He Yuyang: The tough eldest brother of the courtyard house

Just after the Awakening of Insects, the snow in the military family compound had melted completely, and the frozen soil beside the vegetable garden cracked with spiderweb-like patterns, gleaming with a damp black hue. He Yuyang, who rarely gets to rest at home for half a day, was squatting beside the peach saplings pruning the branches—the branches spurred by the spiritual spring space were growing too wildly, and if they weren't pruned, they might affect the fruit production. He held the pruning shears between his fingertips, his movements as swift and precise as if he were disassembling and assembling a gun, the cuts so clean that the fine grain of the wood could be seen, a special texture created by the spiritual spring water.

"Dad! I brought my classmates!" He Shouye's voice burst through the courtyard gate, filled with the excitement of a young boy. Behind him were seven or eight teenagers, carrying faded canvas backpacks, timidly peeking into the courtyard. Among them was Aunt Zhang's grandson, Xiao Shitou, who had recovered from a fever last winter thanks to medicine given by Xu Xiuli.

He Yuyang straightened up, tucked the pruning shears behind his waist, and the cuffs of his military green uniform were stained with mud. "What are you doing? Aren't you going to class?" he asked knowingly—Shouye had said yesterday that the school was going to do "agricultural practice" so that the children could learn planting from "experienced farmers," and he had specifically asked the army for half a day off.

"Teacher Wang said our vegetable garden is a 'model of collectivized production,' and invited us to visit and learn!" Shouye puffed out his little chest, pointing to the vegetables in the plot for his classmates to see. "Look! My spinach is greener than the ones sold at the supply and marketing cooperative, and my chives can grow to half a foot tall!"

All the children's eyes turned to look, wide and staring. In the early spring vegetable garden, the spinach leaves were a glossy green, as if coated with oil; the chives were so dense that they could hide sparrows, their tips curled naturally; most surprising of all were the cucumber rows, the newly erected bamboo trellises already covered with vines, and several small cucumbers, no bigger than a finger joint, hanging from them, their tender yellow flowers swaying gently in the chilly wind.

"This...it's only March, how come there are cucumbers already?" Little Stone rubbed his eyes. His mother said yesterday that cucumbers at the market wouldn't be available until May, and they would be so expensive that you'd have to buy them with ration coupons.

Just as He Yuyang was about to speak, footsteps sounded again at the courtyard gate. Teacher Wang walked in carrying a lesson plan folder with a tin trim, her blue khaki shirt collar tied with a neat bow tie. "Deputy Commander He, thank you for your trouble." She was Shouye's homeroom teacher and had visited their home last autumn. She knew that although He Yuyang was an officer, he was quite skilled at tending the vegetable garden.

"It's not troublesome at all," He Yuyang straightened up, pointed to the vegetable patch, "It's a good thing that the children are willing to learn." He spat into his palm, picked up a hoe and walked into the spinach field, "Growing crops is the same as training soldiers, you have to put in real effort, there's no room for shortcuts."

Teacher Wang had the children form a circle, while she opened her lesson plan book to take notes. He Yuyang swung a hoe to loosen the soil, the blade digging three inches into the ground, stirring up clods of earth mixed with tiny earthworms, eliciting soft gasps from several female students. "See that?" he said, breaking up the clods with the hoe. "The soil needs to be loose so the roots can grow deep, just like when you learn knowledge. If your foundation isn't solid, everything else is in vain."

Shouye squatted down beside him, holding a small shovel in his hand, and imitated him in a very serious manner: "My dad said that when planting, you have to use 'three plows and three harrows' and the soil clods have to be smaller than soybeans to make it easier to plant." He scooped up a handful of soil, the brown soil mixed with fine organic matter, which was the decaying leaf soil from the spiritual spring space. He secretly mixed a little bit of it every morning and never let outsiders find out.

