I had my own plan for entering the Coral Spiral Sea, a secret that naturally I wouldn't share with "Bai Wu." I merely instructed him to take Da Jinya to negotiate the price with the ship owner, and besides that, to draft an invoice for supplies, asking "Bai Wu" to prepare them and oversee the inspection and testing of the hull to ensure it would be absolutely seaworthy once we set sail.

With the vessel confirmed, the group split up. Uncle Ming and the others were responsible for preparing everything necessary, while I went around interviewing local fishermen, gathering intelligence on the practice of gathering eggs at sea. After several hectic days, Shirley Yang arrived to meet up with me, but I hadn't anticipated that Professor Chen would come along with her. It turned out the Professor was too worried to stay behind and insisted on accompanying us to sea himself. I certainly couldn't agree to take him into danger, and only after lengthy persuasion did I manage to convince him to remain on Coral Temple Island, asking Da Jinya to stay on the island as well to keep him company. We agreed they would return to Beijing together once we had achieved our goal.

I took Shirley to take a close look at the refitted vessel. This Hai Liu boat hadn't been named yet, and we finally christened it the "San Cha Qian." Following the local Chinese custom, new or newly renovated ships must undergo a ritual sacrifice to the Sea God before setting sail: burning incense, cutting dried provisions, pouring old liquor, and offering incense to Mazu at the Coral Temple to pray for a safe and smooth voyage. Although we didn't subscribe to these beliefs, we adhered to local customs, as this procedure was unavoidable. Next, we needed to find an old sea dog to take the helm, but finding such a person proved incredibly difficult. The moment we mentioned sailing to the phantom-haunted Coral Spiral, nearly everyone refused without hesitation. In the eyes of the locals, that place was virtually a taboo zone not to be spoken of.

In the end, Uncle Ming—who proclaimed himself an expert in reading the wind, knowing the tides, and understanding the underwater topography—was nominated to take command as the old ship captain. However, I knew Uncle Ming's character all too well. This old rogue was an old fugitive, an old swindler, and an old gambler, his mind filled entirely with opportunistic thinking. For the sake of profit, there was no scheme he wouldn't dare attempt. His motto was: "Not gambling means you haven't lost; not gambling means you don't know how high your luck can take you."

I felt uneasy about letting Uncle Ming steer the ship, and furthermore, with only the four of us sailing, our crew was too thin; I feared we might be unable to handle certain situations. Just as I was feeling troubled, fortunately, Shirley Yang managed to hire several egg gatherers. They were all ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. The elder among them was named Ruan Hei; he was about fifty, his beard white, but his eyes were sharp and full of spirit—a steady, capable, and highly experienced old fisherman.

The other two were a young man and a young woman. The youth was named "Gu Cai," Ruan Hei's apprentice, about fifteen or sixteen, dark-skinned and lean, but extremely nimble and quick on his feet, resembling a little monkey. The girl possessed a pair of bright, liquid eyes, with long hair cascading past her waist, inheriting the main features of Vietnamese women. Her skin was darker; her name was "Duo Ling," about twenty years old, of mixed French-Vietnamese descent. She also called Ruan Hei master.

Duo Ling was an orphan Ruan Hei adopted when he fled Vietnam. Gu Cai was an original resident of Coral Temple Island, also an orphan. The three had depended on each other, fishing on the island to survive, living in extreme poverty. Ruan Hei and his apprentices/daughter had experience with long voyages, could navigate and fish, and had even dived for pearls. Since Shirley Yang could pay them directly in US dollars, the trio was willing to risk the voyage with us to earn a substantial sum. With travel money secured, they planned to go to France to seek out Duo Ling's scattered relatives.

When I met these three Vietnamese individuals, I immediately objected. Hearing them mention helping me brought back memories of fighting on the front lines; the smoke and blood felt as if it were only yesterday. Occasionally, when running into old comrades-in-arms, although everyone maintained a composed demeanor when discussing past battles—only mentioning who was unfortunately lost, who was crippled, or what someone might be doing now if they were still alive—the truth was that they, like me, dared not dwell on or describe those memories in detail. Perhaps few veterans of the Sino-Vietnamese border war dared to recall the scenes of flesh and gore on the battlefield, and none dared to look at their medals. Seeing a medal instantly brought to mind the comrade who took a bullet for them; after looking, they would sit in a corner weeping like a child. I heard that many American soldiers who served in the Vietnam War also suffered from aftereffects like shell shock. This was likely related to Vietnam's hot, oppressive natural environment and the gruesome, meat-grinder nature of the fighting. Souls tormented by war are incomplete and easily triggered.

But Shirley Yang persuaded me, saying, "The Ruan family are not like that. They were refugees who escaped when the U.S. military pulled out of Saigon. Moreover, Ruan Hei is Chinese himself, his ancestral home being Yantai, Shandong. He speaks Chinese quite well, so you shouldn't have any psychological barriers."

I considered it and realized she was correct; there was no valid reason to object. Since Shirley Yang trusted the Ruan family so much, her judgment was likely sound. Thus, I reluctantly agreed to let Ruan Hei and the others join us. Then I gathered all members of the expedition together and repeatedly discussed the feasibility of our action plan. Once confirmed, everything was ready; we just had to set sail at dawn the next day to begin our task.

That night, I made a final inspection of the items in the cabin. The most crucial were the various tools needed for the Art of Mountain Moving and Sea Filling. These items were strange and varied, mostly things used in daily life, but when employed in the Art of Mountain Moving, they performed extraordinary functions. Although I had never practiced this before, I believed that the numerous records left by the Mountain Mover Daoist "Zhe Gu Shao" contained no falsehoods. For a thousand years, Mountain Movers had plundered the world's greatest treasures; without genuine skill, how could they be mentioned in the same breath as the "Mojin Arts"?

Just as I finished checking and was about to retire, I saw Professor Chen hurrying to find me halfway back. Bored on the island, he learned that we had acquired a batch of Qing Tou ancient jades and immediately set about studying them repeatedly. He drew diagrams of every piece, intending to collect them as research material, but this unintentional effort yielded a staggering result.

I took the drawings Professor Chen had made and was equally surprised when I saw them. It turned out that these dozens of broken and strangely shaped ancient jades were fragments separated from one massive jade carving. In the drawing, they looked like pieces of a scattered jigsaw puzzle reassembled into a whole. Although some parts could no longer be restored, the general outline was intact. The carving depicted a monstrous spirit—a woman with the tail of a fish and the head of a human—performing a divination on a massive tortoise shell, set against a background of sea beast totems and temples. I had studied the Yi arts for a long time and was familiar with the practice of candle illumination and tortoise shell divination, so I was naturally very interested. I looked closely at the hexagrams on the tortoise shell, made a slight identification, and my heart began to pound uncontrollably: "This demon appears to be deducing the Innate Eight Trigrams..."