Chapter 952
Construction of a Reservoir
Chu Yang explained the situation to him.
After hearing this, Pigsy's expression changed from resistance to hesitation, and then from hesitation to a strange excitement.
"Digging a well? I, Old Pig, am best at digging tunnels! Back in Gao Village, I dug a well for my father-in-law's family, and I did it quickly and deeply—"
"Is the water from the well you dug in Gao Village sweet or bitter?" Sun Wukong asked.
Pigsy paused for a moment, then said, "Sweet...sweet, right?"
"That's fine. You'll be the starter tomorrow."
Pigsy opened his mouth as if to say something, looked at Chu Yang and then at Sun Wukong, and finally sighed resignedly.
"Alright, alright... what can I do? I'm just too kind-hearted..."
……
Tang Sanzang returned to the inn after nightfall.
His face looked even more haggard than in the morning. A whole day of working at the soup kitchen and constantly preaching had exhausted him. He sat at the table, picked up a bowl of cold soup and slowly drank it, his eyes somewhat unfocused.
Chu Yang poured him a glass of water.
"Master, you've worked hard."
Tang Sanzang shook his head: "This humble monk is not suffering. It is the disaster victims who are suffering. There is so little this humble monk can do..."
He raised his head, a deep sense of powerlessness in his eyes.
"Benefactor Chu, did you see the line of people getting porridge today? There are more than yesterday. But there's less grain than yesterday. The village head said that grain prices in the neighboring county have also gone up, and the amount of grain that can be bought with silver is decreasing."
"In another two or three days, the soup kitchens won't be able to keep going."
Chu Yang sat down opposite him.
"Master, there is something I would like to tell you."
Tang Sanzang looked at him.
Chu Yang said, "Today, I went out of the city to survey the terrain and discovered a location outside the city that may contain an underground water vein. I plan to take Wukong and Bajie tomorrow to try digging through the rock layers to see if we can bring out the groundwater."
Tang Sanzang stopped.
"really?"
"I can't guarantee it, but it's highly likely. If my judgment is correct, that water vein should have enough water to supply the entire city's daily needs."
Tang Sanzang put down the bowl, put his hands together, closed his eyes, and recited a Buddhist chant.
"Amitabha Buddha... If it can truly be so, then it is the Bodhisattva's blessing..."
He opened his eyes and stared intently at Chu Yang.
"Benefactor Chu, what do you need from this humble monk?"
Chu Yang thought for a moment.
"Master, please continue to comfort the disaster victims in the city. Also, please find a few strong laborers for me and have them gather at the city gate first thing tomorrow morning. Wukong and Bajie will be responsible for chiseling through the rock strata, but the subsequent clearing and repair work will require manpower."
Tang Sanzang immediately stood up.
"This humble monk will go find the village headman now."
“Master—” Chu Yang called out to him, “Eat first before you go. You haven’t eaten much all day.”
Tang Sanzang hesitated for a moment, then sat back down, picked up the bowl of cold porridge, and drank it all in one gulp.
Then he wiped his mouth, put on his robe, and hurriedly went out the door.
Chu Yang watched his figure disappear into the night.
Pigsy came over.
"Brother Chu Yang, are you really confident?"
"Seventy percent."
"What about the remaining 30%?"
Chu Yang smiled slightly.
"There's a 30% chance that we'll dig down and find only a puddle of wet mud."
Pigsy thought for a moment.
"If all we find is a puddle of wet mud, how embarrassing would that be for Master... He's already gone to tell the village head..."
"So we need to go all out tomorrow." Chu Yang stood up. "Go to sleep early. We'll set off at dawn tomorrow."
……
The sun was even more intense on the second day than it had been the previous days.
At dawn, it was alright; a thin layer of morning mist covered the fields outside the city, barely blocking some of the heat. But once the sun rose above the horizon, that mist seemed to be ripped away by an invisible hand, and the scorching sunlight pounded directly on the ground, drying up all the shade.
Chu Yang, Sun Wukong, and Zhu Bajie left the city before dawn. Following them were seven or eight strong laborers—the last able-bodied young men in the city who could still work, all summoned overnight by the village head.
These men were all pale and thin, their ribs almost visible, but their eyes shone with a resolute light. When the village head told them the news last night, not one of them hesitated.
water.
For a city that is dying of thirst, this word is more important than anything else.
The group arrived at the location that Chu Yang had marked the previous evening—a dry gully at the bottom of the northern slope of the hill.
Chu Yang stood at the lowest point of the gully, his feet on the circle he had drawn with pebbles yesterday.