Looking at the lush greenery in the vegetable garden, Teacher Wang's pen flew across her lesson plan: "Deputy Commander He, your vegetables are growing so well, what's the secret? Did you use any special fertilizer?" She asked this carefully. After the grain coupon incident last year, people in the family compound kept whispering that the He family "had connections." She didn't want to get involved, but she couldn't help being curious.

He Yuyang sprinkled some wood ash on the spinach roots, the movement as natural as breathing: "What secret is there? Just be diligent. Get up before dawn to water it, loosen the soil in the evening, and catch the pests by hand, you can't use pesticides—we have to be honest about what we eat." He didn't say that the "water" was diluted with spiritual spring water, and the wood ash was mixed with phosphate powder from his space; these were secrets that couldn't be told.

The children followed along, and Shouye taught Xiaoshitou to distinguish between chives and weeds, "Look at the tips of the leaves! Chives are round, weeds are pointed!" Another little girl with pigtails was learning to build a cucumber trellis, but the bamboo strips were tied crookedly, and Shouye helped her tighten them, "You have to tie slipknots, otherwise the vines will break when they grow big." He Yuyang watched from the side and suddenly remembered the days when he taught new recruits how to defuse bombs on the Korean battlefield, and he taught them in the same way, hand in hand, afraid of making the slightest mistake.

"Uncle He, what's this?" a chubby boy asked, pointing to a few unfamiliar plants growing by the vegetable patch. The plants had oval leaves with purplish undersides and fine hairs on their stems, and didn't look like edible vegetables.

He Yuyang's gaze paused. It was a purple salvia miltiorrhiza that he had transplanted from his spatial storage. It could promote blood circulation and remove blood stasis. Last time, when the troops were on a training exercise, a soldier had fallen and injured himself, and these leaves were used to make poultices to heal him. "This is a medicinal herb," ​​he said casually, "It can cure diseases. Don't touch it, it would be a pity if you damaged it."

Shouye immediately chimed in, "My dad said these are treasures! Last time Grandma Zhang had a cough, she was cured by boiling water with the perilla leaves from this place!" He lowered his voice and added mysteriously, "We have to protect them well and not let bad people ruin them." As he said this, he glanced at the gate of the courtyard, as if afraid of being overheard—he still remembered the sarcastic look on Zhao's face during the grain coupon incident.

He Yuyang glanced approvingly at his son, then reached out and touched the leaves of the purple salvia miltiorrhiza plant, feeling a cool sensation on his fingertips. "Shouye is right," his voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly to each child's ears, "Not only are medicinal herbs treasures, but every seed and every seedling in the field is a treasure. You reap what you sow. If you care for them, they will give you a good harvest; if you neglect them, you'll end up with nothing but the northwest wind."

These words seemed to be spoken to the children, yet also to someone hiding in the shadows. He Yuyang glanced at the corner of the courtyard wall, where there was an old locust tree. Behind the tree, a dark shadow flickered, moving very lightly, but it couldn't escape the ears of someone who had practiced internal martial arts—the footwork was unsteady, carrying a deliberately concealed panic, just like the spy who had followed him to the warehouse last time.

"Deputy Commander He is right!" Teacher Wang applauded at the right moment, drawing the children's attention back. "This is the best kind of labor education! Everyone should write this down and write a practice report!"

The children responded in unison, their enthusiasm growing even stronger. Looking at their innocent faces, He Yuyang suddenly felt that protecting these children's smiles was more important than guarding the treasures in those spaces. He bent down, picked up the watering can, and poured some water onto the roots of the purple ginseng—the water in the can was diluted with spiritual spring water, enough for this medicinal herb to safely weather the late spring cold.

At lunchtime, Xu Xiuli steamed white flour buns for the children, which they ate with spinach and egg sauce. They were all sweating as they ate. Little Stone, munching on a bun, said, "Shouye, your vegetables are so delicious! My mother's spinach is bitter."

