This is actually a kind of feudal dross. When the economy was underdeveloped, children were regarded as private property, and investment was only for the purpose of output.

There's even a saying: "A child who eats a lot is a troublemaker." Here, "a child who eats a lot" refers to a gluttonous creature, implying that any child who eats excessively is a troublemaker.

This shows how people treated children back then.

That was fourteen years ago.

Xiejia Village is located next to the dam, which is separated from the river called the Black Sand River.

The Heisha River is rich in iron sand. I don't know if it's because of excessive sand mining, but there are many undercurrents in the riverbed. The water looks shallow, but if you step in, you might sink.

Local children are taught from a young age not to play in the Black Sand River because there are water ghosts in the river.

Even so, drowning incidents still occur in the Heisha River every year.

That year, a group of junior high school students went to the Black Sand River to cool off. Xie Cheng was the youngest among them, and his grandfather came along with them.

I don't know who suggested going swimming, since the river looked crystal clear, and it was the sixteenth of the lunar month with a particularly full moon, so nothing bad would happen.

Then the kids who were swimming had an accident. The sand under their feet kept sinking, and the bottom of the river seemed like a monster with its mouth wide open, about to devour everyone.

Xie Cheng saw something was wrong on the shore and immediately ran over to rescue him.

That night, of the five children who went with him, four returned, but Xie Cheng remained at the bottom of the river forever.

When Cheng Jinlan heard the devastating news on the phone, it was like a bolt from the blue. However, thinking that her child had died while saving someone, she could only suppress her grief and hurriedly closed the fruit shop with her husband, Xie Zude, and returned to their hometown.