Chapter 21 Twenty-first night Shuangjie Lake

Uncle Liu's house was well built. Ji Yan took a look at it, but raised some small questions about how to arrange the furniture, room layout and so on.For example, the total position of furniture should not exceed half the area of ​​the room, otherwise it will not be conducive to air circulation. The air in the countryside is very fresh, and everyone is busy congratulating Uncle Liu on his new house. Ji Yan and I are not used to lively occasions, so we told our mother that we are coming back after dinner. landscape. The two walked away casually. At this time, a young man with a hurried look ran over from the front with his fishing tackle and almost bumped into me. I grabbed him and asked curiously, "What's wrong?"

He was held by me, a little anxious, too thin, and unable to break free for a while, so he had to honestly say: "Let go, there are a lot of live fish jumping out of the lake over there, and they will all be robbed if they go late." "Oh? Did the fish jump out of the lake by itself?" Ji Yan also leaned over and asked strangely. "Yeah, it's hard for me to come back and get something to pack the fish with. You guys should let go, or let's go fishing together." He stamped his feet and looked at the two of us with pleading eyes.I looked at Ji Yan. "Go, go and have a look, it's still early before dinner." Ji Yan looked up at the sun, and made a gesture of going.I let go of the young man, and the three of them came to the lake he said.

This lake is not big, and the lake surface is clear, but I didn't expect many people to stand there.Sure enough, when we took a closer look, many fish swam towards the shore of the lake like crazy, or jumped out of the lake.The scene is very spectacular.And the people next to them were all happy, young and old were fishing with bags, clothes, or their own washbasins.The young man didn't care about us anymore, and rushed towards the lake while shouting "slow down".I think the fishers here are crazier than the fish. We stood by and wanted to wait for them to calm down a little and ask the bottom line.Unexpectedly, the crowd suddenly shouted like a frying pan. At first, there was a sharp shout, which seemed to be a woman, and then a group of people went to watch, and then everyone sighed.We hurried over to have a look.

It turned out that two female corpses floated by the lake. It's fine if it's a female corpse, the problem is that they always feel a little uncomfortable.The skin of the two people has been soaked pale, like jellyfish skin pickled in salt water, almost translucent, glowing in the morning sun, and the wet clothes on their bodies are tightly stuck to their bodies. Judging from their stature, they should be very young, and what puzzled me the most was that they wrapped their hands around each other tightly, and their fingers had almost completely caught each other's back, like nails.The two faces were pressed together, looking at the side together, with a look of great fear before death, the mouth was open and hollow, and the eyeballs were almost completely protruding.

At this time, someone had already gone to invite people, most of the young people present, and some bold ones had already moved the corpses, but the two corpses seemed to be welded together, and they had become a whole.At this moment, she could see more clearly, a girl with long braids, thick as hemp rope wrapped around her neck, with an oval face, slender eyebrows and a high nose.The body is slightly plump compared to the other one, but it may also be blistered. He is wearing what appears to be a summer dress, a short-sleeved plaid shirt and sea-blue trousers, but the shoes are gone, and the clothes have faded. The other one has short hair. She has a round face and a broad forehead. She is dressed similar to the one just now, but she is slender. She should have been a very cute girl when she was alive, but now she makes me feel very uncomfortable because there seems to be a lot of black mud in her mouth.

"What do you think?" I asked Ji Yan who was silent beside me.He kept staring at the corpse without blinking his eyes. I really admired his endurance, because I already felt a little nauseous. "It's strange. They don't look like they were drowned," he muttered suddenly. "Then how did they die?" I couldn't help asking.Ji Yan didn't speak, I think maybe he didn't come into contact with the corpse so he can't say that, but think about it, the two are wearing summer clothes, it's almost Christmas now, and they haven't been soaked in the water for such a long time It is swollen, and there is no sign of rot or fish and insect bites on the body.It's so abnormal.

