Records of Folk Anecdotes

The year I was born, the water level in Baihe Bay was ninety feet high, and a stone tablet was erected on the river bed, which recorded the year, month, and day of my birth. Sometimes, it also recorded the date of my death! According to what is written on the stone tablet, I will not live to be twenty. People in the village say that I am the reincarnation of a river python, and that I will be able to transform into a dragon when the calamity is over in twenty years. The legend about the river python has been circulating in Baihe Bay for thousands of years. It is said that it is a hundred feet long, covered with seven colors, and has a single horn on its head. Whenever there is flood in Baihe Bay, it will make trouble and eat people and livestock. It is precisely because of this legend that I became a street rat that everyone yelled at. This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.