The evil sharks in the underwater coral cave ravenously stared at the moonlight trapped within the pearl oyster shell. If not for their fear of the "Lunar Eclipse," they would have swarmed forward long ago. But the three dead infants we relied upon for defense could dissolve in the seawater at any moment. The sharks circled the periphery, waiting for their chance, the atmosphere as taut as a drawn bowstring. If even one or two of the vicious sharks couldn't resist the lure of that deep-sea essence and charged to seize it, the rest would follow recklessly, heedless of death.

Seeing the urgency, I quickly urged Uncle Ming to accelerate. We couldn't linger in this coral cave any longer. Uncle Ming dared not delay, leading Gu Cai and Duo Ling to pry open the trembling shell of the Ancestor Oyster. Inside, ghostly energy flickered. The corpse-fiend, fashioned from human skin, was enveloped by a mass of grey-white suckers from the shell. This ancient mother-of-pearl, encircled by the giant shell, had become an anomaly, utterly distinct from ordinary giant clams or conches. Several of its foot-like appendages clung to the corpse-fiend, drawing it into the pearl sac.

Its pearl sac was covered in tumorous lumps, resembling a string of pathologically enlarged lymph nodes. With every opening and closing, a strange, cold moonlight flashed forth—indeed, countless luminous pearls were present. The sea-folk believed that "the old clam absorbs the essence of the moon, creating substance from nothingness, thus birthing luminous pearls." Another theory suggested, "pearls form from the clam's sickness," positing that as mollusks live longer, bodily degeneration causes the pearl sac to continuously secrete nacre, enveloping tiny grains of sand over time to form pearls. These pearls were akin to an "inner elixir," much like concretions such as niuhuang (bovine gallstones), mashi (horse bezoars), or gongbao (canine bezoars). All substances of this nature possessed immense medicinal value.

However, at that moment, everyone was too eager to extract a hundred pearls to activate the hidden mechanism in the underwater current, leaving no time to investigate the strangeness of the pearl sac’s formation. Uncle Ming signaled for Gu Cai to step forward, unwilling to handle the task himself. Gu Cai, who always jumped at the chance to perform barbaric acts like scraping clams or slaying dragons, strapped his air-snail to his belt, removed the Dragon Arc bronze knife from his mouth, grasped the burlap-sack-sized pearl sac with one hand, and began to cut with the other.

Having been torn from the mother-of-pearl sea, the Ancestor Oyster’s spiritual energy had greatly diminished. After being scraped several times by the bronze blade, its spirit was long gone. The flesh merely twitched incessantly, allowing Gu Cai to pull and slice the pearl sac away from its body without any chance for resistance. Yet, even at this final moment, it used its last vestiges of strength to cling tightly to the corpse-fiend.

Seeing this, I couldn't help but shake my head inwardly. Were humans any different? Those who plunder tombs and steal eggs are driven solely by profit, risking life and limb. Even when death looms, perhaps they still cannot let go of that one word: "gain." The mollusks in the coral sea were naturally harmless to humans, yet they suffered the agony of being dismembered, all because of the pearls within them—this is the meaning of "an innocent man invites disaster by possessing a treasure." How many sea-folk have lost their lives in the depths while trying to collect these clam pearls? By severing the Ancestor Oyster's pearl sac, we were essentially taking away the lifeblood of the sea-folk; one could argue it was a form of "redemption," making it, in a certain sense, a good deed.

Just as my mind wandered, a sudden, sharp ache pierced my skull, intensely real, as if the mother-of-pearl before me was silently, desperately begging for mercy. I recalled Shirley Yang mentioning that rare night-shining pearls contained certain radioactive materials. The Ancestor Oyster, housing a hundred pearls in its core, possessed an extremely powerful biomagnetic field. The low-frequency pulses it emitted could interfere with electronic equipment and sometimes cause humans to experience auditory or visual hallucinations—a result of affected brainwaves causing abnormal electrical discharge.

I wasn't sure if the strange sensation in my mind was related to this, but everyone around me suddenly paused their actions. They clearly felt the same thing. However, the spasms of the clam within the shell grew slower, and the sense of weeping and pleading in our minds gradually subsided and vanished.

