Filtered through the lake water, the sky ladder’s light was dim and unclear. Four people floated suspended above, their limbs rigid, barely moving except for slight swaying with the water flow – truly an eerie sight.
Yi Sa’s mind raced: Ding Yudie was now caught up in this, which wasn’t good – both emotionally and rationally, she shouldn’t abandon him; Yi Xiao had appeared – though their sisterly bond was distant, she couldn’t pretend to see her; then there were Jiang Jun and Jiang Xiaoguang – what were they trying to do, what was this vault opening about…
It seemed she could only steel herself and follow, taking it one step at a time.
In her tension, her hand suddenly touched the phone strap on her chest: water ghosts kept their phones in specially made waterproof bags when diving – they were waterproof and could withstand significant water pressure, but being electronic devices, their batteries drained quickly in unusual environments.
Yi Sa quickly held it up, hoping to take a couple of photos while the battery was still sufficient: water ghosts all had this habit – seeing is believing, and no description of underwater sights could match the impact of photographs. Plus, while eyes prioritized certain things when looking, lenses didn’t – they faithfully recorded everything, and reviewing later often revealed previously overlooked details.
The phone wasn’t working.
Not because it was out of battery, but because it was completely malfunctioning – the screen showed overlapping images, then froze, icons jumped around – basically anything but normal operation.
Could the force that had turned Ding Yudie and the others into water puppets also affect electronic devices?
Yi Sa had an uncanny intuition: this too was probably part of the Founding Master’s design.
He was like a precise player, considering all potential risks when setting up his game:
—You want to arrange for a water ghost to follow and record? Impossible – any water ghost in the vicinity during tablet questioning would be affected and controlled;
—You want to arrange for others to follow and record? Impossible – besides water ghosts, others lack the talent for diving, they can only gaze at the water longingly;
—You want to use electronic devices as extended “eyes” to follow and record? Still impossible – electronic devices would malfunction.
…
The Founding Master who lived in the Xia Dynasty – it must have been the Xia Dynasty, she remembered stories from Yi family elders when she was young – the Founding Master had even featured in legends about Yu the Great’s flood control. As a water ghost, someone with such underwater talents, how could he not participate in such important water management?
Living in such an early era (whether real or fabricated aside), would he have considered modern devices like phones or cameras?
It seemed he would – after all, he had improvised verses about “flying without wings, facing without face,” which the three families later interpreted as referring to airplanes and video calls.
What was the Founding Master’s true identity? An extraterrestrial? A prophet?
As she pondered this, there was movement above.
Jiang Jun led the way, with the other three following, having left the water path sky ladders.
Yi Sa reacted lightning-fast, darting upward to grab one of the sky ladders, drawing her water ghost dagger to cut off about three or four meters, quickly folding and knotting it into a circle. She pursued closely, and after several powerful kicks through the water, she swung her arm like lassoing a horse, the glowing circle catching Ding Yudie who was at the rear of the group.
Among the four, she was most familiar with him, and he was the only one she dared to catch.
Yi Sa held her breath-
Good, the water puppets truly were puppets, unaware and unfeeling. Perhaps they just thought it was water weeds or rotting fishing nets that had gotten tangled – there was no unusual reaction.
Yi Sa breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to signal Zong Hang to follow.
Zong Hang paddled up.
He had never learned to swim properly. Though he could stay afloat, his swimming form was completely haphazard – not only crooked and uneven but splashing all his limbs at once, making quite a commotion.
This disturbance immediately alarmed Yi Sa, who turned back with angry eyes and “chopped” him twice.
Getting chopped again, Zong Hang didn’t know where to put his limbs and felt quite dejected: he certainly knew trackers should be shadow-like and silent, but no one had trained him…
Yi Sa quickly came down, linking her arm with his. Zong Hang felt a strong force pull him along, his body easily carried forward.
She was linking arms with him!
Zong Hang felt the half of his body next to her go numb. After a moment of stiffness, he secretly turned to look at her.
