We never anticipated a ship emerging from the black hole beneath the water; in a flash of darkness, the prow carved with a sea demon was upon us. The rusted, mottled ghost-ship was merely the wreckage of a larger vessel's bow, and the sight of its fierce, hideous demon-head insignia immediately marked it as a pirate ship sunk to the seabed. We were clinging tightly to the coral trees, with no time to evade; we only felt the violent surge of water sweeping us along as the wreckage of the prow grazed past directly over our heads, tumbling and crashing onto the fossilized coral behind us before plunging downward, kicking up a cloud of silt and startling the nearby aquatic life into a frantic scattering.

Seeing this, I knew the pirate ship's bow remnant had been trapped beneath the seabed for ages, forcefully ejected from the coral cavern by some tremendous power. The true master had yet to show itself. By then, I had no time to dwell on that heart-stopping instant; I urgently shifted my gaze back to the massive black hole on the seafloor. Within that void, two enormous eyes, illuminated by the cool pearl-light, blinked like masthead lamps, flickering as they moved outward from the inky darkness.

The malevolent sea beast lurking in the hole was astonishingly huge; as its murky gaze swayed, the giant creature's slow shifting agitated the water, making the entire coral forest seem to tremble.

I looked up above. In the lattice-like hollows of the coral sieve, the Black Sharks were streaming in and out, countless and dense, thick enough to obscure the water surface. By now, the three malformed dead fetuses had been largely dissolved by the seawater, and I doubted they could still serve to dispel the devilish swarm of sharks.

However, the mechanical mechanism below the seabed, related to the Zhen trigram, had clearly failed. We had messed up again, causing the death of the pearl mother, which had drawn the sea monster to fight for the pearl disk on the Gua plate. Staying here any longer was tantamount to suicide; we had no choice but to break out amid the chaos and ascend to the surface, returning to the "Whale Belly" through the passage of the divine wood beneath the sea. How we would escape the Guixu, whose terrain so closely resembled a whale's belly, was not a concern for the immediate moment; the coral water cave had already erupted, and we could not remain under any circumstances.

With this thought, I prepared to signal everyone to flee, but the Fatty, thinking himself clever, saw the sea monster had not yet fully emerged from the cave. He planted submersible explosives at the entrance, timed perfectly for when the creature was about to exit, and detonated them. But the fossilized coral was extremely tough; the resulting underwater shockwave failed to collapse the coral cavern, only flipping several sharks and shattering some fine fragments of fossil.

The remaining evil sharks lurking in the water were startled by the sudden explosion, swimming about chaotically in all directions. Even if they didn't actively attack us during our ascent to the surface, we were bound to collide with them in the confusion. Sharks have no lips, exposing rows of interlocking, razor-sharp teeth; a single brush would rip away a large chunk of flesh.

Everyone was trapped in place, using the stillborn fetuses as shields to keep the frenzied, darting sharks at bay. I grabbed the restless Uncle Ming, gave a hand signal for everyone to hold still, and wait for the right moment to surface. Just then, the water at the coral cavern entrance began to boil violently, and a colossal entity emerged from the hole, churning up silt. The translucent, ghastly white pearl-light reflected off the churning smoke underwater, painting everything a dull grey, making it impossible to discern what kind of deep-sea leviathan was wrapped within. We only vaguely saw massive swathes of black, scaly flesh covered in numerous whitish, sucker-like objects.

Witnessing such a spectacle filled everyone with both shock and awe. I wondered about the immense resistance of the underwater currents; this thing had effortlessly smashed the hundred-pound wreckage of a ship's bow out of the cavern. Could it be a giant deep-sea squid? Or perhaps a massive crayfish that favors lurking in the depths of underwater caves? Although we were deep beneath the ocean, the depth was only about fifty meters. For something that had dwelled in the coral cave for so long, it seemed unlikely to be a creature accustomed to the deep that occasionally ascended.

