Half a month ago, when the Yellow River flooded in, five hundred people stood on the high slope watching the muddy water swallow the drainage ditches. More than half of them cursed Lin Siniang as a madwoman.
Half a month later, the water receded.
The late June sun was scorching. Sun Qi, leaning on his wooden crutch, was the first to step onto the field.
With a "squelch," his foot sank in half an inch. What he stepped on was finally not the glaring white salt crust.
But a layer of bright yellow new mud.
"Where's the salt?"
Sun Qi squatted down, touched the mud with his fingers, rubbed it, put it under his nose to smell, and then stuck out his tongue to lick it.
Not bitter.
"Where's the salt!" He turned his head and roared at the people behind him. "I'm asking you, where is the glaring white salt crust!"
The dark mass of disabled soldiers behind him stood frozen on the ridge, no one answering.
Half a month ago, this piece of land looked like it was covered in frost, glaringly white.
Now, under their feet was all moist yellow mud, soft to step on, like the paddy fields in Jiangnan.
A man with missing fingers was the first to react. He plumped down on his knees in the mud, thrust both hands down, scooped up a handful of yellow mud, and raised it above his head: "No salt! There really is no salt!"
Sun Qi didn't join the commotion. He pulled a sharpened wooden stick from his waist and thrust it into the mud under his feet.
One inch, two inches, three inches—the stick went through the layer of yellow mud on top, and at a depth of four inches, the feel changed.
He pulled out the wooden stick, the tip bearing a piece of grayish-white earth.
"Camp Field Envoy Lin."
Lin Siniang had already walked down. She took the wooden stick, glanced at it, and nodded: "The top three or four inches are new mud brought by the Yellow River, underneath is still the old salt earth, the line in between is clearly separated."
"Then the salt underneath..."
"What's the rush." Lin Siniang stuck the wooden stick back into the mud as a marker, facing everyone, "Listen well! This layer of new mud under our feet is our lifeblood, no one is allowed to dig deep!"
"The hoe must not go deeper than three inches, do you hear me? Going deeper than three inches will bring up the salt underneath, and the last half month will be all for nothing!"
"Three inches?" A veteran with a missing ear muttered. "What the hell can you plant in three inches."
"Three inches is enough for broomcorn millet to take root." Lin Siniang ignored his grumbling and had already walked towards the drainage ditch.
Old Zhao had been squatting at the mouth of the ditch for a while.
He was blind, but his ears were sharper than clairaudience.
Before Lin Siniang walked up and spoke, Old Zhao spoke first: "Still draining."
"Is the sound of water loud?"
"Quieter than half a month ago, but it hasn't stopped."
"I tasted the water flowing out of the ditch mouth. It seems... the brine underground is still flowing out."
Lin Siniang squatted down, caught a handful of water from the ditch mouth, put it to her lips, and took a sip.
It was bitter and astringent upon entering the mouth, but already much lighter than half a month ago.
The drainage ditch was still working, the salt underground was still being drawn away bit by bit.
"Good." She stood up and clapped the mud off her hands. "The ditch mouth must not be blocked, no one is allowed to dump earth into it."
When she returned to the field, several impatient veterans had already started working.
The man with missing fingers and two others had dug up half a bag of broomcorn millet seeds from somewhere, bending over and poking holes in the soft mud.
"What are you doing!" Lin Siniang rushed over in three steps and kicked over the half bag of seeds.
The man with missing fingers was anxious: "Camp Field Envoy Lin! The mud is soft, we need to scatter seeds while it's wet, how can we plant when it's dried hard? The Yellow River brought such good mud, we can't waste it!"
"What the hell do you know!" Lin Siniang bent down and picked up the scattered seeds one by one back into the bag. "Underneath the new mud is salt earth. If you plant now, the roots will go down into the salt layer."
"The seedlings will die in less than three days. Do you want to grow grain or waste seeds?"
The man with missing fingers was choked into silence, and the few people beside him also sheepishly stopped their hands.
Lin Siniang straightened up, untied the drainage shovel from her waist, and drew three long lines on the field.
