The lunch at noon that day was unexpectedly delicious, and I think it was because of Sister Cai's help. During the meal, Fu Yunni looked at each of us with expectant eyes. Hu Zongren thought that he was a person who had suffered hardship, and he gobbled up the rice bowl without saying a word, and after tasting the dishes made by Fu Yunni, he found that it was much better than I imagined, so he ate a lot.

After the meal, the two girls went to wash the dishes, and I called the village chief back. Said that we took this order, as for how much the honorarium is, you can watch and do it with the village chief. For this kind of customer who is too embarrassed to ask for money, I can only give this choice back to himself. Then I told Sister Cai and Fu Yunni that Hu Zongren and I were going to Qijiang for a few days, 2 days if it was fast, and it would be difficult to say if it was slow. Just let Sister Cai go home later in the afternoon, if you don't want to go back, you can live in Fu Yunni's house. Since the two women became friends, they have been chattering non-stop every time they meet. So I asked Hu Zongren to pack his things, and then followed me back to my house, and I took some necessary things with me, and began to drive towards the location of the village that the village chief had told me.

The distance from Chongqing to Qijiang is not far, only a few dozen minutes. But from Qijiang County to that village did let me find a lot of time, the road is not easy to walk, fortunately, after the beginning of spring, the scenery of the mountain village along the way is still good. The Qijiang River is located on the border between Chongqing and Guizhou, and the beauty of the Guizhou mountains is also occasionally seen in these small villages, and I saw some fruit farmers picking loquat on the way, and when I was intoxicated by this atmosphere, I heard an unpleasant snoring sound from my right. Turning his head, Hu Zongren was asleep in a very ugly sleeping position.

So I silently pulled over, then pulled out Ashley Simpson's record from the CD bag and stuffed it into the CD player, first turning the volume off, then fast-forwarding to about the chorus, and then I covered my ears and turned the volume to the fullest.

After witnessing a strange carp fight, I drove the rest of the road with great pleasure.

It took almost an hour to walk the mountain road to the village. After inquiring with the villagers about the village committee, we drove there directly, and called the village chief on the way, who was waiting for us at the door of the village committee early in the morning. When he saw us, he was a little surprised at first to find that we were not very old, but soon he didn't say anything more, but moved two stools out of the house, and we sat in the courtyard and talked.

The village chief's surname was Wu, and Wu told us that on the way into the village, we should have seen a large pond in the ravine, which could be the size of a school football field, and it was the pond that had the accident. Village Chief Wu said that he himself had grown up in the village since he was a child, and when he was a child, he heard from the old people in the village that there was no such pond in this place, and that it was a big crater that was blown up by the Japanese devils who had scattered bombs in a radius of several hundred miles in the vicinity in order to blow up the road where the Kuomintang had transferred troops from Guizhou to Sichuan. I was a little surprised when I heard it, and I said that a bomb could blow up such a big place. Village Chief Wu said that the old man said that this pit was not so big, because it damaged the hillside and encountered a landslide, and after a few rains, it began to accumulate water.

Village Chief Wu went on to say that when they were young, many children went to play by the water because the water was very clear. But in the 60s, it was drying up and bottoming out. But a strange thing happened at that time, that is, overnight, the water refilled the pond. The old man in the village told the children that there was an old turtle living under the pond, and in order to prevent the water from filling up and forming a flash flood, the old turtle used his shell to block the underground water inlet under the pond, and when it dried up, the turtle would turn over and let the water fill the pond again. And when the children go to play in the water, the old people always tell them to scare them, saying that the turtle will bite people, and the turtle will not let go until thunder bites people. But over the years, it's been peaceful. Until two years ago, a child in the village went for a swim and drowned. The village organized manpower to search for the body for a long time but did not find the body, until one night there was a thunderstorm, and the next day the villagers found the child's body on the water. So the legend of that year was turned over again.

Hu Zongren interrupted Village Chief Wu and said, Village Chief, wait a minute, didn't you say on the phone that it was about the water ghost? How did this get to the tortoise again? Hu Zongren glanced at me and said, we really can't do anything about this strange thing!

Village Chief Wu frowned and said to Hu Zongren, please listen to me. Originally, after the child drowned, the village turned out the legend of that year, just to remind the children in the other villages not to swim without permission, but those who were a little older, those with a little common sense, knew that it was just a made-up story. The real problem was a year ago, in the summer, a few teenage children made an appointment to go swimming in the pond, and one drowned on the same day, and then when the village police station asked about it, the children on the shore said that the one who drowned was their classmate, and the water was very good, and the children were doing a game in the water that day, that is, to find a strange-shaped stone, everyone remembered the appearance of the stone, and then one of them threw the stone into the deep water to see who dived down first to find the stone. As a result, one of the children dived and never got up again. That day, after the children told the villagers, they also salvaged once, but nothing was found, and it was thundering and raining that night, and everyone was fishing in the water with flashlights in the rain, and at this time, the child's body floated to the surface.

Village Chief Wu said that it is precisely because of this that some people told the legend of the early years again, and as they talked, these people gradually began to believe in this story. Because there is a tradition in the village, it is relatively closed, so there are rumors such as "the dragon king recruits a son-in-law". Village Chief Wu sighed and said that after that, despite the persuasion of the villagers, there were always people who did not listen to the invitation and went into the water without permission, and for more than a year, people drowned every three or five times.