The group exchanged glances underwater, all feeling that the legend of the mother-of-pearl achieving sentience was likely true. It seemed to know its end was near and escape was impossible, using the last bit of energy in its life to plead for mercy. Even ants cling to life; how much more so for this ancient creature that had lived for thousands of years.

Seeing everyone frozen, I waved my hand at them. In our current predicament, where survival was razor-thin, making decisions involving life and death required absolute ruthlessness. Nevertheless, this Ancestor Oyster had lived hidden beneath the seabed, never provoking anyone. Gu Cai cutting the pearl sac with the bronze knife wouldn't instantly kill it, so hesitation was unnecessary.

Furthermore, a sudden realization struck me: even if taking pearls required killing the clam, this mother-of-pearl must not be slaughtered. It had long ago merged with the Haiqi (sea energy) of the Sea Eye. Once that sea energy was unbalanced, the Guixu (abyssal vortex) would undergo a catastrophic, earth-shattering transformation—under a ruined nest, how can any egg remain intact?

Gu Cai nodded, picked up his knife, and continued cutting the pearl sac. The sac was large enough to hold a person and not easy to sever. Duo Ling, having worked with Ruan Hei harvesting pearls for years, also pitched in, helping to cut and drag the massive pearl sac out of the shell. The flesh of the vibrant pearl sac was brimming with luminous pearls—a rough count suggested at least one hundred and fifty or sixty.

The mother-of-pearl shell contained several pearl sacs, but this central one was the largest. The flesh walls of the others contained only unformed pearl grains or silt. Shirley Yang probably reasoned that taking all the formed pearls would instantly kill the old clam, so she decided to return a small portion since they didn't need that many. Uncle Ming watched Shirley Yang’s actions, though his heart ached, he dared not intervene.

Noticing the lurking evil sharks becoming restless—though they still dared not cross the invisible line—I saw the three dead infants were beginning to dissolve in the water. Our time was running out. I quickly led Shirley Yang to return over thirty pearls to the shell, and then the group immediately dove beneath the fossilized coral iron tree.

Earlier, Shirley Yang and the others had already placed the bronze figure beneath the tree. The bronze figure, in its strangely posed posture, held a jade trigram plate, looking as if it were ascending to the moon underwater. I looked at the shark heads covering the pale green body of the bronze statue and thought: "Whether we find the hidden current to escape depends entirely on this. Among the mechanisms in ancient tombs, the hardest to preserve are those related to power. Mechanical crossbows, hidden fires, poison liquids, thunderous stones—with age, wood decays, bronze corrodes, and active ingredients dissipate; few can last long. How could this seabed possibly hold the power and energy needed to start the mechanism and raise the South Sea mummy, delayed for a thousand years, towards the heavens?"

I had pondered this question repeatedly before, clinging to the faint hope that the sea energy condensed in the hundred pearls would somehow propel the hidden current upwards. However, even I didn't truly believe that scenario. Although the spiritual essence hidden in the mother-of-pearl for millennia possessed a radiance superior to the real moon above, to suggest it could initiate an underground current seemed far too much.

Previously, I had been prepared to gamble on luck, but upon reaching this spot beneath the coral fossil, I felt utterly uncertain. A moment of hesitation caused me to freeze. Fatty pushed me from behind, jolting me back to reality. I realized then that thinking was useless; we could only do our utmost and leave the rest to fate. If this plan failed, we would have to leave this extremely dangerous underwater area immediately. With a gesture, I beckoned, and the others rushed forward, each pulling luminous pearls from the pearl sac and embedding them one by one into the mouth of the bronze shark.

It took nearly a hundred pearls to fill the bronze shark’s mouth. Very few remained in the sac. Bathed in pearl light, the bronze figure seemed almost translucent. Moreover, the brilliant, exotic light of the moonlit pearls condensed into a halo within the bronze shark's mouth, projecting onto the jade plate to vividly form a full moon. The moon shone like a mirror, illuminating the entire coral cave with clarity.

