Chapter 1

"You little rascals, mealtime, wule wule wule~"

Cui Guiying, wearing an apron, held a bowl in her left hand and a ladle in her right, calling out while tapping the rim of the porridge vat.

Li Weihan, sitting nearby and filling a water pipe with tobacco leaves, kicked the woman's large buttocks and scolded irritably:

"Has water flooded your brain? Are you calling piglets?"

Cui Guiying glared at her husband, slammed a stack of bowls in front of him, and spat out a curse:

"Pah, pigs aren't as rowdy as them, nor do they eat as much!"

At her call, a group of children ran in from outside, seven boys and four girls, the oldest sixteen and the youngest only three.

Li Weihan and his wife had raised four sons and one daughter; after the children grew up and established separate households, only the eldest family, who lived nearby, would usually leave their pair of three-year-old twins here to be raised.

But once summer vacation arrived, whether for convenience or because they felt cheated if they didn't take advantage of their parents, everyone sent their children over.

Once you accepted the eldest family's children, it became awkward to refuse the others, suddenly turning the home into something like a school.

The couple hadn't yet had time to savor the sweetness of having the hall filled with grandchildren before the rice jar at home was visibly nearing the bottom.

As the saying goes, half-grown boys can eat a father into ruin; including the girls, they were all at the age of growing bodies, incredibly hungry, their bellies like bottomless pits; at Cui Guiying's house, the staple food for meals had to be served from a vat, and even one vat wasn't enough, with another pot keeping warm on the stove.

Although the couple already had a house full of grandchildren, they weren't actually that old, and by current rural customs, unless you were bedridden with illness and lost the ability to work, as long as you still had the strength to work the fields, no matter how old you were, you had no qualification to enjoy meals provided by your children.

"Don't snatch, don't snatch, are you all ghosts reborn from starvation? Line up for me!"

The children held out their bowls to receive food while Cui Guiying was responsible for ladling the porridge.

The last one to come over was a ten-year-old boy; he wore denim overalls and fashionable sandals, with fair, tender skin and a shy expression.

He looked somewhat out of place compared to his brothers and sisters around him, who were dirty from play and sniffing runny noses.

"Little Yuan Hou, come, eat here."

"Thank you, Grandma."

Cui Guiying smiled and patted the child's head; among this large group of biological grandchildren, he was the only maternal grandson, though that distinction no longer applied now.

The child's name was Li Zhuiyuan; his mother was Cui Guiying's youngest daughter, the first university student in the history of Siyuan Village.

His youngest daughter had been admitted to a university in the capital, stayed there to work after graduation, and found her own partner; before marrying, she brought him home once, a city dweller with fair skin and a refined demeanor.

Cui Guiying couldn't recall his specific appearance clearly because on that day, she and her husband had been so stiff and reserved in front of their son-in-law that they hadn't felt comfortable looking too closely.

Later, when their daughter became pregnant and gave birth to a son, the long distance and busy work kept her from returning home, but ever since graduating and starting work, she had never missed sending money to her parents every month.

The money sent before her marriage, Li Weihan and his wife had saved; when their four sons married, they gritted their teeth and refused to touch a single fen of it; when their daughter brought her husband home that time, Li Weihan pushed back the betrothal gift money offered by the son-in-law and even returned the money their daughter had sent.

They had intended to be even more steadfast and add extra from their own savings, but since the four sons had married first, no matter how tightly the couple tightened their belts, they couldn't squeeze out any more oil or water.

This matter had always weighed on the couple's conscience; returning the daughter's money to the daughter meant that as parents, they had contributed nothing when marrying off their daughter, which was truly a loss of face.

As for the money their daughter sent every month after her marriage, the couple saved it all; when their sons, egged on by their wives, tried to scheme for this money with various excuses, Li Weihan would point at their noses and scold them away.

Half a month ago, their daughter entrusted a man in military uniform to bring their son over, along with a letter and a sum of money; the letter stated she had divorced, her job was undergoing recent changes, and she could only entrust her son to her parents to care for temporarily.

