Ghost Record

  At this time, another old man in his fifties came out of the house. He was not tall with a head full of white hair and a face full of wrinkles. After seeing me, he asked if I was Little Li, I said yes, then opened the door to let me into the house.

  This old man is Zhang Shenniang's husband, and this woman is her daughter who married into Pingnan. I've never seen them before.

  The atmosphere was quite awkward as I entered the house, and I didn't know what to say. Zhang Shennu's daughter asked if I had eaten breakfast, and I said yes. I asked if my aunt had returned, but as soon as I spoke, there was a moment of silence in the room, followed by Zhang Shennu's daughter bursting into tears, while Zhang Shennu's husband let out a sorrowful sigh.

  Zhang Shennu's old announcement told me that Zhang Shennu never came back, but her family's immortal had dreamed many times that she was still alive, in the Nanning area, and didn't know whether it was true or not. He also went to find her several times, but Nanning is so big, where can he go? After searching a few times, he spent most of his savings at home and couldn't afford to search anymore.

  If she was being controlled by someone, they couldn't find her no matter how hard they looked. If she wasn't being controlled, then she would return home on her own. Zhang's wife finished speaking with a sigh, followed by another long period of silence.

  Zhang's husband said to wait until May and go again to look for it, I listened and gave him 500 yuan, he was surprised with his mouth open asking where I got so much money, but didn't accept it.

  I told him that this was what I had earned in the past few months while working away from home. As for how I managed to earn so much, it's a long story. Zhang Shenniang has been kind to me, and this is my way of showing my gratitude, so please accept it.

  Reality is always cruel, even with today's advanced communication, you can still see many missing person notices on the streets. Who wouldn't worry about a lost loved one? But what can be done, the world is so big, where to find them!

  I stayed at the godmother's house for less than an hour and then left, went to Xuefei's big aunt's house, Xuefei's sister had also left the village and gone to her mother's place.

  After leaving the village, I felt uneasy and unknowingly walked to the riverbank where I caught the fish demon with Zhang Shenniang. My fate and Zhang Shenniang's changed because of that incident. Zhang Shenniang, who was respected as a goddess in and out of the village, became a missing person whose life or death was unknown, while I inexplicably obtained the little water ghost she had always dreamed of raising. Fate is always playing tricks on people, making some cruel jokes.

  The river in front of us was the waters where Tongtong used to stay, and returning here seemed to excite her extremely, the willow wooden man in her upper pocket was shaking. I took it out and asked if she wanted to eat people again? Tongtong told me that the small woods in front buried her remains.

  Several years ago, Tóng Tóng was thrown into the river and drowned to death. His body was hastily buried in a small grove on the riverbank. Now that Tóng Tóng has shed his fish body, he remembers where his remains were buried. I now have some spare change, so I've decided to dig up Tóng Tóng's remains and give him a proper reburial. A little girl who drowned, hastily buried in the mud like a dead rat - how pitiful!

  I walked into this small grove under Tongtong's guidance, where the wet and dense mosquitoes were terrifying. Finally, I arrived at a three-forked tree, where Tongtong told me her remains were buried here.

  I crouched down to look, and the ground here was no different from other places, flat everywhere, where could you see that there was a child buried inside.

  I asked Tiantian to confirm if it was here, she said that she absolutely wouldn't remember wrong. Then I broke a stick and started digging, after digging a hole about 30cm deep and 40cm wide, I saw a small skull exposed with the top of the cranium visible.

  The bone had been buried in the muddy soil of a riverbank forest for many years, and it was already rotten to the point where it was almost as soft as tofu dregs. I finally covered up the soil, bought a small earthenware pot from town, came back and dug deeper into the hole, and eventually excavated the entire remains. Tongtong's remains could barely be seen wearing a white dress before death, but that dress had almost turned to mud by now. I picked up all the bones and put them in the pot, then went to the riverbank again, washing each piece of bone clean before putting it back into the earthenware pot. But where should Tongtong's remains be buried? I didn't understand things like feng shui, so I didn't know what was good or bad.

  Tongtong said that there is an island in the lower reaches of the river, so let's bury it there! She likes that island, and she has no descendants. Even if the burial is not good, it will not affect her descendants, and we can also change places to rebury.

  The island that Tóng Tóng mentioned is called Xiāng Sī Zhōu. The shape of the island resembles a fish, about two kilometers long and five hundred meters wide. I discussed with Tóng Tóng to bury the remains at the eye of the fish.

  But in broad daylight, if I were to carry a vase with human bones and people found out, it would be unacceptable, let alone digging a hole, so I can only wait until nightfall.

  I hid the earthen jar under a tree root, pulled out some grass to cover it tightly, and then walked out of the forest to town to take a small boat to Xiangsi Island. After arriving on Xiangsi Island, I circled around the island several times and found that there were actually several households on it, so I had to be careful at night.

  After wandering around the island for four or five hours, I finally determined the approximate location of the fish eye and found a few stones to pile up a large circle as a marker.

