fault!"
"Yes, don't be shameless and demand an explanation after you get beaten up!"