Although I had not yet been completely put down, my mind was clear, and I could see that the old man's eyes flashed with a faint red light as if they were bloodshot, and suddenly, a strong pressure that I could not describe was like a rolling fog, which made me feel more stressed.

"Are you alright?" Yi Tian frowned slightly, seeing that my face was already red, and the rope around my neck was very tight, Yi Tian raised her hand to help me untie it, but the moment her hand touched the rope, she suddenly took a step back as if she had been pricked by a needle.

At the same time, I felt that the rope around my neck was suddenly slippery and greasy, as if it was slowly squirming back and forth on my neck, and my diaphragm was dying. The old man had been confronting the old woman, and when he heard the noise behind him, he looked back, and then he stepped over, and with a slight movement of his wrist, he did not know where to draw a knife.

The knife suddenly looked like a pig-killing knife, but the blood groove on the knife was very deep, and there were a few ancient seal characters that I couldn't recognize, and the knife was sharp as if it had broken hair, and the hairs on its body were all stirred and stood upright. The old man held the knife and waved it casually, and the rope around my neck was immediately broken, and I felt an indescribable relief, and I took two sharp breaths. The moment the rope broke, I suddenly realized that it was not a rope, but a few eels writhing back and forth on the ground.

"It's okay." Yi Tian helped me to the back and looked at my neck with concern, and the proud young man finally broke free and ran to us, gasping for breath.

The old man with the knife slowly turned around, raised the knife in his hand, and said to the old woman: "You should recognize this knife, you can't go!" "

The old woman's rickety body trembled for a moment, and the eyes covered by the eyelids suddenly rolled up, and I could see that there was a trace of fear in the old woman's eyes, and she stared at the old man a few times, and without saying a word, she turned around and left, and in the blink of an eye, she had disappeared into the night when the wind was howling.

"Over there" I picked up Qiqi, and immediately remembered the Song family who were still wrapped under the black cloth, I can't say how worried those people were, but I didn't want to watch them have an accident. I didn't know the old man's name, but I thought the knife he was holding was very sharp.

I led them backwards for a while, and the old knife probably really scared the ghostly old woman, and she disappeared without a trace. We saw the black cloth, and the Song family was completely like a swarm of headless flies, spinning around under the black cloth. The old knife looked at it, and reached out to remove the black cloth little by little.

"They're fine." The old knife said, "It will be fine in a while." "

The old knife may not want to deal with strangers more, so he left immediately while the Song family had not woken up, I thought, Song Baiyi and they would clean up the mess when they woke up, so they followed the footsteps of the old knife with Qiqi. This old man was very mysterious, especially the picture of my grandfather who was shown to me at the time, and I think he knew something, and those things happened to be what I wanted to know.

"How did you provoke that old woman?" The old knife asked as he walked, and he was completely back to normal, and although his tone was a little cold, I could tell that he was trying his best to speak to me gently.

"I don't know." I shook my head: "I was asleep in the middle of the night, and I found out these things, who is the old woman?" "

"I haven't seen it, it's hard to say." The old knife pondered for a moment and said, "Do you know the paper man chapter?" "

"Yes."

The paper man chapter that the old knife said is one of the thirty-six side doors of the Yellow River Beach. This family has long been a craftsman specializing in making shroud coffins, and the paper figures and paper horses they make are particularly exquisite. At that time, large families wanted to do white things, and they would rather spend more money than ask the Zhang family to do a full set of white things. When it was passed on to the seventh generation, the craftsmanship of the eighth master of the Zhang family became more and more superb, and it is said that the paper figure he made could run on the ground and even catch fish from the river. These are all rumors, I estimate that the eighth master of the Zhang family must have learned some kind of secret technique, mixing the secret technique with the craft of the paper-binding person, and he is ghostly. Starting from Zhang Baye, the name of the paper man chapter has spread farther, and the family no longer only makes a living by making shroud coffins and the like, but will do some private work behind the scenes, and gradually integrate into the thirty-six side doors.

"That old woman is very similar to the people of the paper man Zhang family, but not exactly like her, and she looks a little strange." The old knife muttered two sentences and said, "She is very difficult to mess with, if she offends this person, there will be trouble in the future." "

"What's wrong with her!" The proud young man had blue tendons on his forehead, and it was estimated that his stomach was full of anger: "I don't believe it, these messy and dirty things are so powerful, I'm in a hurry, give her a shot"

I wanted to laugh when I looked at him, and the screaming and jumping that I had just been tossed by the old woman was now very passionate and generous. The old knife frowned, glanced at him, and said, "Dawei, how long has it been?" Don't you know how many quirks there are along the banks of the river? "

"We received a materialist education, I was a staunch atheist, and the feudal superstitious dregs of the old society could not stand the test of science." The young man named Dawei turned his head to look at Yi Tian and said, "Yi Tian, you said yes, right?" "

Yi Tian smiled and didn't answer. I was a little flustered, and the way she laughed was so beautiful that it made her heart beat faster.

