Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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Since Bi’an had already made arrangements, Jiang Lan did not comment any further.
When he turned back, he saw Hai An had already chosen a black-sailed boat and was now choosing a mask at a mask stall. The brochure said that during the river god festival, many people of status would hire boats to perform outdoor performances. Most of these people were self-respecting and afraid of losing face, so they would wear a mask to cover their faces. This habit led to many ordinary people who later participated in the festival also wearing masks.
Even today, at opera art exhibitions, vendors had taken advantage of this to promote their products, bringing in a lot of masks to sell, and their business was surprisingly good.
When Jiang Lan approached it, he saw a wide variety of masks on the stall, including cute cartoon characters that children loved and some weird-looking opera characters.
Even the stall owner himself was wearing a “Thunder God” mask. Seeing Jiang Lan coming over, he immediately greeted him enthusiastically: “Handsome guy, would you like to buy a mask? It is a tradition in our Nancheng that you must wear a mask when watching night shows…”
He lowered his voice and pretended to be mysterious as he said, “Our older generation said that if the night show is too lively, it will easily attract other creatures to sneak in and watch the show. They are afraid of being discovered, so they wear masks and blend into the crowd. After the show, they will catch a few people to take home for midnight snacks. Later, everyone was afraid of being targeted by those creatures, so every time they watched a night show, they would wear masks to cover their faces. In this way, those creatures could not tell which were humans and which were their own kind, and would not attack at will…”
The stall owner’s voice was rich and his storytelling was rhythmic, but in essence he was just making up stories in order to sell masks.
Jiang Lan looked at his furry face under the mask and reminded him, “The mask is crooked, and the fur is visible.”
Stall owner: …
He straightened his mask awkwardly and continued to sell it: “All tourists wear masks. Don’t you really want to buy two? There’s a discount if you buy two together.”
Jiang Lan had no interest at all. Instead of spending money on a mask, he would rather buy some local specialties.
But Hai An was obviously fascinated by the stall owner’s little story. So, he picked and chose at the stall for a while and finally picked out a mask of a “Chicken-beak Taoist” and a “Flying Bowl Taoist” and paid for them happily.
These two masks were characters from local operas, with exaggerated and weird shapes and did not look quite human. They were the kind that would scare people if you took them out at night. Hai An wore the “Chicken Mouth Taoist” mask himself and gave the “Flying Bowl Taoist” mask to Jiang Lan.
Jiang Lan refused in his heart but thinking that maybe he could get some more information out of Hai An if he could get on good terms with him, he did not refuse him on such a small matter. Instead he just took the mask and put it on.
After putting on the masks, the two of them boarded the black-sailed boat together. The boatman was waiting at the stern, also wearing a “Guan Gong” mask on his face. When he saw them coming up, he called out to them, told them to sit down, and then paddled the boat to the middle of the river.
The boatman they were looking for was not an official large ship, but a small boat owned by a nearby farmer who came to earn extra money.
The wupeng boat[1] was not big, but it was flexible. The boatman rowed the boat at the stern and could choose a position and adjust the view according to the customer’s requirements.
Jiang Lan and Hai An sat at the bow of the boat, one in front of the other, looking at the river view in the distance.
By this time, the sky had darkened. The neon lights of the buildings on both sides of the Ling River were lit up, and the street lights on the riverside avenue were also bright. Only the wide river surface was a little dim, and only large and small boats could be vaguely seen moving slowly on the river.
Jiang Lan saw that everyone from the Monster Management Bureau as well as Long Bing and others had boarded the boats one after another.
They all chose private boats that were flexible and easy to maneuver, with three or two people in each boat, and one after another they floated onto the river.
On the tall and ancient spirit-inquiring platform, there was a drum as tall as a person with red silk tied on both sides. Two strong men holding the drums stood on one side, ready to go.
At eight o’clock in the evening, it was completely dark.
The riverside avenue on the side of the Wenling Terrace was already crowded with onlookers, and large and small boats were interweaving on the river, making it noisy and lively.
The host, wearing a traditional Chinese dress, appeared at the Wenling stage. After the opening remarks, the first drum sound announced the start of the show.
The fierce drum beats staggered and heated up the atmosphere. On the most popular flower boats, the opera teachers dressed in gorgeous costumes appeared one by one and won the applause of the whole audience as soon as they opened their mouths. Their clear singing voices tore through the darkness and echoed far away with the waves.
Hai An sat at the bow, propped up his chin and said excitedly: “Although I don’t understand what they are singing, it is indeed very nice.”
“It should be a professional opera teacher invited by the organizer.”
Jiang Lan had read the process in the brochure and knew that these were professionals invited by the government to perform. The show had just begun, and the performers probably hadn’t even started singing yet. After this performance was over, the real “performers” would begin.
Sure enough, after the first act, the colored lights on the flower boats dimmed, and the gorgeous flower boats gradually disappeared on the river surface. Instead, the small boats floating on the river gradually hung up their lights. At first, they were all silent, as if waiting for someone to start. After a while, someone impatiently started singing first –
The east side just sang two lines of “Guarding the cloud room for no years, I don’t know what year it is in the world. Looking into the sky, I can’t see anyone. To whom do I want to share my thousands of thoughts?”, and then it was suppressed by the clanging voice of “wearing a golden crown on the temples, and the iron armor of the past is put on again” from the west. Then someone from somewhere sang “I hope to save the loyal and good, wash my hands and burn incense to repay the gods”, the singing tone was desolate and simple, and it drowned out the previous voices in one fell swoop…
That was what a wild show was like. At the beginning, everyone started to sing in a chaotic manner. If you don’t have the ability to outshine others, you will be buried in it. Only those who really sing well could sing to the end and win the applause of the whole audience.
