In the silent depths of the reed marsh, Uncle Zhou frowned after listening to Wei Ran's retelling of the information. After a long time, he asked, "Boy Wei, at this time, there are puppet soldiers, traitors and even little devils in the city. Looking for you. You definitely can’t go back. What are you going to do next?”
“Fight the Japanese” Wei Ran gave the answer without even thinking about it.
The other three people on the small platform looked at each other. After a moment of silence, Uncle Zhou said, "Shoutian, take Wei boy back first and find a fortress to live in to avoid the limelight."
p>"Dad, what about you?" Zhou Houpu asked.
"I have to go to the pier and continue to keep an eye on it," Uncle Zhou replied without thinking, "If Qiu Ermazi is not so careless, we must find out the time of the sweep."
"I'll go with you!" Zhou Houpu and Han Shoutian said in unison.
"Don't go, Morita. You have a wound on your leg. Go back and take care of it first. By the way, you can pass back the information that Mr. Wei asked."
Uncle Zhou thought for a while, Then he continued, "Hopu, you go to Yaodang and wait. If I find out anything then, it will be up to you to pass the news back."
After hearing this, Zhou Houpu and Han Shoutian looked at each other. He glanced at it, and then nodded reluctantly, "Dad, you have to be careful."
"Don't worry." Uncle Zhou waved his hand carelessly, "Okay, don't waste time." I'm leaving now."
"Wait a minute"
Wei Ran, who had been silent for a long time, grabbed Uncle Zhou, picked up the flower-mouthed poker, and pulled out the bullet. He looked at the box, then turned the handle of the gun and handed it over, and said seriously, "This gun is small and easy to carry. Use it for self-defense."
Uncle Zhou was stunned, and then He happily took the pistol and put it in his arms, "You are quite generous, kid."
"They are all fighting against Japanese invaders, so what is yours and mine?"
Wei Ran said again. He opened the hard cowhide satchel at hand, took out two gold bars and the collected paper tickets and handed them over, "Uncle Zhou, if you need these, take them with you. They are all gifts from Qiu Ermazi anyway."< /p>
Uncle Zhou quickly waved his hand and took out the box of cannons he also got from Wei Ran last night, "These are useless. You can also take this gun back and give it to Captain Zhao. They It will definitely come in handy. Boy Wei, do you have any objection?"
Wei Ran quickly replied, "What objection can I have?"
"Okay, you guys should go back as well. Let's go!"
After Uncle Zhou finished speaking, he handed the rattan box he brought back to Houpu, jumped on the small wooden boat that had just brought him over again, and followed the channel where Wei Ran and others had just come. In the blink of an eye, it disappeared into the thick reeds.
Finally looking at the direction where Uncle Zhou disappeared, Wei Ran said, "I won't go back now. Brother Houpu, I will wait for Uncle Zhou to come back with you. The two of us can have more or less "Then I won't go back," Han Shoutian, who didn't want to leave, said accordingly.
"You have to go back"
Wei Ran and Zhou Houpu said in unison, and before Han Shoutian could open his mouth, Zhou Houpu added, "The news that Brother Wei finally found out must be sent back quickly. Let everyone be prepared in advance. If the Japanese really organize a raid, they will definitely snatch away the wheat they just collected from the fields."
"This..." Han Shoutian hesitated for a moment. Finally nodded, "Then...then be careful"
"Take all these things, except for the bottles and jars, keep them for me, and you can watch the distribution of the rest. "
As Wei Ran spoke, he took out the camera from the hard leather bag and hung it around his neck. Then he put all the other things into the satchel and handed it to Han Shoutian. When Zhou Houpu next to him saw this, although he looked reluctant, he still put the box of cannons he had been holding in his hand.
Han Shoutian took the satchel, then picked up a bullet casing hanging on a pillar of the platform and brought it to his mouth and blew lightly a few times.
Three long and three short whistles, which were not very sharp, echoed in the dense reeds. In less than five minutes, an old man who looked to be at least fifty or sixty years old was holding a wooden boat. Came over.
