The Sea Cave
An old fishing boat was moored on the shore.
The ship's planks were worn dark gray by salt stains and sun exposure, and a faded triangular flag hung at the bow. An old man wearing a dark blue headscarf was squatting at the stern mending nets. When he looked up and saw Long Tian Yu Jin, his gaze lingered on them for a moment, then glanced at the Dragon Shadow behind Long Tian that continued to gleam with a gray-gold light in the sea breeze. He then put the shuttle in his hand on the plank and stood up.
"The cave keeper told me to wait here," he said in his rough, sea-salt-like Mandarin. "If you had been half an hour later, the tide would have been high, and you wouldn't have been able to get in."
Long Tian stepped onto the gangplank, and the boat swayed slightly as he landed. Yu Jin followed and squatted down at the bow. The old man untied the rope and used a pole to propel the boat. As the sails filled with wind, the bow cut towards the gray shadow on the sea. The water on both sides of the boat broke into white foam in the morning light, sliding back along the gunwales in two parallel lines.
The boat traveled for nearly an hour. As it approached the gray outline, the sea fog thickened, and the boat slowed down. The old man's hand on the helm was steady yet relaxed. When the fog was at its thickest, the color of the sea ahead suddenly deepened—from bluish-gray to Mo Lan, like a piece of cloth of different textures sewn into the same sea surface. Looking down from the side of the boat, Long Tian saw a huge dark outline slowly rising from below the water. It was a stone wall, mostly submerged by the tide, its surface covered with seaweed, but a narrow, long line in the center was not covered by the seaweed, like a path repeatedly eroded by the water.
The boat rounded the rock face and docked beside a natural stone embankment. The old man wrapped the rope twice around an iron stake and gestured towards a narrow crevice in the rock ahead. "The entrance is inside the crevice. The tide will fill in an hour and a half; you must get out before it reaches full strength."
Long Tian and Yu Jin disembarked and squeezed into the crevice. The crevice walls were slippery and cold, covered with fine water droplets. After walking about thirty or forty steps, the crevice suddenly opened into an arched doorway. The rocks on the floor inside the doorway were dry and flat, without any seaweed or water stains. Long Tian stood inside the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. As the Dragon Shadow entered the passage, it automatically retracted its wing membranes. The gray-gold light layer at the edges of its scales began to gather towards the vertical line on its forehead, forming a denser halo around the line, like a shell pushed up from the inside.
The passage stretched straight ahead. At intervals, patterns were carved into the stone walls on both sides. Long Tian stopped at one point to examine it closely—it was a dragon-shaped line, its head and tail forming a loop. Inside the loop, a thin line ran from head to tail, branching off into several short horizontal lines, like some kind of marking. He didn't linger long and continued forward. As he passed the patterns, the edges of the Dragon Shadow's scales flickered slightly before dimming, like the afterimage left by wind across water, disappearing and returning to normal.
At the end of the passage was a circular stone chamber. The ceiling was about three zhang above the ground, and a whole spiraling dragon pattern was carved on the dome's arched surface, extending from the bottom wall of the chamber all the way to the center of the dome. The dragon's head looked down from the highest point, and a shallow circular groove was carved in the center of its forehead. The bottom of the groove was inlaid with salt stains from many years, which gleamed with a matte finish in the dim light.
The Dragon Shadow detached itself from Long Tian's back the instant it entered the stone chamber. It rose to a position level with the shallow groove in the center of the dome and hovered there, its wings spread and all four eyes open. A sliver of gray-gold light seeped from the vertical line on its forehead—like morning light seeping through the edge of a tightly closed curtain, thin and steady, extending along the dragon patterns on the dome. The patterns the light passed through lit up segment by segment, all the way to the circular shallow groove at the very top of the dome. The salt stains at the bottom of the groove receded somewhat in the light, revealing a symbol with three waves at the bottom. Deep within the groove of the symbol, a layer of grayish-white powder remained, which gradually evaporated into fine smoke under the continuous illumination of the light, rising high into the dome and dissipating.
The thin beam of light emanating from Dragon Shadow's forehead continued to shine for about the time it takes to brew a cup of tea after the powder completely dissipated before it began to narrow and thin, finally retreating to the edge of the vertical line, like the tide turning back to the sea along the last channel. After the light layer withdrew into Dragon Shadow's body, it reattached itself to the top of Long Tian's back, and the wing membrane closed at its usual angle. After it closed, Long Tian felt that the rotation speed of the Origin Return Pearl was slightly faster than usual, and the new core was steadily heating up at the center of the pearl. Both were within the normal range, just slightly more active than usual.
He turned and walked towards the entrance of the passage. The Dragon Shadow followed behind him at a close angle. The closed shape of the vertical line on his forehead remained unchanged, except that a very faint afterglow remained in the very center of the thin line, like the last wisp of light from a lamp being slowly drawn back into its original depth as it continued to fade, lingering in the darkness for a while before disappearing completely.