Chapter 55 – Falling Behind

The water here shimmered with a jade-green glow. I followed Hou Jinshan as we swam beneath a waterfall that looked like a silver ribbon. The deeper we went, the colder the water became. I shivered twice—the kind of chill that seeps into your bones, something no swimming pool could ever replicate.

The water was fairly clear, but visibility near the bottom was still terrible. We’d already dived a dozen meters in without seeing a single fish. The only sounds in my ears were the rush of water and my own breathing. The cave was pitch-black, and we had to rely on our flashlights. Visibility was so poor that I simply followed the beam of light from the flashlight ahead of me.

The river channel gradually narrowed. Soon, I felt patterns along the bank that seemed artificially carved. I reached out to alert Hou Jinshan, who was supposed to be just ahead—but my hand grasped nothing. Thinking my arm was too short, I kicked forward into the void, but still touched nothing.

I immediately grabbed a protrusion on the bank and stopped. I remembered Xiao Wu had been swimming close behind me when we entered, so even if I’d somehow strayed from the group, I should still be able to reach him.

But when I reached back—no one.

I had clearly been following the light! How could I have fallen behind? And more importantly, how could there be an extra flashlight in the group?

Panic surged through me. I opened my eyes wide, trying to scan my surroundings. I spun in a slow circle underwater, flashlight in hand. There was still light ahead, but when I reached out toward it, there was nothing there.

My mind raced. I swam toward the source of the light, but my mask suddenly slammed into a rock. Luckily, I hadn’t been swimming fast—any faster and I might’ve knocked myself out. But there was no one there.

Underwater, flashlight beams are severely limited. I leaned against a rock, thinking. The space here wasn’t large, and the river channel had been narrowing since we entered. That meant this was a completely enclosed area. Even if I had fallen behind, I couldn’t be far from the others.

I swept my flashlight around. Suddenly, I caught a glimpse of something massive on the bottom. The beam only passed over it briefly, but the sheer size of the object suggested it was likely a sculpture.

Could this statue be what separated me from the others?

Driven by curiosity, I swam slowly toward the spot where I’d seen it. The water was full of debris, and my mask was foggy, making it hard to see. As I got closer, I raised my flashlight—and it landed on a giant eye, barely a meter in front of me.

The stone eye was grotesque and terrifying. I nearly choked on water from the shock. I kicked backward, putting some distance between us, and forced myself to stay calm.

It was an enormous stone statue. Its lower half was anchored to the bottom, and its upper half had seven arms. One pair cradled a baby whose eyes were squinted shut in a smile. The form was identical to the “Ghost Father and Ghost Mother” image Hou Jinshan had described.

I shone my flashlight on it. The statue gave me a deeply unsettling feeling. Maybe it was just the sheer size of the thing—what kind of ancient engineering could’ve produced something this massive?

What was this thing even doing here, grinning like that? Acting as some kind of demonic gatekeeper?

As I was thinking this, I caught something out of the corner of my eye—the statue’s eye moved. It wasn’t my imagination. It actually moved.

I gasped and swallowed a mouthful of water. I clamped my mouth shut and swam upward as fast as I could. This place was far too creepy. I’d heard of corpse reanimation, but never of a statue pretending to be dead. Whatever was going on, I needed to get to the surface.

The river channel wasn’t deep, so I surfaced quickly. As soon as my head broke the water, I started coughing violently. That mouthful of water had gone straight down my throat, and it felt like I was hacking up a lung.

I didn’t even bother wiping my mask before swimming to the bank. I grabbed the edge and pulled myself up. Just as I took off my mask and looked up, I saw a grotesque stone face staring down at me from the shore—so close we were practically nose to nose.

I screamed and instinctively jerked backward, falling into the water again. Water rushed into my nose and mouth. I thrashed and surfaced four or five meters from the bank, coughing out everything in my throat. I wiped my face and looked back toward the shore.

Nothing. It was completely empty.

That couldn’t be right. It had felt so real. Was it just a hallucination?

Still coughing, I didn’t immediately swim back. Instead, I used my flashlight to carefully scan the area. Only after confirming there was nothing there did I cautiously make my way back to shore. I hauled myself up and immediately felt the chill seep into my bones.