The daughter's letter also mentioned that after the divorce, she had changed the child's surname to hers, instantly turning this maternal grandson into a paternal grandson.

After arriving in the countryside, Li Zhuiyuan not only showed no signs of maladjustment but quickly integrated, spending all day playing joyfully with his brothers from the village head to the village tail.

This meal's staple was sweet potato porridge; it tasted sweet but wasn't filling, digested quickly, and even after several large bowls that bloated the belly round, running around wildly for a while would immediately bring back hunger.

Moreover, eating sweet potato porridge and sweet potato strips in large quantities over a long period could truly damage the stomach; when not hungry, just seeing them would make stomach acid rise.

Li Zhuiyuan, however, hadn't grown tired of it; he quite enjoyed this "large canteen" feeling, and the various pickles and salty pastes made by Cui Guiying were deeply to his liking.

"Grandma, why aren't we going to Grandpa Big Beard's house for the banquet today?"

The one who asked was the son of the second uncle, nicknamed Huzi, nine years old this year.

Cui Guiying tapped the end of her chopsticks on Huzi's head and scolded: "You little rascal, that was an event held only because his old mother passed away; do you want them to hold banquets every day?"

Huzi, covering his head, said: "Why not? Holding them every day would be great."

"What nonsense is this little rascal spouting? Even if his family wanted to hold them, where would they find enough people dying every day to line up for it?"

"Slap!" Li Weihan heavily tapped the table with his chopsticks and scolded: "What kind of drivel are you, an adult, telling a small child?"

Cui Guiying also realized she had misspoken; instead of retorting to her husband, she used her spoon to scoop a piece of salty paste into Li Zhuiyuan's porridge bowl beside her; the paste contained some crushed peanuts and a bit of diced meat, and her scoop included some.

Li Zhuiyuan stirred a few times with his chopsticks; the dark color of the paste dispersed, and tender white cubes of meat floated to the surface of the porridge.

The children had sharp eyes and were most insistent on fairness rather than scarcity; Huzi immediately said: "Grandma, I want meat too, the kind in Brother Yuan's bowl!"

"Grandma, I want some too."

"Me too."

The other children joined in the clamor.

"Shoo, shoo!" Cui Guiying scolded them irritably, "It's one thing for the younger brothers and sisters to be ignorant and make noise, but Pan Hou, Lei Hou, and Ying Hou, you older ones acting as big brothers and sisters, what are you joining in for? Be sensible; everything eaten here today was bought with money given by Little Yuan Hou's mother; your own parents haven't contributed a single grain of rice to Grandma, and you still have the nerve to fight with him for food!"

Pan Zi, Lei Zi, and Ying Zi lowered their heads somewhat embarrassedly, while the younger ones just looked at each other, smiled, and let the matter pass.

Grandma had hinted before, and they had conveyed the message to their families, but their parents had instructed them to play dumb.

At this moment, Shitou, eight years old from the third uncle's family, asked: "Is Xiao Huangying still there?"

Cui Guiying asked: "Who is Xiao Huangying?"

Huzi answered: "Grandma, Xiao Huangying is the one who danced and sang at Big Beard's house yesterday; she sang so beautifully, and her dancing was very good too."

"Is that so." Cui Guiying had been helping wash dishes in the back kitchen yesterday, so busy her feet barely touched the ground, with no leisure time after the meal to go to the front and watch the funeral troupe perform.

Her husband, Li Weihan, hadn't gone either; he claimed he had gone out on the boat, but in reality, he was at home; the reason he didn't go was embarrassment; after all, he had already let Pan Zi and Lei Zi take five children—Yuan Zi, Huzi, and Shitou—to the banquet, so for an adult like him to go eat as well would have looked bad.

The five children not only ate their fill but also brought back quite a bit, especially the hard dishes distributed per person at the table; Li Zhuiyuan, imitating his older brothers, tore off a piece of the red plastic sheet covering the table in front of him to use for wrapping food.

When they returned home and distributed the food to the younger brothers and sisters who hadn't been able to attend the banquet, watching them eat made the older children feel like generals returning victorious from battle.

