With three superpowers at his fingertips, he could dominate the 1970s.

The next morning, the three borrowed a jeep from the local armed forces department and drove along the winding mountain road toward Tianchi.

At the end of May, spring had just begun to creep up Changbai Mountain from its foot, with remnants of snow still clinging to the mountainside. The car bumped along the gravel road, flanked by dense primeval forests. Red pines, birches, and larches stood close together, their canopies intertwining to form a deep green dome. Sunlight could only peek through the gaps, scattering into patches of light on the ground.

The higher we went, the lower the temperature became. We were wearing a light shirt at the foot of the mountain, but by the time we reached the halfway point, we had to wrap ourselves up in a jacket. The air outside the car window was cold and damp, carrying the smell of pine resin and earth. Occasionally, a mountain breeze would blow in, chilling us to the bone.

Li Mancang sat in the back seat, clutching a compass in his hand, the needle swaying back and forth. He frowned as he looked at it, then took a pen and jotted down a few numbers in a small notebook.

"The geomagnetic declination is increasing," he muttered to himself, "and it gets more pronounced the higher you go."

Wang Zhaixing sat in the passenger seat and took out a stack of crumpled hand-drawn maps from his bag—maps he had marked over the years as he traveled all over China, showing various geological formations.

He pointed to a dotted line on the map extending from Gansu Province and said to Jiang Zhiyu, "According to Mancang's calculations, this point should be near Tianchi Lake in Changbai Mountain. Tianchi Lake itself is a crater lake; the earth's energy converges upwards from the crater and then reflects downwards from the surface of Tianchi Lake—forming a closed loop. If the ancients chose this place to store things, it must be because Tianchi Lake itself is a natural amplifier."

As Jiang Zhiyu drove, she listened intently, nodding inwardly. Although Wang Zhaixing and Li Mancang didn't possess any special abilities, they used their decades of accumulated metaphysical knowledge and the ability to deduce earth veins to transform a vague "legend" into a clue with location, logic, and data support. This skill impressed her even more than her own teleportation and spatial abilities.

……

The car drove to the edge of Tianchi Lake, and the three of them got out.

At the end of May, Tianchi Lake had not yet completely thawed. A thin layer of ice remained around the edge of the lake, with a bottomless pool of dark blue water in the center. The wind blew across the lake, cold as if cutting one's face with a knife. The surrounding area was bare, with only low-lying birch trees and tundra clinging to the ground. Occasionally, a few alpine rhododendrons would peek out from the cracks in the rocks, their small purple flowers trembling violently in the wind.

Tianchi Lake was very quiet. Unnaturally quiet.

Li Mancang squatted by the lake, placed the compass flat on a rock, and stared at the pointer for a long time.

"The geomagnetic anomaly is severe; the pointer is deflected by nearly twenty degrees. This location... is correct."

He then took out a stack of handwritten ancient texts from his bag, compared them with the compass readings, and muttered to himself.

Wang Zhaixing stood beside him, and the two of them would squat down to gesture and stand up to look around, like two old hunters searching for treasure.

Jiang Zhiyu stood quietly to the side, watching the two of them busy themselves.

"Based on the topography of Tiantai Mountain," Wang Zhaixing drew a line in the air with his finger, "Tianchi Lake is the convergence point of the volcanic crater. Energy gathers from the surrounding ridges towards the center and then sinks down from the lake's surface. If we were to put something in Tianchi Lake, the most reasonable location would be—"

"Fifteen degrees east of due north," Li Mancang continued, pointing to a direction on the lake, "that angle is where the geomagnetic anomaly is strongest. And judging from the water depth, that's exactly where the crater wall is recessed, about thirty or forty meters deep."

The two looked at each other and saw confirmation in each other's eyes.

"Right down there."

Jiang Zhiyu walked to the edge of the direction they pointed to and looked down.

The water of Tianchi Lake is frighteningly clear. You can see the rocks and moss underwater at the edge, but the deeper you go, the darker the color becomes, changing from blue-green to deep blue, and then to almost pure black, as if something in the depths is swallowing up all the light.

Thirty or forty meters.

