Longfish Bay
The man's cloth paused for a moment as the Dragon Shadow passed by, then he continued wiping the last section of the paddle surface.
He draped the cloth over his knees and looked up carefully at the Dragon Shadow behind Long Tian. Long Tian stood at the edge of the dock, his boots treading on old wooden planks soaked with seawater, the moisture seeping from the cracks shimmering in the sunlight. The man watched for about three or four breaths, then stood up from the stern, braced the oar against the gunwale, patted the water off his hands, and spoke with the hoarseness characteristic of a near-shore fisherman, like the old planks of a boat constantly soaked by sea winds and salt spray. "Did you come here following that direction?"
Which one points to?
"The light shining up from beneath the sea was a similar color to your shadow, a deep gray with a golden tinge, like the sun sinking to the bottom and then being pulled up again." The man picked up an old earthenware pot from the side of the boat, poured a bowl of water, and held it a short distance away from Long Tian, as if waiting for confirmation. Long Tian reached out and took the bowl. The man's gaze lingered on Long Tian's raised hand for a moment, then he looked away and sat back down at the stern. "I've traveled that route three times. The first two times were with a sea hunting team, and the third time was the autumn before last when I went alone. That time, when I reached the area where the water became lighter, I stood at the bow and looked down. I could see a very long shadow below. It wasn't a school of fish, nor a shipwreck, but a shadow with straight edges, like the top of a wall. I walked along the edge of that shadow for a while and saw that one end was bent at a right angle, like a piece of stone that had been cut."
Long Tian, holding the bowl of water, didn't drink. "When you saw that wall, what was the compass's position on the ship?"
"Spinning. The pointer kept spinning, very slowly, but never stopping." The man raised his right hand to demonstrate the movement. "The ship wasn't tilting, and there were no waves on the surface, but something was constantly churning underwater, like another layer of water flowing in a different direction. When you looked down from the ship's side, you could see the boundary between that layer of water and the surface seawater like the edge of a stretched silk ribbon." He lowered his gesturing hand and placed it on his knee. "The wall extends in the direction of southeast to south, consistent with the extension of the old official road on land. If that's what you're looking for, I can make another trip."
Long Tian drank half of the bowl of water and rested the rim of the bowl on his knees. Yu Jin stood a few steps behind him, the faint light of the dark gray bead almost invisible in the sunlight, but when the man glanced at Yu Jin, his gaze lingered on his collarbone for less than half a breath before turning back to Long Tian.
"You provide the boat and the waterway," Long Tian said, finishing his water and placing the empty bowl on the gunwale. "I will pay you according to your rates."
The man waved his hand, ignoring the topic of payment, turned and jumped off the boat. He rummaged through a pile of old nets on the shore for a while, then pulled out a tightly bound roll of thick hemp rope and a package wrapped in oilcloth, stuffing them into the cabin. He moved quickly, as if doing something he had been waiting for some time. After doing this, he stood back at the stern, untied the mooring rope, and waited for Long Tian and Yu Jin to board.
As the boat departed the shore, dusk was already falling. The outline of Longfish Bay gradually narrowed into a semi-circular gap behind them, the tops of the two cliffs appearing as symmetrical silhouettes in the twilight, like the pages of an open book slowly closing as they moved. Long Tian sat at the bow, his Dragon Shadow rising from its position close to his back to about ten feet above the bow, its wings half-spread, all four eyes open, gazing in the direction ahead. The person at the stern gripped the rudder, adjusting the bow's direction with one hand. After a while, and after traveling for about half an hour, he spoke, his voice thin and even, softened by the sea breeze. "Your shadow is guiding me. Each time it tilts its head, it corresponds to the direction of an underwater current. I tried three times but couldn't figure out the pattern of that current's intervals, but your shadow saw it all the moment it appeared."
Long Tian didn't look back at the helm. He gazed at the deepening twilight on the sea ahead and the unfathomable depths beneath the surface. The Dragon Shadow continued to sway along the line of his vision, like a calibrated measuring tool constantly sensing unseen boundaries, marking their positions one by one. The ship continued to propel itself across the sea, the color of the water beneath it transitioning from the bluish-gray near the shore to a cooler, deeper blue further out, like a canvas being repainted from the edges towards the center, continuously absorbing new colors while not yet completely covering the previous base color.