Lei Zi said: "Her singing was truly beautiful, and she was pretty too; she asked us all to call her Xiao Huangying."

Pan Zi nodded: "She was very nice, good-looking, and her clothes were beautiful too; when I grow up, I want to marry someone like her."

Cui Guiying lowered her head and asked Li Zhuiyuan beside her: "Little Yuan Hou, is that so?"

"Yeah." Li Zhuiyuan put down his chopsticks, nodded, and said, "Good-looking."

Rural funeral troupes prided themselves on being presentable in the main hall and capable in the kitchen.

During ceremonies, they could don Daoist robes or Buddhist kasayas to chant sutras and perform rituals, appearing ethereal and dignified;

yet after the midday banquet, they had to organize a variety show, singing, dancing, acrobatics, magic tricks—whatever they could manage, they had to put on.

If a family was wealthy and loved to show off, they would even hire specific funeral troupes for an evening performance, though before such shows began, adults would always chase the children home to sleep.

Xiao Huangying's surname was Xiao; her real name was Xiao Huangying, her stage name was Little Yellow Oriole, and she was actually not young, being in her thirties and divorced.

As for her skills in singing and dancing, they were merely amateur at best, but she knew how to dress, wearing bold and trendy clothes, a tight black cheongsam with a high slit revealing large expanses of white legs, coupled with her friendly and enthusiastic crowd control...

To use the most vicious curse and simultaneously the highest praise from the village women, it was simply—slutty.

Nowadays, few households in the village owned a television set; often, even bringing a stool to squeeze in wouldn't allow one to get a spot, so in this rural area where the winds of fashion had not yet blown in en masse, Xiao Huangying's "sluttiness" was a dimensional strike against the surrounding village girls and daughters-in-law.

Not only did it steal the souls of the grown men, but it also bewitched the adolescent boys into a daze.

At this moment, a figure appeared at the doorway of the main hall; it was the neighbor Zhao Simei, who had been Cui Guiying's "sister" for many years; when their children were few, the two loved to sit on the dam and gossip whenever they had free time.

"Have you eaten?" Cui Guiying asked. "Come, add a pair of chopsticks."

Zhao Simei hurriedly waved her hand and laughed: "Oh my, I wouldn't dare come to your place to mooch a meal; look, you're only eating porridge here."

"This porridge sits comfortably in the stomach; I just love this taste. Come on, I'll ladle you a bowl; no matter how much I scrape the rice jar, could I possibly lack enough food for you?"

"Alright, alright, I've already eaten. Hey, do you know that the head of the funeral troupe just led people to cause a scene at Big Beard's house? Rumor has it they smashed things and nearly came to blows."

Hearing this, Cui Guiying immediately stood up with her bowl and chopsticks in hand, shoveling porridge into her mouth as she moved toward the door: "What happened? Did Big Beard's family fail to settle the payment?"

"It wasn't about the performance fee; someone from the troupe went missing."

"What, they lost face?" Cui Guiying sucked on her chopsticks. "Who went missing?"

"A woman, the one who reeks of lust; yesterday, the way she twisted her hips, you'd think she was trying to expose her anus."

"Is it Xiao Huangying?" Pan Zi asked.

The other children all pricked up their ears.

"Seems like it was her, that slutty bitch," Zhao Simei said with great schadenfreude.

"How exactly did the person go missing? Have they been found?" Cui Guiying asked.

"They say someone saw that slutty bitch from the troupe last night following Big Beard's youngest son into the small woods by the river; later, she didn't return to the troupe, which is why the troupe came to demand the person back."

"What about Big Beard's son?"

"He is at home, claiming he knows nothing and that it never happened; but many people in the village saw him and that wanton bitch entering those woods together."

"Then where is the person?"

"Who knows? She's just gone. The head of the troupe came specifically to demand her back, but Old Beard's family stubbornly insisted they had never seen her, claiming that slutty bitch ran off on her own."

"So what happened then?"

"Old Beard's family paid the troupe leader a sum of money, quite a large amount too."

