At that moment, I felt the agitation of the water surging around me in the surrounding darkness, raising a powerful vortex, and a blurry white shadow was tentatively poking its head out nearby, its tail bobbing, now alarmingly close to us. I knew hiding was impossible, so, thinking fast, I snatched the squid irley Yang was holding, squeezed it hard, and then instantly let go. Startled and in pain, the squid instinctively jetted a cloud of ink to disappear into the dark.

The thick, black ink expelled by the squid billowed out like an underwater cloud of soot, and its body shot away. Indeed, in the darkness, a sea beast was drawn by the fleeing squid, which turned and gave chase right before us. We couldn't clearly see what it was even under the faint light, only sensing a vast, frightening expanse of white. The current stirred up by its movement was incredibly strong, like a hurricane sweeping the seabed; if we hadn't been clinging to the stone pillars, we would have been sucked away. Moreover, the undertow turbulence lingered endlessly. I was secretly astonished: what creature could grow so large? Could there truly be a dragon in the depths?

Before I could think further, the large mass of black ink was already swept away by the current. Then, the long, white, ribbon-like shadow swallowed the squid and turned back toward us. We were encased in heavy diving suits, and even with buoyancy underwater, every movement was agonizingly slow; escape was simply out of the question. At this point, we could only fight or surrender to fate. I raised my speargun, intending to shoot it with the fish dart laced with Giant Ginger, but irley Yang was half a beat ahead; she activated the powerful underwater searchlight, shooting a blinding white beam directly at the approaching sea beast.

In the light, we saw a huge, pale mass—its head resembled that of an ox, its body like a python, covered in scales and horns. We turned ashen with horror. Was this a dragon or something else? If it were a dragon, it lacked claws; if not a dragon, then why did its ox-headed face sport nascent horns? Its body was as long as a white ribbon, visible at the head but never the tail. I stared, dumbfounded, forgetting for a moment to fire the fish dart.

Blasted by the intense light, the monster abruptly turned away from its direct charge towards us, veering sideways to bypass the beam of the searchlight. Its long body swept past us like a cloud in the deep. The powerful current made all three of our bodies sway violently. It seemed to fear the strong light and plunged into the abyssal trench deeper within the ruins of the ancient city, vanishing without another sound.

Before we could celebrate our reprieve, the stone pillars behind us, already weakened by the ceaseless pounding of the sea surge, were destabilized by that violent undertow and began to groan, on the verge of collapse. I pointed toward an ancient shipwreck not far to the side; behind it, there appeared to be a stone hall. Hiding inside might shield us from the falling debris.

The pillars were already leaning, and once they fell, there was no telling where the stones would land. We quickly gauged the blind spots where the falling rocks wouldn't reach and scrambled inside the skeleton of the shipwreck. The broken pillars immediately crashed down, churning up the seabed sand into a cloud of sediment that obscured the area we had just occupied. Fortunately, it didn't trigger a chain reaction, but no one could guarantee that the other sections were any safer or sturdier. In this ancient city sunken for millennia, there was simply no safe zone.

We sheltered beneath the keel of the sunken ship to catch our breath. Uncle Ming, shaken by the successive shocks, grew somewhat restless, fidgeting nervously. He grabbed the underwater slate and hastily scrawled a character for us to see. These slates are used for divers to communicate; unless two divers have established a deep, intuitive rapport through long experience, complex exchanges are difficult to convey promptly. In such situations, they resort to the slate.

When I saw Uncle Ming had written the character for "Dragon" (), I knew he meant the great sea beast we had just witnessed was a dragon. This was truly big trouble. I had never seen a real dragon, nor did I know if Uncle Ming had. However, no matter how complex Marxist theory seems, it boils down to two words: "rebellion"—what is rebellion? It is daring to do what others fear to do. In my worldview, a dragon and a fish are no different. I raised the fish dart in my hand toward Uncle Ming. If that monster dared show its face again when we surfaced, I would surely give it a few shafts, letting it taste the sting of arrows saturated with the blood and tears of the Egg People's vengeance.

irley Yang waved her hand, signaling us not to worry. On her slate, she wrote "Sea Serpent" () and then pointed to the searchlight. Only then did I recall that two days ago on the ship, she had mentioned the great sea snakes of the deep ocean. Westerners call them "sea serpents," while Easterners name them "dragons"—in reality, they are the same marine creatures, their movements unpredictable, often attacking ships during hurricanes and typhoons, devouring passengers and livestock. That’s why sailors spoke of them with dread. In ancient times, coastal temples frequently depicted sea monsters swallowing ships and capsizing vessels; the image of the five-clawed dragon often seen there was modeled after these sea snakes. However, because they fear light, they usually only haunt the dark seabed. As long as one carries powerful underwater lighting equipment, there is nothing to fear. If we had identified it as a sea serpent earlier, we wouldn't have listened to Uncle Ming's bad advice to extinguish the lights and hide; our action of turning off the light just now nearly led to an attack.

Uncle Ming also knew the serpent's background. After a while, unless under extremely unusual circumstances, sea serpents would not attack ships or divers under bright light. He gripped his powerful searchlight, and only after a considerable wait did he finally calm down, giving us a thumbs-up to show we needn't worry about him; he was fine.

As irley Yang and I swept our dive torches around, we observed that the ancient shipwreck behind us, though reduced to wreckage, still showed distinct features far removed from Chinese ship designs, exuding an exotic flavor characteristic of the Arabian region. Most of the hull was buried under sea sand, and what could decay had almost certainly done so. It was likely a merchant vessel involved in maritime trade during the Yuan or Ming dynasties, meeting some unknown disaster that swept it into the Coral Spiral.

The surrounding ruins of the ancient city had also lost their original forms. While these findings might be astonishing discoveries for archaeologists, I found them to hold no exploratory value. I swam a circuit around the shipwreck but found no trace of the Mary Celeste or any other wreck. Although the scale of the underwater ruins was vast, the accessible areas for divers were severely limited. First, collapsed walls and pillars blocked the way; second, there was a constant risk of cave-ins everywhere inside. Perhaps touching something inadvertently could trigger a building's collapse. It seemed even the sea creatures knew this place was dangerous; nothing stirred nearby—it was a realm steeped in the heavy stillness of death.

There were several pitch-black abysses within the ruins; that sea serpent had fled into one of these deep trenches. I wanted to approach for a closer look, but the water in those areas swirled with a terrifying intensity, so strong that even fish would struggle to get near. I had to give up. I signaled irley Yang: the wreck we were looking for wasn't here. It seemed that obtaining this great treasure, the "Qin King Bone-Revealing Mirror" (), would not be easy. The ruins of this underwater city were fraught with peril and not a place to linger. We had best retreat and reconsider our strategy.

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