The murderous aura that suddenly burst out from the old ghost's body made me hesitate and fear, and my steps involuntarily slowed down. After walking for a long time, he finished roaring the tune of the river patrol, looked back at me, frowned and said: "You baby, sometimes I make Lao Tzu look very annoyed, what?" When I heard that I was going to hug Liu Village, I was scared? How did Chen Lao Liu raise such a grandson as you? "

"Who said I was scared!" I was young, I couldn't stand the crowding, I listened to what the old ghost said politely, and my heart was a little angry, I straightened my waist, trotted to follow him, and said, "Let's go!" "

Outsiders who go to **, there is no fear, my heart is not so stable, but how to say, since the matter is let by my grandfather, it is right, he will not harm me.

"That's right." The old ghost saw that I was a little angry, and then he stretched his brows, grinned, and said as he walked: "When Chen Lao Liu was so old with you, that bloody body, Lao Tzu also admired it very much, he chased people for three hundred miles with a knife, and he would never stop if he didn't chop the other party, you practice your courage, don't embarrass your Chen family." "

I looked at the old ghost and felt a little helpless. This old guy is actually very cheap, I talked to him respectfully, he was here and that, holding the shelf with horizontal eyebrows, he really wanted to collide with him with anger, he was very happy. Thinking like this, I simply left all the fears and taboos in my heart and talked to him without any covers.

I really want to ask my grandfather about his youth, our Chen family is thin, and he has been rooted in Xiaopanhe for three generations, and he is an outsider, and I know almost nothing about the past of my family. But the old ghost said that when it came to a pinch, he diverted from the topic, and it seemed that he didn't want to mention it to me.

Huanlianggou is not close to here, and the land route is too slow, and in the middle of the morning, we met a boat carrying people on the riverbank, and the old ghost did not ask the price at all, and jumped on it with me. I wondered, could the old man crawl out of the stone coffin have money on him? I'm a poor jingle anyway. At that time, I was thin-skinned, and I was afraid that I would have no money to give to the boat family when I got to the place by boat, and I would be said to be cold, so I asked the old ghost in private: "Let's take the boat, do you have any money?" "

"Money? What money? The old ghost was stunned for a moment: "Yuan Datou or national ticket?" "

"Forget it." I smacked my lips and suddenly remembered, how long has it been since the old ghost came ashore? He said Yuan Datou, ordinary people know that it is a silver dollar, as for the national ticket, it is the legal tender issued during the Republic of China, the days have been too long, and the old ghost has actually been out of touch with society: "You don't have money, and I don't have either, how can you give people money later?" "

"Fart's boat money." The old ghost squinted his eyes, sat on the side of the boat with his knees crossed, glanced at the vast river, and said, "Half of the river belongs to Lao Tzu's family, and you still need to pay for the boat?" "

We talked in a low voice, the people on the boat didn't know anything, and then we set sail. The old ghost is calm, sitting on other people's boats in vain and sitting on them with confidence, I am not so free and easy, looking at the boatman, my heart is slightly empty.

The boat went all the way around Lianggou, and the old ghost talked to me all the way, yesterday he didn't pay much attention to me, probably because he thought I was only submissive to his appetite, but now he is completely let go, and the words are thickened.

"Fellow, sit tight." The boatman turned back to us and said, "The front is the mountain cliff, the water is urgent, I will work harder, and I will pass steadily." "

The eyes of the old ghost of "Wangshan Cliff" were always squinted during the day, and he could barely see the eyeballs, and when he heard the words of the boatman, he clicked his mouth alone, as if he was thinking about something.

Wangshan Cliff is a very famous place on the long river in our hometown, and the river has a turn in Wangshan Cliff, so the water flow is relatively rapid. There is a legend, I don't know how many years it has been spread on both sides of the river, Wangshan Cliff is the small dragon gate of the Yellow River, because the water flow is rapid, and it is not frozen when the water level drops sharply in winter, the carp turns into a dragon to jump over the dragon gate, and the small dragon gate is the first hurdle, so in the four seasons of the year, the fish shadow in the river channel of about six or seven miles before and after the Wangshan cliff continues. However, the river flow of Wangshan Cliff is fierce, and ordinary fishermen rarely come to fish, if there is really a skilled old fisherman, you can often catch big fish here.

"You carry him forward, don't wait for me." The old ghost came back to his senses, looking at the mountain cliff was already close in front of him, the river was tightened, the water flow accelerated, and the silted sediment at the bottom of the river was washed downstream, so this section of the river has been very deep, the water splashed constantly against the boat, and the water beads splashed all over, the old ghost didn't wait for the boatman to say anything, he tore off the rotten clothes on his body, his body was crooked, and the head and feet were plunged into the water.

"This! This! The boatman suddenly made a stupid face, sweating anxiously, it was difficult to even drive a boat in this section of the river on the cliff, who would dare to jump into it with a big grin? But I didn't even have time to shout, so I hurriedly turned my head to see that the water was constantly flowing, and the figure of the old ghost was no longer visible.

"Listen to him and move forward." I was a little flustered, but I wasn't very worried, and the old ghost was not stupid and would not die by himself.

The boatman was completely out of ideas, probably thinking that he had met two strange people, so he subconsciously nodded and drove the boat with all his might. We walked backwards in the waves for about two cigarettes, and the old ghost's head popped out of the water behind the boat.