Cui Guiying immediately patted Zhao Simei's arm and raised an eyebrow: "There's something fishy here!"

Zhao Simei immediately patted Cui Guiying's arm back and lifted her chin: "Absolutely!"

Old Beard had previously served as the deputy station master at the town grain station, a truly lucrative position; even though he is now retired, aside from his youngest son being idle, his other sons all hold positions in the town, making his family more formidable in this village than even the village chief's.

Therefore, the fact that Old Beard was willing to pay money to settle this matter meant there must be something sinister beneath the surface!

"So after paying the money, did the troupe leader leave?"

"He left."

"What about the person? Aren't they looking for her anymore?"

"Look for what? The whole troupe has packed up their gear, gotten onto a truck, and headed to the next venue for their performance."

"Oh dear." Cui Guiying shook her head. "Let's just hope nothing bad happens."

"Who knows."

"People can be so fake."

"Indeed."

Hearing this, Huzi and Shitou suddenly burst into tears:

"Wuwuwu! Little Yellow Oriole, Little Yellow Oriole!"

"My Little Yellow Oriole, Little Yellow Oriole is gone, wuwu!"

Seeing this, Zhao Simei nearly laughed until snot bubbles came out of her nose; she pointed and said, "See that? Your two grandsons are truly stubborn romantics."

Cui Guiying rolled her eyes at her and said, "Don't you have a granddaughter? Match them up."

"Heh." Zhao Simei snorted, pointing at Li Zhuiyuan. "Marrying into our families isn't impossible, but she'd have to be paired with your Little Yuan Hou, so my Little Juan Hou can follow him to the capital to enjoy the good life."

"Go on, go on, stop dreaming such beautiful dreams."

Li Weihan had finished eating; he had no interest in the old women's gossip and found it inconvenient to interject, so he simply silently picked up his water pipe, opened the matchbox, only to find it empty.

Li Zhuiyuan put down his chopsticks, ran to the slot behind the stove, and brought a box of matches over to Li Weihan.

Li Weihan did not take it; instead, he moved the pipe bowl in front of Li Zhuiyuan. Li Zhuiyuan smiled, pulled out a match, "scratch," "scratch," "scratch," finally managing to strike a flame; he carefully cupped it with his other hand and lowered the match to the pipe bowl.

Li Weihan took several deep puffs, drew out the smoke, felt thoroughly satisfied, and wore a face full of smiles.

Back then, his own daughter also liked lighting his pipe for him, saying that when she grew up, she would buy him boxed cigarettes to smoke.

"Hoo."

Li Zhuiyuan blew out the match, dropped it on the ground, and stepped on it several times with the sole of his shoe.

Pan Zi spoke up: "Grandpa, shall we pole the boat this afternoon to pick lotus seed pods?"

Li Weihan glanced at the blandness on the dining table, nodded, and said, "Lei Zi will come too; bring the net along and see if we can catch a few fish for your grandmother to make soup."

Hearing this, Huzi and Shitou quickly forgot about Little Yellow Oriole and shouted, "Grandpa, I want to go too, I want to go too!"

The other youngsters followed suit, shouting together, afraid that any fun activity would leave them out.

Li Weihan seriously scanned the group and scolded, "Grandpa is telling you, there are water monkeys in this river; they specialize in dragging people underwater to drown them so they can serve as their substitutes, allowing the monkeys themselves to reincarnate."

Immediately, the children grew afraid and fell silent.

Shitou asked with some indignation, "Why are the older brothers allowed to go?"

Pan Zi and Lei Zi were ultimately the older children; they were sensible enough to help their grandfather frighten the younger siblings:

"I, your older brother, have great strength; the Water Monkey cannot hold me."

"I swim well; the Water Monkey cannot catch me."

Li Zhuiyuan was not frightened; he also wanted to go, but felt too shy to speak up, so he merely lowered his head to fiddle with his small hands, occasionally stealing glances at his grandfather with his little eyes.

Li Weihan said, "Young Master Xiaoyuan will go as well."

Huzi immediately protested, "That's unfair; Brother Yuan is only a year older than me."

