Chapter 1

“Eat up, you little gluttons, *wu-lei wu-lei wu-lei*~”

Cui Guiying, wearing an apron, held a bowl in her left hand and a spoon in her right, shouting as she tapped the rim of the porridge vat.

Li Weihan, sitting nearby and packing tobacco into his water pipe, kicked the woman’s backside and scolded her irritably

“Is your brain waterlogged? Are you calling for piglets?”

Cui Guiying glared at her husband, slammed a stack of bowls down in front of him, and spat back

“Pah! Pigs aren’t as noisy as them, and they certainly don’t eat as much!”

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

Li Weihan and his wife had four sons and one daughter. Once the children grew up, they moved out to live their own lives, and usually, only the eldest son’s family, who lived nearby, would leave their three-year-old twins here to be looked after.

But once summer vacation arrived, whether it was for convenience or because they felt they were losing out if they didn’t take advantage of their parents, everyone sent their children over.

Once you accepted the eldest son’s kids, it was hard to refuse the others, and in the blink of an eye, the house felt like a schoolhouse.

The couple hadn’t even had time to savor the sweetness of having a house full of grandchildren before they noticed the rice vat was bottoming out.

As the saying goes, growing children eat their parents out of house and home. Including the girls, they were all at the age where they were shooting up, and they could eat like horses. Their bellies were all like bottomless pits. Cui Guiying had to use a vat to hold the staple food for meals, and one vat wasn’t even enough—there was another pot warming on the stove.

Although the couple had plenty of grandchildren, they weren’t actually that old. According to the current rural customs, unless you were bedridden and unable to work, as long as you had the strength to go to the fields, no matter how old you were, you had no right to be fed by your children.

“Don’t grab, don’t grab! Are you all reincarnated starving ghosts? Get in line!”

The children brought their bowls to be served, and Cui Guiying was in charge of ladling the porridge.

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

He looked somewhat out of place compared to the surrounding brothers and sisters, who were all playing until they were filthy with snot running down their noses.

“Little Yuanhou, come here, I’ll put yours here to eat.”

“Thank you, Grandma.”

Cui Guiying smiled and patted the child’s head. Among this large group of grandchildren, he was the only grandson from her daughter’s side—though he didn’t count as that anymore.

The child’s name was Li Zhuiyuan. His mother was Cui Guiying’s youngest daughter, the first college student in the history of Siyuan Village.

The youngest daughter had been admitted to a university in the capital, stayed there to work after graduation, and found her own partner. Before they got married, she brought him home once—a fair-skinned, refined city man.

Cui Guiying couldn’t quite remember what he looked like, because that day, she and her husband had been so reserved in front of their son-in-law that they hadn’t dared to look too closely.

Later, when their daughter became pregnant and gave birth to a son, the distance was great and work was busy, so she never came home. But ever since she started working after graduation, she had never missed a month sending money to her parents.

Li Weihan and his wife had saved all the money sent before the wedding. When their four sons got married, they gritted their teeth and didn’t touch a cent of it. When their daughter brought her husband home that time, Li Weihan had pushed back the bride price the son-in-law offered and even returned all the money the daughter had sent over the years.

They had wanted to be even more generous and add some extra from the family, but with four sons getting married first, no matter how much they tightened their belts, there was no more oil to be squeezed out.

This matter had always left the couple feeling guilty. Returning the daughter’s money to her meant that as parents, they hadn’t contributed anything when she married, which was truly shameful.

As for the money the daughter sent every month after marriage, the couple saved it all. Whenever their sons, instigated by their own wives, tried to get their hands on this money for various reasons, Li Weihan would point at their noses and curse them back.

Half a month ago, the daughter had entrusted a man in a military uniform to bring her son over, along with a letter and a sum of money. The letter said she had divorced and that there had been recent changes in her work, so she could only entrust her son to her parents for a while.

The daughter also wrote that after the divorce, she had changed the child’s surname to hers, so this grandson from her daughter’s side had suddenly become a direct grandson.

After arriving in the countryside, Li Zhuiyuan hadn’t been the least bit unaccustomed; instead, he had quickly integrated, spending his days playing happily with his cousins from one end of the village to the other.

The staple food for this meal was sweet potato porridge. It tasted sweet, but it didn’t keep you full; it digested quickly. Even if you stuffed yourself with several large bowls until your belly was round, after running around for a while, you’d immediately feel hungry again.

