Zhou Sanlang had just straightened up and was about to look around when a whip came out of nowhere and hit the ground next to him. The officer shouted, "What are you looking around for? Get back to work. If you don't finish this section today, no one will be able to leave the job!"
Zhou Sanlang nodded immediately.
Manbao roared, and when Third Brother didn't respond, he climbed onto Zhou Wulang's neck, sat on it, and roared at the crowd again, "Third Brother——"
The supervisor finally saw the children and pointed at them with his whip: "Hey, kids, what are you doing?"
There were also some laborers who quietly raised their heads to look. They looked dusty and Manbao could not recognize them, but the villagers of Qili Village could easily recognize them.
The fifth and sixth sons of the Zhou family, especially the one sitting on his neck, aren’t they the darlings of the Zhou family?
Someone immediately shouted, "Zhou Sanlang, your brother and sister are here to see you!"
Although the officers supervised the workers, they were not so strict that they did not allow them to talk. They just did not allow them to be lazy or slack off.
Zhou Sanlang heard it clearly this time. He didn't care about the whip and raised his head. When he turned around, he saw Manbao sitting on Laowu's neck. He widened his eyes and shouted, "Manbao, why are you here?"
The official glanced at the child over there, and waved his hand at Zhou Sanlang in disdain: "Go, go, I'll give you a quarter of an hour, come back and work quickly."
Zhou Sanlang bowed his head repeatedly to express his gratitude, dropped his hoe and ran over there.
Manbao finally recognized her third brother among the crowd of people because she saw him running towards her.
Manbao hugged Zhou Liulang's neck and was about to slide down skillfully, but Zhou Liulang quickly picked her up and took her down.
Bai Shanbao looked at this with great envy and decided that when he returned he would ask Manbao's brother to let him sit on it as well, as he had never sat on an adult's neck before.
Zhou Sanlang rushed over, and at first he wanted to hug Manbao happily, but when he thought about how he was covered in dust, he retracted his hand and looked at Zhou Wulang, "Lao Wu, is there something wrong at home?"
"No," Zhou Wulang said stiffly, "Manbao said she missed you, so she came to see you. Third brother, I, we miss you too. It must be hard to serve in the army."
I've only been here for a few days, but not only have I become a lot darker, I've also lost a lot of weight. All the flesh that I had worked so hard to gain has been lost.
Zhou Sanlang narrowed his eyes and smiled, shaking his head, "It's not hard. Really, it's so cold, Manbao is ignorant, and you are also ignorant, walking such a long way..."
Zhou Sanlang kept on chattering and subconsciously reached for money, asking Manbao to go home and buy some candy.
Manbao had already taken out a candy from her pocket, peeled off the oil paper and stuffed it into his mouth. She tiptoed to touch his face with a distressed look on her face, "Third brother, you have lost weight."
Zhou Sanlang bent over, feeling relieved, but he was not very good at speaking, so he just kept shaking his head, "It's not hard, it's not hard."
Manbao looked at them curiously as they dug the dirt on the roadside, "Third brother, what are you doing?"
"Repair the road," Zhou Sanlang was very happy, but he didn't know how to express it. He kept talking to Manbao about their military service and pointed to two ditches on the side of the road. "There's a lot of water here. See? Now the official road is full of potholes because the rainwater can't be drained away and the road is damaged. Let's dig two small ditches now and use the mud to fill the potholes. In the future, the water on the road will be drained into the ditches, and the road won't be damaged so quickly."
He pointed to a row of thatched houses in the open space in the distance and said, "That's where we live. They are all temporary. We are responsible for the official road of Bali and the nearby water conservancy, so we eat and live here..."
Manbao listened very carefully and asked several questions. Zhou Sanlang then explained in more detail, such as what water conservancy includes.
"It's actually very simple. Just dig a ditch, four feet wide and five feet deep, around these farmlands, from there to there..." Zhou Sanlang was very envious when he said this, and said, "I don't know when the county magistrate will have people repair the water conservancy in our village. If our village also has such a ditch, it will be much more convenient."
"So building water conservancy projects is a good thing?" Manbao asked.
Zhou Sanlang smiled and said, "Of course it's a good thing."
Manbao and Bai Shanbao looked at each other, scratched their heads, and whispered, "But didn't you say in the village that you didn't want to serve in the army and didn't want to repair the water conservancy?"
Zhou Sanlang immediately looked around and found that the official was not paying attention, so he whispered: "It's not our village's water conservancy project. Of course we are not happy to ask us to repair it..."
And serving in the military is really hard.
But as soon as the thought came to his mind, Zhou Sanlang smiled again.
Manbao then roughly understood that good things are still good things, but the good things will not happen to the people who build water conservancy projects.
Manbao wanted to ask more, but the official on the other side urged him, "Zhou Sanlang, come back to work!"
Zhou Sanlang responded and asked Zhou Wulang to take Manbao back immediately, and then he hurried over to work.
They finally got here, but even if Manbao wanted to go back, Bai Shanbao didn't want to.
So the two of them took out a small notebook from their small bags, took a pen, ground the ink on the spot, and went to find someone to question.
Zhou Wulang and Zhou Liulang looked on in awe, thinking that their youngest sister was truly amazing, being able to write at such a young age. Then they followed to watch out of curiosity.
With the help of Keke, Manbao and Bai Shanbao developed a very concise and clear questionnaire, and wrote down these questions in a small notebook.
The two children squatted in front of the laborers and asked how many people there were in their family, how many able-bodied men there were, how the labor was distributed in the family, what the family had prepared for them when they went out this time, and under what circumstances would they rush to build water conservancy projects and official roads even if the court did not issue a labor order?
The laborers didn't want to answer at first. They were already exhausted from work, so who had time to take care of two babies?
But these two babies, one holding a notebook and a brush, and the other holding an inkstone, look very elegant and one can tell at a glance that they are scholars.
Although everyone has no chance to read and write, they respect people who know how to read.
So everyone started to take time to answer their various strange questions. An officer noticed the situation here and came over with a whip. Seeing Bai Shanbao squatting and taking notes, the officer took a look and did not interrupt, but still frowned. When he raised his head, he said, "Young master, young lady, this is not the place for you to play. Go somewhere else quickly."
Bai Shanbao said, "This is the homework assigned by our teacher, we have to complete it."
The officers thought that their teacher was being ridiculous. Letting such a young child run here, who would be held responsible if something happened?
He said, "Ask me any questions you have, I can answer them all."