Literary Master 1978.

Chapter 321 Three-story story
The so-called "The Boat Crossing" is actually a story adapted by Lin Chaoyang based on the movie "Life of Pi" that people have watched in later generations.

"Life of Pi" tells the story of an Indian boy named Pi who encountered a shipwreck with his family. Unfortunately, he and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker were stranded on a broken hull and had to drift in the Pacific Ocean.

The film was directed by Chinese director Ang Lee and grossed $2012 million worldwide after its release in 6.

At the same time, the film also won many awards that year, such as the Oscar for Best Director and Best Visual Effects. It can be said that it was a double harvest of box office and awards, bringing director Ang Lee's film career to a new peak.

It is worth mentioning that when this movie was released in China, it caused quite a stir and a viewing craze, which led to the movie finally achieving a box office of 5.7 million yuan in China.

"Life of Pi" is not a commercial blockbuster, but at this point in 2012, its box office revenue of 5.7 million RMB is undoubtedly a big box office miracle.

After all, this is a movie invested and produced by Americans, shot by Chinese, and telling Indian stories.

From this point of view, it can be seen that the story of "Life of Pi" itself is very much in line with the aesthetics and tastes of the Chinese people.

In Lin Chaoyang's story, the time setting changes from India in the 1970s to China in the 1930s.

The protagonist Pai was changed to Du Sanjiang. His age and personality did not change much. Only the religious beliefs of Pai, which were complicated and not in line with China's national conditions, were changed to Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity.

The insurance adjuster's questions to the protagonist in the movie were also removed, and the story was directly turned into a dialogue between the protagonist and the writer. In this way, Lin Chaoyang continued the two-layer narrative structure of the original story.

A writer who was looking for inspiration accidentally learned about Du Sanjiang's legendary experience and came to the hospital to interview him. At this time, more than 40 years had passed since Du Sanjiang drifted across the sea. He was already a sixty-year-old man. Half lying on the hospital bed, he told the writer about his legendary experience.

Du Sanjiang's father, Du Bangjie, was the first generation of animal research scholar in China and also the first director of Shanghai Municipal Zoo. Because of such family conditions, Du Sanjiang developed the habit of being close to animals from an early age.

Shanghai during the Republic of China period was a gathering place for merchants and politicians from all over the world. The cultures of many countries and nationalities were intertwined, allowing Du Sanjiang to come into contact with religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Christianity. He was born with precocity and gradually developed a unique view on faith, and the nature of humans and animals.

Once, he tried to make friends with a Bengal tiger, which angered his father. His father taught him a bloody lesson on the spot: animals and humans think differently, and if you forget this, you will die.

The war of aggression against China broke out, and Japan quickly occupied northern China. After the disastrous defeat in the Battle of Shanghai, some powerful people planned to take advantage of the war to secretly sell the rare animals in the zoo to foreign countries for profit.

The father, who was preparing to seek refuge with his family, discovered the conspiracy of the powerful and tried to stop it, risking his life. In the end, the whole family was arrested and taken to a ship that was preparing to transport the animals abroad.

Originally, their family was about to be killed by bad guys after going out to sea, but unexpectedly a violent storm arose on the sea, swallowing up the ship in an instant.

The ship sank, but Du Sanjiang survived on the lifeboat. In addition to him, there were also the Bengal tiger that he had had contact with, the hyena, the chimpanzee and the injured zebra.

The adventurous journey begins here.

In order to survive, the extremely hungry hyenas killed the injured zebras according to the situation. The gorilla was also killed in order to stop the hyenas' atrocities, while Du Sanjiang could only watch helplessly from the side.

But he also knew that under the watchful eyes of the hyenas, he might be the next to die.

Just when he was about to muster up the courage to declare war on the hyena, the tiger killed the hyena.

Faced with the hungry tiger, Du Sanjiang had to throw the newly made raft into the sea and jump onto it himself.

In this way, a boat, a tiger, a raft, and a person, connected by a rope, drifted aimlessly in the endless ocean.

Along the way, Du Sanjiang had to be on guard against hungry tigers attacking him, but at the same time, both of them were creatures who shared the same suffering in this lonely ocean.

They were hostile to each other, attacked each other, accompanied each other, experienced life and death together, and witnessed the magnificent wonders of the sea together.

When they woke up for the last time, they drifted to a human-shaped island. There were food everywhere on the island, even tree roots were edible.

The tiger came ashore, and Du Sanjiang wanted to stay there. But at night he found that there were human teeth growing in the fruits on the tree.

It turns out that this is a cannibal island that attracts living creatures during the day. At night, the fresh water turns into acid, digesting these living creatures and obtaining nutrients to supply life on the island.

In order to survive, Du Sanjiang had to set out again. This time he loaded the boat with food, returned to the sea, and soon found land.

When Du Sanjiang finally returned to land, the tiger also came ashore and disappeared into the jungle by the sea.

Through Du Sanjiang's narration, the writer got a legendary story full of challenges and adventures, but he also felt that there were some difficult to understand parts of Du Sanjiang's narrative.

For example, Du Sanjiang mentioned that after the shipwreck, the gorilla floated to his boat on a banana, the flying fish they encountered at sea that were delivered to their mouths, Du Sanjiang and the tiger coexisted for such a long time without any harm, and the various magical things on the human-shaped island...

