Poor but talented scholar

Chapter 13 Self-Salvation

Whenever the fishing net is pulled up and the struggling sounds are felt, cheers erupt in the ancestral hall.

Baskets of carp were carried into the ancestral hall.

The plump carp slapped their tails in the bamboo basket, splashing mud and water onto the villagers' faces, but no one complained about the dirt. Instead, they wiped their faces and laughed.

Lu Chuan stood under the pillar, watching the women skillfully scrape off scales and gut their bellies.

As night fell, several bonfires were lit inside the ancestral hall. Fish soup bubbled in earthenware pots, its milky white broth emitting an enticing aroma.

Lu Chuan couldn't help but look at his seventh uncle.

This elderly man, who had lived a life of poverty, was now sitting hunched over beside his ancestral tablet.

Beside him lay a wooden box wrapped in layers of oilcloth, which he had risked his life to rescue from the flood—one of the few remaining classics and philosophical works of the Lu family.

"Chuan'er, come here." Seventh Uncle beckoned, his voice hoarse.

Lu Chuan obediently sat down beside him. The old man's hands trembled as he untied the oilcloth, revealing a copy of "The Great Learning" that was wrinkled from the moisture.

"Chuan'er..." Seventh Uncle called out Lu Chuan's formal name, his gaze lingering on the yellowed pages of the book as if caressing a rare treasure.

"In my life, I haven't achieved anything remarkable. I've just been tending to these few acres of barren land and a few old books, and I'm nearing the end of my life. I originally thought that this flood would wash away the fortunes of our Lu family."

He raised his head, his cloudy eyes gleaming with anticipation: "But these past two days, my heart has been pounding when I look at you."

"You are a smart child, more composed than any child I have ever met."

"You must study hard. If you can pass the imperial examinations in the future, you will be able to stand tall even when you see those wolves and tigers in the county government office."

Looking at his seventh uncle's fervent expectations, Lu Chuan felt a heavy pressure.

In an era where imperial power did not extend to the countryside and clans were paramount, a scholar was a safe haven for the entire clan and a talisman that could reduce taxes and corvée labor.

"Third Uncle, I understand." Lu Chuan took the book, his fingertips touching the cool paper.

He no longer went to see the clansmen in the ancestral hall who had temporarily forgotten their sorrows because of the fish and meat, nor did he listen to the surging water outside the door.

He took a deep breath, exhaled all the distracting thoughts from his chest, lowered his head again, and immersed himself completely in the words under the faint firelight.

"Knowing when to stop leads to stability; stability leads to tranquility; tranquility leads to peace..."

The sound of recitation echoed in the silent ancestral hall.

On the evening of the fifth day, as the last rays of the setting sun disappeared below the horizon.

The open space in front of the ancestral hall, which had been occupied by the flood for several days, finally struggled to emerge from the mud.

"The road is open!"

Someone's shout woke up the entire Lu family, who were huddled in the ancestral hall.

Lu Chuan squeezed through the crowd to the doorway. The area outside had indeed faded, revealing a large expanse of mud.

"Listen up, everyone! Don't rush back to your rooms and start crying!"

Sixth Uncle Lu Dehuang stood on the high platform, clutching the "self-rescue note" that Lu Chuan had given him, his voice booming like a broken gong:

"A collapsed house is just an object, but if a person dies, then there's truly no hope! Lu Chuan said that when the water recedes, the mud remains—this is 'fertilizer' that God has given us! Now, let's follow this kid's orders!"

Lu Chuan didn't waste any words. He stepped into the mud that was above his knees and pointed to the wasteland on the back slope where the water was receding the fastest.

"Father, take some men to dig drainage ditches. We can't let stagnant water stagnate and make the land stink."

"Third Aunt, take the women up the hill, not just to dig for wild vegetables. See those serrated leaves of that wild wormwood? Pull them all up, they're a life-saving medicine!"

Lu Shouye responded in a muffled voice, picked up the wooden shovel, and went down.

"Brother, look at this basket of green things I dug up, can we eat them?" Lu Xiaoman came closer, her face covered in mud.

Lu Chuan looked down, reached out and wiped the mud off his sister's nose, his eyes softening.

"You can eat it! Xiaoman is really capable. Go give it to your third aunt and tell her to blanch it a couple more times to remove the bitterness so it's easier to swallow."

Lu Xiaoman responded cheerfully, picked up her small basket, and ran off, her steps uneven.

Lu Chuan straightened up and looked at the land beneath his feet that had been ravaged by the flood.

The mud looked sticky and smelly, but in his eyes, someone with modern agricultural knowledge, it was simply natural fertilizer.

"Listen up, everyone!" Lu Chuan wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Don't rush to repair the roof if it hasn't completely collapsed yet. We have to race against the sun and burn the buckwheat and mung beans while the mud is still warm."

"If we plant now, we can harvest another crop before autumn, which will be our lifeline for the winter!"

The villagers, who were initially somewhat bewildered and preoccupied with searching for pots and pans in the ruins, were brought back to their senses by Lu Chuan's shout.

Sixth Uncle, leaning on his cane, tapped it loudly: "What are you all standing there for? Listen to Chuanzi, Fifth Brother, Sixth Brother, take the wooden plow, if there are no oxen, we'll pull it ourselves, and turn over this mud!"

The men, shirtless, with ropes digging into their shoulders, pulled the plow through the ankle-deep mud.

The women carried baskets, searching for wild vegetables on the hillside while keeping an eye out for the "life-saving herb" that Lu Chuan had mentioned.

Lu Chuan used a withered twig to scribble and draw in the mud. He was calculating the route of the drainage ditch, and also the daily food rations for these hundreds of people.

"Chuanzi, what are you looking at?" Lu Ming approached unnoticed. He had just led a group to pull up a large bundle of purple-stemmed wormwood, and his hands were red from the effort. "Can these herbs really prevent diseases?"

"It can prevent it." Lu Chuan nodded, his tone serious. "After a great flood, there will inevitably be a great epidemic. These wormwoods can be dried and used to fumigate houses, or boiled to make water for wiping the body. This will keep the villagers from getting stomachaches or fevers."

"Lu Ming, take two literate men and collect all the old clothes that each household has cleaned out. Scald them with boiling water, and they are not allowed to wear them until they are thoroughly scalded."

Looking at Lu Chuan's calm and experienced demeanor, Lu Ming's admiration for him grew stronger.

For the first time, he felt that studying was so that he could be like Lu Chuan, able to hold up an umbrella for the whole village when the sky fell.

On the other side, Lu Shouye had been swinging a wooden shovel all day, his hands were cracked from the effort, but looking at the drainage ditch that was already half-dug, he chuckled foolishly: "Chuan'er, look, the water is flowing smoothly now, this land... this land can survive!"

"Father, not only will you live, but you will live even more prosperously than in previous years."

Lu Chuan's voice wasn't loud, but it carried a calmness that made the men around him listen attentively.

"The river mud washed down from upstream is full of nutrients, as long as we can endure the hardship these next few days."

"Once the buckwheat heads emerge before winter, our Lujia Village will not only be able to make up for the shortfall in summer taxes, but also allow every household to have an extra bowl of thick soup."

Upon hearing this, Lu Shouye's eyes, which had become cloudy from overwork, suddenly lit up.

For these men who toil in the fields, nothing is more tempting than "a bowl of thick soup."