What’s interesting is that not only is the sidecar of the motorcycle that Wei Ran rode back at the stern of his boat, there are also four wheels hanging on both sides of the wooden boat, and under the butt of this particularly honest old man , also sitting on a motorcycle seat.
Wouldn’t this old man dismantle the motorcycle in such a short time? Wei Ran looked at the other party's full boat with a strange expression and thought to himself.
"Uncle Chui, did you finish the demolition so quickly?" Han Shoutian asked Wei Ran's doubts.
"We brothers have dismantled several kid's steamboats. How troublesome can this be?" The honest old man clicked his pipe pot, "Are you planning to go back?"
"Yes! And you have to hurry up." As Han Shoutian spoke, he had already jumped onto the boat with his cowhide satchel in his arms.
"Then sit tight."
Before the honest old man, who was called Uncle Lao Chui, finished speaking, he had already pushed the fully loaded boat into the reed marsh again. Wei Ran, who was still sitting on the platform, couldn't help but pick up his camera and clicked the shutter on the back of the fully loaded boat.
What he didn’t expect was that before he could put away the camera, two more small wooden boats emerged from the reeds. One of the two boats held a motorcycle frame, and the other one held a motorcycle frame. Put the disassembled engine and other parts.
Wei Ran, who was sitting on the small platform watching the new arrivals, took photos of them one by one. The old men, who were shirtless and only wearing shorts, did not show any stage fright and waved enthusiastically at Wei Ran. He waved his hands, his wrinkled face clearly still filled with the joy that comes only when crops are harvested.
"What can we do with those things if we send them back?" It wasn't until the boats were far away that Wei Ran curiously asked Zhou Houpu.
Zhou Houpu untied the boat tied to the platform, and waited for Wei Ran to jump on and sit firmly.He pushed the boat forward slowly in the reed swamp, and explained matter-of-factly, "It has many uses. At the worst, you can make some big blades, or you can simply make it into iron sand and use a big lifting pole to return it to the little devil. Anyway, it's basically useless." It won't go wrong."
"Have you ever beaten a Japanese?" Wei Ran asked curiously.
"I would like to fight the Japanese, but in fact I have never beaten the traitors."
Zhou Houpu said with a bitter face, "The mission of Shoutian and I is to assist my father." , and they said it’s just a matter of division of labor. I see, they just don’t want me to fight the Japanese!”
“There will definitely be a chance,” Wei Ran assuredly said, in his return mission this time. Including assisting Zhou Houpu in completing the ambush mission, so naturally he vowed to do so.
"If only it was like what you said."
Zhou Houpu sighed, with confusion and depression on his wheat-colored face. I can hit wild geese accurately with a stick, the boat can row fast, and the water is no worse than theirs, so why don’t you look down on me?”
Hearing Zhou Houpu’s complaints, Wei Ran was riding in the boat. After traveling through the reeds for a long time, the boat finally saw the light of day and entered a channel four to five meters wide, hidden in the reeds.
Zhou Houpu tied the bamboo pole to the side of the small wooden boat. After sitting down facing Wei Ran, he skillfully swung the oar and rowed forward along the intricate channel.
At noon at the end of June, the water surface was warmed by the sun, and the people on the boat were also exposed to the sun. As the boat moves forward, the reeds on both sides gradually disappear and the water becomes more and more open.
Gradually, a lotus lake covering several acres appeared on the water in front of the boat. Occasionally, you can see one or two small frogs or unnamed birds on the green lotus leaves.
Zhou Houpu picked up a sickle from under his feet, cut off a few lotus leaves in two strokes, and then cut off a few full lotus pods.
Wrapped a few lotus pods in one of the lotus leaves and handed them to Wei Ran. Zhou Houpu continued to rock the boat through the lotus lake. At the same time, under the guidance of Wei Ran's words, he changed the topic to the days before the Japs. First sweep.
In Zhou Houpu's words, what Wei Ran heard was very different from what he learned about the Yanling team in later generations.
Those Yan Ling team members whose names are followed by either "uncle", "uncle" or "brother so-and-so" in Zhou Houpu's mouth, almost all of them have the same relationship with the Japanese There is a blood feud.