“This is it.” He crouched down and patted the ground with his palm. “The rock layer is about ten feet deep. Below that is the water vein. What we need to do is start digging from this point, clear away the top layer of soil, and then chisel through the rock.”
Sun Wukong jumped onto a high rock beside the gully and looked down at the terrain below.
"A layer of soil and rock ten feet deep? That depends on how thick the rock layer is. If it's only a foot or two thick, I, Old Sun, can pierce through it with one blow. But if it's five or six feet, or even ten feet thick..."
“It might take some time,” Chu Yang said. “And we can’t just rush in. We have to control our strength when chiseling through the rock; if the water pressure below is too high, it could explode and injure someone.”
Sun Wukong responded with an "oh," clearly not taking the reminder too seriously.
Pigsy was already stretching his muscles. He propped his rake on the ground, took the newly acquired copper hammer from his waist and put it aside, rolled up his sleeves, revealing his two thick arms.
"Leave digging to me, Old Pig. Back when I was a monster in Fuling Mountain, I dug caves ten times deeper than this."
Chu Yang nodded: "Bajie, clear away the top layer of soil first. Wukong, wait until the soil is cleared before you go up. You guys—" He turned to the seven or eight strong laborers—"are responsible for transporting the excavated soil to the side and piling it up properly, so it doesn't block the ditch. After the water comes out, we'll need to dig an irrigation canal, and we'll need your help then."
The able-bodied men responded in unison.
Pigsy swung his rake and smashed it down toward the center of the circle marked by Chu Yang.
Click!
The nine-toothed rake's teeth dug deep into the hardened loess soil, cracks spreading outwards from the point of entry. Pigsy strained his arms and pried the rake upwards—with a whoosh—a large clump of loess was turned up, like a paving stone being lifted.
Second rake. Third rake. Fourth rake.
Pigsy was incredibly fast; each stroke of his rake turned up dozens of kilograms of earth. With each rise and fall of the rake, yellow soil flew like raindrops, and the pit expanded downwards at a visible speed.
The strong laborers were stunned.
They originally thought that digging a well would be a long and arduous task, requiring more than a dozen people to take turns digging for several days before they could achieve results.
Unexpectedly, this pig-headed monk did the work of twenty strong laborers all by himself.
In less than half an hour, a circular pit about ten feet in diameter and four or five feet deep had been formed.
The color of the soil layers on the pit walls is changing—the top one or two feet are dry yellow soil, then it turns into slightly moist brown sandy soil, and at the bottom, a grayish-white clay layer begins to appear.
"We've reached the clay layer." Chu Yang peered down from the edge of the pit. "Bajie, keep digging, but with less force. Below the clay is the rock layer." Zhu Bajie panted heavily, sweat pouring down his face, but he was full of energy.
“I know—hey—”
The rake continued digging downwards. The clay layer was much denser than the loess above, and the rake felt noticeable resistance as it pierced through. But for Pigsy, this resistance was like a tickle.
Another quarter of an hour passed.
Ding--
The rake's teeth struck something hard, producing a crisp metallic clang.
Pigsy's arms went numb from the recoil, and his tiger's mouth throbbed with pain.
"We've run into a tough opponent!"
Chu Yang's heart skipped a beat.
"That's the rock formation. Bajie, come up first and let Wukong take a look."
Pigsy climbed up the pit wall, his whole body covered in mud, looking just like a pig that had rolled out of a mud pit—well, he was a pig to begin with.
Sun Wukong leaped into the pit.
He squatted down, pressed his palm against the exposed grayish-white rock at the bottom of the pit, and tapped it twice.
"Hmm... granite. It's quite hard."
He stood up, held the golden cudgel upright in front of him, and pointed the tip of the cudgel at the rocks beneath his feet.
"Move aside. Everyone, keep your distance."
Chu Yang led the able-bodied men to higher ground on both sides of the gully.
Sun Wukong gripped the golden cudgel with both hands and took a deep breath.
"open--"
The golden cudgel, carrying immense force, slammed straight down into the rock beneath its feet.
boom!
The entire hill trembled at that moment.
The ground beneath their feet felt as if it had been slammed down by a giant hand, the shockwave spreading outwards from the bottom of the pit, cracks extending rapidly across the surface. The strong laborers standing on the edge of the pit staggered, two of them losing their footing and sitting directly on the ground.
A large cloud of grayish-white dust rose from the bottom of the pit, obscuring the view.
After the dust settled, Chu Yang saw that the golden cudgel had pierced through the rock layer and sunk at least three or four feet into the ground.