  It was after eleven at night, I carried a hoe and a snake skin bag with a tile jar, stole a small bamboo raft in the village by the river, and rowed downstream to Xiangsi Zhou. As for choosing midnight, it's because most people were asleep at that time, and no one knew what I did.

  The width of the river surface is nearly a thousand meters, but the water flows slowly and is almost like a lake. If you don't look carefully, you can't see that the river water is flowing. At night, the river surface is pitch black, and Tongtong has already come out from among the willows. She is now walking on the river surface not far from the small bamboo raft.

  This scene should have been terrifying, a young boy rowing a bamboo raft in the middle of the night on the vast and dark river surface, while a little girl was walking on the water beside the bamboo raft. However, since the person rowing the bamboo raft was me, and the one walking on the water was Tongtong, it wasn't scary at all.

  The child was walking on the water for a while, and then lay down on the water to slide, seeing her playing so happily, I think it's pretty good to be a water ghost too!

  I paddled the bamboo raft for twenty minutes, and finally arrived at Xiang Si Zhou. I tied up the raft and went ashore. The place where I landed was near Yu Zui (Fish Mouth), which is only one or two hundred meters away from Yu Yan (Fish Eye). I found it in no time.

  I put the snake skin bag on the ground, clamped the flashlight on a small branch to illuminate it, rubbed my hands and picked up the hoe to start digging. However, just as I had just raised the hoe, Tongtong stopped me, saying she thought she saw something buried underground.

  I asked her if she saw anything, and she said no, telling me to dig carefully, even if there was something, it wouldn't be damaged by digging.

  I let out a loud "oh" and rubbed my hands together, picked up the hoe and started digging. Before long, I had dug a hole that was one meter long, forty centimeters wide and one meter deep. Handling a hoe is my specialty. I've been carrying a hoe to the fields to weed since I was seven years old. By the time I was ten, whether it was peanuts, corn or sweet potatoes, I was the one who dug the ground for them.

  I took out the earthen jar containing Tongtong's bones from the snakeskin bag, ready to put it down into the pit. At this time, Tongtong suggested that I dig a little deeper to take a look. So I started digging again, and after digging about 1.6 meters deep, I stood up with only a few strands of hair exposed, and it turned out that I had grown taller by that much. But Tongtong still wanted me to dig deeper, so I dug another 20 centimeters or more, and the hoe hit something and sparked some sparks.

  Won't it! There's really something, won't it be digging up gold again? I called Tiantian over to see if he could see what it was. Tiantian came over and took a look, saying it was just a stone duck, about the size of a cow's head.

  I hastily dug out the mud at the bottom of the pit, revealing a stone about the size of a pillow, with a mark left by a hoe on it.

  After digging deeper, I found that the big stone was actually a duck head, but I was too tired to dig anymore. How could there be a big stone duck here? It's really strange, and such a big stone duck can't be moved by me, and the stone is not worth much anyway!

  I told Tiantian that I couldn't dig anymore, this stone duck isn't worth digging out, let's stop! But Tiantian didn't care if I was tired or not, she made me keep digging, she wanted to bury her own remains on the back of the duck.

  Bury on the back of a duck and let the duck bow to itself, this burial seems very reasonable. What does it mean for someone who drowned?

  Just then, there was a "crack" sound, and the handle of the hoe actually broke. This made me secretly happy, thinking that I could finally rest. After estimating that we had dug for more than three hours, our stomachs were growling with hunger. We retreated to a spot on the shore, found a relatively flat place to sit down.

  I called Tiantian to quickly catch fish, roasted and eaten full of energy to repair the hoe, repaired the hoe can be dug. Tiantian pouted and turned around to walk to the riverbank, plunged into the water, and soon a yellow eel as thick as a child's arm came out of the water, at least over 3 catties, crawling straight to my side.

  I had just prepared a pile of firewood and was about to light it, but then I realized I didn't have any matches. This is really frustrating! We can't eat the yellow croaker raw after all! Unfortunately, we could only release it, lucky for its life. Then I asked Tongtong to catch some crabs and shrimps because they can be eaten raw. Sitting on the riverbank eating raw crab and shrimp has a unique flavor, people who are not afraid of parasites can try catching and eating them fresh.

  After eating, I stood up and stretched my waist. Tiantian suddenly shouted loudly for me to quickly hide. She was fine just now, but with this shout, I didn't know what happened, so I jumped away from where I originally stood by 7-8 meters. Turning back, shining the flashlight, I saw that there was a long centipede at the place where I originally stood.

  This centipede is really long! It's a full meter long, just like ten centipedes connected head to tail. Its body is similar to that of an ordinary centipede, and from a distance, it looks like a bicycle chain.

  This centipede is called "blood centipede", its venom is extremely potent, compared to the silver ring snake, it's like comparing green beans and watermelon. It lives in the muddy sand at the bottom of some large rivers, comes out at night to be active, often climbs ashore to bite people.

  Being bitten by this blood leech has only one consequence, that is waiting for death. It's said that after being bitten, the whole body will blister and feel like it's on fire with pain.