It was far from being as dry as it is now, and I remember that there were days of heavy rain in the summer, and the rivers and ponds around the village would be full of water. At that time, there was almost no industrial pollution, let alone game consoles, video games, etc., so these ditch ponds became playgrounds for children throughout the summer vacation.

In fact, it is not only a playground, but also children can earn some pocket money in the water.

For example, catch fish and sell it.

There are many ways to catch fish, there are nets, there are fishing, there are fish panning - that is, a mud dam is piled up in a river somewhere, and then the water is drained, and when the water is empty, you can pick up fish on the ground.

Because there are some ditches and ditches near the village, although the area of the water area is not small, they are all divided into pieces, and these ditches and rivers slowly dry up after summer, so no one in the village has ever bought a boat.

But when I was eleven years old, I saw a strange black boat.

To add, the village I was in at that time was called Pagoda Village, but there were no pagodas in the village at that time, and as for whether there was a pagoda before, and why it was called Pagoda Village, not only I don't know, but even the old people in the village can't tell clearly.

There is an earthen embankment seven or eight miles west of Baota Village, and on the left side of the earthen embankment is a miscellaneous forest, and on the right is a river. The name of the river is the Zhulong River, because of the climate, the Zhulong River has become a seasonal river, every summer when the rain is strong, the river swells, sometimes there will be floods, and in the winter dry season, the river shrinks into a narrow one, and even freezes to the bottom of the river.

The river is some distance from the surrounding villages, and there is a forest across the earthen embankment, so few people come to the river. In addition, in the summer, the river is fast, and adults do not let children go there. But Rao is like this, the children's curiosity can not be suppressed, every year there will be many children running to the side of the river to play, every year there are children drowning in the river incident.

At that time, there was a child leader in Baota Village, and we all called him Brother Da Ran. Brother Da Ran has not married until he is twenty-five or sixteen years old, and he always mixes with the children in the village, and the village calls him "a single".

At that time, people in the village got married early, and they all hated to check their household registration books every day, and they hurried to get the certificate as soon as the legal age birthday passed, and even spent money to ask someone to modify their birthday to get married and have children early.

So Brother Da Ran became an outlier in the village at the age of twenty-five, and he was named "Brother Single". When I typed these words today, I thought that I was still in my thirties and single, and I would probably be crowned the title of "King of Singles" at that time.

I remember that day was gloomy, the kind of weather that couldn't rain until it stood. The whole day seemed to be wet, and it felt like all the moisture was being inhaled into my lungs. Whenever this time comes, it is surprisingly hot, and almost all the men, women and children in the village will go to the river and pond to soak in the heat to cool off. But when there are too many adults in the water, it is difficult for children to have fun. At this time, Brother Da Ran stood up and called a few children in private.

"Let's go, let's go to the Zhulong River to play."

"It's a little far." There are also children who question it.

"Go by bike! There are few people over there, the land is empty, and it's cool! "There are even children who have come up with solutions.

So five or six children wanted to follow Brother Da Ran to play on the other side of the Huanlong River. I didn't want to go because I heard from adults that it was easy to drown and that there were traffickers who abducted and sold children. But there was a cousin named Yan Yan who angered me with a word.

"The wooden stake (my nickname) is timid, so don't force him."

Several children, large and small, burst into laughter.

When the boy was a child, he was most afraid of being ridiculed for being timid, and I was angry and said, "Go, go!" ”

Then a few of us children carried three bicycles on our backs, and walked along the potholed dirt road in the fields, through the sheep intestine path in the miscellaneous woods, and over the low and not low earthen embankment, to the side of the Zhulong River, where the river is wide and the water is gentle.

There are a lot of cattails growing along the river, and the cattails are generally fish nests. There was a guy named Tongzhu in us, who was very addicted to fish, and as soon as he got to the river, he took off his shirt and tiptoed into the water to touch the bushes. Who knew that Rao was like this, and the fish were alarmed, and a big grass carp with a black back suddenly jumped up from the water, hit him on the chin with a tail, and then escaped with the force of bouncing back.

We laughed on the shore. The copper pillar wiped his face and stood in the water and made a "shhh

"Don't be noisy! The fish are all gone! ”

At this moment, we saw a sudden churn in the water, and the waves splashed in the grass, as if something huge was stirring under the water.

"Come on, come on!" We were all terrified and shouted at the bronze pillar.

But the bronze pillar did not move, and we saw that he was full of excitement, and an upside-down onion was poured into the water. The surface of the water was smashed by his fat and strong body.