It was Uncle Ming, knowledgeable about the sea, who seemed to discern something. Despite the churning silt and powerful currents obscuring visibility, and the clear moonlight being blocked, he noticed the beast's body covered in black scales dotted with dense white suckers. He immediately pointed at the Black Sharks swimming among the fossilized coral, then patted his stomach and mimed the action of giving birth. In the panic, nobody quite understood his meaning, though it seemed he was trying to tell us that the Black Sharks in the water were all born from that coral cave.

A chill ran down my spine. Was Uncle Ming trying to imply: "What's hidden in the black hole isn't a sea monster, but the reproductive body of the Jiao-people?" The evil sharks found in the South China Sea are covered in black scales and possess sharp hooked fingers on their pectoral fins, thus they have been called Jiao-ren (Merfolk/Shark-people) since ancient times. However, they are not the mermaids mentioned in ancient texts; true mermaids are rare in the South China Sea; the creatures described in old books were a type of four-legged fish from the East China Sea.

There is an ancient legend that Jiao sharks conceive by worshipping the moon, gathering on the surface during the full moon to absorb the essence of the bright moon, thereby becoming pregnant. This was merely a speculation, but after entering the coral spiral, we found the seabed here was ringed by mountains, condensing the sea's energy. The sky was perpetually covered in dense clouds, with heavy sea fog flowing everywhere; the sun, moon, and stars were completely invisible. Only when the sea energy surged to form a massive sea cavern, sucking in millions of tons of seawater, would the cloud layer in the sky be affected by the air currents, revealing the bright moon above like a mirror for a fleeting moment. The mollusks in the coral forest weren't forming pearls in response to moonlight; they were entirely created by the yin-fire dragon lamps beneath the seabed. That light was eerie and sinister, even brighter than moonlight, which is why the pearl essence here shone with extraordinary, complete brilliance, far surpassing any other South Sea pearls.

Legends about Jiao shark procreation are numerous in coastal areas, varied, and have never been conclusively settled. Over the last thousand years, Jiao sharks have become nearly extinct, so no scholar currently researches or verifies them. When I first saw so many sharks in the coral cave, beyond the initial surprise, I did wonder where they originated. At this moment, as Uncle Ming pointed repeatedly toward the dark sea monster in the hole, we suddenly recalled another, lesser-known legend about Jiao shark reproduction. But now, those whitish suckers faintly visible in the silt-fog must be the placentas birthing the sharks. The giant sea monster in the coral cave was the millennial mother body of the great swarm of Jiao people—the Jiao-Lao (Shark Matriarch).

The Egg People, who historically made their living harvesting eggs from the sea, were often eaten alive underwater by the evil Jiao sharks. The old legends of the Egg People claimed that the South China Sea Jiao-ren once caused widespread disaster, posing a threat to egg harvesters beneath the sea no less severe than sharks; countless Egg People perished in the mouths of Jiao sharks and the jaws of great white sharks. The Jiao-ren nest was an ancient coral tomb; this coral reef concealed the Jiao-Lao. This old demon was covered in placentas; its nature was strange—countless placental wombs grew externally, and most Jiao sharks were birthed from within it. Some ancient sea god temples still preserve relics pertaining to this legend.

Amidst the underwater chaos, following Uncle Ming’s hint, everyone realized we had probably made things worse; the jade disk failed to stir the hidden currents, but instead lured out the old monster from the sea eye. None of us had ever seen a Jiao-Lao before, and now, confronting it suddenly, we had no idea how to react.

The underwater turbulence intensified. If we hadn't been clinging to the fossilized coral trees, we would have long been swept away by the torrent, having no chance to escape. Only the disc of moon in the water—its icy light flickering and shifting through the waves—created a dizzying, alternating pattern of sinister shadows, making us feel as if we were trapped in an endless nightmare at the bottom of the ocean.

To alleviate the pressure from the current and the light, we held onto our companions' arms, pressing our faces tightly against the coral trees. Although the vibrations transmitted through the fossil made our bodies tingle, the dizzying sensation finally subsided. I checked the barometer; the oxygen in our scuba tanks was nearly depleted. If we weren't drowned by the sea, we would be devoured alive by the Jiao-Lao. It seemed death was inescapable from both inside and out.

