vstars Chapter 731
Chapter 731
"There's no soil at all, so where does the bulge come from?" Jing Chunxi muttered in a low voice.
But Jing Yi still heard the sound. When he turned around, he knocked over the hoe he was leaning against. "Come here, both of you." There was a kind of tense expectation in his voice, and his tone changed.
Jing Chunxi ran over, dragging a long-handled hatchet, the tip of the blade plowing a shallow furrow in the mud. Pu Ge'er held the bird's nest carefully, fearing that the bumps would throw out the squirming chicks.
"Give me the knife." Jing Yi dropped the hoe and grabbed the hatchet, stirring up a gust of wind.
"Stay still and wait for me!" he ordered, his voice sounding like it was squeezed out from between his teeth.
The arc of the hatchet sliced through the air, making a whooshing sound. The thorns, severed in two, bounced up, leaving bloody marks on Jingyi's calf. He didn't clear the area horizontally as before, but instead moved diagonally upwards, like a ladder to heaven, his footsteps sending the earth sliding down. Severed vines drooped like writhing snakes.
"Pu Ge'er, put down Que'er and take a look at the position Dad is talking about." When Jing Chunxi spoke, he found that there were grass debris in the cracks of his fingernails and shook his hands hurriedly.
Pu Ge'er didn't dare to play anymore. He placed the bird's nest on a tree branch. The baby birds made faint "chirp" sounds, as if calling their mother.
"Let me see. It's about three or four feet high. Isn't there just trees and grass there? Where's the protrusion?"
Pu Ge'er complained softly. He finally realized that he was here to do something big today. He became serious and made sure that the location of the bird's nest was very safe. Even the howling mountain wind would not overturn this fragile home.
When he looked up again, his neck stretched into a tense arc.
Jing Chunxi also repeatedly adjusted her posture and examined the mountain from different angles. Following the direction in which Jing Yi was cutting trees, cutting grass and walking, Jing Chunxi had already guessed the approximate location of the protrusion that Jing Yi mentioned, but there were too many trees and she couldn't see anything.
The intertwined treetops on the mountain are like an impenetrable net, with thorns and grass forming a natural barrier that is difficult to penetrate even with the sharpest eyes.
"Dad, are his eyes like eagles? Let's follow him. We can dig some steps along the way to save the trouble of going down." Pu Ge'er bent down to pick up the hoe, his knuckles turning white from the exertion. The splinter on the hoe handle pierced his palm, but he was completely unaware.
"Go up to us too."
The two climbed up along the path Jing Yi had cleared. Severed nettle stalks lay scattered about, a clear mucus oozing from the broken parts. This so-called path was actually just a temporary gap created by the vegetation, barely a foot wide at its widest point, and at its narrowest, requiring one to lean sideways to pass.
He dug a hole with each step, the damp earth groaning under his hoe. Each step Pu Ge'er took sank deep into the humus, and dead branches and leaves crumbled to dust beneath his feet.
Soon they were standing behind Jing Yi and could smell the green scent mixed with plant juice on his clothes.
"Why are you following me instead of staying put?" Jing Yi's voice was like sandpaper. Without turning back, he continued to swing his axe, sending out a few pale yellow sawdust as the axe cut through an old vine. But he didn't actually stop them, tacitly allowing them to follow.
It looked only a few feet, but the climb was so steep it made his legs tremble. Jing Yi advanced along a zigzag path, the path the hatchet carved through the dense forest like a twisted scar. Disturbed ants crawled up the handle of the hatchet to his wrist, only to be flung to the ground.
Finally, standing at a higher point farther from them than where they started, he swung the axe dozens of times back and forth, left and right, and suddenly stopped, with the axe wedged deeply into the trunk of a wild pear tree.
"Come up! Did you notice? This is a flat ground, and there is a flat corner on the outside." His breathing was as heavy as a bellows, and the clothes on his back were soaked and stuck to the raised curve of his spine.
When Jing Chunxi followed Pu Ge'er onto the last step of the earthen steps, his knees trembled slightly due to being tense for a long time.
Jing Yi had already cleared a patch of ground with his hatchet, and broken grass scattered around like shaved stubble. The so-called flat ground wasn't actually flat at all; it had a slight bulge in the center like a turtle's back, and the surface was covered in weathered gravel.
She squinted her eyes, but still couldn't see the flat angle Jing Yi mentioned - until he pointed to a particularly dense row of reeds at the edge.
"Give me the hoe." Jing Yi's open palm was covered with calluses, old and new, and black mud was embedded in the cracks between his nails. The hoe seemed to have life in his hands, and each blow gnawed the soil with precision.
Soon a shallow crescent-shaped pit was dug out on the outside of the platform, and the exposed soil showed a strange stratification - the upper layer was black and rich in humus, and the lower layer suddenly transitioned to sticky red soil.
"I'll push this dirt down, and then you can see." Jing Yi used the back of his hoe to pound the loosened dirt. Large and small clumps of earth began to roll down the mountainside. Fist-sized clumps collided with the roots of the dogwood trees and shattered instantly. Even larger clumps leaped downward as if alive, plowing clear tracks down the steep slope.
"See? If we'd just walked up this steep slope, it would have been much harder. It's very flat, with no place to stand." Jing Yi pointed with the tip of his hoe at a remarkably straight path. The largest piece of red soil, as if guided by an invisible hand, slid unimpeded all the way to the foot of the mountain, finally crumbling into a red mist at the edge of the vegetable patch.
"Does this mean the slope here is very steep, but all the way down is a straight, smooth slope, and there aren't that many weeds down here?" Pu Ge'er suddenly squatted down, rubbing a handful of the fallen red soil between his fingers. His pupils dilated slightly with sudden enlightenment, and his voice was filled with the joy of discovering a secret.
Only then did Jing Chunxi notice something unusual—a section of the slope about three feet wide that sloped downward was filled with only ground-level bermudagrass and a smattering of plantain. There were no shrubs, no trees, not even the common ferns. This bizarre vegetation distribution seemed like a deliberate flaw left by nature.
"Look here again." Jing Yi's hoe suddenly changed its angle. It was no longer digging aimlessly, but moving precisely along an invisible axis. The newly dug trench was incredibly straight, and the cut surfaces on both sides were as smooth as a mirror.
Just as Jing Chunxi and Pu Ge'er exchanged bewildered glances, the crisp sound of a hoe striking something hard startled a chickadee from the treetops. Then came a crackling sound, like some ancient seal being broken. An unnatural bluish-gray hue flashed beneath the upturned dirt.
"Come over here and take a look." Jing Yi moved sideways, leaving just enough space for two people to stand side by side. There were still a few pieces of strange debris stuck on the tip of the hoe - that was not the cross-section of the rock, but the edges and corners with obvious traces of human intervention.
"It's a brick!" He stretched out his hand to touch it, but retracted his fingers halfway.
"This must be blue bricks!" Jing Chunxi's fingertips had already touched the straight edge, where blue bricks were exposed and there were also traces of stones.