"Don't block it, channel it."
Sun Qi knelt on one leg in the mud, half a broken sandbag still in his hand.
Hearing these words, he froze for a full three breaths.
"Channel it?!"
"Commissioner Lin, this, this... if this water is channeled in, the salt drainage ditches we've spent half a month digging will all be flooded!"
The surrounding veterans also stopped what they were doing.
A man with severed fingers smashed the mud clod in his hand fiercely into the ground, splashing up a puddle of yellow water.
"Siniang! Our sweat from all these days!"
"Everyone dug day and night, not even getting a full night's sleep, just hoping to drain the toxic water out of this saline-alkali land! Now you're letting the Yellow River water pour in? Isn't this all going down the drain!"
A veteran missing his left ear crawled up from the muddy water and wiped his face.
"Are you trying to drag everyone down with you? Once this water overflows, we won't even have a place to stand!"
Seeing it all about to be destroyed, no one could bear the stimulation.
Blind Old Zhao leaned on a stick, feeling his way through the muddy water, one deep step, one shallow step.
"Siniang, under this water is all mud and sand. The force is too strong, we won't be able to withstand it!"
On the high slope, the fat and thin bailiffs saw this scene clearly.
The fat bailiff threw away the melon seed shells in his hand, slapped his thigh, and laughed.
"Oh my, I thought this widow had some heaven-defying abilities. After all this time, she's just a lunatic!"
The thin bailiff sneered, pulled a water skin from his waist, and took a gulp.
"Lord Zhang really overestimated her."
"This woman is a living Yama coming to collect debts!"
"We don't even need to do anything, she'll send these five hundred cripples straight to the Western Paradise herself."
The fat bailiff pointed down below.
"Look, look, those mud-legs are about to rebel."
"If this water pours in for another half hour, they'll all drown in the mud pit."
"Let's go, let's go get the horses. Stand higher to watch the show, don't get splashed with mud."
The two patted their bottoms and stood up, their faces full of mischievous amusement at watching a good show.
On the embankment, Lin Siniang paid no attention to the veterans' curses.
She pointed to the churning yellow soup at the breach.
"Open your eyes wide and look clearly! What's in this water?"
Sun Qi roared through gritted teeth.
"There's mud! There's sand! There's deadly yellow soup!"
"Right! It's mud and sand!"
Lin Siniang thrust her iron pickaxe into the ground.
"The mud and sand in this Yellow River water are treasures sent by the Dragon King!"
The veterans were all stunned.
Lin Siniang pointed to the saline-alkali land beneath their feet.
"Why can't crops grow on this land? Because underneath is all saline-alkali poison! Our digging ditches can only drain a portion of it."
"The remaining poison is still nesting in the soil!"
She raised her hand and pointed to the breach.
"Now the Yellow River is flooding, and the water is wrapped in countless amounts of yellow mud! Let this water in, let it overflow the ditches we dug, let it overflow this wasteland!"
"When the water recedes, this thick yellow mud will cover the saline-alkali land!"
"The yellow mud presses down the saline-alkali, and the toxic gas won't come up! This is called diverting the turbid to deposit the silt! This is Heaven helping us change the land!"
"When this water recedes, what's left will be a layer of fertile, oil-oozing good fields! Come next spring, scatter a handful of seeds, and you can grow millet as high as your waist! Enough to eat your fill!"
Sun Qi didn't believe it. He had lived this long and never seen anyone do this.
"Lord Lin, you say yellow mud can cover the saline-alkali? Won't the saline-alkali rise up again?"
Lin Siniang pointed to the cracks in the ground.
"Water washes the salt, mud presses the alkali! The salt drainage ditches we dug before were to drain the poison from this land."
"Now the Yellow River water pours in. The mud and sand in the water are heavy, they will sink to the very bottom, sealing up the rising saline-alkali tightly!"
"When the water recedes, on top is a layer of new soil, and below are the salt drainage ditches continuing to drain the toxic water."
"When we plant millet later, the roots of the millet will take root in the new soil, and this dead land will completely come alive!"
The veterans stood with their mouths open, their minds all turning over Lin Siniang's words.
Diverting the turbid to deposit the silt?
Water washes salt, mud presses alkali? Fertile mud on top, poison-draining ditches below?
They had never even heard of this explanation.
Sun Qi leaned on his crutch.
"Siniang... you, you're not lying to everyone? This water can really turn into good fields?"
Lin Siniang didn't want to waste any more words.
She grabbed and tore off the cumbersome hem of her long skirt, revealing her mud-stained trouser legs.
She gripped the handle of the pickaxe tightly with both hands and raised it high above her head.
Bang!
The iron pickaxe smashed fiercely into the soil layer at the edge of the breach.
A large chunk of earth broke apart, rolling into the wasteland along with the water flow.
Lin Siniang pulled out the iron pickaxe and swung it again.
After smashing three times in a row, the breach expanded by another half a foot.
The Yellow River water poured in even more fiercely.
Lin Siniang, her face covered in mud, roared at the dazed veterans.
"Those who want to live, those who want to eat their fill, those who want to settle down on this land! Get to work! Tear this opening wide! The bigger you dig, the better!"
Sun Qi looked at the iron pickaxe in Lin Siniang's hand.
Then he spat out a mouthful of muddy saliva fiercely.
"Let's do it!"
He threw away his crutch, hopped to the edge of the breach on one leg, grabbed an iron shovel, and aimed it at the soil layer, shoveling down fiercely.
The veteran with severed fingers got red eyes and rushed up to claw at the mud with his bare palms.
"Do it! At worst, we all die together in this mud pit!"
The veteran missing an ear picked up an iron pickaxe and smashed desperately beside Lin Siniang.
"Dig! Tear the opening wide! Let all the Dragon King's yellow mud come in!"
Blind Old Zhao felt his way to a hoe, judged the direction by the sound of the water, and dug down hoe by hoe.
They were no longer blocking the water, but doing the exact opposite.
...
Not long after.
Someone shouted loudly.
"The sound of the water has changed! The undercurrents below have all been washed open! This land is drinking water!"
Large chunks of earth peeled off.
The breach went from four feet to one zhang, then to two zhang.
Boom—
The embankment completely collapsed.
The long-suppressed Yellow River water lost its final barrier, rolling up mud waves a zhang high, roaring as it crashed into the Yanmen Wasteland.
The turbid water flow wrapped in mud and sand swallowed up large tracts of saline-alkali land.
The salt drainage ditches were filled, the depressions were flooded.
At the bottom of the water where people couldn't see, the water flow was washing the surface layer of the saline-alkali land.
That salt frost, meeting the turbid river water, dissolved rapidly.
As the water flow slowed down, the mud and sand began to sink layer by layer.
The originally hard and compacted land became soft under the soaking of the water.
The depressions began to fill with water, forming mud pools one after another, and strings of bubbles began to emerge on the water surface.
...
The veterans retreated to higher ground, looking at the vast ocean before them.
No one spoke.
There were only heavy sounds of panting.
On the high slope, the fat and thin bailiffs were already scared pale.
The fat bailiff's foot slipped, and his whole body plunged into a mud pit, getting a mouthful of rotten mud.
He didn't care about spitting it out, crawling forward using both his hands and feet.
"Crazy! All crazy! This widow breached the Yellow River!"
"Lord Zhang wanted us to come watch a joke, and now look, we've become the joke!"
The thin bailiff hurriedly untied the reins tied to the tree, mounted the horse, and didn't even care to grab the riding crop, kicking the horse's belly desperately with his feet.
They fled.