Just as I despaired over our situation, contemplating detonating the explosives for a quick end for everyone, the massive, grotesque body of the Jiao-Lao began to crawl out of the coral cave, trailing wreckage from sunken ships and bronze artifacts. Black water seeped from its whitish placentas. I was momentarily stunned. How could this bottomless coral cave, hidden beneath the Guixu, contain the wreckage of ancient ships? Now that the pearl mother was dead, the compass and other equipment had returned to normal. Using the compass on my dive watch for reference, it seemed the coral cave connected directly with the underwater ruins where we had encountered the sea snakes. If this passage was blocked by the Jiao-Lao, its movement might allow us to slip past and dive back to that coral forest teeming with mollusks.

However, this thought flashed through my mind and was quickly dismissed. Even if the secret medicine in the shell mound to alleviate decompression sickness hadn't failed, the oxygen in our tanks wouldn't last. And we had no idea how long this coral cave tunnel was; we’d likely suffocate halfway through before reaching safety.

We were caught between a rock and a hard place, clinging desperately to the fossilized ancient coral tree in the turbulent currents, watching the Jiao-Lao emerge from the sand below. The grayish silt churned like smoke. Many unhatched sharks were squeezed out of the placentas on its body by its violent movements; the malformed embryos struggled and died in the water, yet the Jiao-Lao seemed completely oblivious, lunging straight for the Gua plate radiating moonlight in the Copper Man's hands.

The coral tree, spanning from the seabed to the heavens, shuddered violently as the Jiao-Lao slammed its head against the great cauldron at the tree's base, causing the fossilized coral to tremble uncontrollably. Through the watery haze, a monstrous face covered in wrinkled, fleshy scales was revealed. Its two dark-gray eyes resembled air bladders, glimmering with a lifeless sheen under the moonlight, and its body was covered in countless backward-pointing barbs and fleshy teeth. They say the fish and dragons under the sea are as large as mountains and rivers, and while this Jiao-Lao hidden in the sea eye wasn't that colossal, in the chaotic currents, we couldn't discern the outline of its head or tail.

The Egg People were utterly terrified, their limbs paralyzed by the horrific visage of the Jiao-Lao. The man let go, and the ancient water-dividing sword slipped from his grasp, falling toward the seabed. The Fatty, quick as lightning, couldn't bear to lose the antique Qingtou, so he quickly maneuvered down the iron tree, managing to snatch the ancient sword back just before it fell into the Jiao-Lao's mouth.

His action was tantamount to pulling a tooth from a tiger's maw; the Jiao-Lao only needed to move slightly upward to swallow him whole. Although there was buoyancy underwater, the turbulence was fierce. If he had let go of the coral tree, he might not have floated straight up but instead been caught by the undertow, swept sideways, very likely delivering himself directly into the Jiao-Lao's gaping maw. Thus, although the Fatty was right next to the monster, he dared not release the iron tree, scrambling upward as if his backside were on fire after grabbing the ancient sword.

Seeing the Fatty had become too reckless this time, I quickly bent down to assist, but events unfolded faster than thought. The Jiao-Lao arched its back, sucking in seawater toward the Fatty, drawing in the surrounding currents toward its mouth. We clinging to the coral tree were caught by the water flow, dangling like torn banners on a clothesline, nearly swept away by the gale-force current.

It was then that I suddenly noticed the Jiao-Lao, positioned near the stone cauldron—though extremely close to the moonlight-shining jade disk and us—could not advance an inch further. It seemed physically locked to the seabed, unable to move too far, yet desperately sucking water, trying to engulf us and the Gua plate. As it strained to move forward, it only managed to cause the heavy edge of the stone cauldron to turn slowly, never quite reaching the ghostly disc of the moon in the water.

I barely managed to pull the Fatty back, but my grip on the fossilized coral iron tree slipped, and I was involuntarily sucked away by the current. Suddenly, my shoulder tightened—Shirley Yang had grabbed the strap of my pack. The three of us, pulled by the undertow, lost our balance and dared not let go. In my daze, I saw the great cauldron beneath the coral tree spinning around with a grinding noise, and a sudden realization struck me—the mechanism of the Zhen trigram was hidden within the Jiao-Lao deep in the sea eye.