Guai Dao Hu Zong Ren

  "Hú Zōngrén! Hú Zōngrén!" I started shouting in a panic. Since I've known Hú Zōngrén, although we've been through many dangers, those dangers were only relative to ordinary people and hadn't reached the level of directly threatening our lives. I'm clear about my own swimming abilities - when I was 9 years old, I crossed the Jialing River with my dad. And although Hú Zōngrén has always told me that his swimming skills are not bad either, I've never gone into the water with him before. Plus, in May, even though it's starting to get a bit warm, going for a swim is still a bit too early, especially since we're all wearing spring clothes - getting our clothes wet and having them stick to our skin doesn't feel great.

  More than ten seconds later, Hu Zongren still hadn't surfaced, at this point I was really getting anxious, gritting my teeth, I flipped over and dove down into the water.

  When I was a kid, I watched those boring movies and thought it was cool to open my eyes in the water. Only when I grew up did I realize that even though my eyes could get used to the feeling of being filled with water quickly, I couldn't see anything clearly. It felt like my eyes were full of tears, so everything was very blurry. After diving down, I started searching around with a flashlight, and even in the clearest water, there would be mud and sand at the bottom. Hu Zongren is not someone who gives up easily, so I looked for the murkiest water everywhere. Soon, I found a patch of murky water just a few meters away from where Hu Zongren was sinking, and although my eyes couldn't see clearly, I could vaguely see him frantically kicking his legs in the mud.

  I adjusted the direction, stuck the flashlight on my belt, and quickly swam over. There was a lot of mud in the water, I was worried that my eyes wouldn't be able to take it, so I kept my eyes closed and stretched out my hands to grab around, hoping to catch Hu Zongren and pull him up. I grabbed hold of him soon enough, and held on tight, feeling like I was almost at the bottom of the water. Then I turned around, kicked off the ground, and desperately pedaled upwards towards the surface.

  After I surfaced, I instinctively took a few deep breaths and shook off the water from my face. Since I had long hair that year, I bet I looked like a horse shaking its mane at that moment. Next, I pulled Hu Zongren's hand towards the surface with all my might, but his hand felt extremely heavy, as if I was engaged in a tug-of-war with the water ghost, and Hu Zongren was the rope. Although I knew Hu Zongren had a strong physique, he was suddenly dragged underwater without being able to hold his breath, and it was inevitable that he would lose strength within those few dozen seconds. Just then, about four or five meters away from me, Hu Zongren suddenly emerged from the water like an otter, coughing a few times after surfacing, looking around in all directions, and upon seeing me, asked if I was okay?

  I grabbed Hu Zongren, but Hu Zongren appeared a few meters away from me. Then what was I holding in my hand? When I thought of this, I suddenly felt a chill on my back, and even the feeling of my skin shrinking tightly, I could remember clearly. So I held my breath, used all my strength, and pulled out the thing in my hand from the water surface with a loud splash.

  During this intense tug-of-war, the first thing to emerge from the water was a lotus root-like object. It looked like a foot, but it had long toes and fingernails that resembled fish scales. Next, a dark, butt-like object appeared. Since my hands were only so long, I couldn't pull whatever this thing was completely out of the water. At that moment, I knew there were only two possibilities for what I had grabbed onto. Either it was a corpse that had drowned in the water and hadn't been recovered, but I quickly dismissed this idea because even if a body is submerged underwater in a vacuum state, it's still just a dead body - how could it possibly grow such long fingernails? So there was only one other possibility left: what I had grabbed onto was that water ghost we had tried so hard to catch earlier but failed to, and instead pulled Hu Zongren underwater.

  Hu Zongren probably saw what I was holding in my hand under the weak light of the flashlight, and he quickly understood. He swam towards me with a splash, and since we were not far apart, we soon met. The lower half of the water ghost I was holding was upside down, and its waist and above were still underwater. I have to say that its strength was much greater than I had imagined, but it was not irresistible. Until Hu Zongren arrived at my side, grabbed the other foot of the water ghost, and we both started swimming desperately towards the shore.

  It wasn't until now that I had the time to carefully feel the thing in my hand. It's actually very hard to describe the sensation, I don't know if anyone has played with those water balloons, but it feels like when you squeeze them. However, it doesn't have a strong plastic feeling like a balloon, but more like something with fluff on it. If you apply a bit of force and squeeze it, you can feel that there's something elastic inside, but it's definitely not bone. If you were to squeeze your own wrist or ankle right now, you would be able to feel the bones through the skin, but at that time, the thing in my hand felt like there was a layer in between. I couldn't help but rub it with my thumb, and it felt like skin, but slightly rough and slippery, kind of like snot.

