And just like that, the mountain daddy became a lonely man, no, and the old buffalo.

From that time on, I was afraid to see Daddy, afraid that he would ask me to call him "Daddy of the same year". Because my friends say he's the water ghost's dad. The way he looked at me became unpredictable, wondering if he was looking at me or fantasizing about looking at his son. Every time I ran into him herding cattle on the road after school, I ran as hard as I could. He often just reached out to me and asked me to call him, and I was already running away without a shadow. A few times I looked back at him, and he reluctantly shook his outstretched hand, sighing and shaking his head.

No one dared to go to the lotus pond, and everyone faintly felt that the mountain father and daughter-in-law were waiting for the arrival of people by the water, waiting for the opportunity to pull down the stand-in. Although no one over there said that they heard the cry at night, the elders said that such water ghosts were more clever, knowing that the cry would scare away passers-by, and deliberately lured people quietly to the past.

After a few days, a corpse floated in the lotus pond, facing down with its back to the sky. Needless to say, this is the body of the mountain daddy's daughter-in-law. Daddy used a bamboo pole to salvage her. Her skin swelled, thin, transparent, and green dirty water could be seen flowing through it. When you poke it with a stick, a hole breaks in the fragile skin, and the green dirty water inside squirts out, stinky and smelly. She was as thin as dry wood before she jumped, but now she is as fat as a pig for the New Year.

The mountain father packed her up in a plastic bag filled with agricultural fertilizer, carried her to the general slope behind Changshan and buried her.

Later, I asked my grandfather why the corpses of the soldiers were not found, but the bodies of the mountain father's daughter-in-law floated on their own. Grandpa said that when he drained the water from the pond to catch water ghosts, of course he couldn't find them, otherwise the water ghosts themselves would have been found. So the water ghost deliberately hid the corpses of himself and his soldiers. This mountain daddy's daughter-in-law is different, she is willing to be a substitute for her son, and she may want to have a place to bury her when she dies, so she sends her body back. I wondered if the water spirits could be like carp and could sneak into the mud of a pond and not be spotted. I asked my grandfather this, and he smiled and said nothing.

If it weren't for what happened later, Daddy Mountain wouldn't have asked Grandpa to help.

Here's what happened next. There are two grandsons from the city who come to the four grandmothers in the village, and neither of them knows about the lotus pond. When they saw a few ripe lotus seeds growing on the north bank of the lotus pond, they couldn't help but salivate. But they can't swim and don't dare to go into the water to pick it. So the two of them found a long stick and wanted to use the stick to bring the lotus seeds in the pond closer before plucking them. In this way, I got a brown more mature lotus seed and ate it, and I was reluctant to leave, and I looked at the lotus seed farther away with greedy eyes.

At this time, one of the two of them saw the lotus leaf alarmed, so he leaned down and looked at it. "Look, there's a black gooey thing over there, with long hair." The other also lay down to look, and sure enough, a mass of long black hair, as long as an arm, writhed like an earthworm, floated in the clear water.

"Brother, what's that?" The younger one asked.

"Don't you know if you get it?" Brother said.

So the younger brother took the elder brother's hand, and the elder brother leaned over and tried to reach out the stick in his hand to stab the thing. The thing fluttered like a ball and drifted closer to his brother. The elder brother put down the stick, spread it on the ground, and scratched the long black hair with his hands. The younger brother immediately shouted: "Don't catch it!" ”

The elder brother looked back at his younger brother suspiciously and said, "Why didn't you arrest it?" "The hand is less than a decimeter above the water. The long black fur shook quietly.

"That thing is dirty, it's better to pluck it with a stick." The younger brother said seriously.

My brother was right when he thought about it, so he stood up. The long black fur stopped shaking.

The elder brother picked up the stick and stabbed it at the thing, and immediately the sewage flowed out of the long black hair, like a cuttlefish spitting ink. The elder brother lifted the stick and moved the thing to shore.

The two children squatted down and looked carefully, and it turned out that there was a body the size of a leather ball in the middle of the long black hair, and the sewage was flowing from the place where they had been stabbed with a stick. The round wound shrunk one by one, and seemed to be painful. The ball-like body is soft and mumbles.

"Huh? Why don't you have a head and no hands or feet? The younger brother looked left and right curiously, "What kind of animal is this?" ”

My brother flipped the thing over with a stick, and it was still a ball-like body, "I don't know." ”

"I don't think it's fun, just get it back in the water." The younger brother said disappointedly.

"Hey, hey, watch me play football." The brother stood up and raised his foot to kick the thing.

At this time, the stern voice of the fourth grandmother sounded from behind him: "Don't kick it!" That's a water ghost! ”

My brother's foot had already been kicked out, and it was too late to take it back. The thing flew up with my brother's feet.

The long black hair wrapped up in his feet!

The elder brother couldn't stand still, and was dragged down by the thing, and slid down the embankment in one fell swoop. My brother turned pale with fright! The elder brother screamed in surprise and grabbed his hands out of thin air. The fourth grandmother chased after her tremblingly with a porcelain bowl.

Maybe the elder brother was just startled by the voice of the fourth grandmother, his feet did not exert all his strength, the elder brother did not fall into the water, and his hands grabbed the weeds on the embankment. He was so frightened that he desperately shouted: "Grandma help, grandma help!" The younger brother immediately ran over and grabbed his brother's hand and used his strength to feed. But how could they outcompete the water ghosts who fell into the water? The younger brother also followed the elder brother into the lotus pond.