About three miles north, there's a river and a reed marsh nearby.
In the winter, the water level in the marsh significantly decreases.
In the shallow pools, there are both fish and water birds.
Sometimes they would try their luck in the reed clusters, but walking in them wasn't convenient.
The weather was too cold; walking barefoot would be freezing.
The marsh was over twenty acres in size.
'Big Goose' said he once caught a fish a meter long in there.
"My father and I carried it back. It was eating a rotten water bird in a half-meter-deep pool, my father and I blocked the exit, so it could only run in the shallow water. Then we hit it with sticks, and when I hit its head, it couldn't move much after that."
Ma Lin didn't understand why some ponds grew lotus while others grew reeds.
That day, as the gathering team passed by the marsh, they saw a man emerging from the reed cluster.
He wasn't from the Nest Tribe.