Sun Wukong gripped his golden cudgel, his brows slightly furrowed.
"The rock strata are about two feet thick. I, Old Sun, have already passed through them. But the situation down below is a bit strange—"
He slowly pulled out the golden cudgel.
The moment the rod tip emerged from the rock strata, a strange sound came from underground.
grunt.
It looked like some liquid was boiling and churning.
Then--
Water began to seep from the cracks in the rock strata.
At first, there were only a few thin streams of water seeping out from the hole made by the golden cudgel and the surrounding cracks, winding like snakes across the grayish-white rock surface.
The water is clear.
It wasn't the yellowish, murky water from city wells, but truly clear and transparent groundwater, shimmering with a faint blue light under the morning sun.
"There's water!" Pigsy jumped up from the edge of the pit. "There's water! There really is water!"
The able-bodied men saw it too, their eyes widened, their lips trembled, and they were speechless.
More and more water is seeping out.
The thin thread split into smaller streams, which then converged into a torrent. Water gushed continuously from the cracks in the rock strata, making a rushing sound, and quickly submerged the layer of grayish-white rock at the bottom of the pit.
The water level is rising at a rate visible to the naked eye.
"Monkey King, come up here!" Chu Yang shouted, "The water pressure is increasing!"
Sun Wukong shrunk the golden cudgel and stuffed it into his ear, then somersaulted out of the pit.
He had just landed when a deep, loud bang came from the bottom of the pit—BOOM!
The remaining rock layers completely collapsed under the pressure of the water.
A column of clear water gushed out from the bottom of the pit, shooting into the sky, reaching a height of two or three zhang (approximately 6.6-9 meters), and spreading into a silvery-white water curtain in the air, with water droplets refracting colorful light under the sunlight.
The able-bodied men were stunned.
The water jet sprayed for about ten breaths before its force gradually weakened, transforming from a towering fountain into a churning gushing spring. Clear groundwater continuously gushed out from the bottom of the pit, filling the pit, overflowing its edges, and flowing downstream along the dried-up gullies.
The water flowed across the cracked loess ground, making a hissing sound—it was the earth, which had been parched for two years, greedily sucking up the moisture.
The water in the gully grew deeper and wider. A brand-new stream took shape before everyone's eyes, winding its way down the gully and flowing towards the city.
The first person to cry was a burly man in his forties.
He knelt beside the ditch, cupped his hands in water, brought them to his lips, and took a sip.
Then his shoulders began to shake violently.
“Sweet…” his voice was hoarse and incoherent, “It’s sweet… the water is sweet…”
Other able-bodied men also flocked to the water's edge. Some cupped their hands to drink, some buried their faces in the water, and some simply lay in the shallow stream, letting the cool groundwater flow over their bodies.
A young man in his early twenties raised his face, still wet with sweat, and roared at the sky—
There were no words in that roar; it was just a pure sound that burst forth from the deepest part of the chest.
It was neither sadness nor joy, but an indescribable emotion—a sudden grasp of life at the edge of despair.
Chu Yang stood beside the gully, watching all of this.
His lips curled up slightly, then he pursed them again.
We can't be too happy yet. Although the water is flowing, there's still a lot to do—build reservoirs, dig irrigation canals to bring the water into the city, test the water quality to ensure it's suitable for long-term drinking, and estimate whether the water flow can meet the city's needs…
But at least, the most crucial first step has been taken.
The water is available.
Sun Wukong had somehow appeared beside him, arms crossed, watching the ever-flowing spring water.
"Your nose is even sharper than mine. I, Old Sun, couldn't even find the water underground, yet you, a mere Qi Refining cultivator, managed to find it."
Chu Yang said, "It's not that their noses are more sensitive, it's that their methods are different. Monkey King's abilities are for conquering heaven and earth, using them to find water is a waste of his talents. Although the foundation of the Taiyi Qi Cultivation Technique is weak, its strength lies in its subtlety; sensing the flow of natural spiritual energy is its most basic function."
Sun Wukong snorted.
"Any method, as long as it works, is fine."
Pigsy walked over from the water's edge, completely soaked, with water droplets on his face, grinning like a flower.
"That was great! I just soaked in the water for a while, and all the fatigue from the past two days is gone! This water is so cool, it's even more refreshing than sorghum liquor!"
He walked up to Chu Yang and patted Chu Yang's shoulder hard.
Chu Yang let out a muffled groan—the spot that had been slapped was precisely the side that was injured.
"Be gentle..." (End of Chapter)