Pan Long kept going all the way, and when he arrived by the Taohua River, it was only the 28th day of the first lunar month.

But he did not relax. The Taohua River has three or four hundred miles of rivers, and the entire basin has passed through three or four nearby counties. God knows what the custom of "river gods marrying" is!

So his first choice is to ask the locals for inquiries.

"River God married?" The waiter smiled, "No wonder, you come here now. Every year on the second day of the second month, the river god married celebration will be held in our Taohua River area. Now it is time!"

"Where is it held?" Pan Long asked.

The waiter smiled and said, "It's not 'where', but the place where the entire Taohua River flows. Such a ceremony will be held in towns with conditions. One is for prayer, and the other is for joy."

Pan Long frowned, he felt that things might be a little different from what he guessed.

Such cruel things like worshiping the gods with living people cannot be called "festive". Even if the locals are insensitive and do not take other people's lives seriously, it is really wrong to be so happy.

What's more, when he saw the waiter's expression and tone, he didn't look like a villain who didn't take human life seriously.

So he took out a piece of silver and asked the waiter to explain it in detail to himself.

The piece of silver was about four or five cents, which was a good surprise for the waiter. He smiled, put away the silver, turned around and explained to the boss, and sat on the stool opposite Pan Long.

"In our Taohua River area, it is said that there is a river god who likes beauty living in the river. He once announced that he would marry the most beautiful woman in the world as his concubine. Therefore, the people here here choose the most beautiful unmarried girl in the village every year. After the Chinese New Year, they dress up beautifully and walk around the river on bamboo rafts, which means that the river god will see, are you satisfied with this girl?"

"What if the river god is satisfied?" Pan Long asked.

The waiter laughed: "The river god is a god, how can he be satisfied with mortals? Anyway, I have never heard of anyone who can satisfy the river god. Over the years, everyone is actually just looking for a festive celebration. In addition... maybe there is also the meaning of competing for the 'The No. 1 Beauty in Peach Blossom River'."

He explained: "Whoever is qualified to ride a bamboo raft down the river on February 2nd, of course, is a first-class beauty. This is what everyone wants to see. Those who are not beautiful enough will lose not only their own faces, but also the faces of all the villagers. So there is actually no prescribed rules for this matter. Sometimes there are suitable people every year, and sometimes there are not even a few years."

As he said that, he thought of something and turned around and asked, "Shopkeeper, I remember when you were drinking, you bragging, saying that your grandmother had been riding a bamboo raft and becoming a concubine of the River God, right?"

The fat shopkeeper replied: "It's not bragging, it's true. My grandmother was a river god concubine who had been in the river for three consecutive years, and her reputation spread throughout the Taohua River!"

Pan Long looked at it and found that the shopkeeper was about fifty years old. No matter how young his grandmother was, she should be nearly ninety years old.

According to this, at least seventy or eighty years ago, the marriage of the river god was a harmless celebration, rather than a sacrifice for living people to harm the people?

He thought for a while and asked, "Do you know the origin of this celebration?"

"The origin? It's the one I just mentioned. Legend has it that the river god likes beauties..."

Pan Long shook his head: "I mean, when did this celebration start? A hundred years ago? Or longer?"

"That's been a long time." The waiter smiled and said, "Sometimes the elderly chatted and said that they had this when they were young. But for the elderly, you know, and you always say that they were better than now. According to their words, the River God concubines used to be the kind of people who accidentally hit the wall when they walked out - do you believe it? I don't believe it anyway."

Pan Long also smiled: "The old man is like this. He either talks about how hard he worked in the past or how good he lived in the past. Everyone is the same."

He also inquired about the celebration this year and learned that there are probably five or six bamboo rafts on the Taohua River this year - that is to say, the entire Taohua River basin is confident that they will be able to attend the beauty pageant and compete for the identity of "The No. 1 Beauty in Taohua River". There are five or six women this year.

According to the rules of the celebration, these beauties would ride bamboo rafts down the river until the place where the Taohua River turns into the Baisha River, and then abandon their boats and go ashore to participate in the celebration of worshiping the river gods.

If you want to see beautiful women, the best place is naturally Taoxiang County, where the two rivers meet. But if there is a fast horse that can keep up with the speed of bamboo rafts flowing in the water, it would be a unique flavor to ride a horse to see beautiful women.

Pan Long asked repeatedly and finally confirmed that in recent years, there has been no incident in which the river god came forward to pick up the beauty.

In fact, the local people are not even sure whether there is a river god in the river.

Of course, there are also temples and ancestral halls of river gods along the Taohua River, and there are quite a few. However, although these river god temples and river god temples are incense every year, they have never shown any magic.

There are mountain gods and water gods in the Jiuzhou world. There are many temples that appear magical after sacrifice.

For example, on the banks of the Baisha River, there is a "Jiangshen Zuo Doctor Temple", which is dedicated to an official whose official position is Zuo Doctor.

The official was responsible for water control. He spent his whole life busy clearing the waterways and consolidating the embankment. He died of exhaustion on the construction site. It can be said that the silkworms will not stop until they die, and the candle will not stop tears from turning into ashes.

After he died, the people at that time worshiped him as the god of the river and built temples for him. They were recognized by the court at that time and were officially enthroned.

This river god is a bit supernatural. Once it rains heavily, the river water will surge and a flood will form. As long as the old people from all over the country go to the temple to pray and pray, the river water will flow a few points out of thin air.

When the water flows faster, it will naturally flow faster, making it less likely to form floods.

This is a magical wonder that everyone knows. Although it is not widely seen on the land of Jiuzhou, there are really many.

For example, the Lushan Mountain God that Pan Long passed by a few years ago was a bit magical. Pan Long helped him kill the mandrill that occupied the mountain temple. He even came to thank him in the middle of the night and gave Pan Long a small bottle of longevity wine.

The bottle of longevity wine is still in Pan Long's dimensional bag, waiting to be given to the elderly at home after returning to their hometown in the future.

Only by being so magical can one prove that the gods really exist. And like the Taohua River God, they are naturally "not checked".

So everyone doesn't take this River God seriously, they just make jokes.

After hearing the waiter's introduction, Pan Long couldn't help but wonder - this is different from what the travel notes said!

But then he thought that the travel notes recorded what happened more than 200 years ago. What the waiter and the others knew were at most about a hundred years ago. It was a hundred years apart. Perhaps what happened in this hundred years?

He rested for a day, and the next morning, he found the official school in the town and asked the old master of the official school for advice.
Chapter completed!