Not long after.It seemed that the local police had arrived, and many other villagers rushed over. Among them, a ten-year-old woman with a painful expression pushed aside the crowd of onlookers and shouted: "Is it my son? Is it my son?" Is it?" The crowd stepped aside.The middle-aged woman stood there for a few seconds when she saw the corpse, and then threw herself on the corpse with a wow.When people are at their saddest, they don't express themselves by crying, but by howling. The people around were talking in low voices, and I tugged at the corner of the person next to me.

"Who is this woman? Is her daughter lying there?" The man sighed, and said slowly: "Her name is Aunt Min, she is Uncle Min's wife, and the one with braids on the ground is her daughter. But." He stopped suddenly, as if hesitating, and a little scared Said: "Her daughter disappeared last summer. At that time, she thought she was in the lake. After fishing for a long time, she couldn't find it. Aunt Min became obsessed. She stopped and complained when she saw people all day long, just like Mrs. Xianglin, but there was no I thought it was the corpse floating up again after so long."

"Who is hugging Aunt Min's daughter?" I asked again. "It's her daughter's classmate. They often play together, but both of them should be very good at water, and this lake is not deep." He sighed again and stopped talking.I walked around the crowd and found that Ji Yan was gone.I searched around and found that he was in a daze on the shore of the distant lake. I walked over to pat him, Ji Yan looked at the lake and said: "The lake is a bit strange." "Strange? No, although I don't come here often, I know that this lake has existed for some years. Residents in this area often fetch water here, and play here in summer. It is rare to have such a lake that has not been completely polluted. It's gone." I looked at the still clear lake water.I told Ji Yan everything I knew just now, and he waved his hand.

"Come on, we're going to find out what happened in the summer here a year ago." His old problem came up again, but it was one of my problems too. I asked many individuals, and the answers were not very complete, but we still got a relatively complete and satisfactory answer by piecing together everyone's narratives. Last summer, there was a severe drought here. I still remember it. I remember that the temperature was surprisingly high and there was no precipitation for several months. However, it was a little better in the city. I heard from my mother that most of the fields here were dried up. Farmers Lost a lot.This lake is no exception. It is not very big, so it has dried up so much that it has become a small pond. It is hot in summer. Naturally, many children want to come here to play, but they are forbidden by the villagers. It doesn't matter if it doesn't rain or the crops die, people always need water, so we send people on duty continuously to guard the poor water source.

