Chapter 157: A Wall?

I sat on the edge of the boat, my gaze hidden behind diving goggles as I looked toward Liang Si and his group. They were swearing loudly and splashing water at the side of the vessel, looking extremely relaxed. I tightened the strap on my wrist and watched them quietly.

The reason Liang Si and his men were so at ease was that, including myself and Bai Shenxian, I had only brought four people down. On their side, they had at least seven hands, and they had even brought along that Short Old Man. Their numerical advantage gave Liang Si immense confidence.

What he didn’t realize was that, in a way, I was the one who had granted him that confidence. Initially, I hadn’t intended to be ruthless with Liang Si, but his constant pressure on the boat, his insistence on humiliating me in front of all the men, and his insults toward my family lineage and Fourth Brother had forced my hand. I had to take measures.

When it came to doing things that might damage one’s moral standing, my grandfather had taught me through his own actions: either do nothing at all, or crush the opposition so completely that they never have a chance to recover.

Given the shadow the Shennongjia ruins had cast over me, I carried my heavy oxygen tank over to check everyone’s respirators and air valves. Only after confirming there were no issues did I sit back down.

Once everyone was geared up, I sat on the gunwale, adjusted my respirator, and signaled to Bai Shenxian and the others to pair up. Then, pressing my hand against my mask and respirator, I was the first to roll into the water. Bai Shenxian followed me, and finally, the two hands I had brought down.

Our descent was noticeably faster because we needed to swim to the vicinity of that Tomb-guarding Beast before sunset. Liang Si followed closely behind us. Usually, diving in pairs is safer, but he insisted on pushing Bai Shenxian aside, terrified that I might slip away if he didn’t keep a constant eye on me.

I ignored him. Giving Bai Shenxian a signal, I began to dive. Following the compass on my wrist, I descended to a depth of about ten meters and stopped to wait. Liang Si swam up to me and gestured, asking why I wasn’t moving. I signaled back that we were waiting for everyone to catch up so we could move as a group.

He was clearly impatient with me taking command, but since I was the only one who knew the location, he had no choice but to follow my lead.

By now, the sunlight had almost entirely vanished from our surroundings. I adjusted my air valve slightly and scanned the group to ensure no one had fallen behind before continuing to lead the way.

We weren’t that far from the surface, but the water was murky and visibility was poor. Most importantly, there were no landmarks, making navigation extremely difficult. Without the compass, I might have truly been done for today. After all, I’d managed to get turned around even on land, let alone in the ocean.

We swam for a while and then continued to descend. I wasn’t sure how many meters down we were when a piece of waterlogged wood debris drifted past my eyes. I immediately looked down and could faintly see fine sand shifting on the seabed. The hulls of several Ship-Burial Coffins, thrust vertically into the sand, were partially exposed.

I was shocked. The terrain here was actually this high. We hadn’t dived very deep, yet we could already see these Ship-Burial Coffins. Just how many of these coffins had to be buried under this sand to raise the seabed by such a significant margin?

I decided right then to turn on my headlamp and dive a bit deeper, but Bai Shenxian suddenly swam up from behind and grabbed my arm. He gave me a small, firm shake of his head. His movement was absolute; he wouldn’t allow me to dive to the upper layer of the fine sand to swim right alongside those Ship-Burial Coffins.

I gestured to him, explaining that the map said we had to swim along the upturned sterns of the highest coffins to find the Tomb-guarding Beast. Bai Shenxian glanced around the area before slowly releasing his grip.

I stuck to my plan and dived toward the stern of a coffin protruding from the white sand. I looked up, steadying my headlamp with my hand as I surveyed the surroundings. I discovered that these Ship-Burial Coffins were arranged in a bizarre fashion, every single one of them positioned head-down and tail-up.

Liang Si, following behind, gave me a shove. I didn’t have the energy to deal with him and simply swam forward along the line of exposed sterns.

We swam for nearly fifty meters this time. Natural light was non-existent now; there was nothing left but the beams from our headlamps. The sterns buried beneath the fine sand looked like the tails of scorpions, stretching out into the depths of the darkness. I was getting tired, so I stopped.

Right then, however, the needle on my compass suddenly began to swing wildly from side to side. I raised my hand and moved it to different positions, but the needle continued to oscillate, losing its sense of direction entirely. I calculated my recent swimming speed and realized with a jolt that our current location was no longer within the scope of my original plan.

Lu Ayao had said the Tomb-guarding Beast was directly below the ship. He’d given me a straight-line distance of less than five hundred meters to reach the beast’s head. Swimming along the coffin sterns should have taken less than ten minutes to find it, but I had been swimming for twelve minutes now, and there was still nothing in sight.

