Darkness was a secret that could not be looked upon directly. If someone opened their eyes in the darkness, they would see an entirely different world.
The indescribable pain made Gao Ming want to smash open his own skull. Ink seemed to spread through his pupils, and he began seeing even more horrifying things. Besides the severed hands, the wheelchair, and the other torments of childhood, new things began surfacing in the Deep Pool.
A female celebrity had been drawn in a student's exercise book, with several photographs tucked between its pages. On closer inspection, the woman in the photographs looked somewhat familiar.
As the sewage soaked the exercise book to pulp, a pale arm wearing a bracelet emerged. It belonged to a corpse bleached white by the water. From her clothing to her features and makeup, she still bore a faint resemblance to Ding Xiang.
A pair of oversized leather shoes emerged beside the female celebrity's rotting corpse. A tall, heavily built woman in a tailored suit had an enormous bundle wrapped around her legs, stuffed with documents and insurance policies. Her features were rather androgynous, and she was more muscular than a man. Even in death, her face retained an overbearing expression. She seemed never to have deigned to look Li Sansi in the eye, as though she had been his superior at work.
This woman's build was almost identical to Wu Wei's, the youngest member of the film crew, whom anyone could order around.
The third corpse's face had also rotted in the water. His skeletal frame resembled Jia Youzhi's, and all his clothes were expensive designer brands. He had been either wealthy or influential—at the very least, someone from an entirely different world than Li Sansi.
The three corpses floating out of the sewage-filled Deep Pool