There was a village in Benxi, China. The Benxi people who lived in that area suffered a long drought. Consequently, there was a famine.

To find water, they began to dig a well. They worked day and night, and at last water began to bubble up from the ground. As they cheered and prayed, something fell from the sky, which to their amazement turned out to be a wounded dragon.

The dragon weakly asked the people for water, and, because they were kind, they gave him as much water as he wanted from the well and took good care of him.

But the dragon needed lots of water. He drank day and night without any stop to take a breath. Very soon, the well dried up, so the people again had nothing to drink. Village people were not angry at him, but focus on finding more water by digging more wells. Day after day, they continued to dig more wells for water....... Finally, they found water.

This time there was too much water. It poured forth from the ground in torrents until the entire town was flooded. People climbed up into the hills for safeth and cried out in fright.

The dragon pondered for a moment and turned around taking a look of the kind village people who had been so nice to him. He turned back, jumped into the air, whirled in the sky, and dived into the flooding ocean. In the water, he found the big hole where people dug through and plugged this hole with his own body. Thereby, the flood was stopped and the water flowed to the other ocean and lake.

Village people finally came down the hill and realized that was the dragon stopped the flood by plugging himself in the hole. All of them got down on their knees to thank him for his self-sacrificing.

A few weeks after, the village was completely out of flood and plants started flourishing. No one could ever find the dragon and the hole anywhere. Near that place it appeared a little translucent lake which they had never seen before. In memory of the brave dragon, people all called it the Laying Dragon Lake, WoLong Lake.

( Based on an old Chinese folktale )

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