  So don't ask me how I know the feeling of snot, I won't tell you that when I was a kid, playing with snot was my favorite thing to do.

  Perhaps it was because we were already exhausted from dealing with the water ghost earlier, and being pulled underwater was like a desperate struggle for survival. And pulling Hu Zongren down to the bottom of the water was just an instinctive reaction, I think, because I don't think it intentionally chose Hu Zongren, but rather randomly selected one of us to pull down into the water. Hu Zongren just happened to be the unlucky one. Because water ghosts are a very special kind of supernatural entity, usually when a living thing's soul and body separate, they become a corpse and a ghost, respectively. In other words, the body is like a container for the soul. But water ghosts are actually drowned spirits that have borrowed a dead person's corpse to move around underwater, entering the container, but the body is already a lifeless dead object. Its only purpose is to constantly alternate between killing people in order to achieve its own escape.

  Until I and Hu Zongren's feet had already stepped onto the shore, this water ghost was still struggling with all its might, only its strength was much smaller than before. The water itself also has a dissolving force, so when I and Hu Zongren jointly pulled it to the shore, it no longer struggled, but remained motionless.

  Both Hu Zongren and I were exhausted, after sitting on the ground panting for a while, I found that our flashlights miraculously still worked despite being submerged in water. At least not at that moment. So I reached out to grab the "water ghost" we had caught and brought to the shore, flipped it over, and said to Hu Zongren, come on, let's take a look at what this thing really looks like.

  Under the flashlight, the humanoid creature lying on the ground was clearly visible. Its body size was about that of a 7 or 8-year-old child, and it was all black, not the kind of black like ink, but more like the charred skin of a pig's trotter. The surface was covered with fine downy hair, much thicker and denser than human body hair, and the hair was also dark brown in color. The face looked the most strange, because its eyes were always open, and the original black pupils had disappeared, replaced by two small black dots the size of green beans, looking very much like the eyes of a fish. There was no nose bridge, but there were two deep and long small mouths that seemed to be nostrils. But thinking about it, since they're dead anyway, what's the use of having nostrils? The ears looked fake and didn't protrude from the head like human ears do, but were stuck tightly to the skull. I took a closer look and found that they were actually stuck there by some unknown substance. The mouth was the most uncomfortable place to look at, if we say "big mouth" according to our common saying, then this creature's mouth was especially big, I used my finger to lift up the lip and saw that inside were densely packed white, grain-like things that seemed to be teeth, it looked disgusting. The hair on its head was sparse, and there was also hair on the top of its head, but I didn't see the small depression on the crown of the head that is said to be characteristic of Kappa.

  I and Hu Zongren both know that the water ghost is a form, its shape has some specific ones, such as body size, skin color, hand and foot shapes, etc., and it will also be different depending on the place of occurrence. This is like Europeans and Africans, who look similar at first glance but still have differences in appearance. This is my second time catching a water ghost, I'm not sure how many times Hu Zongren has done it, but we both understand that each time we catch one, it will definitely look different. Hu Zongren smiled and told me, "It seems that those legends of river gods and river children are just legends after all."

  I didn't respond to him, both of us were completely soaked. I asked you what happened just now, how did you get caught? Hu Zongren spat out a mouthful of water and said indignantly, I was about to answer your question when something grabbed my ankle and pulled me down with force. Of course, I struggled, but this guy knew how to control my hands and feet in the water, making it impossible for me to exert any strength. Moreover, I fell into the water very suddenly, choking on several mouthfuls of water, and couldn't help but have mud poured into my nose and mouth by a cold hand. I knew this thing was going to kill me. But my hands and feet were trapped, unable to move at all.

  When he said that, Hu Zongren lifted up his pant leg and shone the flashlight at me, saying "Look at this." I looked over and saw that both of his ankles were wrapped with a large amount of water grass. Water grass is very resilient, many people who drown normally do so because their feet get tangled in it. Hu Zongren pulled off the water grass from his foot and threw it on the ground, then turned over his sock to reveal an obvious bruise. He smiled bitterly and said "Luckily this time there were two of us, if I was alone, Old Hu's life would have been gone."

  Hu Zongren took off his socks, one hand constantly rubbing between his toes, the other hand holding the wet socks, wringing out the water ghost on the ground, cursing, "You damn dog, trying to kill me, practice your muscles first!"