Have you ever heard an old man tell a fantasy story from a long time ago?
My hometown lives at the bend of a big river. For many years, the villagers have relied on the nourishment and prosperity of this big river. It is also because of this big river that it is full of legends!
My hometown is in a small village in northern Jiangsu, leaning on the bend of the "Sheyang River". Many years ago, when roads and bridges were not built, the village was far away from the hustle and bustle, quiet and beautiful.
From the time I can remember, the Sheyang River has been so wide, shrouded in mist in the morning, and emitting the golden light refracted by the sun in the afternoon. About the river. There are many stories circulating, among which the story about the big snake attracted my attention the most!
I heard from the old people that there were no villages on both sides of the river for a long time. At that time, it was a wasteland. During the Hongwu period, Zhu Yuanzhang moved the people of the Changmen and Huguan generations in Suzhou to the North Jiangsu Plain. Among them, Some people came to settle by the Sheyang River, and my ancestors are here.
The old man said that when he first came here, the surroundings were deserted and overgrown with grass. There was no human habitation for hundreds of miles, but there was an abundance of fish and shrimp in the rivers and ditches, so people decided to settle here.
The most important thing at that time was to build houses. Fortunately, there were acres of woods on both sides of the river bank, so it was convenient to use local materials. One morning when it was just getting dark, people started to work. Two brothers went to move the wood that had been put down the day before. When they were about to use their strength, they found that the things they were carrying were cold and hard on the surface, but the whole thing was not. It was relatively weak, not like wood. Looking closely, the two brothers almost died of fright. This was not a tree trunk, it was clearly a big snake.
The two men ran back and told everyone. Everyone didn't believe it at first, but looking at the mud on the two brothers and their expressions, it didn't look fake. So a group of people braved it and walked over to check. By this time, the sky was already getting brighter. Sure enough, they saw a big snake lying there. It might have been disturbed by the people carrying the wood just now. At this time, it had woken up and was also curled up. He looked at the person with his head tilted and a red letter was spitting out of his mouth, but he didn't mean to hurt anyone.
The big snake swam into the Sheyang River, leaving a deep indentation. Later, people occasionally saw large snakes basking on the shore on sunny days.
The rumor about the big snake in Sheyang River has been spread to this day. When I was a child, I heard someone say that one morning, Lao Yang, a fisherman in the village, went to the river to collect the ground net, a shrimp fishing tool, that he had buried the night before. When he was collecting the net, a sudden wave of waves swept over him. The boat rocked a few times. Lao Yang looked around. There was no big ship passing by, and there was no wind. How could there be waves? Just when Lao Yang was wondering, he saw from a distance that a big snake emerged from the water and swam toward the reeds on the other side of the river. The reeds made a rustling sound. Lao Yang was so frightened that he even stopped collecting the net and hurried back to the shore.
I don’t know if this is true or false, but the old people have been passing it on by word of mouth. It may be true, but it sounds like fiction! How credible do you think this legend is?