Volume 2Chapter 16: Meeting
I saw his face change, and I couldn’t help but shake my head. Although this fat guy wasn’t very reliable, his performance in the tomb was still remarkable. At least in terms of experience, I don’t know how many times better it is. I’ve never poured a bucket independently, and I don’t know if I have to do a mobilization before going down the bucket. For the time being, I’ll be a student and listen to what he has to say.
The fat guy had eaten a lot and his stomach was bulging. He patted it and said, “I’ve never been in a sea cave before, so I’ll definitely need to plan ahead to avoid being flustered when I go in. It’s definitely not the same as a dry cave, so I’ll take a look at the equipment you’ve prepared for me first.”
A-Ning said, “Mr. Wang, how confident are you in this mission? Let’s plan it first so we have a rough idea.”
The fat man shook his head: “It’s hard to say. According to my experience, the sea pit is difficult to locate, the pirate cave is difficult to dig, and the situation inside is unclear. Of these three, we won’t think about the first and second for now, but mainly the third. In the sea pit, I don’t know if there are rice dumplings. If there are, it will be trouble. If there aren’t, then the sea pit is just a dry pit in the water, and it can be easily taken down.”
Speaking of zongzi, I suddenly remembered what my third uncle told me about the monster we encountered in the tomb passage. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it might be the sea monkey we encountered on the ghost ship today. I couldn’t help but feel a little shiver in my heart and said, “I don’t know if there are any zongzi, but there may be something more troublesome.” He then told the others about the thing he had seen on the ghost ship. The others had already heard Zhang Tuo’s embellished version, but Zhang Tuo’s version focused on how he had saved me and Ning. My version was much more down to earth. After I finished, the fat man frowned and asked, “Fuck, is there really such a thing?”
I nodded and said, “There are legends of this thing in many places, so it should be correct.”
Ning nodded and said, “I heard about it when I was a kid. I thought the adults were trying to scare me away from the river.”
At this point, the boatman interrupted, saying, “No, no, you don’t understand. All the fishing boats here have seen this thing. I’ll tell you, this thing is not a sea monkey, it’s a yasha ghost! They are all relatives of the Dragon King. Now that you have offended him, he will definitely come back for revenge. I think we should hurry back to the shore, buy a pig, and invite a Taoist priest to perform a ritual. Perhaps he will be magnanimous and let us go.”
Zhang Tu laughed when he heard this: ‘I said, Mr. Boatman, I shot the Dragon King’s relative in the shoulder, so I must be Sun Wukong, right?’
The boatman’s face turned green with anger and said, ”You don’t look like Sun Wukong in this state. You’re just a pig!”
We all laughed. Zhang Tu pinched the fat on his face, probably thinking that he really looked a bit like him, and couldn’t help feeling depressed.
The fat man laughed for a while and said, “Since there are these things at the bottom of the sea, we must have weapons. If the sea is their lair, aren’t we running to our deaths? I said, Miss Ning, have you prepared a fishing spear or something?”
Ah-Ning said, “We have considered this situation and prepared some diving guns, but these guns are very large and can only fire one shot at a time. If there is an emergency, I’m afraid they won’t be of much use.”
I know that this kind of gun is fired with compressed gas, and the effective range is only about four meters. Fortunately, it can also be used as a spear. However, the length of the gun is really too long, and it may not be possible to use it in a narrow tomb.
The fat man ignored this and shouted, “No matter if it’s useful or not, you can’t have too many guns. Bring everything you can. Tomorrow, I’ll go first, Comrade Wu will follow me, and you and the bald guy will be at the back. If I see anything that doesn’t look right, just wave my hand and you’ll stop immediately. If I make a fist, you don’t have to do anything, just run.”
We thought the arrangement was reasonable, nodded, and discussed some other things. I thought about the experience that Uncle San and I had mentioned, made a list of things, and asked them to prepare them overnight. What they prepared was quite complete, including flashlights, daggers, fire-extinguishing devices, sealed bags, nylon ropes, carabiners, food, first aid supplies, gas masks, and a treasure box.
After giving the orders, it was almost dawn. The fat man said that we couldn’t talk anymore, and that we couldn’t even swim if we talked anymore. We had to rest. So a few of us each found a place to lie down. The coconut wine had a strong aftertaste, and when the sea breeze blew, my head felt so heavy that I fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until the afternoon.
The others had already woken up and were getting ready. I washed my face with seawater. At this time, several frogmen had already surfaced from the water. One of them took off his breathing apparatus and said, “We’ve found it! This must be the place. We’ve found the cave.”
When Ah Ning heard this, she hurriedly asked, “Did you go inside and take a look?”
The man shook his head and said, “Yes, but the cave is very long. I went in for a while, but I didn’t see the bottom. I didn’t dare go in any further, so I came out.”
A-Ning nodded and asked the frogman a few more questions. He then turned to us and said, “Okay, let’s get ready. They’ll call us when they’ve cleaned up the hole. There are signs of a landslide in the hole, so they’ll use a scaffold to stabilize it.”
We each went to put on our diving suits. The suits fit me and the others perfectly, except for the fat guy, whose belly wouldn’t fit in the suit, so his belly button was showing. Although it wasn’t very elegant, at least he was wearing a suit. After checking our equipment and making sure we had everything we needed, we jumped into the water one after the other.