I entered the ship’s hold with her, which was filled with piles of items, leaving hardly any space to stand. It seemed they had prepared in a hurry, as all the supplies had not yet been moved into the cargo hold and were carelessly tossed at the entrance. As I walked through, I observed that the main items were diving equipment, large instruments, food, and ropes, with oxygen tanks making up the majority.

We made our way through the cargo to the rear hold, which connected to the machinery room. Here, several bunk beds were haphazardly arranged, covered with blankets that had become greasy and darkened with age. One of the beds had a somewhat portly, balding middle-aged man sitting on it, his face shiny with grease. When he saw me enter, he nervously stood up to shake my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, nice to meet you, my last name is Zhang.”

I didn’t have a good first impression of him, but out of politeness, I shook his hand. His grip was surprisingly strong, suggesting he had done physical labor in the past.

Miss Ning introduced him, saying, “Mr. Zhang is a special consultant we invited to our company; he is an expert in the Ming Dynasty’s underground tombs, and this time he is mainly responsible for the analysis of the underwater tomb.”

I wasn’t particularly interested in mainstream archaeology and had never heard of his name. However, seeing the smug look on his face, I could only say, “I’ve heard much about you.”

The bald man waved his hand exaggeratedly and said, “I can hardly call myself an expert; we are just studying together. I just happened to be lucky and published a few papers, a minor achievement that’s not worth mentioning.”

I had never encountered someone who spoke like this and didn’t know how to respond, so I could only say, “You’re too humble.”

He seemed to enjoy this flattery, shook my hand firmly again, and asked, “May I ask what capacity Mr. Wu has been invited in? Forgive my bluntness, but it seems that Mr. Wu’s field of study is rather obscure, or perhaps I am just ignorant; I have never seen Mr. Wu’s name in any archaeology journals.”

These words clearly aimed to belittle me, whether intentionally or not. I have a bad temper, and hearing this almost made me explode. But thinking that I had just gotten on the ship and was still unfamiliar with the environment, I had to suppress my anger and replied curtly, “I specialize in excavation.”

My tone was already quite unfriendly, but he didn’t seem to pick up on it and exclaimed, “Oh! You are an architect? No wonder! You’re not from our circle, but we can consider ourselves half-colleagues. You build houses for the living, and I study houses for the dead; we still have some overlap!”

I found it both amusing and exasperating. It seemed that although this man spoke unreliable nonsense, he wasn’t the type to say one thing while meaning another. I patted him on the shoulder and said, “I’m not an architect; I’m an excavator. You need me to dig up those houses for the dead first.”

After saying that, I regretted it a bit. I hadn’t yet agreed to personally go down into the pit, and the situation there was still unclear. I thought for a moment and added, “But whether I dig or not will depend on the situation. If the circumstances don’t allow it, I won’t be able to dig even if I wanted to.”

He didn’t catch my hint and kept handing me his business card, saying that having one more friend means one more path, and that I could ask him for help with anything in the north in the future. I felt like we had only been meeting for less than two minutes, and he was already acting as if we had a friendship of more than a decade. I figured if we continued chatting like this, we might end up swearing brotherhood, so I quickly changed the subject and asked the woman about the situation in the area where the incident occurred.

The woman was quite competent. She listed several points, and I got a general idea of the situation. It turned out that my uncle couldn’t determine the exact location of the underwater tomb at that time; he had only identified four possible areas to search one by one. Eventually, they must have found it, but the last report from the missing ship was rather brief and didn’t specify which area they had confirmed, so now we also had to search through them one by one.

Their plan was to start searching from the nearest Fairy Reef, then resupply at Yongxing Island, and finally go to three other areas near the Qilian Islands, with a stopover of no more than half an hour. As for the search method, the waters around Xisha are very clear; under good light conditions, visibility can reach over thirty meters deep. Moreover, the water currents are relatively calm, without strong-moving sand, so the theft hole from a few days ago should not have been covered up.

The fishing captain of this boat was also very familiar with those sea areas. For us outsiders, the underwater views all looked the same, but to them, each area had its own characteristics. As long as there were changes in the underwater topography, he could spot them.

From the woman’s conversation, I sensed she had great confidence that the three people at the bottom were still alive. I wondered where this blind confidence came from. Of course, I hoped she was right and that my uncle was safe in the sea fight.

The bald man saw that I was having a good conversation with the woman while he was left alone, and he seemed a bit displeased, so he went to sleep by himself. I thought this guy was already middle-aged, yet his temper was like a child’s, which made me chuckle. It’s really a rare sight to see someone who doesn’t grow up even after a hundred years; I wondered if we would get along well in the future.

Just then, the boat shook as the fishing captain raised the anchor and set sail. The swaying of the boat became more intense; being an old vessel, it swayed not only from side to side but also in an irregular back-and-forth motion, as if I were in a cradle. After more than ten hours of travel, this rocking made me feel drowsy, and I started to yawn. The woman was quite considerate and told me to rest well. I didn’t hold back; I was indeed tired, so I lay down and fell asleep.

When I woke up, the boat had already reached the middle of the sea. Looking out through the window, I realized that in just a short nap, the weather had changed. The entire ocean seemed to have turned a dark green, with the sun disappearing behind large clouds. Light filtered through the gaps in the clouds, creating a massive golden silk engraving in the sky, while also casting a scattering of golden scales on the sea surface, creating a spectacular scene.

However, the good times didn’t last long. Soon, dark clouds gathered together, blocking out all the sunlight. The sea suddenly turned a terrifying black, and the waves began to roll violently. The boat swayed with the waves, and when we were in the trough, the seawater was above the gunwales, as if we were about to be swallowed by a giant wave, which was extremely frightening.

I saw the boatmen running around nervously, reinforcing the nets securing the supplies. Although they were in a hurry, the captain’s face showed no signs of fear.

Having spent so much time in the city, I felt an unusual excitement at this scene and wanted to help on the deck. But once I got up there, I realized it was nothing like I had imagined. In such conditions, standing firm on the deck wasn’t just about quick reflexes; you had to be very familiar with the waves and the boat, knowing when the next tilt would come after the current one, and preparing in advance. I clearly didn’t have that level of skill. After taking a few steps, I had to grab onto a protruding iron ring.

At that moment, several crew members seemed to have spotted something and started shouting. I couldn’t understand the Minnan dialect, but following their pointing, I vaguely saw something behind the high waves on the left side of the boat.

Because it was too far away, I couldn’t see clearly, but I felt it might be a ship. At that moment, a woman walked past me, and I asked her what those people were shouting about. Her hair was wet and blown around by the wind. After listening carefully, she said, “They seem to have seen a ship.”

The captain came over to us and said in his broken Mandarin, “It seems like there’s a ship that has had an accident over there. According to regulations, we must go check it out.”

This was certainly understandable. The woman nodded, and the captain quickly issued a series of commands to his crew in the local dialect. The boat immediately turned sharply to the left and headed in that direction.

The sea in the wind and waves resembled rolling hills, with each wave being a mountain. Our boat charged toward the wave crests, then broke through them. Each time we broke a wave, the people on the boat were drenched in seawater, soaking wet countless times. I had never felt so exhilarated; I couldn’t help but want to shout out loud.

We rolled over more than a dozen waves, and finally, we could see the general outline of that thing. At that moment, I heard the captain scream in terror, and several crew members panicked. I hurriedly asked the woman what was happening again. Upon hearing it, her face suddenly changed dramatically, and she grabbed my hand tightly, saying, “Whatever you do, don’t look back! That’s a ghost ship!”