Moreover, eating sweet potato porridge and sweet potato strips too often and for too long would really hurt your stomach. Even when you weren’t hungry, you’d start feeling acid rising in your throat just looking at them.

Li Zhuiyuan, however, hadn’t grown tired of it. He quite enjoyed the feeling of this “big canteen,” and the various pickles and sauces Cui Guiying made were also his favorites.

“Grandma, why aren’t we going to Grandpa Big Beard’s house for the funeral feast today?”

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

Cui Guiying tapped Huzi’s head with the end of her chopsticks and scolded: “You little brat, that’s something they only hold because the old lady passed away. Do you want people to hold feasts every day?”

Huzi rubbed his head and said, “Why not? It would be great if they held them every day.”

“What kind of nonsense is that brat spouting? Even if they wanted to hold them, where would they find enough people to die every day?”

“*Slap!*” Li Weihan hit the table hard with his chopsticks and cursed: “What kind of filthy talk are you feeding the children?”

Cui Guiying realized she had spoken out of turn, but instead of retorting to her husband, she used her spoon to dig out a piece of savory sauce and put it into Li Zhuiyuan’s porridge bowl. The sauce contained crushed peanuts and a little bit of minced meat; the spoonful she just took had some.

Li Zhuiyuan stirred it a few times with his chopsticks, the sauce color diluted, and tender bits of meat floated on top of the porridge.

The children had sharp eyes, and they were most prone to complaining about unfairness. 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.

“Go, go, go!” Cui Guiying scolded them irritably. “It’s one thing for the younger ones to be ignorant and make a fuss, but you, Panhou, Leihou, Yinghou—you’re the older ones, why are you joining in? Be a little more sensible! Everything eaten here today was bought with money from Little Yuanhou’s mother. Your parents haven’t contributed a single grain of rice to Grandma’s house, yet you have the nerve to fight with him for food!”

Panzi, Leizi, and Yingzi lowered their heads in embarrassment, while the younger ones just looked at each other and laughed it off.

It wasn’t as if Grandma hadn’t hinted at it, and they had relayed it to their families, but their parents had told them to play dumb.

At this moment, the third son’s eight-year-old, Shitou, asked, “Is Little Yellow Warbler still there?”

Cui Guiying asked, “Who is Little Yellow Warbler?”

Huzi replied, “Grandma, Little Yellow Warbler is the one who was dancing and singing at Big Beard’s house yesterday. Her singing was so good, and her dancing was great too.”

“Is that so?” Cui Guiying had been helping wash dishes in the kitchen yesterday, busy off her feet, and hadn’t had the leisure to go to the front to watch the funeral troupe perform after the meal.

Her husband, Li Weihan, hadn’t gone either, using the excuse of going out on the boat. In reality, he was at home; the reason he didn’t go was that he was embarrassed. After all, he had already let Panzi and Leizi take Yuanzi, Huzi, and Shitou to the feast; if he, an adult, went too, it would look bad.

The five children hadn’t just eaten there; they had also brought back quite a bit, especially the hearty dishes that were divided by head count at the table. Li Zhuiyuan had learned from his older brothers to tear off a piece of the red plastic sheet spread on the table to wrap up the food.

When they got home, they would share it with the younger siblings who hadn’t been able to go. Watching their siblings eat, they felt like generals returning from a victorious battle.

Leizi said, “Her singing was really good, and she was pretty, too. She told us all to call her Little Yellow Warbler.”

Panzi nodded: “She was so nice, she looked good, and her clothes were pretty. I want to marry someone like her when I grow up.”

Cui Guiying looked down and asked Li Zhuiyuan beside her: “Little Yuanhou, is that so?”

“Yeah.” Li Zhuiyuan put down his chopsticks and nodded. “Pretty.”

Funeral troupes in the countryside were expected to be able to handle both the hall and the kitchen.

During the rituals, they could don Taoist robes or monk’s cassocks to chant scriptures and perform rites, looking dignified and ethereal.

After the big feast at noon, they had to organize a cultural performance—singing, dancing, acrobatics, magic, whatever they could manage.

If they encountered a wealthy family that cared about face, they would even be hired for an evening show, though adults would always send the children home to sleep before those performances began.

Little Yellow Warbler’s surname was Xiao, her real name was Xiao Huangying, and her stage name was Little Yellow Warbler. She was actually not young—over thirty—and divorced.