Smack

The old ghost stepped on the water, and with two hands and two iron hooks, he grabbed a big fish and threw it into the boat. It was a golden silk carp that was a specialty of Wangshan Cliff, one foot five or six long, and it was still flicking its tail when it was out of the water. The fish was thrown into the boat, and the old ghost did not stop, and in a blink of an eye it was submerged in the water.

In less than 20 minutes, the old ghost caught two fish from the water with his bare hands, and flipped onto the boat with a drenched body, shaking the water splash, like an osprey that had just retracted its wings.

"Boaters." The old ghost touched the water on his face and said, "Lao Tzu has no money, this big one will be used as boat money for you, and the remaining two will be stewed in a pot for rice." "

"Medium! Middle! "For the first time in their lives, the boatman saw a person who could catch fish in the water with his bare hands in the Wangshan Cliff Waterway, and he had already accepted it in his heart, and he agreed repeatedly. In fact, he does not lose money, the golden silk carp of Wangshan Cliff was a tribute in the Song Dynasty, the famous dish of sweet and sour Yellow River carp baked noodles in the ancient capital of Kaifeng, came from the court dishes of the royal family of the Song Dynasty, the authentic sweet and sour Yellow River carp, and the red-tailed golden silk carp with a length of one foot and eight feet.

The boatmen on the river sometimes float hundreds of miles a day, and they don't have time to go home at night, and the boats are prepared with firewood, rice, oil, and salt, ready to cook at any time. There is only one pot in the boat, and I wash and peel the two fish by hand, and the river fresh does not need to be very skillful, and the white water is a good pot of soup when stewed.

It took some time to stew fish and eat, and when we were full of food and drink, the boat happened to go to the waterway next to the Lianggou area, we got off the boat and went by land, I have not been to this place, but the old ghost seems to be familiar, fifty years of wind and dust, the local people have changed, but the land will not change.

"Baby, I'll talk to you first." The old ghost said: "The scalp of the Song family has always been very hard, Lao Tzu estimated that he couldn't talk about it directly, those bastards are all donkeys, and if Shun Mao is disobedient, he can only beat him." You don't care about anything, don't say anything, Chen Lao Liu called you over, just a familiar face. "

I nodded ignorantly, but I couldn't understand much of what the old ghost was saying. I said in my heart that this is all grandpa's explanation, what the old ghost says, I can do it.

Baoliu Village is about twelve or thirteen miles away from Lianggouzi, the residents on both sides of the river believe in those gods and ghosts, Baoliu Village is rumored to be evil, and a village of corpse fishers, ordinary people are unwilling to deal with them, for fear of being contaminated, they usually do not come to the land of Baoliu Village, so in addition to the people of Baoliu Village, there are very few outsiders here. I walked more than ten miles with the old ghost smoothly, and I was already able to see the ** not far away. To be honest, folklore is not necessarily groundless, and when you walk near Baoliu Village, a very faint but unpleasant smell wafts through the air around the village. This is a unique taste that has not changed in many years.

The foul smell emanated from a cellar more than two meters above the ground outside the village, which was perennially filled with ice and the bodies fished out of the river belonged to the owner, who had to be placed in the cellar for the time being and then notified to the family to claim it.

All kinds of ancient professions on the Yellow River have their stories, and the things I talked about have nothing to do with the corpse diggers, but since I mentioned this, I will be verbose. The Song family's corpse salvage team is different from the salvage team on the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, such as the salvage team on the Yangtze River, all corpses must be fished out, regardless of whether there is an owner or not, all of them are fished up, and those who have the owner are let their families take them away, and those who have no owners are wrapped in a straw mat and buried in the Lang Corpse Mountain, and now they are sent to the crematorium. And the corpse diggers like the Song family only accept the entrustment of the deceased's family to find the corpse designated by the family on the river, if it is an ownerless corpse, the Song family does not move, and allows the corpse to continue to drift along the river.

How many stories there are about the corpse diggers, no one knows. A few years ago, TV stations and newspapers reported on an old corpse collector on the Yangtze River, the old man was about 60 years old, and he had been fishing for corpses for decades. But what about the actual situation? I don't want to get in trouble, so I can't go into too much detail, after all, a lot of things are restricted right now. In fact, the old corpse collector who was reported by the TV station was a distant relative of a friend of mine, who passed by Wuhan last year and visited him specially, we invited the old man to dinner, and drank three rounds, and the old man privately talked about some things in the past, and his whole life was spent on the seemingly calm river, but the things he experienced were no less than mine. For example, about ten years ago, the old man met two girls who committed suicide by throwing themselves into the river, and the bodies were floating on the water hand in hand.

Not in this line, don't worry about this, just listen to these things as stories, in fact, there is no need to deliberately explore the truth or falsehood.

The old ghost and I continued to walk forward along the faint smell, Baoliu Village is not big, it is estimated that there are sixty or seventy households, and at the entrance of the village, there is a very large wooden shelf, on which six or seven small rafts are five meters long and three meters wide.

"Baby, do you know what that is?" The old ghost pointed to the raft on the wooden shelf and said, "You will tremble again when you say it." "

"Isn't it just a raft to get into the water?" I swallowed, vaguely feeling that the old ghost wouldn't say anything nice.

"It's a raft." The old ghost pursed his lips, pointed at my chest as if frightened, and said, "Human skin raft." "