PD -Chapter 47 The Bottom of the Deep Pool

Suddenly, the old wooden door creaked open, and a hunched elderly woman with a head full of silver hair appeared in the doorway.

“Who are you?”

Her eyesight seemed poor. She squinted and leaned closer, studying us for quite a while before asking.

“Oh, you must be Grandma Zheng. We’re volunteers from the city. We’re here to learn about your living situation. Some kind-hearted people would like to help elderly residents like yourself.”

I smiled as I spoke, then quickly motioned for Liu Xiaopeng to bring out the rice, flour, and cooking oil we had purchased in town.

The old woman was kind-hearted. Upon hearing our intentions, she smiled and invited us inside.

The house was a small, low-roofed tile dwelling. Though old and worn, it had been kept spotlessly clean.

After we sat down, I looked around for a moment before asking, “Grandma, do you live here alone? Do you have any children?”

The old woman sighed.

“My daughter got married and lives far away with her husband’s family, so she rarely comes back. As for my son… my son died more than thirty years ago.”

“Died?”

I was surprised.

Judging by her age, her son would have been quite young thirty years ago—roughly the same age as the missing children. Could it be…

Had a similar disappearance happened more than three decades earlier?

“Grandma, what exactly happened to your son?” Tang Shanshan asked softly, taking the old woman’s hand.

A trace of tears shimmered in the old woman’s cloudy eyes.

She stood up, opened a drawer, and took out a cloth bundle.

Inside was an old photograph, yellowed with age. It showed a chubby little boy, about five years old.

“His name was Wu Yi. This is the only photograph he left behind.”

Gently stroking the picture with both hands, the old woman began telling us about what had happened thirty years ago.

As it turned out, my guess had been correct.

There really had been a missing-child case thirty years earlier.

The victim was none other than the old woman’s son, Wu Yi.

One summer evening, after going out to play, he never came home again.

The entire village searched everywhere imaginable, yet not a single trace of the boy could be found.

According to the old woman’s account, however, the search of the deep pool had not been nearly as thorough as today’s efforts. Technology at the time was far more limited, and there certainly weren’t sonar devices available.

Even so, most people believed the child had accidentally fallen into the pool while playing.

Later, when no body was ever recovered, the matter gradually faded away unresolved.

Over time, all sorts of rumors about the deep pool spread among the surrounding villages.

Some claimed a water monkey lived at the bottom of the pool and that it had dragged Wu Yi away and eaten him.

Others told even more outrageous stories.

They said there was a bottomless cavern beneath the pool that connected directly to the sea—a tunnel dug by a flood dragon. The dragon had secretly left the ocean, encountered the child, and swallowed him whole.

But people’s memories are limited.

Before long, everyone except Wu Yi’s family had forgotten the tragedy.

The deep pool, once feared by all, gradually slipped from people’s minds.

And because of that, the terrible incident from yesterday was able to happen once again.

We asked a few more questions about the events of that year before taking our leave.

Our next destination was the deep pool itself.

Unfortunately, it appeared to be guarded during the day, so we decided to wait until nightfall and see whether it would be easier to investigate then.

We found a small restaurant along the national highway not far from the village and had dinner there.

Only after darkness gradually settled over the land did we drive back toward the dam.

From a distance, the area around the pool was completely dark.

Perhaps the guards had spent the entire day without finding any clues and had already withdrawn.

Only then did we slowly drive closer, eventually parking on top of the dam and continuing on foot.

Fortunately, the weather was excellent that night.

The moon shone brightly enough that we could see the road reasonably well even without flashlights.

The three of us quickly reached the edge of the pool.

Police tape still surrounded the area, but no one remained on watch.

Liu Xiaopeng and Tang Shanshan both turned toward me.

“So what do we do now?” they asked.

“We need to find out what’s at the bottom of the pool,” I replied.

Both of them instinctively took a step backward.

“W-We can’t swim.”

I shook my head.

“I didn’t mean that someone has to go down there.”

“Then what other method is there?” Tang Shanshan asked.

I set down my backpack and unzipped it.

“To catch a fish, you need bait, don’t you?”

As I spoke, I pulled out a sealed box.

After thinking for a moment, I looked at Tang Shanshan and Liu Xiaopeng.

“Before I open this, I should explain that I bought it specifically for this investigation, so don’t get the wrong idea.”

“Stop talking and open it already!”

Before I could finish, Tang Shanshan snatched the box from my hands.

Within seconds she had opened it, revealing an inflatable doll.

“Well, well! Is this your wife?” she teased.

Beside her, Liu Xiaopeng chimed in.

“Brother Han, I never would’ve guessed you were into this sort of thing.”

I shot him a glare, grabbed the deflated doll, and tossed it at him.

“Hurry up and inflate it. Otherwise, I’ll throw you into the water as bait for the water monkey.”

After grumbling a few times, Liu Xiaopeng crouched down and started blowing it up.

“You think the black shadow from my dream could really have been a water monkey?” Tang Shanshan asked.

“I’ve never seen one myself, and nobody has ever conclusively proven that such creatures actually exist,” I replied, shaking my head.

Whether in mighty rivers, remote mountain ponds, or isolated reservoirs, almost every body of water seemed to have its own legends about water monkeys.

According to folklore, water monkeys possess immense and mysterious strength underwater.

They can burrow through the bottoms of rivers and ponds, traveling between different bodies of water. Whenever they catch someone who falls in, they drag the victim beneath the surface, pack mud into all seven facial orifices, and cause them to suffocate.

Some stories even claim they drink human blood and feast on fingernails and eyeballs.

As for their supposed ability to tunnel through the underwater earth, that might actually explain something.

Despite deploying divers and sonar equipment, the rescue teams had never managed to find the children’s bodies.

Perhaps a water monkey really had dragged them away through tunnels it had dug, escaping to another location.

Of course, we still knew far too little.

Tang Shanshan had only glimpsed the creature in her dream and never clearly seen its appearance.

There wasn’t enough evidence to draw conclusions yet.

“Still… do you really think this inflatable doll will work?” Tang Shanshan asked, pointing at the now fully inflated doll.

“No monster is going to mistake that for a real person.”

“At the moment, probably not,” I admitted. “But I have my own way of handling that.”

Taking the inflated doll from Liu Xiaopeng, I taped a waterproof infrared camera to its head and tested the power.

The camera transmitted its footage through a wireless network signal.

That meant we would be able to watch everything it saw directly from our phones.