As for her singing and dancing skills, they were actually only mediocre, but she knew how to dress, and her clothes were bold and trendy—a tight black cheongsam with a high slit, revealing a large expanse of white leg, plus her intimate and enthusiastic crowd control…

To use the most vicious insults—which were also the highest praise—from the village women, she was—*seductive*.

Nowadays, very few families in the village had televisions, and even when they brought stools to crowd around and watch, they couldn’t squeeze in. Therefore, in the countryside where the winds of fashion hadn’t yet blown widely, Little Yellow Warbler’s “seductiveness” was a dimensionality-shattering strike to the local girls and wives.

It didn’t just steal the souls of the men; even the half-grown boys were hooked and dazed.

At this moment, a figure appeared at the door of the main room. It was their neighbor, Zhao Simei, who was a long-time “sister” to Cui Guiying. When their children were few, the two loved to sit on the embankment and gossip when they were free.

“Have you eaten?” Cui Guiying asked. “Come, let me add a pair of chopsticks.”

Zhao Simei waved her hand and laughed: “Oh, I wouldn’t be embarrassed to sponge a meal off anyone else, but not you. Look, you’re already drinking thin porridge.”

“This porridge is easy on the stomach; I love it. Come on, let me ladle you a bowl. No matter how much we scrape the rice vat, can we be short of a bowl for you?”

“Alright, alright, I’ve already eaten. Hey, do you know that the head of the funeral troupe just took people to Big Beard’s house to make a scene? They say they smashed things and almost started a fight.”

Hearing this, Cui Guiying immediately picked up her bowl and chopsticks and stood up, moving toward the door while shoveling porridge into her mouth: “What happened? Did Big Beard’s family not settle the bill?”

“It wasn’t about the performance fee; someone from the troupe went missing.”

“What, someone went missing?” Cui Guiying slurped her chopsticks. “Who went missing?”

“A woman. The one who was all slinky and seductive. The way she twisted her butt yesterday, you’d think she wanted to show off her tailbone.”

“Is it Little Yellow Warbler?” Panzi asked.

The other children also pricked up their ears.

“It seems to be her, that seductive hussy.” Zhao Simei was very gleeful.

“How did she go missing? Have they found her?” Cui Guiying asked.

“They say someone saw that hussy from the troupe sneaking into the small woods by the river with Big Beard’s youngest son last night. She never returned to the troupe, so they came to demand her back.”

“And what about Big Beard’s son?”

“He’s at home, but he says he doesn’t know anything, that it never happened. But plenty of people in the village saw it—it was definitely him and that hussy who went into the woods.”

“So where is she?”

“Who knows? She’s just gone. The troupe leader came this time to demand the person, but the Old Beard family insists they haven’t seen her, claiming the hussy ran off on her own.”

“Then what?”

“The Old Beard family paid the troupe leader a sum of money—quite a lot, too.”

Cui Guiying immediately patted Zhao Simei’s arm and raised her eyebrows: “Something’s fishy!”

Zhao Simei patted her arm back and lifted her chin: “You bet!”

Old Beard used to be the deputy director of the grain station in town—that was a lucrative position. Even though he was retired now, except for his youngest son who was a loafer, his other sons all had jobs in town. In this village, even the village chief’s family wasn’t as imposing as his.

So, for Old Beard to be willing to pay money to settle the matter, there must be a ghost in the works!

“So after paying the money, the troupe leader just left?”

“Left.”

“And they aren’t looking for her anymore?”

“Looking for her? The troupe packed up their gear and took the truck to the next village for a gig.”

“Oh my.” Cui Guiying shook her head. “I hope nothing bad happened.”

“Who knows.”

“People, they’re really fake.”

“You said it.”

Hearing this, Huzi and Shitou suddenly started crying

“Wuwuwu! Little Yellow Warbler, Little Yellow Warbler!”

“My Little Yellow Warbler, Little Yellow Warbler is gone, wuwu!”

Seeing this, Zhao Simei almost laughed out loud, pointing at them: “Look at that, your two grandsons are quite the sentimental fools.”

Cui Guiying rolled her eyes at her and said, “Don’t you have a granddaughter? Why not pair them up?”

“Heh.” Zhao Simei snorted, pointing her finger at Li Zhuiyuan. “If we’re going to be in-laws, it’s not impossible, but it has to be with your Little Yuanhou, so my Little Juanhou can follow him to the capital and enjoy a good life.”

“Go, go, don’t just dream of good things.”

