Ghost Record

  So that's why she was able to lure me ashore that day, turns out she can only materialize on the first and fifteenth of each month. The little water ghost told me to just call her Tongtong from now on, she'll temporarily stay in this broken willow wooden tablet for now, and wait until I finish making the willow wood figurine before "moving house".

  At this time, the sky had already darkened, where to find a willow tree? Willow trees are generally grown by the water's edge, like pagoda trees, they are both trees with extremely strong gathering shade abilities. The common saying goes that you don't plant pagoda trees in front of your house and you don't plant willows behind it, on Qingming Festival we would stick a branch of willow tree at our door, as for the meaning I also don't know.

  After the child possessed the Huai wood sign, I picked it up and put it in my bag. I opened the flashlight and walked along the riverbank to find a willow tree. The battery of this flashlight has been used for several days, feeling much darker, after passing through a village, I went to buy another pair of batteries again.

  Finally, I found several large willow trees by a river bay. In order to make it convenient to collect materials tomorrow, I decided to spend the night under the tree roots. This place is next to a village, only 200 meters away, and tomorrow I can go into the village to borrow a knife to cut them down.

  It's been five or six hours since I left Old Man Huang's house, and all I've done is walk, so my stomach is a bit hungry. But there's nothing to eat in my bag. After thinking for a moment, I came up with an idea - I took out the willow wood sign and asked Tiantian to go down to the river to catch a fish for me to roast and eat.

  I put the willow board into the water and waited for Tongtong to bring dinner ashore. Sure enough, after a while, a fish weighing two or three catties jumped out of the water, bumped against my shoulder and fell to the ground.

  I looked at this big fish and wondered how it could be roasted to perfection! I picked it up again and threw it back into the water, letting Tiantian handle a smaller one. As soon as I finished speaking, another fish weighing over a kilogram jumped out of the water and landed on the ground, making me excitedly applaud repeatedly.

  Xiao Shui Gui is really capable, if only she could catch fish and I could sell them, wouldn't we have money then? Thinking of this, I no longer worry about the few bucks I have left, it's great!

  I picked up the wooden board and gathered some branches to start a fire, preparing to roast a fish for dinner. The fish had just been roasted for less than two minutes when an old man from the village came towards me with a flashlight in his hand.

  He seemed to be scolding angrily, saying which family's wild child was still playing with fire at night, and when something was burned, they would catch you and put you in jail. What delighted me was that this old man was actually speaking Hakka, and it turned out that there were people who spoke Hakka in the Huangyao area, feeling especially intimate.

  I told the old man: "I'm not from this village, I want to exchange a three-catty fish for his axe to use."

  The old man asked me: "Where is the fish?"

  I told him to get up at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning and come here to take the fish, remember to bring a knife.

  The old man responded with a grunt and went back home.

  After the old man left, I built a small pond on the riverbank. After the pond was built, I asked Tongtong to catch a three-pound fish for me.

  The willow board was put into the water again, and I shone my flashlight on the river surface with full expectation, ready to welcome a three-jin fish. However, contrary to my expectations, the river surface remained still, letting me wait for nearly twenty minutes.

  I couldn't help but worry and fear that something had happened to Tiantian. At this moment, in my heart, she seemed not to be a water ghost, but a real little girl.

  It turned out that my worries were unnecessary, and soon a big fish jumped out of the water. I immediately caught it and put it in a small pool, to be used for changing knives tomorrow.

  At this time, Tóng Tóng appeared in her true form. She emerged from the water with half of her body exposed and said to me: "There is a very large black fish in this river, bigger than any fish she had possessed before." The reason she stayed underwater for so long without responding was that she had been tracking this big black fish.

  I asked her if it was true or false, what kind of fish is so big, is it a fish monster?!

  Tong Tong shook his head, dove into the water for a few seconds, and threw up a small fish about two fingers in size. He said that's what big black fish look like. I understood, it was actually a big catfish. Tong Tong told me that this big catfish wasn't a fish monster, but had just lived for a long time and often ate human flesh to grow so big.

  This sentence shocked me, this river is not big, only one tenth of the Zuo River, where did the human flesh come from?

  There's such a big fish in this small river, it's not a good thing, it's a hidden danger. I let Tiantian hide behind the Sophora japonica sign and picked it up, planning to ask the villagers tomorrow.

  The fire on the shore had not gone out, and I added a handful of dry firewood. I picked up the uncooked fish and continued to roast it. Although no oil or salt was added, the fish became more fragrant as it roasted, and finally, when it was cooked through, one bite told me how delicious it was.

  I picked up the catalpa wooden sign and asked Tongtong if she was hungry, she said that since she didn't have a physical body, she wouldn't get hungry. The demon egg she digested tonight would be enough to sustain her soul for more than a year.

  After finishing the roasted fish, I took a flashlight and wandered around this riverbank, not feeling sleepy until midnight, then found a large stone to sleep on.

  It was the old man from last night who woke me up when it got light. He had come out with his axe at 7 o'clock. He came to where I roasted fish last night but didn't see anyone, then he saw me sleeping on a big stone not far away and came over to wake me up.