Even such a small amount of water has become the object of competition among nearby people. People from other villages often want to borrow water.So the battle between the two villages began.Fighting over water sources and even wounding and killing people is nothing new here. Fortunately, things did not escalate.Probably the weather was too hot, and everyone didn't even have the strength to raise their hands to beat people.However, the village still sends people to guard the lake every day, so as not to be looted by others, there are special people responsible for distributing the basic water for everyone every day. The day when the accident happened happened to be a big summer, and it was a very hot day. Aunt Min’s daughter was named Huahua. She was just a freshman in high school that year, and she was on summer vacation. Naturally, the child couldn’t stay idle, even though the air outside was white in the sun. , she still called another classmate, the other person in the corpse, to go to the lake. This lake has existed for a long time, and no one knows when it came into existence, but it has never been so dry that almost the bottom of the lake is exposed. It was Uncle Liu who was on duty that day. Uncle Liu said that he saw Huahua and her classmates. They wanted to play in the lake, but they were coaxed away by Uncle Liu. Although the lake dried up a lot, it was enough to drown people. It's not good to be seen playing in the house, and then Uncle Liu got sleepy and fell asleep in the thatched hut where he was resting. That night, Aunt Min was looking for her daughter.At first, I thought I had gone to the field, but after ten o'clock, no one was seen, and Aunt Min became anxious, so she begged everyone to help find it, and everyone shouted around with torches.Finally someone suggested to go to the lake to have a look. I found Huahua's pair of shoes by the lake, and Aunt Min started to cry. Although there was no hope, everyone would feel uncomfortable if the body was really in the lake. It is extremely taboo to die in the water here.But it was too dark at night, so everyone had no choice but to comfort Aunt Min, and sent three people with excellent water skills to the lake to find the corpse.But the strange thing was that there was no body found in that big lake, so everyone had to give up, and Aunt Min kept talking like this, and no one knew where Huahua and her classmates had gone. That's how we know it happened.So Ji Yan and I felt the strangest thing was what happened to those two girls, or what was the cause of their death. The corpse has already been transported away, so it may take some time to know the cause of death, Ji Yan said: "Why don't we find the three people who went to the lake at that time." We went back to Uncle Liu's house, had a hasty lunch, and asked Uncle Liu how many people went to the lake at that time. Fortunately, two of them went out to work, and the remaining one happened to be the one we met this morning. A young man in a hurry to catch a fish. Only then did we know that the young man was named Degui, and he came back to work as a farmer after graduating from junior high school. He and Huahua were still classmates in junior high school, but after Huahua entered high school, the two became estranged. They were still good friends before. It seems that he has suffered a little bit today. When we found him, he was nestling at home, half sitting on the bed. "Huahua's death is too tragic, her appearance is always swaying in my eyes." Degui said this, his whole body was still trembling, maybe it is somewhat unacceptable for someone too familiar to die in front of him. "Did you go down to the lake to fish for Huahua last summer? The lake should have been much smaller then, why didn't you see it?" I asked Degui. "Don't mention it, I was almost scared to death that time, and the two who went with me were also very scared." "Oh? Tell me, what's the matter?" Ji Yan frowned, and sat down next to him on a bamboo stool to listen to his narration. "That day Aunt Min almost went crazy. She grabbed my clothes desperately and begged me to get down quickly. When we jumped down, I felt something was wrong." "Do you think the lake is very cold?" Ji Yan interjected and asked.Degui stopped and looked at Ji Yan. "How do you know? Yes, although the water in the lake will be a few degrees lower than the outside, the water is too icy, piercing the bones, as if it is only a few degrees. We were terribly cold, but we still searched inside. I Look for the center of the lake, and the two of them go to the sides. I don’t know what they saw, but when I dived, I felt that the surrounding area was getting darker and darker, but I could still see things. The lake water was quite clear, but there was no shadow of Huahua around. We went up and changed. He breathed and continued to search. I feel that the more I swim to the center of the lake, the colder it becomes. When I wanted to give up, I heard something vaguely in my ear, and I stopped. Indeed, I heard Huahua calling my name. At that time, I responded, but there was no sign of her around, and my voice became very weak. I just thought I heard it wrong.In addition, I didn't have enough air, so I went upstream. At this time, my feet felt strangled by something, and when I looked back, it was a human hand. " "Manpower?" Ji Yan and I asked in unison in surprise. "Yeah, I was also scared to death. The hand came out from nowhere. It didn't look like a severed hand. It seemed to stick out from the darkness. At this time, I pulled it out desperately. The strength of the hand was not strong. But I was scared to death, and slowly I pulled my hand out of the darkness, but there