After about one-third of the gunpowder had been poured into the bottle, Jack took out a pinky-sized object from his pocket. The thing was wrapped in a layer of yellow paper, with one half solid and the other half hollow.

Jack took out a pair of scissors and cut a piece of rope, also about as thick as a thumb, to around thirty centimeters. Then he stuffed one end of the rope into the hollow part of the yellow tube. Only when he couldn’t push it in any further did he put the yellow tube, with the rope attached, into the bottle.

“That tube is a detonator, and the rope is the fuse. This fuse won’t go out if it gets wet, and it doesn’t burn too fast either…” Seeing the confused look on Ethan Foster’s face, Chad took it upon himself to explain. Who in Weijia Village hasn’t gone fish-blasting before? Chad’s village chief dad had done it plenty of times.

“Heh, Chad, didn’t your family’s gunpowder come from ours anyway?”

Hearing Chad’s words, Jack chuckled, but his hands didn’t slow down at all. After inserting the detonator, he quickly poured the rest of the gunpowder into the bottle, then grabbed three chopsticks to tamp the gunpowder down a bit.

After finishing all this, Jack fetched some water, ran out to the yard, and made a lump of mud, which he used to seal the mouth of the bottle, leaving only a fuse about ten centimeters long sticking out. A homemade firecracker was now complete.

“This thing packs quite a punch, doesn’t it?” Looking at the bottle in Jack’s hand, Ethan Foster felt a faint sense of danger.

“Of course it’s powerful. This is blasting powder used for quarrying, and not even half of it is in here…” Jack nodded proudly and said, “Blasting fish is different from quarrying. These explosives are just to stun or kill the fish, so you have to use a bit more.”

“All right, it’s done. Let’s go now…” In recent years, the reservoir management had gotten stricter, and fish-blasting had become less common. Chad hadn’t done it in a while, so he was quite eager to get started.

“Aren’t you two going to eat a bit more?” Jack didn’t mind, reaching behind the door for a green satchel, which contained two already-made homemade firecrackers.

“We already ate half our fill just now…” Ethan Foster was a bit excited too. He’d heard the two talk about how fun fish-blasting was since he was a kid, and now he wanted to see what it was all about.

“Good, then. No one in the village is asleep yet, and it won’t make too much noise…” Jack glanced at the clock on the wall—it was just after seven. At this hour, the villagers were either watching TV or drinking and playing cards, so no one would notice anything by the reservoir.

Chapter 10 Homemade Firecrackers (Part 2)

“Let’s go. Move quickly later—once we fill these two baskets with fish, we’ll head back…” Jack took out two fish baskets from behind the door, carrying one in his hand and slinging the satchel over his shoulder with practiced ease.

“Isn’t one enough?” Ethan Foster took one of the baskets, a bit puzzled, because he noticed that each basket was nearly a meter tall—fitting dozens of kilos of fish wouldn’t be a problem.

“Heh, since we’re doing it, why not catch more?” Jack chuckled and said, “Later we’ll go to the city and bring some for my dad and the others. The fish sold in the city are all fed with pellets—they don’t taste good at all…”

“So that’s how it is…” Ethan Foster nodded at this. When he was with Jack and Chad, he didn’t talk much, because he knew he didn’t understand this world very well—listening more and talking less was the way to learn.

“Hey, wait, bring this bottle of liquor too…” Just as they were about to leave, Chad grabbed the remaining bottle of liquor from the table and stuffed it into his coat before following Ethan Foster toward the reservoir.

The reservoir was a little over half a kilometer from Weijia Village. In the daytime, it would only take a few minutes to walk there, but at night, with no streetlights, it took the three of them nearly ten minutes to reach the edge of the reservoir.

“The reservoir at the foot of the mountain… is it really this big?” Seeing the moonlight shimmering in silver ripples across the lake, Ethan Foster was stunned. Although he’d never been down the mountain, he could see the reservoir from above.

But from the mountain, it looked far away and not very big. Now that he was up close, Ethan Foster realized that what used to look like a small pond was actually so vast he couldn’t see the other side—it was far beyond what he’d imagined.

“This was originally a lake, and the reservoir was built later…”

Seeing Ethan Foster’s astonished expression, Chad smiled and explained, pointing at the lake: “The elders in the village say this lake has never dried up. The deepest part is forty or fifty meters. Years ago, someone even caught a fish over a meter long in here…”

“All right, Chad, enough with the nonsense…” Jack interrupted, sounding annoyed. “Didn’t you say there’s no one on watch? Why are the lights still on in that house over there?”

“Huh?” Hearing Jack’s words, both Ethan Foster and Chad looked toward the small bungalows about fifty meters away by the reservoir, and sure enough, one of the houses still had its lights on.