At that time, I didn’t have much experience, so I was totally shocked upon suddenly seeing the shadow again in that kind of environment. Before I could control myself, my first reaction was to shout.
After yelling twice, Uncle Two came down—he was dressed for tai chi— and rushed into my room to ask me what I was doing. I stuttered as I pointed at the window, “Sha… shadow!”
Uncle Two looked at it and also got a fright, but he responded faster than I did. He immediately rushed over, opened the window, looked out, and cried, “Who’s there!”
I also put on my clothes and rushed over, only to find that there was nothing outside the window. There was a large courtyard where the millet sat, and a large area was illuminated by the street lamps, but absolutely no one was there.
Uncle Two looked around the windowsill, a little puzzled. Even if someone ran away, there would still be at least some movement. At that time, he gave a grunt and suddenly looked down at his hands. I saw that they were wet.
Looking at the windowsill again, I found that it was covered in water. I suddenly had a bad feeling and immediately pulled half of the shutter back. With one look, I saw that the window outside the glass was fucking covered in black and white snails!
The other side was also unexpectedly covered in them.
I took a deep breath, immediately ran outside, closed the shutters, and saw that there were actually more snails than I had seen the previous morning. They were all crowded together into a strange shape that looked like a person lying on my window, peeping in.
My whole body suddenly went cold and I felt an extremely creepy sensation pass from my head to my toes. Uncle Two’s face was also pale and he didn’t say a word.
My legs were trembling and I took several deep breaths before I could speak. “Uncle, what is this?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said through clenched teeth.
“What should we do then?” For a moment, I didn’t know what to do.
Uncle Two didn’t answer me, but took out his cell phone and made a phone call. My mind was completely blank so I didn’t hear what he said at all, I only knew that he called my Uncle Three.
Soon, Uncle Three ran over from wherever he was outside. It turned out that he had gone to the stream with his buddies in the middle of the night to keep watch. Not a single snail had floated up after they sprayed the pesticide, so he was afraid that the stream was too active and had rendered the pesticide useless. He figured the snails might gather at night, so he was patrolling.
With a few of his guys trailing behind, he ran up to us without asking anything and looked directly at the window. With just one glance, he immediately turned pale.
A man beside him said, “Fuck, where did these motherfuckers come from?”
Instead of answering him, Uncle Three immediately picked up the millet rake and scraped the snails off my window.
The number of snails stunned me—piles upon piles of them fell to the ground. When I used to eat snails before, why didn’t I think it was so disgusting?
After all of them were removed, Uncle Three fiddled around on the ground a few times and said, “They’re wet; they haven’t been out of the water long. Go and find out if there’s any water nearby.”
His buddies immediately spread out to look around and had only walked a few steps before Uncle Two said, “Don’t bother, it’s from there.”
We turned to the place he pointed at and found that there was a sink under the wall, which led to the sewer.
The drainage system in the countryside was very simple and crude and was similar to farm irrigation systems. All domestic sewage flowed into the nearby stream, so this sewer was connected to the stream. In fact, all of these sewers were connected to the streams. Uncle Two said, “Look, it’s not raining and the sink is wet. They must have climbed up the drain.”
Uncle Three started cursing, “Son of a bitch. No wonder I didn’t see any poisoned snails. They all hid in the sewer.”
“How do we deal with it?” A man asked.
“Kill them all!” Uncle Three immediately said, picking up the rake and smashing it onto the group of snails on the ground. His buddy immediately went to help, but Uncle Two quickly stopped them.
“What are you doing?” Uncle Three asked.
“It’s useless,” Uncle Two said. He opened the lid of the sewer, and when we looked at it, we saw that it was completely full of snails.
<Extra 1.15> <Table of Contents><Extra 1.17>
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Is anybody else disturbed by the fact that they swim, bathe, and wash clothes in this stream where they basically put their sewage and waste? So gross.
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Updated 11/22/2021
They knew that the water wasn’t clean sand they still swim in it?
Before it was snake and now it is snail. If it goes on like this Gradually we get a phobia from each animal with the letter S in it or maybe any animal that is told in this novel.
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In the past, in small town of China it always like this I think. This story took place in around year 2000 before Wu Xie met Xiaoge. I was born in 1990s in a city in central China, and when I was a little girl, there were no facilities like swimming pool, in the summer time, we kids can only swam in the river where citizens wash their clothes. But for me, that was a sweet memory.
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With the description about this stream, I thought this place seams shallow and somewhat stagnant, unlike most rivers. So when the child went there to….do his little job in water, it didn’t feel well. Didn’t mean in bad way. 😇
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Антисанитария полная… меня бы тоже тошнило!😣😣😨🤢🤮
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