1942, I lived on hunting

Old Jia, soaking wet, walked a long way along the Yellow River before he found a family. When they learned that he had crawled out of the river, the family praised him for his good fortune. After a month or so, the flood receded, and Old Jia returned home, once again becoming penniless.

There were so many people in the village sailing out, and you, Jia, were the only one coming back. How could you not make a scene? Old Jia could only tell people about his experience. Many people did not believe him, saying that he must have seen it wrong and the boat hit the reef, killing everyone on the boat. But even if Old Jia drove his boat onto the reef, what about the other small fishing boats? Did they also hit the reef and sank?

Later, he met a blind fortune teller. After hearing his story, the blind fortune teller asked him a question: Which do you think is scarier, the thing in the river or the weird child?

These words woke Lao Jia up from his dream and left him stunned!

He immediately asked the blind fortuneteller what the child was. The blind fortuneteller told him that some people did a lot of bad things, and their unwilling souls turned into something called a life-seeking ghost, pretending to be a child, but actually coming for revenge. Such children are plagued by disasters and diseases, and generally do not grow up. When they grow up, they will be prodigals, and will not stop until they have ruined the whole family.

After this incident, Lao Jia was terrified of the Yellow River and the thing in the river. For a long time, he didn't dare to come to the river, take a boat, or even go into the water.

But there are some things that are useless to be afraid of. Instead, you have to deal with the things you are afraid of to support your family. Going hungry is the most realistic thing. Later, when he was too poor to survive, Lao Jia became a boatman and continued to drift on the river. He even worked as a corpse collector for a while.

It is said that the corpse retriever travels alone in the three realms, not afraid of ghosts or gods and not concerned about his future.

Every year, countless corpses are washed down the Yellow River from the upper reaches. In order to allow these corpses to rest in peace, the industry of Yellow River corpse retriever came into being.

The master who brought Lao Jia into the business was named Qin Zhong, a famous corpse lifter in this river basin. His wife died early, leaving behind a son. People in the village said that he had too much contact with the dead and brought bad luck to his wife, but he himself was lucky.

Qin Zhong was busy making a living, and his son Qin Yong had no mother to discipline him since childhood. After a fight with someone, he ran away from home and was never heard from again.

In a blink of an eye, Qin Zhong was fifty years old. He had only done one thing in his life, which was only this one thing. When he got old, he wanted to find an apprentice to support him in his old age. Lao Jia happened to be living under someone else's roof, so he followed Master Qin to do corpse recovery.

Once, Lao Jia followed Master Qin to retrieve a corpse and encountered the thing in the river again.

It was late autumn, the weather was cold, and the river water was icy. A woman from a neighboring village jumped into the river out of frustration. Her family paid a large sum of money and wanted to entrust Lao Jia and Master Qin to find her body and bury it.

The most feared thing for corpse retrievers is to encounter this kind of corpse. The corpse itself jumped into the river with a grudge, and it is very fierce after death. If they are not careful, the master and apprentice will lose their lives.

Before going out to retrieve corpses, Master Qin tied a foot-long red cloth strip on the bow. This cloth strip is not the common red color, but a dark brownish red color. It is said that it is soaked with chicken blood and black dog blood. Red represents auspiciousness, and tying a red cloth strip on the bow is intended to ward off evil spirits. The same is true for black dog blood and chicken blood. In fact, it is more of a psychological comfort.

When he was young, Lao Jia rowed the boat, while Master Qin held a large bamboo pole with a hook tied to one end, and headed for a backwater bay. The water flow suddenly slowed down here, and most of the debris washed down from upstream would gather here, including corpses.

The two men skillfully drove the boat to the destination, only to find that the water area was truly dangerous and scary. The water flow seemed not to be fast, but it was full of whirlpools. Some of the whirlpools were more than one meter in diameter. If someone accidentally fell into it, how could they survive?

Lao Jia steered the boat carefully to avoid these big whirlpools and sailed back and forth in the waters here. Master Qin held a long bamboo pole, stared at the river surface with sharp eyes, and kept searching among various debris and floating objects.

The two worked hard for a whole afternoon, but found nothing except a few old clothes. They had no choice but to go ashore and prepare to continue working after eating.

Lao Jia bent down to get food from the cabin, which was actually some dry food, steamed buns and flatbreads. Master Qin glanced at a whirlpool and saw a human-shaped object being sucked into the whirlpool and spinning on the river.

"Don't take it anymore, we found it, let's go!" Master Qin urged Lao Jia to get back on the boat and rowed quickly towards the whirlpool.

Lao Jia controlled the boat and approached the small whirlpool little by little. When the distance was close enough, Master Qin skillfully hooked the clothes of the corpse with the hook at one end of the bamboo pole and slowly pulled it to the side of the boat.

At this moment, something strange happened. A huge figure suddenly poked its head out, grabbed the corpse in one bite, and then turned over and dived into the water. The thing was three meters long, with a slippery black-brown back, and when it turned over, its exposed belly was yellow-white. Its huge body could splash a large area of ​​water with any movement.

Master Qin was pulling the bamboo pole hard at the time, and was about to fall into the water when the object pulled him. Fortunately, Lao Jia was very young and agile. He let go of the oar with one hand, grabbed Master Qin's clothes and pulled him back.

Master Qin and Lao Jia were so frightened that they rowed their boats towards the shore without even looking back.

When they reached the shore, Master Qin jumped off the boat first, then pulled Lao Jia, and the two of them rolled and crawled onto the beach. Only then did they dare to look back.

Where was the other person at this time? He had disappeared long ago.

The two men came to their senses, dragged the boat directly to the shore, packed up the things in the cabin, and walked home. It can be seen how scared the two men were that they didn't even care about the boat.

After returning home, Master Qin took out a jar of wine from under the bed, opened the seal and poured two large bowls of wine. He then took out a small porcelain bottle from the box, poured some powder into the two bowls of wine, stirred them well, took a big sip from the bowl himself, and then called Lao Jia to come over and drink some.

"Master, I don't want to drink!"

"Stop talking nonsense, come and drink it. This is a good thing passed down by the older generation to calm the mind and soul. After drinking it, you won't have nightmares..."

Old Jia had no choice but to sit at the table and drink. The more he thought about it, the more scared he became. The huge figure in his mind kept appearing in his mind. It seemed that the secret recipe passed down by the older generation was not very effective.

"Master, do you think I have done something wrong? Why do I always run into the old Dragon King?"

"Bullshit! We corpse collectors don't believe in these weird things. We only believe in the rules passed down by our ancestors. Old Dragon King? That's what others call it. To put it bluntly, that thing is just a big fish, but it's just a little bigger and more ferocious..."

"Fish? What kind of fish can grow that big?"

Master Qin took a sip of wine, "What fish? It's a very rare catfish. It eats three pounds of meat to grow one pound. It can grow to a length of ten feet in less than a year. The one we encountered today is just a small one. Your master and I encountered one once, and its head alone was bigger than our boat!"