The rain was still pouring down, frenzied as ever. In Hangzhou, such heavy rain couldn’t last this long. Ah Gui could no longer help; I guessed he was afraid of becoming like them, that he couldn’t handle this kind of stress anymore. I told him about Pan Ma bringing me here and cautioned him to be careful of Pan Ma, although I suspected that this time Pan Ma might have truly collapsed.

He wanted to remove the bodies, but I said no. Keeping the bodies there could prevent Pan Ma from coming back. Given Pan Ma’s demeanor, it was already hard to persuade him. I really didn’t expect this person to be so fierce.

Returning to the mule, I hurriedly took the diving gear I had brought and rushed toward the lake. I couldn’t wait even a minute; I had to verify something.

Wearing the full set of gear, I was already quite familiar with diving from my time in Hainan, so I wasn’t nervous. I pushed the wooden raft and swam toward the center of the lake through the pouring rain.

With the flippers on, I quickly reached the center of the lake. The torrential rain pounded the surface, creating a deafening sound that oddly calmed me down. I searched for the buoy we had left behind but found that it was impossible to locate anything in this environment. I could only find a rough position, then put on my diving mask and submerged into the water.

Having had the experience from before, I was slightly more composed this time because I knew that this diving method would not take me to the very bottom. So I planned to hover just above the trench for a while to observe the general situation.

Reaching the previous spot, I cut the rope again, exhaled all the air from my lungs, which would prevent me from rising too quickly, and moved my hands and feet to keep myself suspended at a fixed depth.

With the diving mask, everything underwater was very clear, but unfortunately, the lighting was much dimmer now. I balanced myself with my feet, trying to sink a little lower, while one hand moved the dive light to shine deeper. Soon, a grayish-blue but distinctly contoured underwater world appeared clearly before my eyes. I kicked my feet and began to swim forward.

Since the flashlight could only illuminate parts at a time, I couldn’t see the whole picture; I had to rely on my memory to piece together what I saw. Fortunately, I studied architecture and had a special way of remembering, allowing me to form a complete image in my mind from the parts I observed.

It was a monochromatic world, all dark blue lake water. After swimming a short distance, I found, just as I had thought, that the trench from the entrance to the bottom was indeed very dark. This steep slope was entirely covered with sediment-laden wooden buildings. The lakebed was not flat at all; instead, it was a deep, irregular underwater canyon, with the village built against the southern slope of the canyon.

In the following moments, I continuously floated up and dived down, changing my position, observing the underwater situation within a brief minute.

More details appeared before me: an eerie, ancient underwater village, comparable in scale to the Yao village we had come from, with fifty-six households, mostly stilted houses. However, from the details, it was evident that these ancient buildings were not constructed recently; they were very primitive, and the characteristics of the Yao ethnic group were quite prominent. Unlike many of the modern stilt houses that are neither traditional nor contemporary.

“I still have some impression of the location where we originally descended; the fat guy also mentioned a place with a fence. I searched the area, and soon I found the small buoy, and at the same time, I saw the fences. I immediately sank down, but there was nothing underwater; I couldn’t find any trace of their existence, nor was there anything unusual.”