Shitou chimed in, "Right, Brother Yuan's strength isn't even as great as mine; how can he fight the Water Monkey!"

Li Weihan slowly exhaled a ring of smoke, offering a highly reasonable explanation that even the children found convincing:

"Young Master Xiaoyuan has returned from outside; our local Water Monkeys do not know him."

The houses in the village were basically built along the water, with the front gates facing the road and the back doors opening toward the river.

When washing vegetables or clothes, one only needed to carry the items out the back door, descend a few green brick steps, and arrive at the riverside.

Those skilled at managing a household would often set up a net along the section of river bordering their home, raising ducks and geese within the enclosed area.

Old Li's boat was tied to the persimmon tree behind the back door; Li Weihan untied the rope, boarded the boat first, and used a bamboo pole to steady the vessel.

Pan Zi hugged the fishing rod while Lei Zi held the fishing net, and they jumped onto the boat one after another.

Li Zhuiyuan, carrying a small bamboo basket on his back, was reached out for by Li Weihan and pulled aboard.

"Everyone sit tight; we're casting off!"

Accompanied by the bamboo pole repeatedly lengthening and shortening upon the water's surface, the boat began to move.

Pan Zi and Lei Zi were long accustomed to this; both lay slanted on the boat, very leisurely, while Li Zhuiyuan sat upright and straight, watching the water weeds floating past on the river surface and the dragonflies skimming by.

"Here, Yuanzi." Pan Zi handed over a small handful of fried beans.

He belonged to the eldest branch; since his home was nearby, he would often find time to visit, bringing some snacks from home, though his mother had instructed him to hide these treats and eat them himself, never sharing them with others.

In contrast, Li Zhuiyuan's mother, when entrusting someone in military uniform to deliver Li Zhuiyuan, had also sent along a large bag of snacks—biscuits, meat floss, canned fruit, and the like—and just the day before yesterday, another large package had arrived by post, all of which Cui Guiying had locked in the cabinet to distribute daily in fixed portions to all the children.

"Thank you, Brother Pan Zi."

Li Zhuiyuan accepted them and put one into his mouth; locally, these beans were called "fist beans," but they were actually broad beans, stir-fried in their shells with some spices and a bit of salt, tasting very fragrant when chewed.

However, Li Zhuiyuan did not like eating them; they were too hard, difficult to bite, and liable to crack one's teeth.

Therefore, while the two older brothers constantly made "crunch crunch" sounds with their mouths, Li Zhuiyuan simply placed one in his mouth and let it dissolve like candy.

"Lai yi zong shi qian qian yao ge, piao dang zai lu shang; lai yi zong shi qian qian yao ge, liang liang jin wan yao liang."

Pan Zi began to sing.

"You're singing it wrong," Lei Zi laughed. "It's not sung like that."

Pan Zi scoffed, "Hmph, if you know how to sing it, then you sing!"

Lei Zi mumbled a few times, scratching his head: "I only remember the tune."

Li Weihan, who was poling the boat, asked, "What sort of thing are you singing? I don't understand it."

Pan Zi replied, "Grandpa, it's what Xiao Huangying sang yesterday; it's called Yue Opera."

"Yue Opera?" Li Weihan asked with some surprise. "Was what you just sang Yue Opera?"

Lei Zi said, "No, Grandpa, it's Cantonese opera, from the Guangdong and Hong Kong side."

"Oh, is that so? Then sing it properly for Grandpa to hear."

Lei Zi said, "Pan Zi doesn't know how to sing at all; he can't even remember the lyrics; he's far worse than Xiao Huangying was yesterday."

In truth, Xiao Huangying's singing was not very standard either, but for the inland regions of today, the difference between standard and non-standard was not significant; anyway, no one could understand it, and all that mattered was that confident tone.

Pan Zi pointed at Li Zhuiyuan and said, "Yesterday when Xiao Huangying was singing, I saw Yuanzi singing along with her; he knows how to sing it."

Li Weihan said, "Young Master Xiaoyuan, sing it for Grandpa to hear."

