Guai Dao Hu Zong Ren

  In late April 2010, my mobile phone was ruthlessly destroyed by someone, so I had to replace it with a new one and put the SIM card into an old orange Nokia slide music phone that I used before. Although I'm not a tech-savvy person, seeing all sorts of new phones on the street still makes me feel unbalanced, and the reason for this imbalance is that my phone was intentionally damaged by Hu Zongren.

  By mid-May, I couldn't help myself and took Cai Jie with me to the nearest digital city near my home. We bought a new phone that had just been on the market for a few days. It was my first non-Nokia phone, my first domestic L-head phone, and also my first smartphone with a robot system. The salesgirl proudly told me that this phone was 3G! So I followed her to buy a 3G SIM card. After the store staff installed many popular software and games for me at the time, I started sending text messages to my family and friends who I often contacted, telling them that I had changed my number. In addition to my master, Si Tu, Huang Po Po, Ji Lao Tai, Xiao Juan, there were also Hu Zong Ren and Fu Yun Ni.

  It turned out that showing off my new mobile phone in front of Hu Zongren was a very stupid decision, and for this, my ears paid a heavy price.

  Here is the translation:

  It was like this, on the third day after I bought my phone, Fu Yunni was in a rare good mood and said she wanted to cook personally, inviting me and Cai Jie to their home for dinner. At that time, she and Hu Zongren were still living in Fu Qiang's old house in Nan'an District. As for Fu Yunni's cooking skills, I had already experienced them when we lived with the Situ family before. She was someone who could forget to use a knife when chopping pork ribs, instead using her feet to stomp on them. From this point of view, she and Hu Zongren were quite a match made in heaven. So, before going to their home that day, Cai Jie and I ate some cake and other things to fill our stomachs, because who knows what strange food we would be eating next.

  After arriving at their home, Cai sister still helped in the kitchen out of sympathy for the weak, and I watched TV with Hu Zongren in the living room. Earlier, because Hu Zongren damaged my phone, I was very unhappy with him. Because after that night's events at vocational school, I received a strange text message from him, saying "we've attracted attention again". When I asked him what he meant, he hesitated and wouldn't say. For the next half month, he didn't contact me again. This made me wonder if something had happened that he wasn't telling me. However, in our line of work, there's a rule to avoid crossing lines. Hu Zongren and I belong to different schools, although we share some common knowledge, but generally we don't ask about each other's personal business unless they want to talk about it themselves. So despite having questions in my mind, I didn't take the initiative to ask him what that poem was really about.

  Hu Zongren found out that I had a very stylish mobile phone at the time, so he asked me to lend it to him to play with. As I handed it over to him, I warned him not to damage it, or our friendship would come to an end. For a long time after that, he was obsessed with a game called "Angry Birds" that I had installed on my phone. And this is where my nightmare began - from that day on, for a very long period of time, he would constantly imitate the sounds of the various birds flying out in the game, especially the one that flies out and throws bombs, which makes a "Wooo~~~~~" sound.

  Just as he was enjoying himself, my phone rang. The loud ringtone startled Hu Zongren, and with an envious gaze, he handed me the phone. I answered it, and on the other end was a middle-aged man with a thick accent. Drawing from years of traveling around the country, I easily picked up that his accent was from either Wansheng or Qijiang in southern Chongqing.

  The man on the phone told me that he had been searching for my phone number for a long time. Something has happened in their village, it's almost been a year now, and they have also looked for fortune tellers locally but to no avail. Every few months or so, someone dies, sometimes even two people within a month. Now everyone in the village is very scared, so please help us no matter what.

  District and county added village? This doomed me that if I take this order, the commission will not be much. Since I found it, it's fate, and I have no way to say refuse just because of refusal, especially can't refuse because of money. So I asked the other party, what is the relationship between the dead person, I understand that since they found me such a person, it means that there must be some clues, otherwise we will always be their last straw after normal consideration yields no results.

  They told me that in their village, there is a large pond with living water because it has an outlet flowing out to form a small stream, but the source cannot be found. It's probably due to underground water seeping out. Although this pond is not the only source of water in the village, accidents have been happening here for over a year, resulting in drownings. A few years ago, such incidents never occurred, but recently, they keep happening, so there are rumors in the village saying that there's something dirty underwater, or that the Dragon King is looking for a son-in-law and daughter-in-law. Some villagers even claim to have seen a black thing in the pond at night, which sank into the water and disappeared instantly. In the past two months, two children drowned one after another. Our village is far from the county town, and the villagers are superstitious, so they invited a female shaman from a neighboring village, who killed a sheep for worship. The elderly people in our village all knelt down by the shore to pray for peace, but not long after this ritual was performed, another person drowned just a few weeks ago - it was the daughter-in-law of a family in our village, whose husband works outside and has young children. After such an incident happened, we couldn't just sit back and do nothing. Many people came to our office asking us to find a solution, but we're also afraid that things will get out of hand. You know that when things like this get out of hand, they usually don't end well. So, as a last resort, we've tried every means to contact you, and now I'm begging you, please help us out.

