The White Olive Tree

Chapter 13

By the afternoon, the small team had cleared thirteen landmines. They disarmed all of them, lining them up neatly on the ground.

Song Ran squatted on the side taking photos. She saw Li Zan divide the landmines into two rows and asked, "Is there any difference?"

"These six are pressure-activated, and these seven are tripwire-activated," Li Zan explained.

Song Ran held up the recording microphone and asked, "What does pressure-activated mean?" 

"It explodes as soon as you step on it."

"What about the kind in the movies?"

"Movies?" He turned to look at her. "In movies, they usually show mines that explode only when you release the pressure. It's called pressure-release. It's rarely used in reality; usually, mines explode upon pressure, no time for sentimentality."

"Oh," she realized. In the past, she often wondered why landmines had such a significant flaw in movies, always allowing the protagonist to escape. It turns out it's the scriptwriter's design.

In the late afternoon, the team cleared a safe passage. The Dongguo soldiers with the team set up markers alongside the passage and also dispatched individuals to inform the local residents in the village.

Everyone packed up their instruments and tools and started heading back. After a whole day of fieldwork, everyone was exhausted, silently focusing on the journey with fatigue replacing the morning's lightness.

The sky was cloudless, a vast expanse of blue like the sea; the sun still intense, scorching the mountains and fields. Passing by a hill, the vast wheat fields looked like a golden ocean.

Song Ran, with sharp eyes, spotted an elderly person wearing ethnic clothing and a sweat-soaked headscarf.

He hunched over, carrying a hemp sack, slowly walking along the field embankment. The old man was thin and frail, but the sack on his back seemed unusually robust, like a big, round dumpling, bending his waist.

Song Ran opened the camera, adjusted the lens, and spoke softly into the recording microphone, "Encountered a local elderly person on the road. He's carrying a sack, probably... grains?"

Li Zan listened, looked up, and saw the elderly person in coarse clothes and pants walking through the blue sky and wheat fields, resembling a painting. He squinted to make out the details and said, "It's grains. When we came over this morning, he was harvesting wheat in the field on that side of the mountain."

Song Ran commented, "It looks heavy."

Li Zan suddenly asked, "Guess how many kilograms?"

Song Ran couldn't guess, "I don't know. Can you tell?"

Li Zan looked again, contemplating, "Around 40 kilograms."

Song Ran had no concept of weight. She adjusted the brim of her hat, damp with sweat, and asked, "How heavy is 40 kilograms?"

He glanced at her from head to toe and said, "About your weight."

She whispered, "I'm not that light. Besides, I don't think the sack is that heavy."

Captain Yang, on the side, interjected, "I think it's heavier than you, probably over 100 kilograms."

It turned out that everyone had heard their conversation. With Yang speaking up, the soldiers began to talk, discussing:

"How exaggerated! Maybe around 25 kilograms, and there might be cotton inside."

"Nonsense, there's no cotton here."