Some of their families died in the raids by the Japs; some of the village where they grew up had countless people massacred by the Japs; and some of them were forced to death by the traitors who worked for them. Mothers, wives, and even children, some had their homes burned down, their stoves smashed, and even the few acres of reed fields they depended on for their livelihood were robbed.
Gradually, when the fresh and juicy lotus seeds in Wei Ran's hand were thrown into his mouth, they no longer tasted sweet, leaving only a mouth full of bitterness, but he clearly remembered that the bitterness had just been peeled off lotus core.
At some point, the particularly beautiful lotus lake was left behind, and not far in front of the empty water they were about to cross, a large reed swamp appeared again.
The small wooden boat, which was not too big, carried the two of them, drifting along the edge of the reed swamp, and finally turned into a channel.
Continuing to move forward along the channel, Zhou Houpu, who had his back to the direction of travel, put away the oar, untied the bamboo pole on the side of the boat, pushed it hard, and dexterously manipulated the small wooden boat under his feet to get in again. Reed marsh.
While the scorching sunshine overhead was blocked by the dense reeds, the surrounding temperature also dropped slightly. Zhou Houpu, who was punting the boat, also made a silent gesture towards Wei Ran.
The boat rowed forward silently in the reeds for only a dozen meters, and a channel less than half a meter wide quietly appeared.
After walking for a long time along this waterway with countless forks along the way, and turning countless forks along the way, finally there appeared a piece of empty water directly in front of us that could barely allow the boat to turn around.
Plugging the bamboo pole in his hand into the mud at the bottom of the water, Zhou Houpu pointed behind him and made a silent gesture again.
It wasn’t until Wei Ran nodded that Zhou Houpu took out a kid’s lunch box from the wooden box between the two of them. On the tray of this lunch box were several finger-thick black incense sticks and a box of matches. On the second floor were several browned cornmeal pancakes, a fist-sized pickle dumpling, and two sticks of smoked incense sticks, a specialty of Baiyangdian. fish.
Take out two pieces of pancakes and a piece of pickle dumplings and place them on the lotus leaves that were picked before. In addition, he handed Wei Ran a piece of smoked fish. Zhou Houpu then picked up a stick of incense, lit it, and inserted it into a small hole on the side of the boat.
As the lingering green smoke began to disperse, Zhou Houpu was not in a hurry to eat. Instead, he continued to take out a roll of thin hemp rope with a fishhook from the box and hooked it up casually. After throwing some crumbs of corn tortillas into the water, he tied the other end to the waist of a reed.
After finishing all this, he picked up the pancake and took a hard bite, then tore off a piece of pickle and threw it into his mouth.
The two of them finished their simple lunch in silence, but Zhou Houpu was not idle. Instead, he picked up a black mud-like thing and a stick from the small box that served as a stool. A small bamboo tube more than ten centimeters long.
Under Wei Ran's puzzled gaze, Zhou Houpu simply kneaded the piece of mud, and then skillfully filled it into the hollow bamboo tube. It wasn't until black mud emerged from the other end of the bamboo tube that he picked up another slightly thinner bamboo tube and quickly pushed it from one end, and a stick of incense was squeezed onto the wooden board between the two of them. .
"Are there any more?" Wei Ran asked in a low voice, pointing to the two bamboo tubes in the opponent's hands.
Zhou Houpu nodded and took out two matching bamboo tubes from the box and handed them to Wei Ran.
Taking the bamboo pipe, Wei Ran imitated his opponent and grabbed a piece of black mud.Although this thing looks like mud, it is like dough in your hand and has a little bit of toughness. After just rubbing it for a few times, Wei Ran's hands were dyed dark brown, and he also smelled a vague medicinal fragrance.
"This incense can not only repel mosquitoes," Zhou Houpu explained in a low voice, "it is used to ignite the gunpowder in the fire door when the big lever is raised to fire the gun."
"You did it all?" Wei Ran asked in a low voice.
"How can it be possible? It's a craft that everyone can do." Zhou Houpu shook his head and continued busy with the work at hand.
As the two of them were busy, the sun above their heads moved westward little by little, and the incense sticks on the boat were burning one after another. Until dusk, there was a faint sound coming from outside the reed marsh. A crisp gunshot!