At the last bend of the Yellow River's nine meanders, there is a place called Guitou Bay.
Chen Du is the last person to recover corpses here. There is an old scar on his face, and he has three ancestral precepts in his heart: Don't take advantage of those who complain, don't save those who are alive, and give way when you see danger. Twelve years and more than a hundred floating corpses, he has never broken the rules.
Until that morning, a black floating coffin floated from the whirlpool. There were three long and two short knocking sounds from the coffin - these were the living people's cry for help.
He broke the first rule.
The girl in the coffin was wearing a wedding dress that looked like blood, with a fish-shaped jade pendant hanging around her neck. On the back of the jade pendant is engraved a crooked word "Du" - it was carved by his mother while she was holding his hand when he was seven years old. Twenty years ago, my mother walked into the Yellow River on a rainy night and never returned.
The girl opened her eyes and said her first words: "I know you. You have been waiting in the water for twenty years."
Her name is A Li. She could open her eyes and see in the undercurrent of the Yellow River, and her skin would appear with scale-like lines. In the underwater palace she drew, there were countless silent figures standing.
Something is awakening at the bottom of the river. And the thousand-year-old secret of the Chen family is emerging with this floating coffin.
Quite to my liking