Li Zhuiyuan said with great embarrassment, "I only know how to sing that little bit."

"Just sing it, just sing it," Lei Zi urged. "Yuanzi can not only sing Cantonese opera; he can even sing English songs."

Li Zhuiyuan had no choice but to begin singing:

"Lai ri zong shi qian qian que ge, piao yu yuan fang wo lu shang; lai ri zong shi qian qian wan xing, liang guo jin wan yue liang."

"That's all I know; Mother likes this song and often played it at home."

Lei Zi looked at Pan Zi challengingly: "Did you hear that? The lyrics you sang were wrong."

Pan Zi rolled his eyes dramatically at Lei Zi.

As the brothers chatted along the way, the boat finally reached a wider section of the river channel.

Pan Zi went to help his grandfather with the pole, Li Weihan began searching for a spot and organizing the net, while Lei Zi set up the fishing rod.

Li Zhuiyuan had not been assigned any task, so he continued to sit upright with his small bamboo basket on his back, sometimes watching his grandfather and older brothers busy themselves, and other times looking at the water weeds on the river surface and the frogs jumping atop them.

As he watched, Li Zhuiyuan leaned forward with some confusion.

Li Weihan had been keeping a close eye on this "grandson from outside"; seeing him do this, he immediately warned, "Young Master Xiaoyuan, sit further inside; don't fall in!"

Li Zhuiyuan pointed at the river surface ahead and asked, "Grandpa, Brother, there is a clump of black water weeds over there."

"Where?" Lei Zi looked in the direction Li Zhuiyuan was pointing. "Eh, indeed, it is black."

"Where, where?" Pan Zi was at the stern helping pole the boat and could not see clearly, so he actively pushed the pole to steer the boat toward that direction.

At first, Li Weihan did not take it seriously; he was busy untying knots in the fishing net, but upon hearing Li Zhuiyuan and Lei Zi still chattering about it, he finally lifted his head to glance in that direction, and with just that one look, his eyes immediately widened in shock.

That clump of blackness was fine yet spreading, scattered yet not separating; how could this be water weeds? This was clearly human hair!

At this moment, because Pan Zi kept steering the boat closer, the distance to that area diminished, and the submerged portion became vaguely visible: those black patterns, white buttons, and curving lines...

Because Li Zhuiyuan was sitting, it was Lei Zi, standing beside him, who first saw the part beneath the water, and Lei Zi immediately shouted:

"Master, that's a person, someone has fallen in! Pan Zi, hurry and pole over to save them!"

The story of the water monkey could no longer frighten older children like them; their simple and kind nature made them instinctively assume someone had fallen in, their first reaction being to attempt a rescue.

"Bullshit!"

Li Weihan suddenly roared; this grandfather, who was usually strict yet mostly kind toward the children, rarely lost his composure, but now the blue veins stood out starkly beneath his rough, cracked skin. He immediately threw the fishing net in his hand onto the boat and, while walking toward the stern, shouted at Pan Zi:

"Turn around, turn around! Give me the pole, do not approach!"

Their own boat had already been in this area for a while, yet they had heard no sound of anyone falling in; moreover, the water there was perfectly calm without a single ripple, so how could any rescue be needed? That person must have been long dead, thoroughly so!

Yet logically speaking, even if one encountered a drowned corpse, at most one would feel it was bad luck; why such panic and loss of composure?

But Li Weihan knew deeply that at this moment, the only option was to flee far away as quickly as possible.

Because the local area relied on the river and bordered the sea with dense waterways, drowning was not considered rare; basically, every village or neighboring village would have someone specializing in retrieving corpses from the water.

It was generally not a primary occupation, yet the personnel remained very fixed, first because of the bad luck involved, and second because of the many taboos; unless one was an old craftsman with inherited skills, no one was truly willing to touch this line of work.

Siyuan Village had one such corpse retriever named Li Sanjiang; by generation, Li Weihan even had to address him as Uncle.

This Li Sanjiang had no sons or daughters; he was too lazy to farm the fields allocated to him by the village, instead renting them out just to secure enough grain for meals.

