Mance paused, “Reel in! Reel in! Warn Ye Sheng!”
The reel at the stern began turning, retrieving Aki’s safety line.
“No tension on the line,” Selma looked up, her face pale, “Aki’s safety line has been severed again!”
Ye Sheng surfaced next to Aki, supporting her arm, making her feel much lighter.
“You’re back? Is the mission over? I didn’t hear any explosion,” Aki felt much more relaxed seeing her teammate again.
“Underwater explosions aren’t that loud,” Ye Sheng said. “I’ve taken care of it. Let’s finish gathering samples and get ready to return. We’re running out of time.”
“Got it. I’ve completed the photos of the dome carvings.”
“Let’s collect some bronze material too; we can analyze its composition when we get back,” Ye Sheng pointed to a statue on a bronze wall not far away, “We could try taking that statue back. This style isn’t from ancient China—it’s European.”
“Alright,” Aki said, as Ye Sheng dragged her toward the statue. The water parted along her diving suit, even carrying a slight warmth.
The statue of the snake-faced man was only a few dozen centimeters tall, unlike the human-sized ones they had seen when they first entered the bronze city. It wore ancient Chinese robes and held an ivory tablet, standing on an arch-shaped bronze pole, its head slightly bowed in a respectful posture, exuding noble politeness. Yet, its head was that of a cobra, its slender neck protruding from the collar of the robes, appearing extremely jarring.
It was a serpent-headed man.
“What is this?” Aki turned to Ye Sheng.
“I don’t know either. Probably a totem of the Dragon Raja, but bringing it back might prove useful. Go ahead and take it down,” Ye Sheng said.
Aki nodded and swam over. As she faced the serpent-headed statue, she felt a hint of surprise—the statue’s eyes were pure silver, gleaming with a solitary silvery glint against the dark bronze surface, as if blinking. Aki reminded herself to dismiss such thoughts—it was just a trick of the light, an underwater reflection. In these conditions, she had to stay calm.
She reached out and grabbed the serpent-man’s neck. The bronze statue was not as heavy as she had expected; she lifted it without much effort.
Suddenly, a shadow rose from beside her, reaching for her neck at lightning speed. Aki, without hesitation—thanks to the physical training from Cassell College and her years of underwater experience—pulled out her folding knife from her diving suit pocket and slashed at the shadow.
At the same time, she shouted, “Ye Sheng! Watch out!”
Ye Sheng was armed with an SSP-1 underwater pistol modified by the Gear Department.
But the shadow moved faster than both Aki and Ye Sheng. It used a weapon to parry Aki’s knife, striking the top of Aki’s helmet. In an instant, Aki lost the ability to counterattack. She instinctively twisted backward, trying to evade the shadow’s next strike, but she was already tightly held by it.
“Ye Sheng! Shoot!” Aki shouted.
“Who do you want me to shoot?” the shadow asked.
Aki froze. It was Ye Sheng’s voice. Once, during training at the Great Barrier Reef, her oxygen tank malfunctioned underwater, and just before she lost consciousness, it was Ye Sheng’s voice that brought her back, saving her life. She suddenly opened her eyes wide, looking at the black shadow holding her. The dim light inside the helmet illuminated the face—it was Ye Sheng’s face.
“How can there be two Ye Shengs?” A huge fear exploded in Aki’s heart.
She turned to look behind her, and the Ye Sheng who had swum here with her was gone. Floating in the water was a human-sized snake-headed statue. No one knew why a bronze statue could float. Its silver-inlaid eyes flashed, and its fanged mouth seemed to wear a mocking smile.
Ye Sheng drew the SSP-1 and shot the statue’s face, destroying it. “I came back and found you here, with that thing floating behind you. I didn’t understand why, but it kept following you until you reached out to activate the system.”
Only then did Aki realize that her safety line and data cable had been severed. She followed the safety line downward, feeling the clean cut—it had been sliced by a blade. Aki touched her waist and suddenly remembered—it was she herself who had drawn the knife and cut the line!
“Oh my God!” Aki shivered. “Was it an illusion?”
“It might be because of the Draconic,” Ye Sheng pointed at the dome. “You were taking pictures of it in sequence, which is akin to reading the Draconic in a particular order, triggering ‘Vision,’ leaving your mind out of control.”
“This kind of ‘Vision’… it’s very strange.”
“Just like the sound during the 3E exam, will it directly affect the depths of consciousness?”
“Far more powerful than those.”
A chilling sound came from around them, like someone scraping rusted iron pieces harshly next to their ears. This sound was amplified hundreds, thousands of times over.
Ye Sheng and Aki looked at the bronze walls around them. Tens of thousands of bronze gears slowly began to rotate, and the deep tolling of a bell echoed inside the hollow. Rust began to peel off the gears, and the teeth clicked and rattled as they meshed. Ye Sheng looked up sharply, and in the darkness above, an unseen clock began to strike—a bronze pendulum swayed back and forth around its axis, and the snake-headed men carved into the bronze walls moved simultaneously, lifting their ivory tablets, their slender necks arching upwards, looking at the dome as if participating in an ancient ritual of worship.
“You’ve activated the system,” Ye Sheng looked at the bronze rod Aki had pushed earlier. “I don’t know what system it is, but it doesn’t seem like a good thing… This is a… trap!”
A chill ran down his spine. He sensed that the “snake” he had stationed nearby on guard was trying to escape—something that had never happened before. The “snake” was his loyal servant, always residing in his subconscious, but now it was overwhelmed with terror and fleeing from its master. A stabbing pain erupted in Ye Sheng’s head; in his mind, other snakes were swimming in panic, trying to burst out of his skull.
They needed to get out quickly—this was Ye Sheng’s intuition.
He pulled the folding knife from Aki’s waist and stabbed it into the gap between two gears. His strength was astonishing, and the Nano blade was exceptionally sharp. The knife embedded itself two inches deep into the bronze wall, jamming two gears, halting their movement. The shaking of the massive bronze bell immediately slowed; it had lost its power.