Li Weihan had finished eating. He wasn’t interested in the old women’s gossip, and it wasn’t convenient for him to interrupt, so he just silently picked up his water pipe and opened the matchbox, but it was empty.

Li Zhuiyuan put down his chopsticks and ran to the back of the stove to get a box of matches for Li Weihan.

Li Weihan didn’t take them, but moved the pipe bowl in front of Li Zhuiyuan.

Li Zhuiyuan smiled and pulled out a match, striking it “*cha, cha, cha*” until he finally got a flame. He carefully shielded it with his other hand and lowered the match to the pipe bowl.

Li Weihan took several puffs, got the smoke going, and looked satisfied, a smile on his face.

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

“*Hoo.*”

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

Panzi spoke up: “Grandpa, let’s go boat out to pick lotus pods this afternoon?”

Li Weihan glanced at the bland meal on the table, nodded, and said: “Leizi, come too. Bring the net and see if we can catch a few fish for your grandma to make a soup.”

Hearing this, Huzi and Shitou immediately forgot about Little Yellow Warbler and shouted: “Grandpa, I want to go too, I want to go too!”

The other younger ones followed suit, afraid they would miss out on something fun.

Li Weihan looked around sternly and scolded: “Grandpa is telling you, there are water monkeys in this river. They specialize in dragging people into the water to drown them so they can become their scapegoats, and then they can be reincarnated.”

Immediately, the children were frightened and dared not speak.

Shitou asked somewhat unconvinced: “Why can the older brothers go?”

Panzi and Leizi were older children after all; they were sensible and helped their grandfather scare their younger siblings

“I’m strong, the water monkey can’t hold me down.”

“I’m a good swimmer, the water monkey can’t catch me.”

Li Zhuiyuan wasn’t scared. He wanted to go too, but he was too shy to ask, so he just lowered his head and fiddled with his small hands, stealing glances at his grandfather from time to time.

Li Weihan said: “Little Yuanhou is coming too.”

Huzi immediately said indignantly: “That’s not fair, Brother Yuan is only a year older than me.”

Shitou chimed in: “Yeah, Brother Yuan isn’t even as strong as me, how can he fight a water monkey!”

Li Weihan slowly exhaled a smoke ring and gave a very reasonable reason that even the children were convinced by

“Little Yuanhou is from the outside; our local water monkeys don’t recognize him.”

……

The houses in the village were basically built by the water, with the front door facing the road and the back door facing the river.

When washing vegetables or clothes, one only needed to carry things out the back door and walk down a few blue brick steps to reach the riverbank.

Those who knew how to manage a household would often set up a net along their stretch of the river to raise ducks and geese.

The Li family’s boat was tied to the persimmon tree at the back door. Li Weihan untied the rope and got on the boat first, steadying it with a bamboo pole.

Panzi held the fishing rod, and Leizi carried the fishing net; they jumped onto the boat one after another.

Li Zhuiyuan carried a small bamboo basket, and Li Weihan reached out to help him onto the boat.

“Sit tight, we’re setting sail!”

As the bamboo pole on the water surface repeatedly lengthened and shortened, the boat began to move.

Panzi and Leizi were long used to it; both of them lay diagonally on the boat, very relaxed. Li Zhuiyuan sat straight and upright, watching the water weeds floating past and the dragonflies skimming the surface.

“Here, Yuanzi.” Panzi handed over a small handful of roasted beans.

He was from the eldest son’s family, and since they lived nearby, he would find time to go home and get some snacks, but his mother had warned him that these things were to be hidden and eaten by himself, not shared.

On the contrary, Li Zhuiyuan’s mother had sent a large bag of snacks—biscuits, meat floss, canned fruit—when she entrusted the man in the military uniform to bring him over. She had mailed another large package the day before yesterday, all of which Cui Guiying locked in the cabinet to be distributed to all the children in measured amounts every day.

“Thank you, Brother Panzi.”

Li Zhuiyuan took them and put one in his mouth. These beans were locally called “fist beans”—actually fava beans—roasted with shells, spices, and salt. They were very fragrant when chewed.

However, Li Zhuiyuan didn’t like eating them; they were too hard, he couldn’t bite them, and they were liable to chip his teeth.

So, while the two older brothers were crunching away, Li Zhuiyuan just kept one in his mouth, sucking on it like a candy.

“*Coming tomorrow, even if there are a thousand songs, drifting on my road; coming tomorrow, even if there are a thousand evening stars, brighter than tonight’s moon.*”

Panzi started singing.

