(Drinking too much is a local legend. There are errors in the punctuation in the oral description and text recognition. Please do not mind)
There is Gaoyou Lake not far from Yangzhou City. Legend has it that there was a very ancient city in the center of the lake, which was flooded a long time ago and sank to the bottom of the lake.
One day, a pair of brothers rowed a small boat to fish in the center of the lake. The two brothers were poor and had to make a living by catching some fish every day. Because of their hard work and practicality, their lives were not bad.
Unknowingly, a layer of thick fog rose on the lake, and the faint sounds of people and horses neighing could be heard. The two brothers looked into the fog with wide eyes, and they suddenly discovered that a street market had appeared in the fog.
The two thought that the boat was rowing in the wrong direction and arrived at a nearby market town. They thought that their home happened to lack an iron pot for cooking, so they parked the fishing boat on the shore, went ashore and walked into the city.
The market was extremely lively. Pedestrians came and went, and the words they spoke were all in local dialects. The two brothers didn't pay attention. After picking and choosing, they bought an iron pot and boarded the boat to go home.
After returning home, the eldest brother put a bowl of rice into the pot and lit the fire. A pot of fragrant rice was quickly cooked. The two brothers wolfed down the rice and ate it up.
After eating, the two of them got dressed and slept together. It didn't take long for them to fall asleep, but as they fell asleep, the two of them suddenly smelled a scent, and the scent became stronger and stronger.
Finally, the two brothers opened their eyes and followed the smell. Suddenly, they found that there was a pot full of rice in the iron pot they had just finished eating.
Combining the strangeness between the city and the iron pot, the two brothers understood that they were not going to a market town, but the city that sank to the bottom of the lake. This iron pot was not an ordinary iron pot.
From then on, the two brothers lived a life without worries about food and clothing. They no longer bothered to go fishing in the lake and just lay at home all day long.
But as time passed, the brothers were no longer satisfied with eating rice, but thought of more things to do with the iron pot.
The two speculated that if the rice was exchanged for silver or copper coins, would the iron pot be filled with gold, silver and jewelry when they woke up?
The more they thought about it, the more excited they became. They collected all the belongings in the house and put them into the iron pot. Then they lay on the bed and closed their eyes beautifully.
But soon, the sky changed drastically, strong winds arose, dark clouds filled the lake, and the waves became higher and higher. Amid the screams of the two brothers, the boat quickly sank to the bottom of the lake.
Many years later, someone mistakenly entered the city at the bottom of the lake and saw the two brothers again in a trance, but in the blink of an eye, the other brothers disappeared into the sea of people...
(When I was a child, the author saw with his own eyes the porcelain pieces fished out by relatives from the bottom of the lake. He couldn't help but sigh that the world has changed a lot. He drank too much and slept.)
