Beneath the Sea Eye
The steps were deeper than Long Tian had anticipated.
He counted the steps as he descended. When he reached the twentieth step, the air temperature began to change, and warmth rose from below, as if a warmer air mass was lingering at the bottom. When he reached the thirtieth step, the steps turned, and the direction changed from vertical downwards to a sloping ramp, as if he had to pass through a thick structural layer to reach a deeper place.
At level forty, he stepped onto flat ground. Beneath his feet was a thick layer of stone paving, rougher than the floor of the upper-level foyer, like a load-bearing layer that didn't require fine polishing. The light layer of Dragon Shadow unfolded forward after Long Tian stood still, illuminating a larger space—a lower hall several times wider than the upper-level foyer, about two zhang high. The walls at the bottom were made of roughly chiseled stones, the surface not finely polished, but the joints were tight, filled with a dark gray adhesive, as if filled with some kind of mineral-containing fine material. Under continuous support, the structure remained stable, without shifting or cracking.
He took a few steps forward. The floor of the hall was covered with a thin layer of fine dust, as if it had accumulated after a long period of inactivity, but the dust layer was of uniform thickness and there were no obvious signs of footsteps. In the center of the hall was a low, vertical platform, flat and about half a person's height above the ground, with a relief carving on its surface—the pattern was identical to a section near the central mark of the silk map, but larger and with thicker lines, as if it were an enlarged and re-carved version of the original. There were no other obvious symbols or patterns on the walls around the platform, except for a shallow groove at the base of the wall, filled with a layer of dark-colored substance, like a waterline left after long-term water accumulation.
Long Tian walked to the low platform and stopped, bending down to look at the relief on the surface. This enlarged map was more precise than the silk map; the direction of the lines and the positions of the branches were more accurate, as if the artist had revised the original draft, replacing some of the originally blurry details with more precise lines. The mark in the center of the map was engraved into a groove, with a ring of fine teeth around the edge, like a part to be embedded.
Yu Jin also walked to the edge of the low platform. He squatted down and touched the serrations on the inside of the groove with his hand, tracing the outline of the serrations with his fingertip before withdrawing it. He stood up, took the dark gray bead off his collar, held it in his palm, and then slowly brought the bead close to the groove. It brightened slightly as it approached the edge of the groove, as if it had been sensed by some residual magnetic field within the groove.
Long Tian watched the changes in the dark gray bead as it approached the groove, but didn't speak immediately. The Origin Return Pearl subtly adjusted its rotation speed in sync with the center of his chest. He reached into his robes and touched the silk map scroll close to his skin, his fingertips tracing the edge of the scroll before withdrawing his hand and letting it hang at his side. The lingering aura at the center mark of the groove naturally overlapped in his mind with the connection between the dark gray bead and the Origin Return Pearl, like an overlapping seal mapping the correspondence between the two in the same location. Through continuous comparison, he gradually confirmed their matching relationship. He didn't put the bead into the groove, and neither did Yu Jin. Yu Jin withdrew the dark gray bead from his fingers and hung it back on his collar, restoring its original close-fitting state.
At the bottom of the east wall of the hall, there was an opening, narrower than a normal doorway, seemingly an entrance to the next level. Long Tian walked over and bent down to look. Inside the opening was a short, gentle downward ramp, its surface paved with finer gravel than that of the hall, like a passage made of ground stone. He squeezed through the opening and walked down the ramp for a while. After a gentle bend, the ramp led into a smaller room. The walls of the room were carved with several new images, unlike the systematic dragon and wave patterns on the outside. They resembled individual scenes—a wavy line drew a straight line above the sea, and the sea below the wavy line was carved into a deep, arrow-shaped groove, like a marked entrance. In the center of the room's floor was a circular stone slab the same size as the recessed relief on the lower platform, its surface smooth and without any patterns.
Long Tian squatted down in the center of the room, placing his palm on the surface of the stone slab. The pulse of the Origin Return Pearl flowed along his palm into the interior of the stone slab. As he continued to channel the energy, the color of the stone surface gradually lightened from dark gray, like a surface slowly changing after being heated, its hue shifting segment by segment along its circumference from the edge to the center under the continuous pulse. He squatted in front of the stone slab for a moment, then used his fingertips to probe around the seams along the edge of the slab, feeling that there was no gap at the junction of the stone slab and the ground.
Yu Jin crouched at the doorway, the light from the dark gray bead emanating from his collar, merging with the Dragon Shadow's shadow to create a stable area of illumination in the room. His voice was soft, echoing through the stone walls before settling back down. "If this stone slab is integrated with the groove on the platform, then it might need that bead to be inserted to trigger it."
Long Tian stood up and looked down at the stone slab at his feet. It was quietly embedded in the ground, showing no signs of moving. He withdrew his hand from the surface of the slab, letting it hang at his sides. He stood in the center of the room for a moment, and after confirming that the slab could not be opened by itself under the current conditions, he retreated back to the ground floor hall along the ramp he had come from. Yu Jin followed him out of the room.
They reunited in the lower hall, retraced their steps back to the upper anteroom, passed through the narrow crevice and stone platform, and returned to the ship while the Moon Tide was still at its lowest level. The person at the stern was still crouching by the gunwale, in the same position they had left in. Seeing them return from the stone surface, they didn't ask any questions, but simply loosened the rope tied to the corner of the stone, letting it drift back to the bow. Long Tian boarded the ship and sat back at the bow, while Yu Jin sat at the hatch. The ship swayed gently with the weak waves, and the Dragon Shadow rose back to its usual height above the bow, its wings slightly spread. The light layer on the dragon's forehead maintained its brightness on the open sea at the lowest point of the Moon Tide. After re-anchoring, the ship slowly began its return journey along the route it had come from. The stone platform behind it remained exposed as the tide receded, its edges gleaming with a faint gray afterglow under the light from the Dragon Shadow's forehead, like a marker that had been briefly opened after the Moon Tide receded. It had neither been sealed off nor cleared away in the continuous cycle of the rising and falling tides, but simply remained in a state where it could be reopened, waiting for someone to approach it again when the next Moon Tide came.