“You’re singing it wrong.” Leizi laughed. “That’s not how you sing it.”

Panzi said disdainfully: “Hmph, you know how to sing? You sing it then!”

Leizi mumbled a few times and scratched his head: “I only remember the tune.”

Li Weihan, who was poling the boat, asked: “What is that you’re singing? I can’t understand it.”

Panzi replied: “Grandpa, it’s what Little Yellow Warbler sang yesterday. It’s called Yue Opera.”

“Yue Opera?” Li Weihan was a bit surprised. “What you just sang was Yue Opera?”

Leizi: “No, Grandpa, it’s Cantonese opera, from Guangdong and Hong Kong.”

“Oh, I see. You two sing it properly for Grandpa to hear.”

Leizi: “Panzi doesn’t know how to sing it at all. He can’t even remember the lyrics. He’s far worse than Little Yellow Warbler yesterday.”

In fact, Little Yellow Warbler’s singing wasn’t standard either, but for the current mainland, there wasn’t much difference between standard and non-standard. Anyway, no one understood it; all they wanted was that confident tone.

Panzi pointed at Li Zhuiyuan and said: “When Little Yellow Warbler sang yesterday, I saw Yuanzi singing along. He knows how to sing it.”

Li Weihan: “Little Yuanhou, sing it for Grandpa to hear.”

Li Zhuiyuan said very shyly: “I only know that little bit.”

“Sing it, sing it.” Leizi urged. “Yuanzi doesn’t just know Cantonese opera; he can even sing English songs!”

Li Zhuiyuan had no choice but to sing

“*Coming tomorrow, even if there are a thousand songs, drifting on my road; coming tomorrow, even if there are a thousand evening stars, brighter than tonight’s moon.*

That’s all I know. Mom likes this song and plays it at home often.”

Leizi looked at Panzi provocatively: “Hear that? Your lyrics were wrong.”

Panzi rolled his eyes at Leizi.

The brothers chatted all the way, and the boat finally reached a wider part of the river.

Panzi went to help his grandfather with the pole, Li Weihan began to look for a spot and organize the net, and Leizi set up the fishing rod.

Li Zhuiyuan wasn’t assigned a task; he continued to sit there with his small bamboo basket on his back, watching his grandfather and brothers work, then watching the water weeds and the frogs jumping on them.

After watching for a while, Li Zhuiyuan leaned forward, puzzled.

Li Weihan had been keeping an eye on this “grandson.” Seeing this, he immediately warned: “Little Yuanhou, sit further inside, don’t fall in!”

Li Zhuiyuan pointed to the river ahead and asked: “Grandpa, Brother, there’s a black clump of water weeds over there.”

“Where?” Leizi looked in the direction Li Zhuiyuan was pointing. “Hey, it really is black.”

“Where, where?” Panzi was helping pole at the stern and couldn’t see clearly, so he took the initiative to push the boat toward that direction.

Li Weihan hadn’t taken it seriously at first; he was busy untying the knots in the fishing net. When he heard Li Zhuiyuan and Leizi still chattering about it, he looked up. Just that one glance, and he froze.

That black clump—slender yet diffuse, scattered yet not separated—this wasn’t water weeds at all; it was clearly human hair!

Because Panzi kept pushing the boat closer, they were now much nearer to that area. The underwater part was vaguely visible: the black patterns, the white buttons, the curvaceous lines…

Because Li Zhuiyuan was sitting, Leizi, who was standing beside him, was the first to see the underwater part. Leizi immediately shouted

“Grandpa, that’s a person! Someone fell into the water! Panzi, hurry and pole over to save them!”

The story of the water monkey could no longer scare older children like them. Their simple, kind nature made them subconsciously think someone had fallen in, and their first reaction was to rescue them.

“Bullshit!”

Li Weihan suddenly roared. This grandfather, who was a bit strict but mostly kind to the children, lost his composure in a rare display. Veins bulged under his rough, chapped skin. He immediately threw the fishing net onto the boat, walked toward the stern, and shouted at Panzi

“Change direction! Change direction! Give me the pole, don’t get any closer!”

Their boat had been in this area for a while, and they hadn’t heard a splash. The water there was calm and waveless; there was no way anyone needed rescuing—that person must have been dead for a long time!

But logically, even if one encountered a drowned corpse, at most one would feel unlucky; why be so terrified?

But Li Weihan knew that he had to get away as fast as possible.