Viewing it from the side, the bronze figure's jade plate transformed into shimmering light and shadow in the water, like the moon reflected in water. To the Hentian clan, the "Moon Palace of the Toad Realm" was the destination for the souls of the dead, much like our concept of the underworld. Furthermore, although this watery moon was cool and transparent, it was not the true moon; it carried a greater, chilling, spectral aura than real moonlight, appearing like a "ghost moon" that shouldn't exist in the human world, making one's scalp tingle with deep-seated unease.

But other than that, there was no other unusual change in the coral fossil cavern. My heart chilled. The Zhen trigram within the full moon was clearly visible, but it was not the mechanism to trigger the undercurrent at all. Worse, this moonlight was too bright; the lurking evil sharks would undoubtedly be driven into a frenzy by it. Now, the three infants, whose forms had begun to dissolve from the Lunar Eclipse, were being soaked away by the seawater, visibly shrinking by two sizes since the beginning, their features blurring. Even if we wanted to retreat and find another way out, it was likely too late.

Shirley Yang suddenly signaled, pointing behind us. We turned and simultaneously gasped: "Damn it!" A swarm of sharks, like a dark, turbid current, had pried apart the mother-of-pearl shell. In an instant, they gnawed the oyster flesh into fragments. The remnants of the flesh, mixed with blood, churned the seawater into a murky mess, and the remaining few dozen pearls were greedily swallowed by the ravenous black sharks. Poor thing, the clam spirit that had lived for thousands of years—separated from its nest in the vast ocean—had no means to resist or struggle. Not only did the sea-folk covet its pearls, but even the scaled denizens of the deep had their eyes on these secret treasures of the sea. Because of our momentary carelessness in failing to guide the Ancestor Oyster back to the mother-of-pearl sea, these evil sharks found an opening and gnawed it alive into an empty shell.

The blood dissipated with the water current. Only six lifeless, empty shells of the mother-of-pearl remained. The corpse-fiend, having lost the Yin energy from its skin, had swelled abnormally from the water, resembling a pig carcass inflated with air after being bled out during slaughter, drifting aimlessly nearby. The swarm of sharks, having devoured the clam flesh and pearls, pursued and swallowed even the residual scraps and sludge in the water. Their numbers were immense, surrounding the coral tree like a tightly sealed barrel.

Seeing this, a buzzing sound filled my head. I thought, "The tide has turned against us." It wasn't that I mourned the Ancestor Oyster of the vast ocean, but if it was tragically dismembered and died violently, our lives were likely forfeit as well. The interior of the Guixu was riddled with holes from Hentian’s use of dragon-fire ore, and the dragon energy should have long since dissipated. Yet, the Haiqi remained, shifting and transforming, refusing to vanish. The mother-of-pearl was the crystallized essence of the Guixu sea—what the Qingwu Feng Shui school calls "manifested substance," formed from the condensation of accumulated sea energy and self-coagulated spiritual essence. With the death of the mother-of-pearl, the delicate balance of the sea energy in the Sea Eye would be lost after thousands of years, triggering a catastrophe of collapsing heavens and shifting seas—something truly momentous was about to happen...

Before I could ponder further, I felt the seabed surging violently beneath us, causing everyone to sway unstably. I instinctively grabbed the bronze figure beside me. All sorts of sea creatures, large and small, darted wildly past; it looked like the prelude to a disaster. I thought, "Has it come too quickly? Why must the world turn upside down just because the mother-of-pearl died?"

But then I realized it wasn't an earthquake; a giant beast had surfaced beneath the sea, causing the water waves to churn and surge. The violent surging originated from the bottomless black hole on the coral reef. The moon-like jade trigram plate cast its clear moonlight directly over the opening. In the depths of the black hole, two eyes the size of rice bowls flashed, piercing and fixed intently on that ghostly moon.

We used the corpse-fiend as bait to draw the mother-of-pearl out of its hiding place, taking its pearl sac. Now, these hundred luminous pearls, like a cold, clear moon in the water, served simultaneously as bait, drawing out the death lurking in the seabed. Waves of chilling terror washed over my body. I sensed that what we were about to face was likely the most terrifying entity in the depths of the South Sea. Just then, under the ghostly moonlight, the water inside the black hole churned, and a large ship adorned with ferocious demon heads emerged. A dark shadow flashed, and the ship's bow was suddenly before us.