Great Power Reclamation

Chapter 2749: The Misunderstood Lou Zhanjiang

Yang Geyong has never been a romantic person, but at this moment, he was immersed in the silence and did not speak.

After strolling on the levee for a while, Ye Yuze frowned. The entire reservoir was too quiet and there was no sign of any construction, which made him very angry.

You must know that Liu Qinghua's fund is for specific purposes and misappropriation is a crime. He made this clear when allocating funds.

What does this Lou Zhanjiang want to do?

If he dares to break the law, Ye Yuze will not show mercy. He never shows mercy when doing things.

The two finally found lights on the other side of the river. They had not seen them before because they were far away, so they quickened their pace and went over. When they got closer, they saw a group of naked people digging in the reservoir, and there were several boats on the water carrying the excavated items.

Yang Geyong became alert. He didn't know what was in the reservoir, and it was definitely not normal to dig something in the middle of the night. He picked up two sticks and handed one to Ye Yuze. The two of them quietly moved towards the group of people.

Because of the lantern, they could see clearly from a closer distance that these people were actually digging in the mud.

Yang Geyong looked at Ye Yuze with a puzzled look on his face. He really couldn't understand the situation. No one could understand why they were digging mud in the middle of the night.

Ye Yuze closed his lips tightly, as if he had thought of something but needed to confirm it, so he threw away the stick and walked away.

Although it is summer now, the temperature in northern Xinjiang is not high at night.

"Wear a cotton-padded jacket in the morning, a gauze dress in the afternoon, and eat watermelon around the stove" is a true portrayal.

These people were digging mud naked in the middle of the night. You can imagine how cold it was.

They took turns going into the water and lit a bonfire. Those who came out gathered around the bonfire and put on their coats to keep warm. Ye Yuze recognized Mamtim at a glance.

The bearded manager was wearing an overcoat and smoking a cigarette. He had water stains all over his body and was shivering all over.

Ye Yuze walked up to him and coughed. Maimaiti was startled. After seeing that it was them, he jumped up in panic:

"Mr. Ye, Mr. Yang, why are you here?" Ye Yuze had a blank expression: "I just wanted to see what you were doing." After saying that, he stared at him waiting for an answer.

Maimaiti was at a loss, like a child who had made a mistake, and didn't know where to put his hands.

Ye Yuze kept staring at him. If he guessed correctly, Maimaiti planned to use this method to clear the silt.

He allocated 200 million yuan to the farm, but they resorted to manual dredging. How could this be tolerated? Manual dredging also requires water release. How long will it take to effectively clear the silt?

Someone nearby shouted angrily to Ye Yuze: "Don't look at him like that. Our manager can't do anything about it."

Maimaiti hurried to stop the man from speaking, but it was too late. Ye Yuze's face was gloomy, and he was so angry that he was on the verge of losing control. He stared at Maimaiti and asked:

"Is what he said true?"

Mamtim quickly waved his hand: "No, I'm just borrowing it for a while and will return it."

Ye Yuze turned around and left, but Maimaiti grabbed him and said, "Boss Ye, listen to me. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of corn in the division that are in serious water shortage. They are in the seedling stage, and we must take measures to protect them. We can't just ignore them!"

Ye Yuze dug his fingers deeply into his palms, and his nails carved crescent-shaped white marks on the skin.

Yang Geyong strode to the edge of the reservoir, picked up a mud-stained military coat, and when he shook it open, the water droplets that fell from it flashed coldly in the moonlight.

"One hundred thousand yuan?" Ye Yuze squeezed out his voice from between his teeth. Lou Zhanjiang was too bold.

Maimaiti hurriedly opened his arms to stop the two people who were about to leave:

"Boss Ye, please listen to me!"

The old director started coughing violently, his hunched back trembling in the cold wind:

"Last Wednesday, I went to the division headquarters to deliver a report, and I saw with my own eyes that Division Commander Lou dismantled the air conditioner in his office and sold it as scrap metal."

There was a crisp sound of dead branches breaking in the darkness, and three bright flashlights pierced the night.

Lou Zhanjiang emerged from the bushes, one foot deep and one foot shallow. His trouser legs were covered with cockleburs and the briefcase in his hand was still dripping.

"Maimaiti, shut up!"

The commander's hoarse roar startled the night owls in the reeds.

This tough guy, who once captured three smugglers single-handedly on the border, was now leaning against the poplar tree as if his spine had been pulled.

He shook out dozens of photos from the file bag. Yang Geyong caught the falling photos, his fingertips tensed instantly.

——On the cracked field, the corn seedlings curled up into burnt yellow spirals. A woman knelt on the edge of the field holding an empty bucket, her chapped lips oozing blood.

