The River Dragon Demanded a Husband, So the Scholar Stepped Forward novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Night on the Dike

The willows went down with a sound.

Black water poured through the gap, ankle deep and then knee deep, and the line of villagers on the dike broke into shouting.

"Desks!" Liyan yelled. "The schoolhouse! Get the desks!"

He did not stop to think how mad it was.

Eleven small oak desks came down the bank on the shoulders of eleven farmers.

They went into the breach one after another, wedged with sandbags and broken willow trunks.

Liyan stood in the water to his waist and shoved with them.

The surge hit the new wall, and held.

It hit again, and held.

Ma Dechang was beside him, wet to the eyes, holding up a beam with his bare arms and weeping with effort.

"Hold it," Liyan shouted at him. "Hold it, you old crook. You owe us."

"I know!" the headman wailed. "I know!"

The second wave came at the fourth hour, as the marks had said it would.

It was bigger, and it was meant to be.

But far out on the bend, a wall of silver water still stood against the dark.

The black surge shouldered against it and could not climb.

Slowly it turned and spread across the empty paddies, just as the water marks had said it would.

By the grey hour the sluices were closed.

The fields lay under a foot of mud, and no roof was under water, and not one person was lost.

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