The sound of rushing water replaced the thin man's voice, and the shimmering river replaced his face.
I saw the river... the embankment... the apartment buildings by the river...
With a whoosh, something fell into the water.
I turned my head and saw the old fisherman sitting on the riverbank, holding his fishing rod and staring motionlessly at the water.
A ghost with an expressionless face walked along the riverbed.
Somehow, I knew it was a soul on its way to be reincarnated. Upstream, there was a reception point arranged by the underworld, where a reaper was waiting.
The old man sat by the bank, paying no attention to the souls on their way to reincarnation.
In the blink of an eye, it was still the same river, but the old man's aura had changed.
The hook drifted to the soul's mouth, and the fishing line wrapped around its body.
The old man reeled in his rod and pulled the soul onto the bank.
Before the soul could touch the ground, the scene before me changed again.
The buildings were gone.
More precisely, the high-rises were gone. The buildings by the bank and the embankment had changed completely, as if they were sets in a film studio.
The old man had changed his clothes, too. The fishing rod in his hand wasn't a professional one, but a bamboo pole.
Souls still walked through the river, while a funeral procession on the bank played music and wailed, its cries shaking the heavens.
The old man raised his head slightly and glanced at the funeral procession.
Someone in the procession tossed things into the river, like fish fry, mixed in with incense, candles, and paper money.
The river was murky, obscuring the souls below.
The old man reeled in his rod and