the last priest

Hetu was only 12 years old at the time. At that time, the country had enforced nine-year compulsory education for many years, so he had to be sent to school.He Tu wants to be a few years older than me, but he was delayed in the early years, so although he is old, he has to learn from scratch.

Fortunately, the Hetu people are talented and intelligent, and they can read and write at first. They study during the day and learn from Cha Wenbin at night. They have lived like this for more than a month.

Behind the elementary school where Hetu is located is a willow forest, and above it is a stone arch bridge. A small river runs through the willow forest, only 20 meters away from the school.

This school is a bit old, all small bungalows, with slogans from the Cultural Revolution still painted on the walls.Black asbestos tiles and mottled yellow walls sent away generations of villagers.

At that time, there were no toys on campus, not to mention the single and double poles that can be seen everywhere now.There is no court or runway here, and the ground is dusty left by the children after school.A co-ed toilet, separated from each other by hard boards, a canteen where the children cook their meals, six classrooms and two offices for the teachers.

Because Hetu was older than the children in the same class, and he was naturally taller, he was seated behind.There is a door at the back of this classroom, and the door is facing the river. There is a shallow pond there, which is the place where the women in the village wash their clothes and vegetables, and it is also a paradise for these children to entertain after class.

His gaze rarely stays on the blackboard, but often looks at the river outside the door. Although he has not been introduced to Zha Wenbin for a long time, the years of reading and seeing have given this child a certain understanding of Feng Shui.Others learn to write or draw with a pencil, but this child draws the Feng Shui map of this generation on paper. As a propagandist of atheism, the glorious people's teacher will never allow his students to do this in class things.

Ever since, Cha Wenbin began to be invited to the school as a parent.Most of the people living here know his identity, but there is a sense of arrogance in the bones of intellectuals. With eyes that sweep away all superstitions, Cha Wenbin can only warn Hetu to pay attention to his identity in school.

There is a small village ten miles away from Zha Wenbin's village, with about [-] or [-] households. This place was originally rich in hickory nuts, and people who rely on the mountains to eat the mountains settled here and gradually formed a village.This village originally had a school of its own, but in those years family planning had begun, and under the policy that each household was only allowed to have one child, the successor population of this village seemed a bit thin.

By the generation that was about my age, there were only three boys left in their village who needed to study.Originally, there was a substitute female teacher in that village, but she got married and left the mountain, so the students here lost their teachers.College students who graduated from the provincial capital would not be willing to enter that dilapidated school on the mountainside, and experienced teachers were even more reluctant to transfer there. Later, the person in charge of education slapped his head and withdrew the elementary school, and joined Cha Wenbin and his village. The school was merged, so the only three boys left in that elementary school came down the mountain.

These two villages are located ten miles apart, and they are all mountain roads. During this period, there was not a single family, let alone street lights.In summer, it is reasonable for children to get up early and go to school, but in winter, it gets dark early in the mountains and the mountain roads are easy to freeze, making it difficult to go to school.Everyone expects their children to be successful, and it seems that their only choice is to jump out of the farm through reading. After weighing and discussing with several parties, the three boys were arranged to live in school.

At that time, there were no life teachers in the school. In addition to the one-day lessons, the teachers in rural primary schools had to do farm work in the fields when they returned home at night. No one had time to take care of these children. This task fell to guarding the school gate. And on an old man in charge of the cafeteria.

Because there is no dormitory, the children are huddled in a room where sundries are piled up. A bed made of old door panels is the only furniture here.

Because they are still young, these children basically go home once a week, and the old man takes care of them most of the time.After all, the old man's work and rest schedule can't be compared with these thieves' children. At first, the three children went to bed on time quite honestly. After a few days, the freshness immediately made them have a strong interest in this new environment. .

Boys who are XX years old are so easy to calm down. They either sneak into the classroom today to cause damage or stuff frogs into the principal's office tomorrow. The school is very troublesome for these three children but there is nothing they can do about it.