was only a little, but I could see clearly enough, it was half of Huahua's face. I could only see half of her body, the other half was like she was standing in the dark, she looked at me beggingly, her expression was very pitiful, her mouth was half open, I couldn't hear what she said, but from the shape of her mouth You could tell they were calling for help. At this time, I couldn't hold back any longer. I kept trying to pull my foot out. After kicking a few times, Huahua let go, and I saw her being dragged in again, and soon completely disappeared.I couldn't help being surprised, because if I didn't go up, I would suffocate to death in the lake.After I went up, I didn’t tell anyone. No one would believe me when I told others about it. I reasoned that there was nothing in the lake, and the other two came up and said they didn’t find anything.Later, without telling them, I went to a Taoist priest to help me drive away the evil spirits, and I gradually forgot. I heard that there were fish coming out of the lake in the morning, and I wanted to decorate with things. I didn’t meet you, but I Unexpectedly, Huahua's body floated up.You know, when I looked at her face, I almost collapsed, and I immediately remembered the way she grabbed my leg and asked me to save her. Will she come back to me?Will it? Defu suddenly lifted the quilt, grabbed my shoulders with both hands and asked loudly, I was dumbfounded by his question. Ji Yan quickly held him down, covered his eyes with his palms, and helped him to lie down. "It's okay, it's okay, you're fine now, take a deep breath, take a deep breath, and relax as much as possible." Defu calmed down slowly and lay on the bed. Ji Yan pulled me out. "Can you dive?" He suddenly asked.I replied: "I can swim, but I haven't tried diving." "You should be okay, aren't you very good at catching water monkeys?" Ji Yan laughed, and then looked at the time. "One o'clock, the sun is good, it's the best time to go down. You go back and get ready, and you will find me by the lake in fifteen minutes." Saying that I left, I had no time to speak, so I had to go back to Uncle Liu's house first, but the problem is that Clothes are in summer, but now it’s winter.It's terrible. The current air temperature is about 6 degrees. I congratulated myself that I was still in the south. I took a bottle of local liquor and a large dry towel and came to the lake.Uncle Liu was chatting with his mother, and I took the things mentioned above under the pretext of wanting to go back to nature and decided to go swimming in winter, and then walked to the lake, exactly fifteen minutes.It was just the opposite of the situation in the morning. It was very empty, but I could still see a few fish struggling to jump ashore, and then sunk to death. I carefully avoided the dead fish, and saw Ji Yan standing in front.He smiled. "You took so much, and you also took white wine?" "Drink something to keep out the cold." "Don't just lie down." He said and began to undress.I also dragged my coat, it was so cold, every time I took off one, it was like being tortured.It didn't take long for us to stand in the cold wind like two sausages. I took a sip from the can, it was so spicy, and the native wine seemed to have a high degree of alcohol. Ji Yan acted like nothing happened. "Aren't you cold?" I asked. "It's okay, I used to go swimming in winter." He moved a little.We moved a little bit and got into the water.It was really painful when I first entered. Yes, it was not cold, but painful. It felt like cutting flesh, and I had to go downstream even though it was uncomfortable.When I first entered, life was worse than death. After a while, the strength of alcohol came up, and I was also numb. It was a little better. Ji Yan was in front, and I was behind.There were dead fish floating everywhere in the lake, some almost touched my face, and there was already a bad smell in the water.It was dead.We floated up a few minutes later. "No, the temperature is too low, it's too difficult to dive to the center of the lake." I panted.Ji Yan also said that this is too reluctant, after all, the lake is not as dry as it was in summer.We decided to go up first to see if we could find a set of professional diving equipment borrowed from the relevant department.But easier said than done, let alone here.We decided to go back first, buy two sets of diving suits, and inquire about Huahua's autopsy results by the way.On the way back to the car, Ji Yan kept silent, as if she was thinking about something. "What are you thinking?" I asked. "It's nothing. So many fish jumped out of the lake as if they were escaping from something, but they were actually dead when they got out of the lake." Ji Yan replied. "That's different, sometimes it's good to be able to choose your own death." "It is indeed much better to choose death by yourself than to be in someone else's hands." Ji Yan nodded thoughtfully, then looked at the scenery outside the window and said nothing.Back in the city, we rushed to a diving equipment store, which was invested and opened by a diving enthusiasts club.Of course, we found what we wanted, equipped with the most basic set, including masks, fins, wetsuits, oxygen tanks, barometers and depth gauges. If the most important and expensive equipment in diving equipment, then It is none other than a breathing regulator.Its function is to decompress the compressed air in the cylinder into the air we usually breathe.And make sure that air is released from the breathing regulator only when the diver is inhaling.The first stage head is directly connected to the gas cylinder, the second stage and the spare, and the instruments are all connected to the first