She was so close to him that her hair, carried by the water, would brush against his face. Sometimes one or two strands would trail across his face, the sensation incredibly distinct.
She was propelled through the water.
Her technique was unlike any swimming instructor he had ever seen. She didn’t use much force, her body moving like a fish, occasionally making a stroke with her arms to leverage the water’s force. Combined with the natural buoyancy in the water, carrying his 140-some pounds seemed effortless.
Zong Hang wanted to help too, and tried copying her movement with a stroke.
Yi Sa immediately turned to glare at him. If she hadn’t been linked to his arm, she probably would have “chopped” him again. He understood her look: Just rest! Don’t move!
Zong Hang deflated, truly feeling the shame of being behind.
Before, he had heard phrases like “those who fall behind get beaten” countless times, but they had been abstract, without resonance. Besides, his father Zong Bisheng had always been ahead of his time, and sitting in his father’s successful carriage, receiving convenience and care everywhere – how far behind could he fall?
Now it was different. The environment he was in, the people he faced, and the difficulties he encountered, were all beyond his previous imagination. He didn’t want to be a burden, especially not to Yi Sa.
For the first time, Zong Hang felt motivated to improve. After getting out of the water this time, he would comprehensively upgrade himself, he would…
Looking up inadvertently, that surge of ambitious motivation turned into a shiver.
That line of people was like legendary underwater corpses being herded, strung one after another. Though they were swimming, their limbs were rigid, truly like puppets on strings.
Even more spine-chilling was the glowing circle around Ding Yudie, emitting a dim phosphorescence, creating an oval-shaped light cluster front and back. The line of people moved forward silently surrounded by ghostly light, with tiny suspended particles within the light clusters, and sometimes plastic bag-like underwater garbage would drift past.
Besides that glow, the surroundings were deathly dark and silent. Even their glow sticks were useless now, only enough to see Yi Sa beside him.
Zong Hang was extremely tense. Though nothing had happened yet, his heart rate was probably off the charts.
He looked back several times, afraid that something might be hiding in the darkness at their elbows, following with a sinister grin, or that they were actually already surrounded by sharp-fanged monsters, just that he couldn’t see them.
He gripped tightly the water ghost dagger Yi Sa had given him before entering the water.
Focus on the present first.
Any plans for self-improvement could wait until they survived.
Yi Sa kept her eyes fixed on that light cluster, her doubts growing stronger.
Unlike Zong Hang’s wandering thoughts, she had been constantly calculating time and distance in her mind.
Since leaving the water path sky ladders, this group had been moving in a straight line without pause, covering at least one or two kilometers by now, and still continuing.
So those vault points marked in the vault manual were just the first step of a long march – no one knew what routes or twists lay ahead, no wonder there was no risk even if the manual leaked.
What next? They couldn’t keep going like this forever.
She wanted to catch up and look, but didn’t dare: though Ding Yudie and the others were water puppets, Jiang Jun might not be – he was the leader, might he be conscious? If she came face to face with him, that would be…
Just as she was thinking this, that light cluster suddenly suspended in the water.
Had they arrived? Yi Sa’s heart jumped.
Looking around, there didn’t seem to be anything special – just some commonly seen snail and clam shells on the lake bottom.
The water puppets remained suspended silently as before, but Jiang Jun began to move.
He was pushing water downward.
Water pushing was an essential skill for water ghosts. When ordinary people push water, they just push their palms flat against the water’s surface, and the water parts to the sides before rejoining, but water ghosts have a different theory for water pushing.
Yi Sa had learned water pushing from Grandmother Jiang. The old lady’s hands were like withered branches and bone claws, but her tendons and bones were strong, and she explained clearly: “Water has three states – gas, liquid, and solid. When ordinary people push, the force disperses in all directions. If there’s a fish at the bottom, would it feel anything when you push down from the surface? To it, you’re just playing around.”