The weather in October was already a bit cold in the mountains, and the three monkey cubs ran to the river to take a bath after school.The water in that small river pond is not deep for adults, only waist-high, but it is still a dangerous area for these dolls with big butts.

Coincidentally that day, the old man in the cafeteria was picked up by his daughter for dinner, saying that there were guests from afar.Now the three children were completely out of restraint and tossed hard.That spot happened to be a meal spot again, and it didn't take more than one o'clock, and the country people would finish work and eat, so there were few people around the school.

The three male dolls took off their clothes and jumped into the water. At first, they were a little apprehensive about the depth of the water, and they just played in the outer area. As the water battles passed each other, one of the children was pinched by the other two. Gradually retreated to the deep water area.

This small pond built by man-made dams for washing vegetables has never been dangerous in the eyes of the locals, but at this moment it has become a life-swallowing black hole.

The water pool is generally funnel-shaped, and the depth is not known when you step on it because of the river sand. The middle part is a large smooth stone wall. One of the children is standing at the junction of the river sand and the stone wall.As one of the children laughed and slapped the river water in his hand, the child took a step back but found that his feet were empty, and then a big mouthful of river water was poured into his mouth.

Struggling, this is the only reaction to a person who fell into the water in a panic. None of these children can swim, because there is no decent river in the village on the mountainside where they grew up.

When the other two saw their companion falling into the water, they still laughed happily at first, but later when they found that their companion's head was completely submerged in the waterline, only a pair of palms were still struggling to come out of the water, they panicked.

Because they were afraid that they would be scolded by their families if things were revealed, the two children did not rush ashore immediately to seek help from adults, even though there were several families within 20 meters of the river.In fact, at this time, only an adult is needed to stand in the river and lift their companion with one hand, but for them at that time, they seemed to trust their own hands even more.

For people who also can't swim, to save a person who fell into the water is just adding another person who fell into the water.But they are still too young to understand the reason behind it. Saving people is the only signal that fills their brains now.

So one kid went into the deep end, and the second kid went into the deep end, and the kids in the water grabbed each other for whatever they could get hold of, which was each other's hands, feet, and bodies.

Tragedy, that's how it happened.In a small pool of less than 1.5 square meters and the deepest depth of only [-] meters, the three children never climbed up again.

The people closest to them were still eating steaming dishes at home, the men began to pour a little white wine, and the women beat and scolded their babies for not eating the rice in the clean bowl. No one noticed that there were three rivers across the road. The fresh life just disappeared. . . . . .

When a woman went to the river to catch ducks, it was still dark, and there were a few balls of clothes floating on the river. The woman thought it was someone's clothes from upstream.When she found that there seemed to be hands and feet hidden under those clothes, the woman rushed to the shore frantically and rushed to her home.

Almost all the people in the village were present, including the village halfway up the mountain. The men were holding the cold dead body of the child in a daze, and the women were crying faintly as they pulled the doll's clothes.

Because that school did not meet the basic conditions of a boarding school, this incident would definitely be a major campus safety accident if it were put to the present.However, in those days, in rural areas where the concept of the legal system was relatively backward, there were still people who secretly solved this problem in another way for the sake of the black hat on their heads.

Some people began to say that passing the stone arch bridge in the middle of the night could hear the sound of children playing below, and some people said that in the dead of night, they saw three children sitting by the river wet and crying.

Three students died all of a sudden, no one dared to go to that school, and the women did not dare to wash vegetables by the river. It is said that several families nearby can often hear children calling for help in the river at night.All of a sudden, the whole people panicked, and all kinds of rumors of death were flying all over the sky. The adults locked their children at home and did not let them go out, lest they would become scapegoats.

Zha Wenbin's coming out of the mountain was not called by the villagers, nor did he take the initiative, but was found by a certain high-ranking official in the county accompanied by Director Jin after he was punished.