  I heard him mention the office, so I asked him, "Excuse me, are you an official in the village?" He said yes, he was the village head.

  According to his description, I'm used to quickly sketching out the scene in my mind and ruling out all sorts of absurd possibilities. He said that, and I thought, this thing really does seem like a water ghost.

  At that moment, I winked at Hu Zongren, implying that there was something to do and I would tell him about it later. As for the water ghost, I had only experienced it once before. I don't know if it's a problem with my personal memory or what, but after catching that water ghost, until I completely solved the thing, my impression was always very deep. However, when I thought back to it later, I always felt like it wasn't real. The so-called unreality is not about doubting whether all of this actually happened, but rather a feeling of being dazed, like you went to a dreamlike place for a tour and came back, feeling like you've been transported to another world.

  And I have very little experience with water ghosts, the last time was all done with a big heart, and there is inevitably a good luck component in it. From the other party's description and relevant people's testimony, the possibility of water ghost is very high. I asked for the specific name and address of the other party's village, and told him that no matter whether he accepted or not accepted this order, he would definitely call back before dinner that day to reply, even if I didn't do this thing, I would think of a way to recommend a master to come over.

  Isn't it enough to have done what is right and just? At that time, I was like this. I hadn't retired yet, so I could still introduce business to others. No matter how you put it, it's all within the circle. Although such a life has already made me tired and disheartened, years of habit can't be changed. As my wife would say, "a dog can't change its nature of eating feces". Although her description is extremely disrespectful to dogs and also makes me unhappy, but the fact is indeed so.

  After hanging up the phone, I told Hu Zongren about what the other person had described. As a Taoist, Hu Zongren was originally more skilled in the five elements than me, and when it came to dealing with water ghosts, I thought he would be absolutely fine. Hu Zongren took my mobile phone again after I hung up the phone and continued playing games while listening to what I had to say. I also told him that Xiaojun had once told me something about water ghosts.

  Although Hu Zongren often heard me mention Xiaojuan, he had never seen her before. I told him that Xiaojuan's hometown was also far away and there was a small river there too. When the water rose, it became very wide, and when the water receded, many people liked to swim in the river to cool off. When Xiaojuan was young, she often saw some dark figures on the surface of the water, following the swimming children, and from a distance, they looked like people swimming too. It wasn't until Xiaojuan grew up and realized that she had been born with yin-yang eyes that she understood that the people she had seen in the river as a child were actually water ghosts.

  I told Hu Zongren that at the time, I also refuted Xiaojuan, saying that water ghosts are not necessarily visible only to those with yin-yang eyes. Water ghosts have a physical body, which is actually an empty shell and container, often being the first person to drown in that waters. However, after the corpse rots to a certain extent, it begins to be covered by some fungi mixed with the ghost's own spiritual body, turning its entire body black, without bones.

  When I said that, Hu Zongren suddenly spoke up and said that's not necessarily true. Some water monkeys are physical entities that sink to the bottom of the water, and when they want to drag someone down, they will first come out in a purely ghostly state to find their target, and only then will they take action. Moreover, they generally won't come to the surface because if they're discovered by humans, they won't be able to stay for long. Hu Zongren paused his game, and I was relieved that he had found the pause button. He told me, "You didn't even ask about what happens to the body after it's been drowned and pulled out of the water." If the mouth is clean with only a bit of water grass, and the belly is round and full from drinking too much water, then that's just an unlucky drowning. But if there's mud in the mouth and nostrils, and there are some unexplained bruises on the body, then it's definitely the work of a water monkey.

  The water monkey in Hu Zongren's mouth is what I call the water ghost. This thing has many names in our Xuanxue and various places, some of which are crowned with a mythical color, but in the end, it is just a very low-level ghost. The only way to deal with it is to catch it, sprinkle salt on it, burn it, and then get rid of it cleanly.

  I saw Hu Zongren continuing to play games, feeling unhappy in my heart. So I snatched back my phone and asked him, "You're going to give me an explanation, right? We'll split it 50/50 no matter how much money, are you going or not?"

  He picked his nose and said, of course I'll go.