Ye Qiu has been recuperating at my house for half a month now. During this time, Cha Wenbin went on a long trip, and I spent the whole day facing that silent and dazed person, so I simply gave him a nickname: Dizzy No. 2.

  It's strange to say, but since our stupid dog was rescued and brought back home, it started walking around me again. When it sees me, it always tucks its tail in, droops its ears, and occasionally steals glances at me with a sneaky look in its eyes, just like a little cat. But once it's kept what it thinks is a safe distance from me, it starts running wildly, especially when it sees Ye Qiu, that stupid number two. As soon as Ye Qiu appears in the yard, the dog immediately runs over to him with its tail wagging, fawning all over him, licking his face... it's really disgusting. Every time I see this, I quietly lean back in my chair and mutter a curse: "A pair of stupid fools."

  You two aren't like a family, okay. From now on, I'll call you Daidai No. 2. Later, it was too cumbersome, so he simply called him No. 2. As for Ye Qiu, no matter how you deal with him, he doesn't care at all. In fact, in his eyes, our whole family is just air except for that dog.

  "Number Two has eaten!" "Number Two, smile for a moment." "Number Two, where is your hometown?" "Number Two, is your mother really Number Two..." During the time I was being ignored, I also tried to please Stupid One. I even went to get Hua Hua back for it, but this person sometimes is more despicable than a dog. I tried so hard to please it, yet it still hid from me. Such boring and ridiculous days passed by for half a month. Many people came looking for Cha Wenbin during those days, all of whom were sent away one by one. My mom looked at the various gifts sent over by people in our house with a half-smile: "This house is almost becoming a temple, why are they sending so many things?"

  I said: "You're just in time to renovate the house, don't bother with fancy decorations, just turn it into a Taoist temple and name it 'Tianzheng Dao Temple'. Then get some clay statues of gods and put them in the middle. You can stay at home and be a Buddhist nun, I'll go out and take orders and run errands. After all, Wenbin has been living with us for so long, he's like half a son to you, earning some incense money to support the family is only right."

  My dad just walked in and heard me rambling on, a wooden ruler fell on my head scolding: "Supplement! Supplement! All day long you don't know what's good, did you steal someone's mother back home?"

  Half a month later, Cha Wenbin returned, and the news he brought back was still disappointing. He didn't find Long Ye, nor did he find Kuang Feng. Those people seemed to have suddenly evaporated from the world. In April, it was the busy farming season, with some transplanting seedlings, others removing pests, and another important task was repairing the irrigation canals.

  Our Hong Village built a reservoir in the early 1950s, named "Hongfeng". The Hongfeng Reservoir is not big, when I was studying, teachers would take students out for spring outings, and basically all three surrounding village schools would choose to go there. Because the road to Hongfeng Reservoir has cliffs on both sides, strange rocks and waterfalls can be seen everywhere, and the scenery is really good.

  It is said that when this reservoir was built, people died. I heard from the older generation that at that time, a stonemason was crushed to death by falling rocks. Later, he was never found because at that time, one had to rush to meet the deadline, and another was that the landslide was too severe, and it was very difficult for manpower to move those fallen rocks at that time. So this stonemason was permanently buried under the reservoir dam, and every year his descendants would go there to worship him.

  Hongfeng Reservoir is used for water storage and power generation. During the busy farming season, the sluice gate will be opened to release water. There is a canal from the dam that winds through the mountains all the way down to the river channel in the village below. The river on our side is very narrow, just an ordinary mountain stream. In this small stream, about every kilometer there is a barrier dam built across it, and from the top of the dam an opening is made to divert water into nearby farmland for irrigation.

  I remember that at the time, the fields were short of water, but the water in the reservoir couldn't be channeled down. There were two main reasons for this: the main canal that diverted water from the reservoir was blocked; and the design of the canal's final section was such that it ended up on a mountain slope about 100 meters high, forming a large storage pool. A thick pipe ran straight through this pool to the river at the foot of the mountain, creating a significant drop in elevation that generated tremendous water pressure. At the foot of the mountain, there was a hydroelectric power station that relied on this flow of water; and it was precisely this penstock that was blocked.

  There was another reason, that year was particularly dry, the water in the river never came up, and since the beginning of the year, the whole Hongcun village had not seen a drop of rain. It coincided with the peak of agricultural water use, which was very tense. So at that time, the production team held meetings, requiring two teams of people, one responsible for repairing the reservoir canal, which had not been repaired for decades, and the other responsible for drilling wells to extract water.

