Our hope did not materialize.

Early the next morning, I took Lao Yao's letter of introduction to the bus station to buy a ticket. At first, there was no time, then there was no place, and then there was no one to be found. It wasn't until half past eleven that I got my ticket done. But man was exhausted.

I remember that there was a place to rest around here. It was a teahouse that also sold food, and the house was built next to a small river, with a thatched roof, a railing with tree branches, some flowers and plants planted in front of the court, and a few weeping willows growing by the river. The entrance is overgrown with bushes and is led into by a path. Outside the gate, it looks like an abandoned garden. I've been to this teahouse once, the seats are clean, there are not many customers, I like this kind of place.

I sat down at a small tea table in front of the fence in the shade of the willows by the river. I ate two bowls of noodles and was dozing off on the back of a bamboo chair when I was suddenly woken up by a cacophony of human voices. I don't know what's going on. All I saw was some of the guests running outside excitedly. A few people stood in front of the fence and looked out at the other side. On the opposite bank is a winding loess road, and on the other side of the road is a rice field, and outside the rice field is a white and bright river. The small river in front of me is its tributary. Watch the bustling country people and children stretch a line from the loess road to it.

"What's the matter? What are they looking at? After a while, I saw a parishioner approaching and pointed to the men who were standing in front of the fence and asked him.

"Drown," replied the cousin nonchalantly, as if it were commonplace. He glanced in the direction I was pointing in with my finger, and moved his mouth contemptuously to add, "How can you see here?" ”

Drowning again! How do I see calamity everywhere! Do you have to keep reminding me that I'm living in the midst of suffering?

A fat woman covered her face with a handkerchief and walked over crying. She was followed by an old woman and a man who looked like a coachman. They came from the other side of the river.

"This is his mother, she was crying so sadly," the cousin said, pointing to the woman. "She is a widow, and there is only one son in the two rooms."

"When did you drown?" I asked.

"Yesterday was the second half of the day, and it was several miles from here! He was only eighteen or nineteen years old, and he said that he was making a bet, and people said, do you dare to float across the other side? He said that he dared, regardless of thirty-seven twenty-one, he floated over. Yesterday the water was too big, he was not careful, and when he floated halfway, the water swirled twice, and he was finished. The corpse rushed here, blocked the pillars of the bridge, and only saw it this morning, and his mother knew that he had just come to cry, and now he was probably going to prepare for him. "It was as if he were telling an ancient story, with no sympathy and no pity.

I stopped asking him questions, tiredly rested my head on the pillow of the bamboo chair and closed my eyes. I didn't feel sleepy, I just quietly thought about Xiaohu.

About half an o'clock later, everything was already in a state of calm. I got up, paid, and walked out the door. I had walked less than a hundred paces, and on the way, I saw the bridge that the parity had spoken of. There were still five or six people standing at the head of the bridge. Curiosity encouraged me to go there.

The bridge is quietly erected on both banks, and the bridge is not wide. There was a low-hanging willow tree on the left of this end of my stand, the leaves were almost touching the water, close to this willow tree, and under the bridge, there was a completely ** young man floating on his back. His left hand was stretched upwards and a strap was attached to the bridge post, and his right hand hung loosely at his waist. A long, upright face with a black-gray tinge, eyes and lips tightly closed. It was as if he was lying there sleeping, not like a dead corpse.

"It's like a living person!" I muttered to myself in amazement.

"It looks better at first, a blushing face!" A countryman next to him answered, "When his mother came to cry, his face changed immediately." ”

"Is there such a thing?" I don't believe it.

"What I saw with my own eyes may not be fake!" He said, glaring at me.

I buried my head and silently stared at the quiet sleeping face. Gradually, I was dazzled. I seem to see the little tiger sleeping there. I was taken aback, almost screamed, and quickly rubbed my eyes, but there was still a strange sleeping face under the bridge. That's death! So fast, so simple, so real!