Xu Xiuli smiled and put a piece of egg on his plate: "Take some seeds back with you later and let your mother try planting them. I guarantee they won't be bitter." The seeds she gave him were specially selected by He Yuyang from his spatial storage. They were high-yielding and disease-resistant, yet they looked no different from ordinary seeds, so they weren't afraid of arousing suspicion.

In the afternoon practical class evaluation, Shouye won the "Most Careful Award" because the row spacing of the seedlings he planted was perfect; Xiaoshitou won the "Most Hardworking Award" because he wore out his trouser legs while hoeing the ground; the most surprising one was He Yuanchao, who is usually very wild, but today he built the cucumber trellis quickly and steadily. Teacher Wang announced on the spot that he would award him the title of "Little Labor Expert" and said that he would apply to the school for an award certificate.

"I got an award certificate too!" Yuanchao jumped high, holding up a cucumber. "Can I put it next to Big Brother's award certificate?"

"Why not?" He Yuyang lifted him up and stuffed a piece of cucumber into his mouth. "Our aid to Korea was also great!" The sweetness of the cucumber mixed with the refreshing taste of the spring water melted on the tip of his tongue, like a clear stream flowing into his heart.

As He Yuyang saw the children off, he deliberately went around to the back of the old locust tree. Sure enough, there were several messy footprints on the ground, and a worn-out chip at the heel of the shoe—a feature exactly the same as the Warrior shoes that Officer Zhao often wore. He gripped the pruning shears at his waist, the coolness of the metal seeping through the fabric, as if reminding him of something.

At night, He Yuyang lay in bed, listening to Xu Xiuli's even breathing beside him, his mind sinking into the space. The surveillance equipment in the warehouse was facing the screen, displaying the scene in Officer Zhao's office—this was a "new type of eavesdropping device" that he had "accidentally" discovered in the Space Operations Department's warehouse last month, and he never expected it to actually come in handy.

On the screen, Officer Zhao was stuffing something into a brown paper envelope, his movements as furtive as a mouse stealing oil. There was no address on the envelope, only a strange symbol drawn on it. He Yuyang recognized it as the mark of a foreign intelligence organization; he had seen it in a coded telegram intercepted on the southwestern border last year.

"Stirring up trouble...criticism...sending people to the countryside..." Officer Zhao muttered to himself, his voice low, but the highly sensitive microphone picked it up clearly. "He Yuyang...Li Jianguo...they all have to be brought down..."

He Yuyang clenched his fists, his knuckles turning white. It turned out that the grain coupon incident was not accidental. Every time Officer Zhao made things difficult for them, there was a conspiracy behind it. He was the spy who had infiltrated the army, trying to destroy those truly patriotic backbone members through despicable means.

Moonlight streamed through the windowpane, illuminating two certificates on the wall. He Jianguo's third-class merit certificate gleamed, while He Yuanchao's "Little Labor Expert" certificate, though simple, exuded a childlike earnestness. The two certificates, pasted side by side, resembled two clusters of flames, flickering in the quiet night.

He Yuyang quietly rose, walked to the table, and opened the combat log. His pen paused briefly over the name "Officer Zhao," then drew a small five-pointed star next to it—his symbol for marking key targets. A cold glint flashed in the armory within the space; the latest handcuffs lay there quietly, awaiting the day they would handcuff the guilty.

"Dad, why aren't you asleep?" Shouye's voice came from next door, a little sleep-talking, "I still need to water the vegetables tomorrow..."

He Yuyang put down his pen and walked to the window to look at the vegetable garden. Under the moonlight, the leaves of the purple salvia miltiorrhiza had a faint purple hue, as if they were gathering strength. He knew that some battles couldn't be won with guns, but with patience. Like tending to these seedlings, he would wait slowly and observe carefully, and one day he would catch the pests hiding under the leaves.

The night breeze rustled through the peach tree branches, as if echoing his thoughts. Dewdrops quietly condensed in the vegetable garden, gathering into beads on the tips of spinach leaves, reflecting the morning star in the sky, shining like stars scattered on the ground.