Yet he did not live the life of a lazy man unsure of his next meal; first, he made paper effigies, and second, he retrieved corpses; both trades earned considerable money, far more generous than farming those few plots of land, so although he lived alone, he enjoyed small drinks and meat every day, living a very comfortable life.

In earlier years, to help his four sons establish families, Li Weihan had rented and farmed Li Sanjiang's fields; this was truly taking advantage of the man, so whenever corpse retrieval was needed during that period, Li Weihan would accompany this clan uncle to lend a hand.

Although Li Sanjiang never allowed him aboard the boat to touch the corpses, each time only instructing him to stay on shore to arrange the offering table and prepare some chicken blood and dog blood, after many times, Li Weihan had learned some of the tricks of the corpse retrieval trade from Li Sanjiang.

In the underworld slang of this profession, floating corpses were called "dead falls."

Normally, a person who drowned would gradually decompose after a few days underwater and then float to the surface; due to pelvic structure, male corpses usually faced downward while female corpses faced upward.

For most dead falls, after following a fixed procedure, Li Sanjiang would retrieve them, carry them back to shore, and hand them over to the family; however, once while drinking, Li Sanjiang had very solemnly stated there were two special exceptions he did not dare to retrieve.

The first was a dead fall accompanied by a swirling eddy nearby; this indicated a leak or mud trap in the vicinity, and there was no telling if both he and his boat might be capsucked and sucked in.

As for the second, that was something that made even Li Sanjiang's lips tremble and his scalp go numb upon seeing it...

It was the kind of dead fall that left only hair floating on the surface while standing upright on the riverbed!

This carried immense resentment, an inability to close one's eyes even in death, determined to drag someone down as a companion!

Li Weihan still remembered that scene at the drinking table, when Li Sanjiang stared at him with bloodshot eyes and spoke very seriously:

"Han Hou, remember, if you see this kind of dead fall on the water, think of nothing else; flee as fast as you can, for if you flee too late, it will keep you!"

Therefore, upon discovering this was an upright dead fall, how could Li Weihan not be terrified, especially since he now had three grandsons on the boat!

Meanwhile, Pan Zi, still very curious, clearly failed to connect with his grandfather's command; as his grandfather rushed over to snatch the bamboo pole, Pan Zi stumbled, causing the pole to thrust sideways into the mud, which made the boat tilt severely to the right.

Such a tilt meant little to those accustomed to boating; for instance, Lei Zi, standing by the boat's edge, quickly bent down, grabbed the side, and restored balance; but Li Zhuiyuan, sitting there, lacked such experience, and after his upper body was carried outward by inertia, he fell into the water with a "plop," landing precisely on the side facing the dead fall.

The river water was very clear, and since it was mid-afternoon with perfect sunlight, the illumination underwater was quite good.

Li Zhuiyuan, having just fallen in, was still instinctively flailing, but he was immediately stunned by the sight before his eyes.

Just as Brother Lei Zi had said, there was a person standing in the water, and this was no stranger; it was precisely Xiao Huangying, whom the brothers had been talking about at today's meal!

She was still wearing the black qipao from her performance, with white patterned frog buttons, slitted up to the waist, and on her feet were those red high-heeled shoes.

The current flowed steadily; under this push, her arms swung rhythmically back and forth, and her legs swayed gently to and fro.

It gave the impression that she was walking underwater.

She was waving her hands, she was swaying her waist, she was exposing her legs, she was standing on tiptoe, she was singing a song...

Even underwater, she was still embodying that seductive posture that made the village women both envious and disgusted.

"Even if a thousand songs come in days to follow, drifting far away upon my path..."

Beside his ear, it seemed he heard again Xiao Huangying's non-standard Cantonese accent.

Accompanied by the singing,

Xiao Huangying slowly turned around, gradually facing Li Zhuiyuan.

Her long hair drifted diagonally upward, like propping open a black umbrella; the powder on her face was even heavier than yesterday, and her lips were even more vividly red.

Suddenly,

she smiled.

(End of Chapter)