In early summer in the south of the Yangtze River, a farmer drove a buffalo to plow the fields, and a white paddy field slowly turned turbid. This is Lijiawan. The man who plows the fields is called Li Jieshi. He wears a straw hat. The hot sun "bakes" his face into a coppery brown through the brim of the hat. Those wrinkles are as curved as burnt sticks, but they are not ugly. When he smiles at something happy, they can overlap to reveal his kind texture.
Master Li Jie is a diligent worker and will not stop working until he has plowed an acre of land in one morning. Even if his body is dripping with sweat and his belly is full of hunger, he will not stop. He acted a little recklessly, and even the buffalo suffered. At noon, the buffalo, which had worked for several hours, also wanted to rest or graze in the fields. However, this wish was difficult to realize, and it resisted. It is a female buffalo, but why is it so stubborn? Li Jieshi really wanted to cure it, but it was not that easy.
Let's just say that it was the same buffalo who was plowing the fields the morning before yesterday. At noon, the bell of the casual workers in the bay rang just a few times. When it heard it, it refused to work. When Li Jieshi refused to leave, he waved a bamboo branch to chase it away. It blinked and still did not take a step. Instead, it lay down and rolled in the paddy field, covered in mud. Li Jieshi was lying on the ground and could not get up no matter how hard he beat it. Since it was already time to go home for lunch, Li Jieshi compromised.
At this time, it was also noon, and the big bell for the end of work in the bay had already rang. Li Jie was still urging the buffaloes to plow a few more laps, because there was still a little bit of land that had not been plowed in place, but the buffaloes refused to leave, even if He walked slowly, shrugging his shoulders, and tried to take off the yoke around his neck, but he couldn't, so he had to walk a few more steps and plow a few more plows. If you really don’t want to do it anymore, just stop. Li Jieshi waved the bamboo tip in his hand vigorously, and the bamboo tip fell like raindrops on the buffalo's back and tail.
The buffalo became angry and turned around. A piece of mud splashed under its feet, staining its thick gray-black hair on its broad belly and staining Li Jieshi's wrinkled trousers. Li Jieshi didn't pay any attention to this, but found that the buffalo was attacking him with its head arched sideways, and the two curved horns were approaching him like two scimitars.
At this moment, Li Jieshi, who was still waving his bamboo tip, switched from a strategic offensive to a strategic defense, but it was too late. The buffalo blinked its two angry eyes, not afraid of Li Jieshi's whipping at all, and its nose was also very strong and strong. No matter how hard he pulls the rope, he still doesn't obey orders.
Li Jieshi felt that the situation was not right, so he threw away the rope and ran away. After running a few steps in the paddy field, the buffalo that was chasing him knocked him down into the muddy water with a tilted corner, and his straw hat was also thrown off. Wanting to get up and run for his life, the buffalo took advantage of the situation and dug one horn, two horns... Heavy, poor Li Jieshi was dug deep into the muddy water, and a trace of his soul came out of his body.
The buffalo didn't seem to understand its hatred, so it used a curved horn to pick out his body. Seeing that his face was covered in mud and soaked in blood, his teeth were biting his tongue and he was motionless. He was convinced that he was dead, so he became a little panicked.
The buffalo struggled in the paddy field for a while, and finally got rid of the yoke. It wanted to escape far away, otherwise, if the people in Lijiawan found out that it had killed someone, they would ask for its life.
At this moment, the buffalo was afraid of seeing people like a wanted criminal. It ran wildly towards the wild lake outside the bay. When passing through the fields, it was discovered by Li Jiese, the younger brother of Li Jiese. He was looking at the water with a hoe and saw a The buffalo ran away and recognized it as belonging to Li Jieshi's family, because this adult buffalo had an obvious feature, that is, there was no bell tied around its neck, and everyone else's had one.
Seeing that something was wrong, Li Jieshi first looked towards the field where Li Jieshi plowed, but there was no one there. He felt strange and shouted to Brother Jie at the top of his voice, but there was no reply from Brother Jie. Only his own voice was empty and hot. echoed in the fields.
His right eye was twitching, and he always felt that something had happened. It wasn't just the buffalo escaping, but there must be a reason why Master Li Jie was missing. Normally, when the fields are plowed or work is done, Master Li always leads the buffalo to graze on the field or ties it under a shady willow tree by the pond in the bay. But this is not the case now. Instead of chasing the buffalo, Li Jieshi returned to the bay and called Li Jieshi. He couldn't call out, so he only called out Li Jieshi's wife Gong Shuhua.
Gong Shuhua was cooking rice and cooking in the house with a spatula in her hand. When she heard a hurried cry, she came out of the tiled house, saw Li Jieshi, and asked him what he wanted to see his brother for. Li Jieshi said in a panic: Your water buffalo ran away, but you didn't see your brother chasing it away. Has your brother come back?
No. Gong Shuhua answered in surprise and suddenly became nervous: Isn't your brother plowing in the fields? It was time to call it a day. Why did the buffalo run away without being chased? Where did he go?
Gong Shuhua put the spatula back into the tile-roofed house, hurriedly extinguished the fireworks in the stove, fastened the lid of the stove pot for serving food, then came out and said to Li Jieshi: I am going to chase my buffalo, which direction did it go? ?
He ran towards the deserted lake outside the bay. Li Jieshi said, also feeling strange, where has his brother gone? But he was thinking about things at home and went home first.
His house is also a row of tile-roofed houses, with the main house leaning against a sloped house with a chimney. He walked in and had lunch with his wife Li Lanchun. Suddenly he heard crying, a very sad cry. He threw down his job and ran out. He saw that the person crying and crying on the field was none other than his sister-in-law Gong Shuhua.
What happened? There was a stone hanging in his heart. Many villagers also rushed to the field to take a look. He hurried over and was dumbfounded. His brother died for some reason. Half of his body was buried in the muddy field. It was stained with muddy water and blood. Next to him, there was a hat full of blood lying on his back. Mudstar's straw hat.
When the villagers saw this situation, they all talked and said: The buffalo with the curved horns must have killed him.
Suddenly, Li Jieshi's mind flashed to the scene of the buffalo running wildly towards the wild lake outside the bay. He shouted: The buffalo must have gone crazy, otherwise, how could it kill my brother? It must be killed.
Yes, kill it. The villagers all shouted.
Li Jieshi and two men went to the fields, carried his brother's body up the field ridge, and moved it to the bay.
Gong Shuhua kept crying along the way. When he placed his brother's body in front of his sister-in-law's house, he said angrily: I have to kill the buffalo and sacrifice my brother's spirit to relieve the hatred in my heart. He thought that Ah Er next door had a gun, so he ran to him and asked him to put a drill in the barrel of the gun, fill it with medicine, find the buffalo, and kill it.
Ah Er was keen on doing this kind of thing, so he quickly picked up the gun and set off wearing a straw hat to protect the sun. Li Jieshi and three other men followed him and crossed the fields. In front of it was a jungle, and on the other side of the jungle was A deserted lake that they were all familiar with.
Where is that damn buffalo? Ah Er walked into the jungle, took down the gun he was carrying and held it in his hand, ready to shoot at any time, but what he had to do now was to find the buffalo.
Li Jieshi discovered that there were fresh buffalo hoof prints on the jungle trail, so he turned left along the direction marked by the hoof prints. The other two men followed Ah Er, who walked up the mountain road to the right.