  The harvest of a year in rural areas depends on this season. No one can be careless, no one can be slow, rely on the mountain to eat the mountain, rely on the water to eat the water.

  Our family was a team at that time, and according to the principle of fairness, the production team decided to mobilize labor based on household population. Because my household registration was in my old home, so logically our family had to send three workers every day, just right for my family with three idle people, I, Zha Wenbin, and Ye Qiuer. I thought that this kind of thing is just going through the motions, every family sends workers but not strength, as long as they show up at the scene, so I discussed it with my father, and we went to repair the irrigation canal, he was busy with other things.

  Mentioning going to repair the irrigation canal, it's not worth mentioning that Hongfeng Reservoir is still four miles inside from Damiang Temple, which is a desolate area where no birds even defecate. That morning, more than 30 laborers gathered at the production team and set off together, we also took our hoes and shovels to pretend to be working along with them.

  When we arrived at the water storage tank, the depth of the water was about two meters. The pipe was half exposed above ground and half buried underground with cement seals. At that time, I stood at the edge of the pool and said a sentence, "The size of this pipe is just right to trap a person." No one expected that later on, someone was indeed found inside the pipe, which made us dare not drink water for nearly half a month.

  First, the upstream reservoir was closed, and then the water in the storage pool was drained using a pump. It took half a day to do this. Once the water in the canal dried up, there were fish everywhere. That morning was basically spent enjoying catching fish. Anyway, those two, Er Hao and Cha Wenbin, just stood there like wooden posts, watching the scenery. Around lunchtime, the water had completely drained, revealing the entrance of the drainage pipe, which was blocked by many dry branches and leaves.

  I thought it was just clogged with garbage, but actually, as long as the silt in this waterway is cleaned from top to bottom and the cracks are filled, that's it. The entrance of the drainage pipe was originally designed with a steel mesh, which was intended to intercept large pieces of garbage entering the pipe. However, after removing the surface layer of silt and rotten leaves, I found that the steel mesh at the pipe entrance had long been gone, probably having rotted away after being soaked in water for decades.

  This makes the situation more complicated than imagined, just like when the drain at home is clogged and you don't know which section is blocked. The longest tool we had on hand at the time was a hoe, and after digging in for over a meter, it couldn't go any further, but it seems there's still quite a lot of stuff inside.

  I don't remember who was the first to pull out that broken jar from inside, it looked like a chamber pot, after washing it with water, I found that the mouth of the jar was still sealed, and there was a piece of paper stuck on it, which had been unclear what it was for a long time.

  Some people joked that there was wine inside, and most of the workers who came out were about our age, so it was lively to shout together. Since it's wine, why not open it and drink it!

  In this way, the lid of the jar was pried open with a stone by someone in the absence of any equipment. I still remember who smashed the jar, his surname is Wei, and his name is Wei Damao, he's three or two years older than me. In today's terms, this guy is a rural non-mainstream, his hair is styled like Li Yong's, with big waves, wearing a loudspeaker on his shoulder, carrying a tape recorder, riding a 28-type bicycle and running around everywhere.

  Wei Damao is absolutely a avant-garde person, usually this kind of people have big guts, no, actually he is very ignorant. So he stretched his hand into that pipe, under the gaze of many people, this guy fished out something from that can and took a look, his hand was covered with a layer of white powder.

  I glared at him with his mysterious look and shouted: "What's inside, Big Hair? Is it a pile of gold nuggets in there?"

  This kid's biggest characteristic is being forward-thinking, so he said to me: "There may not be gold, but I think there might be 'white stuff' in here." The white stuff he was referring to wasn't flour, but something else - drugs. What he said wasn't entirely unreasonable, as it wasn't long after the reform and opening-up, when all sorts of things were being smuggled into the country, including heroin. At that time, there was a rumor going around that people were smuggling these things from the sea to inland areas, saying that if you got caught, you'd lose your head, so transportation was usually done through secret routes. Hongcun village is located at the intersection of three counties in Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, with a remote geographical location but very convenient transportation. At that time, there were rumors circulating in society about people carrying goods through these mountain forests.

  I shouted: "Isn't it just a matter of you taking a bite to know if it's white flour or not, your big brother has seen and known a lot."

  Who knew that this guy actually put his finger in his mouth, he squinted his eyes and said after a while: "No taste, can't tell."

  At this time, the No. 2 who had been dazed there suddenly said a sentence, and the whole scene was stunned. He muttered to himself: "What good taste can ashes have..."