Under the writer's constant questioning, Du Sanjiang finally told another version of the story.

In this version of the story, no animals survived, only him, his mother, and the ship's cook and sailors.

The sailor broke his leg and the wound became infected. The cook suggested that the sailor amputate to save his life, but it was impossible to complete the amputation without anesthesia and anti-inflammatory drugs on the drifting sea, and the sailor died.

Then the cook used the sailor's remaining limbs to catch fish, which is the origin of the flying fish in the sea in Du Sanjiang's first story.

The mother realized that the cook was not trying to save the sailor. His purpose was actually to kill the sailor and use his body to stockpile sea fish as food.

Later, the bestiality in the cook gradually emerged, and he actually ate the remaining meat on the sailor.

One day, Du Sanjiang was beaten by the cook because he accidentally lost a fish. In order to protect him, his mother was stabbed to death by the cook and thrown into the sea to become food for sharks.

The anger and bestiality in Du Sanjiang's heart were completely ignited. He waited for an opportunity to kill the cook with the same knife, avenged his mother, and survived. At this point, Du Sanjiang smiled and asked the writer, which story do you want to believe?

The story ends abruptly.

Ye Zhaoyan felt unsatisfied after reading the novel. The latter story was not expanded in the novel, but was only described in a few thousand words.

In this story, Du Sanjiang seems to have told the truth, but in fact there are still some puzzling aspects.

Because he always felt that the story was unfinished and there were some doubts in his heart that were not resolved.

When his eyes stared at a few lines of words on the last page of the novel for a while, he suddenly felt a creepy feeling in his heart.

If Du Sanjiang compared people to animals and beautified his own memory, then is the truth of the matter really as the second story tells?
In his mind, he kept deducing the two stories told by Du Sanjiang. The fragmented information was constantly pieced together, and he seemed to be getting closer and closer to the truth of the story.

Suddenly, an epiphany arose in his heart.

If we follow Du Sanjiang's statement, the hyena is the vicious cook, the injured zebra is the injured sailor, the mother is the chimpanzee, and Du Sanjiang is the Bengal tiger.

The four people drifted on the boundless ocean. In order to fill their stomachs, the cook first targeted the injured sailors and then killed Du Sanjiang's mother.

In revenge for his mother, Du Sanjiang killed the cook again.

After a fight, Du Sanjiang was the only one left on the boat. Du Sanjiang was like the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.

This also explains why, in the first story narrated by Du Sanjiang, he could live peacefully with the tiger for 277 days, because the tiger was himself, representing the evil thoughts in his heart, the darkness in the deepest part of human nature.

After coming ashore, the tiger disappeared into the jungle and was never seen again, which also illustrates this problem.

Ye Zhaoyan followed this line of thought and realized that his mother was killed by the cook. After his mother died, given the cook's character, he would not even let go of the sailors' remains. How could he possibly throw his mother's body into the sea?

So, Du Sanjiang lied about this matter.

Ye Zhaoyan thought of a possibility and his heart sank.

In the desperate situation of no food, where did the bodies go?

Reason told Ye Zhaoyan that Du Sanjiang, who had released his inner beast, would do the same thing as the cook.

Otherwise, he would not have been able to survive and reach the shore, and might have starved to death while drifting.

Therefore, it goes without saying where those bodies ended up.

Thinking of this, Ye Zhaoyan felt the blood boiling in his chest and found it difficult to accept it emotionally.

The more he thought about it, the more horrible it seemed to him, and the more he felt a deep despair about human nature.

At the same time, he involuntarily felt a strong sense of nausea in his abdomen and suddenly began to dry heave. He held on to the wall with his hands. The violent physiological reaction made him cough and vomit uncontrollably.

Tears moistened his eyes and saliva flowed uncontrollably from his open mouth.

It took him a while to recover from the pain and he wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes with his fingers. They were neither tears of emotion nor sympathy, but caused by the physiological reaction of vomiting.

He took a deep breath and focused his eyes on the magazine again.

He continued to analyze stubbornly, and believed that the human-shaped island that Du Sanjiang and Lao Hu saw and docked on should be the incarnation of his mother in his heart.

The tree roots and vines that are everywhere on the island represent human meridians and blood vessels, and there are also dense meerkats on the island.

Ye Zhaoyan recalled the description of these meerkats in the novel, which said that they looked like a wriggling mass of white from a distance. The image of maggots parasitizing on rotten meat flashed through his mind.

The fruits on the island are filled with teeth, like the remains of digestion by gastric juice.

Ye Zhaoyan understood that this human-shaped island was also Du Sanjiang's fantasy after he fabricated and beautified his cruel real memories, and it was his mother's flesh and blood that nourished his life.

He gradually sorted out the hidden third story in the novel, and understood why Lin Chaoyang stopped writing after briefly telling the second story.

Because this final story is so cruel. In this story, humanity has disappeared, and only naked animal nature is roaring unscrupulously on the vast ocean.

The shock in his heart took a long time to calm down. The fear that penetrated deep into his bones made Ye Zhaoyan feel cold all over. He covered the book with his hands.

After a few seconds, he picked up the magazine again and put it further away.

Returning to the bed, he couldn't help but look in the direction of the magazine, still feeling frightened.

He probably won't read this novel again in the short term.

(End of this chapter)