I couldn’t help but feel a surge of anxiety. I tried to slow my breathing. My luck was usually terrible, a possibility I had considered while still on the boat, which was why I had made sure to memorize the topographical map He Yu had given me.

I observed the fine sand, carefully recalling the flatness of the area we had just traversed. We should have passed three small rises. Assuming my compass had been correct up until the last moment, then if we went just a bit further, a massive, unparalleled steep slope should appear before us, just as it had on the map.

The gradient of this slope was extreme, showing a huge discrepancy with the surrounding contour lines. That was why it had left such a deep impression on me. I didn’t know if it was a naturally formed pit or something else.

With that thought, I paddled forward a few times and turned my headlamp to its maximum brightness. After a flash of white light, I instinctively recoiled. I could bet that in the twenty years since I was born, I had never seen a sight so eerie.

It was an incredibly vast, deep pit. From my position, I couldn’t even see the other side. Tens of thousands of Ship-Burial Coffins were piled inside. The fine sand had collapsed into the central cavity, covering the stacks of coffins at the bottom. Various rotting wooden planks protruded from the sand on the pit walls. In the very center of the pit floor, three ship coffins were thrust vertically into the ground.

I finally understood the true meaning of the “Undersea Graveyard” He Yu had described. There wasn’t a hint of metaphor in it; it was entirely literal!

Liang Si swam up beside me and stopped, clearly shocked by the Undersea Graveyard before us. Bai Shenxian swam to the edge of the pit, took one look, and then turned around to pull me back a few paces. He seemed very wary of the pit.

But I didn’t have time to ask him for details. Our oxygen supply was limited, and I needed to find the location of the Tomb-guarding Beast immediately.

Bai Shenxian pulled out his writing slate and wrote for me: “Stop swimming. It should be near here.”

The compass on my wrist was still swinging. The magnetic field here was completely different from where we had been before. The Tomb-guarding Beast had to be nearby, but I didn’t want to scatter the team to look for it. Once separated, without a central landmark and without having memorized the terrain, it would be all too easy for people to get lost. Finding them again would be nearly impossible.

I treaded water in place, looking around. About five or six meters away, I noticed a change in the scenery. I squinted and swam toward it. The closer I got, the more bizarre it seemed. Was this… a wall?

Bai Shenxian and I swam closer and found that the area covered in fine sand really was a wall. The surface appeared suddenly, stretching only a short distance into the distance. The wall stood directly in front of us, connecting with the buried Ship-Burial Coffins and thrusting vertically into the sand.

What was this for? A city wall?

On second thought, something wasn’t right. There might be a massive tomb here, but based on my current knowledge, there are only two ways a complete undersea tomb can exist. One is to load the mausoleum into a ship and sink it directly to the seabed; the other is to excavate and build the tomb in a shallow sea area, then divert water to turn the shallows into deep sea.

This stretch of ocean wasn’t connected to any islands, so this kind of city wall didn’t seem to fit into either of those two systems. My head started to ache. Was it possible to encounter a “ghost wall” even underwater? What kind of ghost was this? With wall-building speed like that, they could probably find work on a construction site.

Bai Shenxian stepped forward and brushed his hand against the wall. He cleared away some of the sand, but as soon as he applied a bit of pressure, large patches of sand covering the wall began to slough off one after another, revealing the wall’s true structure.

It was a prow—the prow of a Ship-Burial Coffin. One after another, those fragmented pieces of wood were stacked and layered together to form the entire wall.

I took a breath of oxygen and instinctively looked toward the upper section of the “wall.” Suddenly, I sensed something was off. This wall made of ship coffins wasn’t flat; the upper portion seemed to tilt slightly. There appeared to be something hidden where it connected to the top of the wall, and whatever it was had caused the structure to lean.

I immediately swam upward. In the extreme darkness of the seabed, I pressed myself against the wall. The area illuminated before me was very narrow, limited to the beam of a small headlamp. I swam to the top of the wall, pulled the flashlight from my belt, and switched it on.

The light flashed. I looked up and instantly saw a hideous, giant stone eyeball. It was only two or three meters away from me, staring fixedly through the water. I had seen underwater stone figurines similar to this before, so I wasn’t terrified this time.

I used the flashlight to scan down from that stone eye, inch by inch, and froze in place. My god! The reason we couldn’t find the Tomb-guarding Beast was that we had been swimming on top of it the whole time!

And this wasn’t a wall at all! This was the damn Tomb-guarding Beast’s neck! I’d heard Lu Ayao say this thing was huge and easy to find, but I never imagined it would be this massive!