Because the area was dense with waterways near the river and sea, drowning wasn’t a rare occurrence. Basically, every village or neighboring village had someone who specialized in retrieving corpses from the water.

It wasn’t usually their main job, but the person was fixed. One reason was the bad luck, and the other was the many taboos. Unless it was someone with inherited skills, no one wanted to touch it.

Siyuan Village had a corpse retriever named Li Sanjiang. By seniority, Li Weihan had to call him Uncle.

Li Sanjiang had no children. He was too lazy to farm the land allocated by the village, so he rented it out just to get enough grain to eat.

But he didn’t live the life of a lazy man who didn’t know where his next meal was coming from. He made paper offerings and retrieved corpses. Both paid well—much more than farming that little bit of land. Therefore, even though he lived alone, he had small drinks and meat every day, living quite comfortably.

Years ago, to help his four sons get married, Li Weihan had rented Li Sanjiang’s land. He had truly taken advantage of the man, so whenever a corpse needed retrieving, Li Weihan would go along to help his clan uncle.

Although Li Sanjiang never let him on the boat to touch the corpse, only letting him set up the altar and prepare chicken or dog blood on the shore, after doing it many times, he learned some of the tricks of the trade from Li Sanjiang.

In this line of work, a floating corpse was called a “dead-fall.”

Normally, a drowned person would float up after soaking in the water for a few days and gradually decomposing. Due to the structure of the pelvis, male corpses usually faced down, and female corpses faced up.

Most “dead-falls” were retrieved by Li Sanjiang after a set procedure and brought back to the shore for the families. But once, while drinking, Li Sanjiang had solemnly said there were two special cases he didn’t dare to retrieve.

One was a “dead-fall” surrounded by a whirlpool, which meant there was a leak or mud trap nearby; you might end up with yourself and the boat flipped over and sucked in.

As for the second one, even Li Sanjiang would have trembling lips and a numb scalp just seeing it…

That was a “dead-fall” that stood upright at the bottom of the water, with only its hair floating on the surface!

That was someone filled with extreme resentment, dying with their eyes wide open, determined to drag someone down as a substitute!

Li Weihan still remembered that at the drinking table, Li Sanjiang had stared at him with bloodshot eyes and said very seriously

“Hanhou, remember, if you see this kind of ‘dead-fall’ on the water, don’t think about anything else. Get away as fast as you can. If you’re too slow, it’ll keep you there!”

Therefore, upon discovering that this was an upright “dead-fall,” how could Li Weihan not be horrified? Not to mention, he had three grandsons on the boat!

And Panzi, still curious, clearly couldn’t keep up with his grandfather’s instructions. When his grandfather came over to grab the bamboo pole, he stumbled, causing the pole to poke into the mud sideways, which made the boat tilt severely to the right.

This kind of tilt was nothing to someone who traveled by boat often—for example, Leizi, who was standing by the side, quickly leaned over and grabbed the edge of the boat to maintain balance—but Li Zhuiyuan, who was sitting there, had no experience in this. After his upper body was carried out by inertia, he fell into the water with a “*plop*,” right on the side facing the “dead-fall.”

The river water was very clear, and since it was mid-afternoon with the sun shining brightly, the light underwater was quite good.

Li Zhuiyuan, who had just fallen into the water, was still instinctively splashing, but he was immediately stunned by the scene before him.

Just as Brother Leizi said, there was a person standing in the water, and it wasn’t anyone else—it was Little Yellow Warbler, whom the brothers had been talking about at the dinner table!

She was still wearing the black cheongsam from her performance, with white floral buttons, a slit up to her waist, and those red high heels on her feet.

The water flowed steadily. Under this push, her arms swung back and forth rhythmically, and her legs swayed back and forth.

It gave the feeling that she was walking underwater.

She was swinging her arms, she was twisting her waist, she was revealing her legs, she was standing on tiptoe, she was singing…

Even underwater, she was still interpreting that seductive posture that the village women both envied and loathed.

“*Coming tomorrow, even if there are a thousand songs, drifting on my road…*”

In his ears, he seemed to hear Little Yellow Warbler’s non-standard Cantonese accent again.

Accompanied by the singing,

Little Yellow Warbler slowly turned around, gradually facing Li Zhuiyuan.

Her long hair floated diagonally upward, like a black umbrella held open. The powder on her face was thicker than yesterday, and her lips were even more vividly red.

Suddenly,

She smiled.