"This is 500,000 acres of land...it's all like this."

Lou Zhanjiang's Adam's apple rolled up and down, tears streaming down his face:

"Do you think I want this? If I don't pay for the water diversion canal, there will be no harvest in the autumn... I'm the division commander, not the farm manager. It's okay if I can't manage a farm well!"

He opened his collar, revealing a hideous scar on his collarbone:

"This is what our teacher left behind when he carried me out of the sandstorm on his horse. Now his son is squatting in that dry field, eating naan and waiting for the rain!"

Ye Yuze turned around abruptly, and the night wind blew up the hem of his beige windbreaker, like a cape. But as he turned around, he quietly wiped away a tear...

A breeze blew over, causing his body to shiver a few times even though he was only wearing a windbreaker. If he felt cold like this, one could imagine how cold those soldiers who were digging in the mud felt.

By the campfire on the other side of the river, a dozen dredgers were passing around cracked cornmeal naan. It was so hard to chew, so they dipped it in lake water before eating.

Yang Geyong couldn't bear it any longer and glared at Lou Zhanjiang:

"The foundation's money arrived seven days ago. It covers the labor costs. They were paid for the construction. Why are they eating this? At least you have to pay for this, right?"

Several soldiers quickly said, "Boss Yang, don't be angry. It's not that we don't have this money. We all get it as meal allowance. But if we save it, won't our family have more income?"

Mamtim squatted on the ground and used a branch to scratch crooked numbers on the mud:

"The water pipe at Sanhekou burst, and the repair materials alone cost 400,000 yuan. I only have 60,000 acres of land here, but the division has hundreds of thousands of acres."

He grabbed a handful of mud and threw it on the numbers, shouting, "Yesterday, the Kazakh workers of the 17th Company sold all 20 sheep for the winter."

"We are poor, but we know how to consider the overall situation. We can save money, but we can't let so much land in the division die of drought..."

Yang Geyong's stick snapped into two pieces. He recalled the snowstorm night in 1983 when he knelt beside the frozen reservoir and used his body temperature to melt the ice to give water to the company's sheep.

He was only a teenager that year, and he knew that he was fine even though he was sick, but he could not let the collective property suffer losses...

Now, decades have passed, and they are still the same. It seems that the Corps has not changed.

Although today’s values ​​and people’s concepts have changed, at critical moments, Corps members are still Corps members, and this can never be changed!

Yang Geyong, a man of strong character, began to have tears in his eyes. It seemed that he had been wronged.

Mamtim, the “Zhanjiang”, suddenly used the name he used 20 years ago, with some emotion but a serious expression:

"Are the photos we took at the Little Poplar Outpost still locked in the third layer of your office safe?"

"You said back then that you would rather die of starvation than touch the soldiers' rations. You should not embezzle this fund today." Lou Zhanjiang's bloodshot eyes were watery. In the photo, three young men stood shoulder to shoulder beside the boundary marker, with the poplar saplings just waist-high behind them.

How young and pure was I back then?

It's just that although there are some bottom lines that cannot be touched, they have to be touched. As long as the soldiers can live well and as long as the grain harvest is good, it's worth it for him to go to jail...

Looking back on the past few decades, it has been very difficult for the Corps to get to where it is today. What have they paid for? Only they themselves know.

From not having enough food to eat when we first arrived, to now not only having enough food and clothing, but also paying a lot of grain every year, what a big change!

Even in the years when their organization was disbanded, the soldiers never considered themselves as ordinary people and still held themselves to the standards of soldiers.

Look at the young people in the reservoir, have they really changed?

Maybe they are not as hardworking as their grandfathers, or they are not as disciplined as their fathers, but when the country needs them, none of them will back down...

From the other side of the river came muddy horn sounds, as workers transferred the silt in baskets woven from red willow twigs.

A Uighur boy wearing a flowered hat slipped and fell into waist-deep cold water. He climbed up and laughed:

"This is much cooler than the Banana Cave in the Flaming Mountain!"

A group of young people were playing and fighting, but their hands were moving very quickly. They worked very fast and sang cheerful tunes.

The morning mist had not yet dissipated, and the sound of hurried horse hooves could be heard from the east bank of the reservoir.

A young man wearing a white Kyrgyz felt hat dismounted from his horse, and a pale yellow liquid gushed out of the aluminum kettle in his arms.

"Captain, Nurguli from the 17th Company gave birth in the early morning!"

The young man stuffed the enamel pot to Mamtim and said, "This is the last half pot of goat milk in her family. She insisted that we bring it to the brothers who are digging the canal."