"From here to here, the sun-drying area! The mud is still too wet, let it dry first, we'll talk when it cracks."
The shovel moved east.
"This piece, according to Magistrate Xu's term... is called the experimental area."
"When the mud in the sun-drying area is thoroughly dry, lightly turn it over, no more than two inches, I'll try planting a small patch first to see the seedling emergence."
The shovel moved further east, drawing to the inside of the earth weir.
"This innermost piece, the seed preservation area, no one is allowed to touch."
Sun Qi stood on the side leaning on his crutch, his face not looking very good.
He was silent for a long time before finally speaking: "Camp Field Envoy Lin, June is almost over."
Lin Siniang didn't reply, because she naturally understood in her heart.
"Broomcorn millet must be planted by mid to late July at the latest, any later and it won't catch up with the autumn harvest."
Sun Qi continued: "The grain allocated by the government can only last a month, a month and a half at most."
"If there's no harvest in the autumn, what will five hundred mouths eat?"
As soon as the words "what to eat" came out, the people around quieted down.
Everyone looked at Lin Siniang.
Lin Siniang took out a cloth bundle from her breast, opened it layer by layer, inside were five palm-high broomcorn millet seedlings.
The roots were wrapped in wet mud, the leaves narrow and thick, the color a shade deeper than ordinary broomcorn millet.
"Recognize this."
Sun Qi recognized it.
At that time in the ruined temple south of the city, it was these five seedlings that made him follow this woman to Yanmen Wasteland.
"This year our goal is not to harvest grain." Lin Siniang wrapped the cloth bundle back up. "This year we only seek one thing—to keep the seeds."
"These five seedlings survived from hundreds of dead seedlings over three years, their seeds can resist salinity."
"When they ear in autumn, we keep the seeds. Plant them next spring, and the year after next they can cover the whole field."
"Then this year—"
"The main task this year is to nourish the land." Lin Siniang interrupted him. "If the land is well nourished, the grain next year will grow."
"If you rush one season, you ruin three years."
Sun Qi opened his mouth but didn't speak again.
Lao Tong squeezed out from behind the crowd and coughed dryly: "Camp Field Envoy Lin, I understand the principle you're talking about."
"But the court... they want to see yield numbers. The people from the Camp Field Division won't wait for you to slowly nourish the land. If you can't report a harvest at the end of the year, this piece of land will be your crime."
Lin Siniang glanced at Lao Tong.
"The success of this matter does not depend on you or me."
Siniang didn't answer this directly, turning to Sun Qi: "Take people to measure the terrain, level the high places, fill in the low places, divide all the fields again according to the water line."
"Drive wooden stakes around the seed preservation area, start taking turns keeping watch tonight, the seedlings are more precious than your lives."
Sun Qi agreed and called people to work.
Lin Siniang personally moved the five broomcorn millet seedlings to the inside of the earth weir in the seed preservation area, pressing them one by one into the wet mud, watering them, and patting the soil firm.
She drove eight sharpened wooden stakes around them and strung hemp rope.
When the sun went down, on the high slope east of Yanmen Wasteland, two figures shrank behind the bushes.
The fat bailiff lowered his hand shading the sun, squinted down for a long time, the expression on his face slowly changing from schadenfreude to something else.
"Not washed away?" The thin bailiff leaned over.
"No." The fat bailiff swallowed his saliva. "The water receded, the land... the land turned yellow."
"Those cripples are working down there."
The two exchanged a glance before scrambling and tumbling down the slope. They mounted the scrawny horse tied behind a tree and whipped its rump all the way, galloping furiously toward Zhenbei City.
...
Night fell.
In the back hall of the Office of State Farms, an oil lamp cast a dim, yellow glow.
Lord Zhang dug out a stack of dusty old memorials from the very bottom of the cabinet. He flipped to a page in the middle, picked up his brush, and dipped it in red cinnabar ink.
Over the words that read, "Lin Siniang breached the river dike without authorization, destroying government fields," a red seal was heavily stamped.