“But water ghosts are different. Don’t think of what’s under your hand as water – imagine that when your force goes out, what you’re pushing against is solid water, ice pillars. However much force you put in, the water not only conducts it but amplifies it – push straight down from above onto a fish at the bottom, that force goes straight down and can crush it flat – that’s when you’ve got it right.”
At the time, newly initiated water ghosts Yi Sa and Ding Yudie were each assigned a vat, splashing around and making waves. Later, Yi Sa got a feel for it and said: “Isn’t this just like driving water piles? Except the piles aren’t made of wood, they’re made of water.”
Grandmother Jiang gave her a thumbs up.
…
Now, Jiang Jun was driving these “water piles.”
As a veteran water ghost, his technique was naturally much more skilled than hers. The shock waves hitting the lake bottom and dispersing through the water reached her in ripples.
After finishing, Jiang Jun led the way again, no longer in a straight line but at roughly a 30-degree angle. After swimming less than half a kilometer, he stopped again and pushed down into the water again.
Following this, Yi Sa was led by Jiang Jun in what seemed like random wandering through the water.
You couldn’t make sense of his route – straight lines, diagonal lines, forward then backward, the path sometimes forming triangles, sometimes pentagrams, sometimes arcs. At each node, he would stop to push water – sometimes once, sometimes repeatedly many times, sometimes straight down, sometimes with palms turned outward pushing at angles, and several times coordinating with Ding Yudie and the others – looking up from below to see several people moving in unison, mechanically repeating, their movements stiff and rigid, the feeling was truly indescribable.
Once, Yi Sa signaled Zong Hang to stay put while she boldly swam closer to look.
She felt that Jiang Jun also seemed to lack autonomous consciousness, essentially also a water puppet, just slightly more advanced than Ding Yudie and the others – the difference between fifty paces and a hundred paces.
…
After cycling back and forth, exhaustingly moving about for a long while, the light cluster suspended in the water again.
Jiang Jun raised the Jiang ancestor tablet that was tied to his waist chain with fine string.
Yi Sa’s mind was about to explode as she repeatedly recalled Jiang Jun’s recent route and actions at each stop.
The route was too chaotic to form any pattern, too scattered, all over the place.
Each time he pushed down into the water, the number of times, force, and number of people pushing all varied – analyzing this would be too complex, even codes usually have patterns to follow…
Code?
Yi Sa’s heart leaped violently.
In Cambodia, when Jiang Xiaoguang had her get regular check-ups, he had taken it upon himself to connect her with a foreign doctor.
That doctor ran a private clinic that was decorated like a club to distinguish it from local hospitals. The entrance had a digital combination lock and a small nine-square keypad where clients entered the code to enter.
Code…
Maybe this was a code, except unlike the clinic’s lock embedded in the wall, this one lay flat on the lake bottom, with the code dial enlarged thousands of times.
The many places where Jiang Jun stopped to push water – maybe each stop position corresponded to a “code position,” and the force, angle, and number of times he used were the necessary techniques to trigger that “code position”…
When she was young, she had discussed with people from the three families: Are our vaults safe just because they’re hidden underwater?
What if there’s an earthquake that shakes the vaults loose?
What if climate change lowers the water level and fishermen dig up the vaults?
What if…
There were no what-ifs. During Poyang Lake’s dry season, its area shrank drastically, reducing by nearly tenfold from its maximum size, with many riverbeds exposed and dead fish everywhere, yet no vaults had ever been dug up.
They had always thought it was because the Founding Master had hidden them ingeniously, or they were just lucky.
But now it all made sense.
The reason it was foolproof wasn’t because they simply dug a hole and covered it with two stones like Zhang Xianzhong hiding silver, or just covered it with thick silt and called it done.
Their process was complex, each step precise, even including a code – an extremely complex code that outsiders could never begin to understand.
…
The water suddenly turbulated.
A rumbling sound came from deep in the lake bottom, like thunder, or like the restlessness before an earthquake.
Jiang Jun had just “entered” the ancient code.
Now, the lake bottom was about to open.