Six-fingered ruthless hook
Introduction
The water in the Dumb Bay of the Yellow River will eat your tongue.
This is the truth that Ma began to believe when he was sixty-four years old. That summer, the cruise ship "Jinshui" was carrying 134 people through a river between two mountains. A sudden flash flood caused the boat to overturn like a leaf. After six days of salvaging, no one was alive and no corpses were found. On the morning of the seventh day, the entire river bend was filled with people - 134 people, no more and no less, but all their mouths were empty and their tongues were missing. From then on that place was called Dumb Bay.
Ma Liu was born in Majiadu, thirty miles upstream of Dumb Bay. His mother was taken away by the Yellow River before he could remember and was never found; his father was the last serious corpse fisherman in this hundred-mile river. He was also taken away by the Yellow River on a rainy night three years ago. It was Ma Liu who fished his father out with his ancestral ruthless hook. When his father taught him the rules, his eyes were fixed on Zhuolang: "Don't hook the red clothes, the red clothes are evil; don't hook the upright, standing upright is resentment; if you don't hook three times and don't take the bait, that's the person the King of Hell wants, and you can't steal it."
Now Ma is sixty-seven years old, guarding the old house left by his father and the ruthless Yellow River. The extra finger on his right hand always hurts on rainy nights. And deep in the Mute Bay, those tongueless souls seemed to want to speak.