stage head. Of course, there are two underwater lights. Good guy, these two sets of equipment actually cost more than 5,000 yuan. Fortunately, we discussed with the boss that it was only a day in the concession, but he still reluctantly accepted our deposit and told us not to damage it. , we nodded and walked out of the store.The autopsy report won't come out until tomorrow afternoon at the latest, so we had a good night's rest and returned to the lake early the next morning. We didn't go down until the water temperature was at its highest. Before going down, Ji Yan tied a rope around my waist, just in case.Wearing a diving suit is indeed much better. Compared with yesterday's naked swimming, the difference is huge. Although it is still cold, I can already get used to it.The oxygen in the bottle was enough for half an hour. We swam to the center of the lake that Telford said. At this time, there was no living thing in the whole lake.The depth gauge slowly shows that we are about 14 meters, and the lake is estimated to be no more than 20 meters. We will soon be able to go to the bottom of the lake to see what is there.Ji Yan pointed her thumb down and made a gesture to go down, and we accelerated our dive. It gets darker and darker as it goes down, and the sound next to it is getting harsher and harsher, as if whining. I wonder how I can hear the sound here.The temperature of the lake also dropped sharply, to only 3 degrees. The depth gauge is still showing, but Ji Yan and I are still diving, it seems that the bottom of the lake is unfathomable at all. It's more than twenty meters, but it doesn't mean to bottom out at all.One-third of the oxygen has been used up. I stopped for a while and turned on the light. The light was very bright. I saw that Ji Yan also stopped. I wondered whether I should continue.Ji Yan also went towards me, and then went down again. I shook my head helplessly, knowing that he would never give up halfway. Thirty-seven meters away.I am speechless. The highest depth of the Namtso Saltwater Lake is only 37 meters, but it is still possible to dive here. Could it be that this is a bottomless pit?There are not many places where the light shines, like a black fog, but Ji Yan can still be seen swimming forward.Finally, at forty meters, Ji Yan stopped.I saw that Ji Yan was not moving, and he actually made a gesture to go up. Indeed, our oxygen may not be able to support us to return.The moment I looked back, I seemed to feel that something was rushing down from the top. I subconsciously shone the light and turned my head.What appeared before me was a human face.Telford's face.The face was obviously lifeless, just like Huahua's corpse. What surprised me the most was that he was still facing my face, and the two of us were almost nose to nose.He looked even more ferocious under the light. I wanted to dodge in a panic, but he came down so fast that I was hit by him and fell down quickly.The depth gauge next to it was still jumping up, and Telford fell against me like a missile.I thought it was over.At this time, my waist tightened, followed by a pulling sensation, I managed to remove Defu, and then took advantage of the remaining time of the oxygen tank to go up.Fortunately, this nylon rope saved me. I looked back at Telford, and he sank like a weight.We finally surfaced before the oxygen ran out, and it felt so good to see the sun again. Here and the underwater world just now are basically two different worlds. When I was in the room in shock, I remembered to ask Ji Yan.Ji Yan wiped her hair and said to me: "Defu is dead, just like Huahua." "What's going on? Why is the bottom of the lake so deep?" I picked up a cup of hot tea and took a sip. "That's not the bottom of the lake, or it's not exactly the bottom of the lake. What Huahua encountered last year should be similar, but maybe she just happened to be involved at the time. This kind of lake is called a double-boundary lake." "Shuangjie Lake?" I didn't understand. "There are often many connection points between our world and that world. These connection points are moving, and there is no law. As long as it appears, if there is a creature next to it, it will be sucked in, like a black hole, and then wait for the next time. Spit it out again, have you heard of a tornado, the things that the tornado whips up in this city will go down to another city, such as coin rain." Ji Yan continued to explain. "I understand, but what about Telford?" "He should have been sucked in at that time, but he must have been overstimulated and threw himself into the lake before we got down. Maybe his body will resurface again somewhere after a while." "Does that mean this lake will be like this in the future?" "I don't know, maybe it will, maybe it will move. There are many things where the human body suddenly disappears, even hundreds of thousands of people. Didn't a Japanese army disappear completely overnight during the anti-Japanese war? I guess they met It’s connected. If we kept going down, we wouldn’t be able to reach the bottom even if we ran out of oxygen.” "What's down there?" I finished my tea and asked one last question. Ji Yan wiped her hair, put a towel on her head, and smiled, revealing a row of white teeth, "I don't know about this, maybe we will know in a few years, but anyway, now is not the time." Huahua and her classmate's autopsy report also came out, and there was no injury or drowning.The doctor had to say that it was acute heart paralysis. It's a pity that when the diving suit was returned, the boss still found a small damage. To put it bluntly, he still paid some money, but if he knew that we went there wearing it, he probably wouldn't want it.