We were about to go into the water when we saw a dozen fish floating up in the river with white bellies. It stands to reason that the Zhulong River is a living water, and there are very few large areas of dead fish in the living water, unless the water is poisonous. So this situation frightened several children who were going to save people at once.

While the children were in amazement, they heard the sound of a roaring motor coming from the bending side of the river.

A huge black ship sailed upstream.

"Hey, save people! Save! Brother Da Ran saw the boat as if he saw a savior, and he kept waving and shouting at the black boat.

The black ship was getting closer, but there was apparently no response from above. Not only was there no response, but the boat also looked weird, it was different from the narrow, low tin boats we had in the area, but the kind of building boats with pavilions on top that can only be seen in comic strips.

And the ship is pitch black, even the windows are black. I suspect that the people on the ship don't see the outside world at all, or rather don't want to see the world outside at all.

The black ship exuded an air of mysterious tranquility that frightened us children into shouting, not escaping, and even less approaching. At this moment, I saw a woman in red coming out of the black boat, she was like a beautiful woman from the Western Regions in the painting, and even her face was covered with red veil.

The woman in red walked past the stern to check on something, and it was then that I noticed a thick rod in the stern of the black boat, and a strong line on the rod was taut, and the other end of the line was clearly hooked on something.

Due to the distance and the fact that it was underwater, I couldn't see the real face of the thing under the water, but I could still make out that it was a living thing. The thing had a white back, and it looked like it was two or three feet long, and it had obviously been caught by the rod on the black boat, so it was rolling wildly under the water, trying to get rid of the entanglement of the fishing line.

The woman in red walked to the fishing rod, leaned over to look at the movement in the water, and then forcefully circled a roulette under the fishing rod, and the fishing line instantly tightened, and the head of the underwater thing seemed to be lifted suddenly, and a pointed beak with scales appeared on the surface of the water, and the fangs in the mouth shone with cold light.

The rope probably tossed it up enough, and the thing wagged its tail a few times, and seemed exhausted, and it no longer struggled hard, as if it had resigned itself to fate.

"Hey!" A crisp voice suddenly came.

I was startled and turned to look at my companion next to me, and the voice didn't seem to be coming from them, as each of them seemed to be startled too.

The woman in red beckoned to us, and I realized that she was greeting us, and then we saw her pick something up from the boat and throw it into the river. Before we could figure out what she meant, the black boat pulled the living creature behind it, and suddenly drove far downstream, then turned around a reed in front of it and disappeared.

"Bronze Pillar!" One of the children suddenly shouted.

Then I remembered that the bronze pillar was still in the river, so I quickly looked up into the river. I saw that the guy was somehow standing on the surface of the river, trembling like sifting chaff, and when I looked at him closely, it turned out that he was not floating on the water, but he was standing on a small wooden row.

Then I realized that the thing that the woman in red threw into the water was a wooden raft, and she must have seen the copper pillar that was still struggling in the river, and then threw down the wooden raft for him to grab, and then called us to save him.

Brother Da Ran hurriedly jumped into the river with two children with good water nature, swam to the side of the wooden raft, they stepped on the water, and pushed the copper pillar on the wooden raft towards the shore.

"Don't ...... Don't be busy......" Tong Zhu suddenly spoke.

"What's wrong? Isn't there something uncomfortable? Brother Da Ran asked.

"No, it's not. Pick up fish, pick up fish, ......" the copper pillar pointed to the surface of the river, still trembling.

"Ahh

Only then did we notice that the surface of the water was already full of all kinds of fish, large and small. Some of the fish seemed to have just recovered from their senses, their tails flicking gently on the surface, and some of them had begun to shake their bodies and burrow into the water. It turned out that just now we were only watching the ship save people, and the string in our brains collapsed at all, and we didn't even see such a good thing.

A few of our children who went to the banks of the Zhulong River that day made a fortune. When we picked up fish on the surface of the river, we hurriedly surrounded a small pond with mud on the shore and threw all the fish into the pond. Brother Da Ran and the other two children pedaled their bicycles and brought a few bamboo baskets, and each of us shared a large basket of fresh fish.

When dusk came to the entrance of the village, Brother Da Ran called a few of us who were full of joy and hugged the fish together, and told us with a serious face.

"No one is allowed to say anything about what happened today! Otherwise, we won't be able to go to the river in the future! ”

"Okay!" We say.

"Yes, if there is a fish, you can get it, who said that!" Tong Zhu held the basket, trembling all over, and smiled stupidly in response.

This matter has been buried in my heart for more than ten years, and I only told one person about it when I graduated from college.

But how did the mysterious "Hell's Visitor" know? Is it really by smell?

But how is this possible?