The wild show had just begun and was still noisy, but some people who were not as skilled as others had realized the gap and had begun to gradually withdraw, stopping singing, turning off the lights, and just becoming ordinary listeners on the boat.
By the end of the day, there were less than ten ships with lights on.
At this time, more than an hour had passed since the opening, and the voices coming from these lighted boats were all steady and long-lasting. They were competing with each other, not only trying to outshine their opponents in singing skills, but also in lyrics.
Such tit-for-tat momentum greatly stirred the emotions of the spectators. The emotions of these tourists who were attracted by the excitement also rose and fell with the tune, and comments and cheers were heard everywhere.
They were so absorbed in the opera that no one noticed that fog was gradually rising on the river. The boats floating on the river were shrouded in a light white mist, and even the sounds they heard became vague.
“It’s getting foggy.”
Jiang Lan stood at the bow of the boat, looking in the direction where the fog was coming from.
He could only see a small boat with a lantern slowly approaching in the fog, and a plaintive voice on the boat was singing: “If you can hook the pines and cypresses that reach the sky for a thousand feet, then half a piece of paper of unparalleled fame will fall! General Guan has a beautiful figure, and General Zhang is powerful. When will we be able to visit each other again? The heroes who return to the underworld will fall on the slope of the river embankment…”
The sound came from far away and its pitch was not high, but it drowned out the voices of everyone else. In the end, only this sound was still echoing on the river.
The sad singing voice was mixed with the sound of rippling water, and each sound was like a drumstick beating on people’s hearts.
The grief and indignation of the hero’s defeat seemed to be embedded in his chest along with the mournful music.
Jiang Lan looked back and saw that white fog had covered the river. The street lights on the riverside avenue had become dim. The figures of the spectators on the shore merged into the fog and became hazy. Only the masks on their faces were particularly clear, with a creepy sense of reality.
“What’s in the water?” Hai An squatted at the bow and called Jiang Lan to come and see.
Jiang Lan followed his finger and looked at the river surface. He saw countless shadows swaying under the dim river surface. These shadows looked like humans, but not humans. Their limbs were entangled and twisted, and they looked hideous. They rolled under the water, occasionally revealing their paper-white faces. The blurred facial features on their faces looked like five black holes, and their expressions were full of misery and resentment.
“It’s a water monkey.”
It was said that people who died in water would turn into water ghosts if their resentment was not dissipated. Water ghosts were also called water monkeys.
There were many stories and legends about water monkeys, but most of them were made up by humans with rich imagination. There were indeed water monkeys in rivers, but they were not “ghosts” or “demons”, but monsters formed by the condensation of resentment.
Countless lives were buried in the rivers every year. The corpses of those who died in vain sank to the bottom of the river and could not rest in peace. The resentment left before death lingered for a long time and floated around with the water. Some of them gradually dissipated over time, but some of them gathered with other resentments and grew bigger like a snowball, gradually becoming alienated and becoming a “water monkey” with only predatory instincts left.
They fed on the rotting corpses in the river, absorbing the resentment from the corpses to strengthen themselves. Influenced by the remaining human instincts, they had gained the distorted appearance that was neither human nor inhuman.
The conditions for the birth of water monkeys were very harsh, and it was rare to see one in the past.
But now, there were at least hundreds of water monkeys under the water of the Ling River. They shuttled under the boat, clinging to the bottom of the boat with their twisted limbs, as if they would break out of the water and climb onto the boat at any moment.
Jiang Lan frowned slightly, took out his cell phone and took a look. The signal bar was empty and the time remained at 9:44 pm without any change.
“Is it a barrier?” He muttered to himself, looking up and around. The river was covered with thick white fog, and it was impossible to see what was happening more than one meter away.
Only that sad and desolate voice continued to sing, “The official’s body is in the Dragon Tower and Phoenix Tower, and his soul has gone to Jingzhou and Langzhou. Who would have known that the two brick cities would be replaced by earthen mounds! The Heavenly Court will not accept him, and the Underworld cannot take him back. There is no place for him to go.”
The indistinguishable male and female singing blended into the sound of the water waves stirred by the boat oars, making it seem more vague, ethereal and strange.
“I thought those two annoying dragons were ugly enough, but I didn’t expect there would be something uglier than them.” Hai An squatted on the bow, sighing that these water monkeys looked just as they pleased, while staring at the water monkeys attached to the bottom of the boat.
Jiang Lan did not respond to him but squatted down and walked through the cabin and went to the stern.
The boatman was rowing at the stern. Jiang Lan originally wanted to borrow the oar, but when he walked to the stern, he saw the boatman standing motionless at the bow, his back looking thin and long in the thick white fog.
Jiang Lan’s eyes sharpened, and he stepped forward to hold the boatman’s shoulder, but he felt that it was hard as wood. He turned the man around, but he saw that the person he was holding was not the boatman, but a human-sized puppet. The puppet was wearing a “Guan Gong” mask, and the face behind the mask had no facial features, only a crack at the mouth, as if the mouth was split open, revealing a malicious smile.
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