Pan Long kept going all the way, and when he arrived at the Peach Blossom River, it was only the twenty-eighth day of the first month.

But he did not let go of his mind because of this, the course of the Peach Blossom River is three or four hundred miles, and the entire basin passes through three or four nearby counties. God knows what the custom of "marrying the river god" is!

So his first choice was to ask the locals.

"River god marrying?" shopkeeper smiled, "No wonder you come here now, every year on the second day of February, we have to hold a river god marriage celebration in the area of Peach Blossom River, come now, it's the right time!"

"Where is it held?" Pan Long asked.

The shopkeeper said with a smile: "It's not 'where', but the entire place where the Peach Blossom River flows, as long as there are qualified towns, such a ceremony will be held." One is for prayer, and the other is for joy. ”

Pan Long frowned, he felt that things might be a little different from what he had guessed.

Sacrificing people to the gods with living people is not a cruel thing that can be said to be "festive", even if the locals are insensitive and do not take the lives of others seriously, but it is really wrong to be so elated.

What's more, when he looked at the look and tone of the shopkeeper, he didn't look like the kind of villain who didn't take human life seriously.

So he took out a piece of broken silver and asked the shopkeeper to explain it to him in detail.

That piece of broken silver is about four or five dollars, which is a good windfall for the second child of this shop. He smiled, put away the silver, turned back to explain to the boss, and sat down on the stool opposite Pan Long.

"In our area of the Peach Blossom River, according to legend, there lived a river god who liked beautiful women, and he once announced that he would marry the most beautiful woman in the world as his concubine. So the people here will select the most beautiful unmarried girl in ten miles and eight towns every year, dress up beautifully after the New Year, and take a bamboo raft on the river, which means to let the river god see, this girl is not satisfied. ”

"What if the river god is satisfied?" Pan Long asked.

The shopkeeper laughed: "The river god is an immortal, how can he be satisfied with mortals? Anyway, I have never heard of anyone who can satisfy the river god." Over the years, everyone has actually been just trying to celebrate, and ...... Probably there is also the meaning of competing for the 'first beauty in Peach Blossom River'. ”

He explained: "Those who are eligible to go down the river on a bamboo raft on February 2 are, of course, first-class beauties. This is to be seen by everyone, those who are not beautiful enough to go up, not only lose their own faces, but also the faces of all the villagers. So there is actually no rule for this matter, sometimes there is a suitable person every year, sometimes there are not for several years. ”

As he spoke, he thought of something, turned around and asked, "Shopkeeper, I remember when you used to brag when you were drinking, saying that your grandmother took a bamboo raft and was a concubine of the river god, right?"

The chubby shopkeeper replied, "It's not bragging, it's true." My grandmother was the river god concubine for three years in a row, and her reputation spread throughout the Peach Blossom River!"

Pan Long looked at it, and the shopkeeper was about fifty or so long. His grandmother, no matter how young she is, should be nearly ninety years old.

According to this, at least seventy or eighty years ago, the marriage of this river god was already a harmless celebration, not a living sacrifice to harm the people?

He thought for a moment and asked, "Do you know the origin of this celebration?"

"Origin? It's the one I just said, legend has it that the river god likes beautiful women......"

Pan Long shook his head: "I mean, when did this celebration start? a hundred years ago? Or is it longer?"

"That's been a long time. The shopkeeper said with a smile, "Anyway, sometimes old people gossip and say that they had this when they were young." But the old people, you also know the guest officer, always say that the past was better than the present. According to them, in the past, those river god concubines were the kind that made people look at them when they walked out and accidentally hit the wall - guest officer, do you believe it or not? Anyway, I don't believe it. ”

Pan Long also smiled: "The old people are like this, either they talk about how hard they worked back then, or they talk about how good they were at the beginning, everyone is the same." ”

He inquired about this year's celebration and learned that there are estimated five or six bamboo rafts on the Peach Blossom River this year - that is to say, there are five or six women in the entire Peach Blossom River Basin who are confident to compete for the identity of "the first beauty of the Peach Blossom River" in the beauty pageant this year.

According to the rules of the festival, these beauties will take a bamboo raft all the way down the river until the Taohua River bends and joins the Baisha River, then abandon the boat and go ashore to participate in the celebration of worshipping the river god.

If you want to see beautiful women, the best place is naturally Taoxiang County, which is located at the confluence of the two rivers. But if there is a fast horse, it can keep up with the speed of the bamboo raft flowing in the water, and ride all the way to see the beauty, it will have a unique flavor.

Pan Long asked again and again, and finally confirmed that in recent years, there has really been no situation where the river god came forward to pick up the beauty.

In fact, the local people are not even sure if there is a river god in the river.

Of course, there are temples and ancestral halls of river gods along the Peach Blossom River, and there are quite a few. But although these river temples and river shrines are full of incense every year, they have never shown the slightest miracle.

In the world of Kyushu, there are mountain gods and water gods, and there are not a few temples that show supernatural things after the sacrifice.

For example, on the bank of the Baisha River, there is a "Jiangshen Zuo Dafu Temple", which is dedicated to an official whose official position was Zuo Dafu a long, long time ago.

The official was in charge of controlling the water, and he was busy dredging the waterways and strengthening the embankments all his life, and finally died of exhaustion on the construction site.

After his death, the people at that time worshipped him as the god of the river and built a temple for him, which was recognized by the imperial court at that time and was officially canonized.

This river god is a bit supernatural, once it rains heavily, the river water swells, and it is about to form a flood. As long as the elders of the ten miles and eight towns go to the temple to worship and pray, the river will flow several times faster out of thin air.

When the water flows fast, it will naturally drain quickly, and it is not easy to form floods.

This is a well-known miracle, so miraculous, although it is not everywhere in the land of Kyushu, but there are really a lot.

For example, Pan Long passed by Lushan a few years ago, and the god of Lushan Mountain is a little strange. Pan Long helped him kill the mandrill who stole the mountain temple, and he also came to the door in the middle of the night to thank him and gave Pan Long a small bottle of longevity spirit wine.

The bottle of longevity spirit wine is still in Pan Long's dimensional bag, waiting to be given to the elderly in the family when he returns to his hometown in the future.

Such a miracle can prove that the gods really exist. And like the Peach Blossom River River God, it is naturally "no such person".

So everyone doesn't take this river god seriously, it's just a joke.

Pan Long listened to the introduction of the shopkeeper, and couldn't help but wonder a little - this is different from what was said in that travelogue!

But he thought about it, the travelogue recorded more than 200 years ago, and what the shopkeepers knew was at most more than 100 years ago. There is a difference of 100 years, maybe what has happened in this 100 years?

He rested for a day, and the next morning, he found the official school in the town and asked the old master of the official school for advice.