I looked around. Judging by the surroundings, I had gone quite deep into the cave. The stone platform beneath my feet was narrow—barely wide enough for one person to walk sideways—and most of it was already submerged. The section behind me was completely underwater.

There was no going back. It was impossible to tell direction underwater, and with that bizarre statue lurking down there, I wouldn’t go back in even if you paid me. So I turned around and shone my flashlight ahead. The terrain rose slightly, and the stone platform there wasn’t submerged.

The silence was suffocating. The darkness was overwhelming. My heart pounded in my chest. There wasn’t a shred of safety to be found in this place.

“Hou Jinshan! Xiao Wu! Boss Li!” I shouted into the void. The cave amplified my voice, sending it echoing in all directions. I yelled several times, but no one answered.

This didn’t make any sense.

I stood there for a while, then decided to keep moving. Waiting was pointless. I’d been circling underwater for too long—they might’ve already passed the statue and gone ahead. My only option now was to press forward and hope they hadn’t gone too far.

I edged along the shore. The stone path had clearly been carved by human hands, even featuring anti-slip grooves, which made walking easier. But after only ten minutes, I came to a stop.

Something was blocking my path.

It was a stone figurine standing on the platform—a bowing statue with a smiling face. Its eyes were curved into crescents, and its mouth curled upward in a grin. It stood in a gesture of greeting, as if welcoming me to step forward.

I patted my legs, trying to warm myself up. My fingers brushed against a claw knife strapped to my belt. I raised my flashlight and stepped forward cautiously. I hadn’t planned on bringing any kind of weapon for self-defense—this knife was something Hou Jinshan had “generously” handed over to me. It wasn’t even double-edged, and so blunt it could barely cut butter. Still, in a place like this, just having a blade in hand gave me a bit of comfort.

I reached the stone statue and shone my flashlight over it. Nothing seemed off at first glance. Then I gave it a light tap with my foot—and that’s when I saw its eyes move ever so slightly.

Holy shit! That’s some creepy stuff!

I immediately took three steps back, fumbling with the knife to figure out which side was the blade. I turned it over three or four times, trying to get it right. But before I could even brace myself, something white began to crawl slowly out of the statue’s eye socket. I squinted—it looked like… a butterfly?

I let out a breath of relief. So the statue wasn’t coming to life after all. The pure white butterfly flapped its wings gently and landed on the statue’s nose. I was curious—what kind of species was this? How could it be so white? I stepped in for a closer look, but just as I reached out my hand, the butterfly fluttered its wings and flew off.

A butterfly, in a cave this cold? That didn’t seem right.

Still, the most important thing was that the statue wasn’t alive. I kept that thought front and center as I grabbed hold of the statue and climbed over the stone platform, continuing forward.

This stretch of platform was ridiculously long, and as I went on, I noticed more and more stone statues lining the path. Every few meters, there’d be one or two—sometimes as many as five or six. They all looked more or less the same: bent at the waist, grinning, as if bowing in welcome.

The farther I walked, the stranger it felt. According to what Hou Jinshan had said earlier, this platform was supposed to be part of a drainage system. If that’s the case, why line the banks with these statues? And why were they all in this odd, bowing posture? That kind of figure didn’t belong in a place like this.

It was like putting a bunch of doormen in your bathroom—every time you went in to take a dump, they’d greet you with a big smile and a “Welcome, honored guest!”

I stopped to catch my breath. That’s when I heard a sudden bubbling sound coming from the pool behind me. I pressed myself against the smooth wall, not exactly gracefully, flashlight in hand as I stood up.

What the hell? Was that statue really alive? And now it was rising up to eat people?

Just as the thought crossed my mind, a human head burst up from the bubbling water in the distance—followed by five more. One of them shouted, “Goddamn it! How long have we been swimming down there? What the hell is this place?!”

I blinked, stunned for a moment. But once I processed what I was seeing, a grin spread across my face.

Well, I’ll be damned—it was Hou Jinshan! Wait… how the hell did I end up ahead of them?!