  I repeatedly apologized and took him to the water hole where I had released water last night, and gave the old man more than three catties of big fish. The old man was overjoyed after picking up the fish with a bamboo stick through its gills, and insisted that I go to his home for breakfast.

  I didn't refuse either, because I really couldn't find a place to have breakfast, and Tongtong can't come out during the day to catch fish. As for chopping willow wood, it's not too late to come out after having breakfast.

  The old man's home is not far from the river, it takes less than five minutes to walk. He lives alone in his house. The house is made of mud bricks, with an old bamboo fence in front of the door. Above the door hangs a pair of old and tattered couplets. On the wall inside the house, there is a painting of Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping. After I sat down, the old man poured me tea and asked which village I was from.

  I quickly thought of something and told the old man that I was from Huangyao, which I had heard someone speaking Hakka a few days ago. The old man believed me because he was from Gongqiao, and Huangyao is the next town over. He asked me what I was doing here and if I hadn't left last night. I told him I came to catch fish, it's better at night.

  The old man said he had rheumatism and hadn't gone down to the river for many years. When he was young, he used to catch fish every night! He said this while slaughtering a fish.

  I was sitting in the old man's living room waiting for breakfast, and soon he brought a plate of sour fish and a dish of peanuts.

  It's clear that the old man is very happy, perhaps it's been a long time since he had someone to have dinner and chat with. The old man poured a bowl of rice wine and asked me if I wanted some, I said no, the old man said that wine is a good thing, you must learn to drink it!

  I was savoring the sour vegetable fish, when the old man suddenly asked me what grade I had read up to. This made my face flush red, as I couldn't possibly say that I hadn't read any books, which would be too embarrassing. So I changed the subject and asked the old man if anyone in the nearby village had drowned in the river recently.

  The old man's voice became softer when he heard me ask, and he quietly told me that a child had drowned in the neighboring village three days ago, and people still haven't found him yet!

  I asked him: "How can you be sure someone drowned if they haven't been found? Maybe they just went out to play and didn't come home, who knows?"

  The old man saw that I doubted what he said, and he argued with me, staring at me with wide eyes and a loud voice: "Eight children went down to play in the water, and only he didn't come up. If he wasn't drowned, did he fly up to heaven to become an immortal?"

  I asked the old man: "How can't you find anyone? This river isn't that big, is it? The shallowest part is only up to your belly button, and the deepest part is only as high as a house."

  The old man heard me ask this and his voice became even softer. He said: "It must have been buried by the water ghost in the mud at the bottom of the river."

  I listened with even more interest and asked him: "Are there water ghosts in this river? Have you ever seen one?"

  The old man picked up his bowl, ready to drink, but when he heard me ask this way, he put the bowl down again and said seriously: "Yes! How can there not be? I've lived in this village for over 60 years, and just in this village alone, three people have drowned, not counting the neighboring village."

  The old man became more and more absurd as he spoke, so I lost interest in the topic and interrupted him, saying that I had seen a huge black fish as long as two people in the river last night.

  The old man laughed and said that I was so young to boast in front of him, he had eaten more salt than I had eaten rice, he had lived in the village by the river for over 60 years, but he had never seen such a big fish. Although I said that if I cheated him, I would be born by a sow, he still didn't believe me and was convinced that I was boasting.

  After finishing breakfast, I took the old man's knife and came to the riverbank to cut a willow branch, cutting off a thick arm and putting it in my bag, planning to use it to carve small people.

  At noon it started to rain, I was carving a willow wood head at the old man's house, my hands were all blistered. But for Tung Tung, I continued to carve until evening, and a pretty good little wooden man was done.

  However, Tóng Tóng wants to change the Huai wood plate to a Willow wood plate, but it has to wait until the first or fifteenth day of the month when Tóng Tóng is strongest. It must be done in a water area that the sun cannot shine on all year round. This was what Zhang Shén Pó had said before, and it would be great if she were here now.

  The sky was still bright, and I was strolling aimlessly by the river when I suddenly had the idea of catching this big carp. I remembered that fish demon in Guilin's Liujiang River, wasn't it also dealt with by me? And now I have Tongtong to help me. The old man said I was bragging, so I'll let him see what's what, don't think that just because you've lived for many years you've seen a lot of things.

  The giant catfish usually hides in the river bottom cave or mud during the day and only comes out to forage at night, so it's definitely very rare, basically no one has seen it.

  But Tóng Tóng was a water ghost who had eaten over ten young boys and attached itself to the body of a fish for seven or eight years. This big catfish had only eaten some drowned people's corpses, in front of Tóng Tóng, it was like a small witch seeing a great witch.

  Of course, this is for Tongtong, but for ordinary people, the power of this big fish in water is not inferior to two large water buffalo. After all, a person can lift two or three times heavier things in water than on land. So even if there are more people, they can't handle it in the water, unless they use explosives to blow it up, but it's not stupid and won't stay still for you to blow it up.

  Catch big carp still have to let Tongtong come, but now it's only the 23rd, she said to wait until the first day of the new year is okay, the first and fifteenth are her two strongest days.