It was cold, and Mrs. Xu and Daya were sleeping together. When they heard Xu Ling's movements outside, they called out in the house: "A Ling, is it snowing outside?"
"It's down, mother, you and Daya can sleep for a while, don't get up in a hurry, the snow is thick outside!"
Xu Ling first went to greet the Chen Sheng brothers outside the door, "Why did you get up so early?"
It was windy and snowy last night, and there was no thick quilt in Chen Sheng's house. The three of them crowded into a room and warmed themselves by the stove. It was still cold. Xu Ling provided help in times of need. He himself didn't think it was a big deal, but in the eyes of Chen Sheng and the two brothers, it was no less than providing help in times of need. .
Neither of them wanted to sleep in, thinking about their mother's instructions and clearing snow from Xu Ling's house early in the morning.
"Master, why do you get up so early?"
It was still early, so Chen Sheng was a little embarrassed and thought he had woken up Xu Ling by shoveling the snow.
"It's not early. Thank you for helping to clear the snow. We'll have dinner soon."
The three of them were shoveling snow while chatting, and they were doing it in full swing.
Xu Ling found that when the two brothers Chen Sheng were in front of him, Chen Sheng always talked. His brother talked less than him, but he was not lazy in his work and was nimble with his hands and feet.
In such a cold weather, the brothers still wore single cloth shoes, but when they worked and moved their hands and feet, it wasn't that cold.
Fan Shiqing walked out of the room wearing thick clothes. The puppy Xu Ling brought back from He Dajia's house was placed in a bamboo basket in the corridor. It was covered with a cloth and stuffed with old clothes. It became anxious when it heard people's voices and whined inside.
Fan Shiqing opened the cloth and took out the three puppies. "It snowed really hard last night."
"Yes, the snow is as deep as a person's knees, and it probably won't go away for a while."
Xu Ling originally planned to take his family to the town to buy things for the year before, but who knew it would continue to snow.
Chen Sheng also said: "I heard someone say early in the morning that the river is frozen and people can walk on it."
"It's so cold." Fan Shiqing shrank his neck and stamped his feet. If it wasn't for eating, he really didn't want to get up.
It's so warm on the kang.
Xu Ling was glad that he had made money and built a new room a year ago. Otherwise, the family would not have been able to survive the cold weather.
Brothers Chen Sheng and Chen Ze couldn't stop, and their hands and feet became cold when they stopped.
Xu Ling asked them to bring some firewood from home and not to extinguish the charcoal stove, otherwise Widow Chen's illness would only get worse.
Now that it's snowing and freezing, Xu Ling can't build a new house even if he wants to. He can only wait until the snow melts in spring. Then Chen Sheng's family will have to live in the old house first.
The mattresses brought by their family were old and not very warm at all. If Xu Ling hadn't woken up in the middle of the night to take a look and sent two sheepskins to them, I don't know if they could have withstood the night.
The four of them were saying this at the door, when suddenly someone from the village ran towards this side, shouting as they ran: "Xu Ling! Do you have a shovel at home? Quickly bring a few people to help, Liu'er's house has collapsed! People are buried in it too!”
When Xu Ling heard this, he quickly put down his work, went to the corridor to get a shovel and a hoe, and rushed to the village with the two brothers Chen Sheng.
He Liu's family was at the south end of the village. Xu Ling and the others waded through the thick snow up to their knees, one foot deep and the other shallow, running over and breaking a sweat.
The boots Xu Ling wore were smeared with tung oil, making them waterproof and airtight, but they were still too cold to feel.
There was a sound of crying and shouting at the door of He Liu's house. The east wall of the courtyard also collapsed. You can see that more than half of a house inside has collapsed. The beams are lying horizontally and the mud walls have collapsed. It is not known whether people are dead or alive.
"My son!"
He Liu's mother was crying and screaming at the door. Several gentlemen dug the soil with shovels. Those who didn't have tools used their hands to dig. The soil was frozen hard, and the fingers were frozen, and they couldn't feel much pain.
Xu Ling quickly joined the battlefield and helped start digging. After half a stick of incense digging, he finally dug out He Liu and his wife, who had just been married for half a year. The two were still hugging each other under the quilt. They were smashed. It’s in disarray.
He just took one look and felt a little unbearable, let alone He Liu's family, his mother fainted immediately.
He Liu's family was not the only one affected by the disaster. Xu Ling did not expect the situation to be so serious. He had only seen one heavy snowfall in his previous life, and the situation that year was not optimistic...
However, because this is a modern society, it will definitely be much better during a disaster than it is now.
But at this time, most of the buildings were made of mud, bricks, and wood, without steel and cement. Especially some poor families had straw houses. The wind and snow were so heavy yesterday that the roofs of some houses were blown away. I don’t know where they flew. went.
Fortunately, nothing happened to Gu Litian's family, and he and Gu Daliang were called to help early in the morning.
Some houses in the village collapsed. It was lucky that no one was hit, and it was lucky that no one died after being hit. But if the bones were damaged, and the weather was so cold, it would be another disaster if they were not properly protected.
Xu Ling kept his feet on the ground, running from house to house, and finally met his father-in-law's uncle at the east end of the village.
Seven or eight families in the village were affected, three people died and five were injured.
The fact that the Chen Sheng brothers worked as tenant farmers for Xu Ling also spread in the village. However, compared with the losses caused by the snow disaster, the villagers only said that Chen Sheng and the others were lucky. Even when Xu Ling asked for the rent, no one mentioned it. Says you want too much.
Instead, they said that the two Chen Sheng brothers had a good life.
The snow was so heavy that the river was frozen. If they had not followed Xu Ling back to their old house at night, mother and son would have frozen to death in the awning boat.
Xu Lingchuan's first year passed quietly in this bleak atmosphere.
There are more than a hundred households in Lianhuawanzi, and there are two villages downstream, one is Fengjia Village and the other is Hejiazhuang. Life is not easy. Many people have died. Some have relatives and some have relatives to help. Those individuals are in a miserable state. The family is not so lucky.
There was a family in Fengjia Village. There were only three parents and children in total. I heard that they were all dead, and the villagers helped to bury them.
The ground couldn't be dug in winter, so these people couldn't bury them, so they were temporarily placed in the charity village in Hejiazhuang.
On New Year's Day, Xu Ling's house was naturally busy. He had originally prepared large firecrackers, but few households in the village had prepared these, so Xu Ling just asked the children to play without making any fuss.
There was food, firewood, meat and vegetables at home, so Xu Ling simply closed the door and stayed with his family so that he could shut out the troubles outside.
So as not to make him look pitiful and always want to meddle in his own business.
His own ability is not that great. Apart from lending a helping hand and doing some physical work, he can't do anything really asked of him.
Fan Shiqing taught Xu Ping and Xu An all day long, and even Daya also listened together, so he became an early education teacher.
The study was warm. In order to save firewood, Xu and Gu Tao simply moved their mending work into the study. The family stayed in the same room, studying and working.
In the front aisle, Xu Ling blocked the wind with a curtain and carried a stove so that Chen Sheng, mother and son could stay warm while they spent their free time picking grain for next year's farming.
Xu Ling made clear arrangements for his family members, while he hid in his room, locked the doors and windows, and went to work frantically cultivating land.
Autumn comes when the leaves fall, and the situation in nearby villages is so bad, let alone outside. Xu Ling is afraid that the future will become increasingly difficult.