The old knife sighed and didn't say anything more, a person's thoughts and beliefs are things that are difficult to change.

We walked for a long time along the swollen riverbank, and I wanted to take the opportunity to ask the old knife something, but I didn't have a chance to speak, and we walked about seven or eight miles, and it was still dark. The old knife found a leeward place and let David burn a fire, although David was more proud, but he was still very responsible, and he patrolled around the fire while we drank and ate.

"Eat more, kid." The old knife didn't speak much, but he was always very kind, and handed me some biscuits that were rarely seen in the Yellow River beach. At this time, Qiqi finally woke up leisurely, and when she saw the stranger in front of her, she was too timid to speak.

"Uncle." I didn't have the heart to eat, so I stuffed all the food to Qiqi, thought about it, and said, "Uncle, who are you?" "

At that time, I was young, and I had no experience in using words with others, so I asked in a daze.

"We?" The old knife took a sip of water and said, "River Bureau, do you know? We are the people of the River Authority. "

At that time, the Yellow River beach was still very closed, and some new things were relatively unfamiliar to the Yellow River people. I struggled to remember, vaguely remembering who had ever heard mention of the River Authority. The Yellow River is the mother river of the Central Plains, but it is also a river with many disasters and difficulties, in the history of China up and down for 5,000 years, it has never stopped, dredging and repairing embankments every year, salvaging debris in the river, maintaining water and soil vegetation in the upper reaches, there are a lot of messy things, and the River Bureau manages these things. I didn't understand the specific concept of the river authority, but as soon as I heard the words of the old knife, I realized that they were public people.

I was wondering what the old knife was going to do, and I wanted to know what that picture was all about, but I couldn't find a good excuse when I thought about it, and I couldn't just say it was my grandfather. During the period of chatting with Lao Daozi, I thought back and forth, and after Lao Daozi finished telling his origin, I said tentatively: "Uncle, the person in the photo you saw for me last time, I saw him later." "

"Huh?" The old knife's eyes suddenly lit up: "Where is it?" "

"It's far from here, looking at the cliffs." I said, "It's been about half a month, there are golden carp on the side of the cliff, I was fishing on the shore, and the man drove over and asked me for fire in the middle." "

"Sailing? What kind of ship? "

"It's just a normal little sampan." All I said was nonsense, I felt my face reddened slightly, coughed to cover it up, and then asked, "Uncle, what does that person do?" I looked like a boat walker. "

"Him?" The old knife smiled, as if he didn't intend to hide it from me, and said, "He's a very powerful person." "

The old knife talked about a period of the past, but I didn't say the specific age, but when I thought about it, it was probably more than 20 years ago, when my grandfather was in his forties and his body was still very strong.

The old knife has been in the River Bureau for decades, and he is a native of Dengfeng. Every year during the flood season, and when the river dries up during the dry season, they are the busiest time, and they have to go back and forth. That year, Lao Daozi and some people dealt with a section of the embankment that might have problems, and accidentally found that there was a big thing in the water of that section of the embankment. After all, they are public families, and they bring more things than our native-born boatmen, and they sent two people into the water, and the people who went into the water should have equipment such as old diving suits, so they investigated the situation more clearly.

It is said that at the bottom of that section of the embankment, there was a large long log, like the oversized gloomy wood occasionally found in the southern waterways. But after several observations, the person in charge of the survey said that it was not a simple piece of wood, but a large wooden statue, which was wrapped in a layer of openwork metal skin, more than ten meters long, and half buried by the sediment at the bottom of the river.

Bronze wooden statues?

When I heard this, I muttered in my heart, thinking that there could not be so many copper-skinned wooden statues in the Yellow River, and that copper-skinned wooden statue had not been fished up in the era of the old ancestor of the Seven Gates of Hezizi? And then turn into a bearded old man? How did it stay at the bottom of the river more than 20 years ago?

I knew in my heart about the bronze wooden statue, but I didn't dare to say a word, not even a surprised expression, held back my doubts, and continued to listen to the old knife.

Once something is found at the bottom of the Yellow River, the boatman at the 36th side door first considers how much this parallel goods can be worth, and whether it is worth the effort to salvage, while the old knife is a public family member who considers whether this thing has the value of research. After deliberation, they decided to salvage the bronze wooden statue. There are a lot of strange things in the Yellow River, but the wooden statue of more than ten meters is very rare, and some people said in the past that the big bronze statue of more than ten or twenty meters high was fished up from the river, which is nonsense, absolutely impossible. This wooden statue is already the limit.

At that time, the old knife was not very old, he was a very experienced person, in order to completely figure things out, he personally went into the water, this time, he found that the raw material of the wooden statue wrapped in metal skin, that is, the wood of the wooden statue, was very unusual, even unusual to the point of almost close to the legend.