Hu Zongren asked, did all the drowned go swimming? Were the bodies found after the thunderstorm? Village Chief Wu said that it was not all, and most of the time when people drowned was concentrated when the weather began to get hotter, that is, when most people liked to go into the water to cool off. Summer itself has a lot of thunderstorms, so it may be a coincidence. But some people who drown don't do so because they swim in the water. For example, some people go to the pond to fetch water, and some people go to the pond to wash clothes, in short, it is very strange.

I asked Village Chief Wu, you have said so much, apart from those rumors, do you have any eyewitnesses or anything like that? Because you told me on the phone that someone saw a black figure on the water. Village Chief Wu said that there are witnesses, and there are people who have directly experienced this incident and have not died. Isn't it because of what she said after she was rescued that the village thought it was a haunting ghost?

I said to Village Chief Wu, then you tell me about that person carefully. Village Chief Wu said, that is the eldest daughter-in-law of the Wang family, who lives not far from here, you come with me, I will take you to ask her directly. After speaking, Village Chief Wu extinguished the dry smoke in his hand on his heel and led us towards a mud house not far from the slope.

The eldest daughter-in-law of the Wang family is a middle-aged woman in her 40s, and I heard that her surname is also Wu. After the village chief explained to her what we were here for, she quickly put down what she was doing and rubbed her hands together and talked to us in a colorful voice. She said that she went to someone's house that night, and on the way home, she passed by the large pond, but heard a child shouting for help in the direction of the water. After hearing the call for help, Sister Wu was a kind person, and hurriedly flashed a flashlight towards the water, although she didn't see a human figure, but she saw someone struggling to splash on the water surface that had been calm before. So she was also anxious, shouting to save people, someone fell into the water, while groping to the water's edge, took out the phone and called the men in the village, wanting them to hurry up to save people, but when she was close to the lake, she was violently pulled by something, and she was pulled into the water.

Sister Wu said that the people in the village know about this pond, and there is a buffered slope from the shore to the center, so at a distance of more than ten meters from the shore, a woman of her stature can still step through. After falling into the water, she instinctively touched the stone on the ground and stood up, but before she could come back to her senses, her left foot seemed to be grabbed by something, and she was pulling it towards the center of the pond. Sister Wu said that at that time, she didn't know where the courage came from, and she didn't struggle in the opposite direction, but turned around and got into the water, picked up the flashlight in her hand, and hit the thing that grabbed her feet. She told us that everything she did at that time was instinctive, and she didn't even think about what was holding her feet.

Sister Wu's eyebrows fluttered, which reminded me of many middle-aged women I saw on the news, who would keep chattering whenever someone asked about them. Sister Wu went on to say that after she had been fighting like this for a while, suddenly the thing that grabbed her foot let go, and because the flashlight had not been turned off, she saw something in the water in a trance on the way to fight. But at that time, I didn't have time to think about it, so I quickly swam to the shore, and when I was a few meters from the shore, while the flashlight was not short-circuited, I swam in the direction where I swam again, and I found a black head-like round thing, facing Sister Wu, and then slowly sank.

At this moment, Sister Wu was frightened, and she recalled the thing she saw when she was fighting underwater. She told Hu Zongren that it was a child-like thing, with black skin, but not all black, and a little earthy color. The hands and claws are very long, the fingers are pointed, there is some hair on the head but not much, sparse, the eyes are round, there are no eyelids, the mouth is large, and there are things in the mouth that look like teeth, but there are many more than us normal. She was very frightened when she thought of this, so she turned over and ran back along the road.

Sister Wu said that on the way, she met villagers who came to save people, and she told everyone about it, and just like that, the village began to spread.

Hu Zongren and I looked at each other, and then I asked Sister Wu, what you saw that night, are you sure it wasn't an illusion or something? Sister Wu said a little angrily, of course it's not a hallucination! When they found me that night, they saw the scratch on my left foot and neck.

Village Chief Wu said that it was like this, and he also saw it that night, as if it was a bruise pinched by a few slender fingers. Since the accident of the eldest sister Wu, the village went to the neighboring village to invite the goddess to do it, but it was still useless, and then two people died, but no one knew what these two people were doing to go to the river.

Hu Zongren suddenly asked Village Chief Wu, were the two people who died after Sister Wu the villagers in the village? Village Chief Wu said yes, honest farmers. Hu Zongren asked, do these two have children or old people at home? Village Chief Wu said yes, the two who died, a boy and a girl, both had a child under the age of 10 in the family.

Hu Zongren glanced at me, and then said to the village chief and Sister Wu, this can't be wrong, it must be a water ghost. Village Chief Wu asked Hu Zongren, did someone in our village do something hurtful and unreasonable, and they were punished! Hu Zongren said, it has nothing to do with this, there will definitely be a succession of dead people in places where there are water ghosts, but I didn't expect this time to be so close. Village Chief Wu asked, why did Lu die one after another?

I took Hu Zongren's words and told the village chief, because the water ghost was looking for a stand-in.