Ding Yudie swung above the raft, first retrieved the ancestor tablet, then slowly lowered himself down. As soon as his feet touched the raft, he felt anxious and short of breath, quickly crouching low and clinging to the raft like a crawling turtle.
From the channel bank, it had only seemed bumpy, but being on the raft revealed its true intensity. He’d already swallowed countless mouthfuls of muddy water, with wind and water sounds constantly in his ears. His internal organs felt like they might be thrown out. For the first time, Ding Yudie felt that compared to the yin song singer, being a water ghost wasn’t that impressive.
Yi Sa and Zong Hang came down in turn, following suit by desperately clinging to the raft. They looked like three frogs fighting for survival, terrified of being thrown off.
Three sealed waterproof bags were lowered from above – these were the “treasures” to be locked away, prepared to make everything look authentic. Each person freed one hand to arduously grab a bag and strap it to their backs – they weren’t light, and no one knew what Ding Panling had stuffed inside them.
The “door” was indeed open, but they still needed guidance on where to enter.
The old man still gripped the red umbrella tightly with one hand while moving the kerosene lamp along the unstable raft’s edge with the other. Ding Yudie felt dizzy, seeing only waves everywhere, not knowing what the old man was looking for. Just then, where the lamplight fell, a whirlpool suddenly appeared on the water’s surface.
The old man was so excited his voice changed pitch: “Quick! Right here! Jump!”
Blood rushed to Ding Yudie’s head, and without thinking, he dove headfirst into the whirlpool. Yi Sa and Zong Hang reacted quickly too, jumping while reaching forward to grab.
All three entered the water almost simultaneously, their splashes immediately swallowed by the following waves before they could even sound.
Several searchlights immediately lit up on the channel bank, their bright beams fixed near the raft.
They hadn’t dared use lights earlier for fear of interfering with finding the “door” using the kerosene lamp, but even now it seemed useless – the Yellow River’s muddy water became even murkier when churned up, too thick for even the strongest light to penetrate.
Ding Panling’s lips were tightly pressed as he stared at that spot for a long while before instructing Ding Changsheng: “Turn them off, don’t let anyone see and think something’s happened here.”
Ding Changsheng waved his hand, and the lights gradually went out.
The moment Ding Yudie entered the water, he was extremely excited.
He wasn’t being dramatic, but truly some water ghosts spent their entire lives without getting close to an unlocked Jin Tang, let alone “leading” the way in. So with this experience, his water ghost career could be considered complete.
But this excitement instantly turned to anger.
Damn it, what the hell? Were those two sick? It’s not like they couldn’t swim – why was each one tightly hugging one of his legs? He nearly did a split in the water.
With one person hanging on each leg, plus everyone carrying bags, the weight was no joke. Despite Ding Yudie’s desperate attempts to swim upward, they kept sinking. He wanted to curse out loud, but couldn’t make sound underwater. He wanted to use water ghost moves to kill these two idiots, but it was pitch black in the Yellow River depths – they probably wouldn’t even see him attacking.
Better focus on the task first and settle accounts with them later.
Ding Yudie raised the ancestor tablet and brought it to his forehead.
Yi Sa had entered the water tightly holding onto Ding Yudie’s leg.
The leg futilely kicked, clearly trying to shake her off, but how could that work? He probably didn’t know how thick-skinned she was.
Yi Sa sneered at Ding Yudie’s struggles and held on even tighter, using her body to sense the underwater dynamics since she couldn’t see.
This feeling was like…
A corpse cabinet, yes!
It was like jumping into a water mass – although violent currents raged an arm’s length away and she could feel the force from all sides, the water mass remained stable, preventing them from being swept away.
What next? Would this water mass move underwater? Like an underwater car or elevator, taking them where they wanted to go…
As she pondered this, a distinct wave of air turbulence suddenly burst around her, and simultaneously, Yi Sa felt as if a blindingly bright lightning bolt struck directly into her brain.
In less than a second, several thoughts flashed through her mind:
— Like at the Old Temple, this must be the ancestor tablet taking effect;
— But what was happening to her? Wasn’t she supposed to be unaffected?
…
Her body couldn’t withstand this force and was thrown out, seemingly hitting something midway. Fortunately, though her mind was foggy, her body’s instinctive reactions remained, and she immediately held on tight.
Then that blindingly bright lightning in her mind spread out endlessly, like a TV screen with no signal full of snow, before gradually becoming clear.
She was surprised to find herself in an operating room.
But she wasn’t the one lying on the operating table. Doctors and nurses in protective gear surrounded the table so tightly that not even water could get through. Under the bright surgical lights, she could hear the slight clinking of surgical instruments.
Suddenly a nurse turned around, carrying a surgical tray with a bloody, freshly peeled human face skin on it, its two eye holes staring at her grotesquely.
Yi Sa’s legs went weak, and she nearly collapsed to the ground.
Soon, the people around the operating table dispersed, and a coquettish young woman sat up from the table – though “young woman” wasn’t quite right, as only her face was youthfully tender. Otherwise, her neck and arms showed loose, sagging skin.
She was on her phone, speaking cheerfully: “I’m done, it was quick. Do you want to do it too?”
“It’s worth it, think about it – natural faces are so delicate and troublesome, using such expensive skincare products, yet they still wrinkle when they’re going to wrinkle, lose elasticity when they’re going to lose elasticity. Artificial ones are different – all-day lifting, and self-cleaning at any time… I’m planning to do a full-body skin replacement…”
The scene shifted to what looked like a university classroom. On an LED screen replacing the blackboard was a huge evolutionary tree, starting from “eukaryotes, prokaryotes” at the roots, branching into plants on one side and animals on the other.