Mamtim wiped away tears and said, "Nonsense, her milk supply is low, why did you bring it here? Take it back quickly, don't let the child starve!"

Yang Geyong noticed that there was ice on the mouth of the jar, but when he reached out to touch it, it was warm. It turned out that the young man had wrapped his cotton robe around the outside of the jar, and he himself rode his horse in a single piece of clothing for twenty miles in the morning fog at minus five degrees Celsius.

The young man looked at the old manager, somewhat at a loss, and stood there in a daze.

Ye Yuze grabbed the enamel pot, turned around and shouted to the busy crowd:

"Everyone come here!"

More than thirty workers covered in mud gathered around, and Ye Yuze poured the goat milk into a tin bucket filled with boiling water.

In the steaming hot air, everyone's teacup was slightly whiter than the color of water.

"This is the milk of the mothers in the 17th Company. Drink this and we should work harder. If anyone is lazy..."

Ye Yuze gestured the shape of a little turtle. People laughed.

Before Ye Yuze finished speaking, a toast song in Kazakh broke out in the crowd.

The young man wearing a flowered hat wiped his tears and smeared milk on his forehead, and the old Uyghur employee raised the bowl above his head with trembling hands.

Having lived in the northern border for a long time, Ye Yuze naturally understood these ideas, and this was to express his most sincere gratitude.

Ye Yuze and Yang Geyong followed suit and drank it all in one gulp, and they immediately felt warm in their hearts.

Lou Zhanjiang stood on the outskirts of the crowd, with diesel stains on the front of his military uniform.

On the geological map at his feet, the "Red Willow Beach" circled in red pen was heavily marked with triangle symbols. That was the old red willow forest that saved his life in the sandstorm twenty years ago.

"Report to the division commander!" The signalman came running in breathlessly: "The repair of the Sanhekou water pipeline has not been completed, but Secretary Kader said..."

The young man glanced at Ye Yuze and continued, "They said we were destroying the ecological balance and we want to file a joint lawsuit."

"Let him sue! When the sandstorm trapped the surveying team at Hongliu Beach, it was old Kader who brought the camel team to find us."

Lou Zhanjiang grabbed the geological map and tore it in half: "Tell that stubborn old man that the new canal will bypass the red willow forest for 30 kilometers, and the extra money will be deducted from my salary."

Mamtim walked towards his jeep and came back holding a dusty iron box. The moment the lid of the box was opened, Lou Zhanjiang's pupils suddenly contracted. Inside was a half-dried red willow branch, carefully wrapped in a faded red scarf.

"You stuffed it into my hand before you fell into a coma." Mamtim stuck the red willow branch into the sand.

"You said that if we can get out alive, we must protect this forest into the Jiangnan outside the Great Wall." In the morning light, Ye Yuze saw a light flashing on the commander's graying temples.

Although Ye Yuze is a second-generation military settler, he has not experienced many things, especially the hardships that his parents had experienced...

But he knew one thing: no matter how they quarreled, how they made a scene, or even fought.

But when something really happens, they are the ones who can trust each other, and there is no doubt about that.

Yang Geyong came over and said, "They really look like our father!"

Ye Yuze nodded: "They are originally the same kind of people, we can't compare them."

Yang Geyong leaned on Ye Yuze with his shoulder and said, "Let's increase the funding for these soldiers."

Ye Yuze nodded. There was still a long way to go. We really couldn’t rush this matter. We had to take a longer period of time, earn money while providing support, and it had to be sustainable.

The soldiers' enthusiasm inspired the two men. Although they knew that doing so would not achieve any results, they still went into the water and started working.

Maimaiti and Lou Zhanjiang tried to persuade them for a long time but it was useless, so they simply joined them in the water.

Sometimes, your behavior represents an attitude, especially for Ye Yuze and Yang Geyong now. When they are in the water, the soldiers will work harder.

This took more than two hours. Although both of them exercised every day, they were still very tired. This was completely different.

A bright color appeared on the horizon, and then a golden sunrise slowly emerged from the intersection of heaven and earth.

As the sun rose, the temperature suddenly rose a lot.

"Report! We dug up an unusual hard object in the northeast corner of the reservoir!"

Shouts came from the other side. Everyone waded over and saw the soldiers digging.

Mamtim suddenly knelt down in the mud, picked up a stone tablet and sobbed:

"This is... This is the tomb of martyrs who were building the reservoir in 1958!"

The old director's turbid tears washed away the dirt on his face, and he sobbed:

"Twelve soldiers died in the landslide that year, and they said they would erect a monument after the reservoir was completed. How did it end up in the water?