On the animal side, from single-cell organisms to coelenterates, from nematodes to fish and amphibians, mammals stood at the highest branch tips, represented by a human figure.
At the podium, a thin middle-aged professor was passionately stating: “Will this evolutionary tree grow endlessly? I think not.”
“The moon waxes then wanes, water overflows when full, flowers bloom then wither, people die when they age to the extreme – the most essential truth is always contained in the most ordinary, common phenomena. When evolution reaches its end, it becomes devolution.”
A student in the audience joked: “So eventually we humans will evolve backward, becoming single-cell organisms again?”
The professor smiled: “Devolution means extinction, but it’s not simply retracing our steps. Extinction has many forms, right, Yi Sa?”
Yi Sa was caught off guard: “Huh?”
But the professor kept staring at her: “Right? Yi Sa? Yi Sa?”
Suddenly that voice sounded familiar.
Like Zong Hang’s.
Yi Sa struggled to open her eyes and found herself lying on the ground.
Zong Hang was kneeling beside her, looking anxious: “Yi Sa, what’s wrong?”
Where was this? Yi Sa looked around.
It seemed like a cave, but not quite – it was a passage, carved square and regular, with Ding Yudie sitting at the side…
Seeing Ding Yudie, Yi Sa became fully alert.
He wore his backpack and maintained the position of holding the ancestor tablet to his forehead with both hands, eyes wide open but lifeless, like a suddenly stiffened puppet.
Yi Sa asked Zong Hang: “What happened?”
Zong Hang said: “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
He told Yi Sa what had happened earlier: after entering the water, following her instructions, he held tightly to one of Ding Yudie’s legs without letting go. While struggling, he felt a weight on his body as someone grabbed his legs.
He hadn’t realized it was her, thinking actual water ghosts from the Yellow River bottom had been summoned by the yin song. He was so scared his hair nearly stood on end – just as he was about to free one hand to pry them off, suddenly there was nothing under his feet, and the entire person, no, all three people strung together, slid down.
He gestured to Yi Sa: “Like one of those cylindrical spiral slides, where people tumble around like balls inside, and then bang! We landed here. I felt like my bones were about to fall apart. When I finally got up, I saw Ding Yudie…”
At this point, he couldn’t help but shudder: Ding Yudie’s posture was creepy no matter how long you looked at it, like a wax figure.
“…Ding Yudie sitting like this, and you holding my legs. Yi Sa, weren’t you unaffected by the ancestor tablet last time?”
Indeed.
Yi Sa turned to look at Ding Yudie, unconsciously moving farther away: “Could it be because I was holding onto him?”
Was Ding Yudie like a conductor, transmitting some of the ancestor tablet’s functions to her?
Zong Hang didn’t think so: “But I was holding onto him too, so you and I… are still different?”
Yi Sa mumbled: “Different, we’re different.”
She was from the three surnames, and what happened at the Three Rivers’ Source in 1996 – if you weren’t too strict about it, she could be considered a midwife too. Being a midwife meant being able to open doors and enter Jin Tang caves, otherwise, how could they perform deliveries?
But Zong Hang was neither from the three surnames nor a midwife.
A line gradually became clear in Yi Sa’s mind: “Among those involved in the Drift Cave incident, only two were water ghosts. The others were either Shakers or Water Grapes. They must have all been given water ghost abilities to facilitate their future underwater tasks.”
“But to open a Jin Tang cave, you need direct contact with the ancestor tablet. Last time at the Old Temple, I didn’t have close contact with the tablet, but this time, holding onto Ding Yudie, I was affected somewhat.”
Something clicked in Zong Hang’s mind: “Does that mean we didn’t need Ding Yudie for this Jin Tang locking? You plus the ancestor tablet could have gotten us in?”
Maybe, but she dared not try: just holding onto Ding Yudie’s leg had already caused so many strange visions in her mind. What if her forehead made direct contact with the ancestor tablet? Would her mind no longer be her own? Would she become completely their puppet?
She didn’t want to touch that ancestor tablet at all now.
Yi Sa turned to look behind: “So how did we slide in here?”
Not far behind was a vertical rock face – or was it breathing soil? But according to Zong Hang’s description, it took quite some time for them to slide down, and with no shipwreck materials to use here, trying to burn their way out would be pure fantasy…
As she pondered this, Ding Yudie suddenly sprung up from the ground.
His joints were stiff, making his standing posture extremely eerie. Then, equally stiffly, he began walking deeper into the corridor.
It seemed they could only follow Ding Yudie: in the past, when the three surnames locked Jin Tang, it only took an hour or two, and they always entered and exited safely. As long as they stayed close to the leader and didn’t touch anything carelessly, there shouldn’t be any problems.
Yi Sa called for Zong Hang to follow, and they trailed behind Ding Yudie, observing their surroundings as they walked.
This corridor truly looked man-made, with traces of shovel and chisel marks still visible on the rock walls. As they walked, they even discovered rock paintings.
Rock paintings are part of rock carving culture, generally believed to have been created by human ancestors using stone tools to record their production and life activities. The painted lines are usually bold and primitive, expressing content ranging from immediately obvious to more obscure than ancient texts – after all, the generation gap between modern people and primitive humans is probably deeper than the Mariana Trench.
The rock painting they were passing showed countless abstract little figures, running, fleeing, pulling, or dragging. Long wavy lines below probably represented the great river, and tall earthen platforms stood with two slightly larger figures on top. One of them had a downward-curved line above the head, seemingly a rain hat, and appeared to be holding something like a wooden pitchfork for turning soil.
Zong Hang blurted out: “Yu the Great, Yu the Great and his people carved this corridor!”