"Host," Seventeen said in his mind, "I can detect a metallic reaction down there, three small pieces, in that recessed crevice in the rock wall."

"I know."

Jiang Zhiyu turned around and asked calmly, "Have the exact locations been marked?"

"It's marked." Wang Zhaixing tore a page from his notebook, wrote down the location data, and handed it to her.

"Can you two...go diving?"

Li Mancang shook his head: "At this depth, it's impossible to go down without professional equipment. Moreover, the water temperature of Tianchi Lake is only a few degrees Celsius year-round; an ordinary person wouldn't last more than a few minutes at that temperature."

Wang Zhaixing frowned: "How about... we go back to the county and find a professional diver?"

"It's too late," Jiang Zhiyu said decisively.

She turned and walked to the jeep, opened the trunk, and pulled out a large canvas bag—which she had taken out of her storage space beforehand, of course. Unzipped it, and inside was a complete set of diving gear: a wetsuit, oxygen tank, mask, and fins—everything she needed.

Wang Zhaixing and Li Mancang were both stunned.

"You—" Wang Zhaixing pointed at the pile of equipment, "Where did you get this?"

"I had someone buy it from Gangcheng before." Jiang Zhiyu said without changing her expression, and began to put on her diving suit.

"No!" Li Mancang exclaimed anxiously, "This water temperature is too dangerous! You're a woman—"

"Don't worry, I've received professional training." Jiang Zhiyu slung the oxygen tank over her shoulder, pushed the mask up to her forehead, glanced at them, and said, "You guys wait up there, I'll go down and check and then come right back up."

"You alone—"

Wang Zhaixing tried to stop her, but Jiang Zhiyu had already put on her flippers.

She walked to the lakeside, stood at the boundary between the pebbles and the ice shell, and took a deep breath.

Seventeen provided her with real-time guidance in her mind: "Host, head 15 degrees due north east, descend to about 35 meters, and you will see a rock wall depression. The three masks are in the crevice, covered by a layer of gray sediment."

"knew."

She leaped into the Heavenly Pool.

……

The underwater world is icy cold.

Even with the wetsuit in between, the chill felt like countless needles piercing my skin simultaneously. The visibility of Tianchi Lake was very high, but as the depth increased, the light decreased at a visible rate—from blue to dark blue, from dark blue to grayish blue, until finally, it was almost pitch black.

Seventeen mentally guided her: "Twenty meters ahead, depth twenty-eight, two meters to the left—yes, that's the direction."

Jiang Zhiyu swung her flippers, moving like a black fish through the deep blue water. It was utterly quiet; the only sounds were the hissing of her breathing apparatus and the gurgling of bubbles rising from the oxygen tank.

The deeper she went, the greater the water pressure became. Her chest was compressed little by little by an invisible force, and each breath required more effort. Fortunately, she had her superpowers, otherwise, things might have been very different.

"Depth thirty-three, the depression is ten meters ahead."

She increased her descent speed.

The rock wall came into view—a gray-black volcanic rock wall, its surface covered with a thin layer of mineral crystals, gleaming dimly under the headlamp. There was a narrow crack in the middle of the rock wall, just wide enough for a person to squeeze through sideways.

"This is it."

Jiang Zhiyu squeezed into the crevice sideways, the light from her headlamp sweeping across the rock wall—at the deepest part of the crevice, beneath a pile of gray sediment, three bronze-colored edges were revealed.

She reached out and brushed aside the sediment, revealing three masks intact.

The masks were small, each only the size of an adult's palm, cast in bronze, and covered with dense engravings. They weren't the taotie or cloud and thunder patterns commonly seen in the Central Plains, but rather a pattern she had never seen before—like water ripples or sound waves, spreading outwards in concentric circles from the center of the mask's brow, layer upon layer, dense yet orderly.

The three masks each have a different facial expression—one with eyes closed, one with eyes half-open, and one with eyes wide open. But their mouths are all slightly open, as if they are silently telling a story.

"Host!" Seventeen's voice was clearly excited. "These three items have residual energy! It's very faint, but it's definitely there—unlike the surging energy of the core array eye, this is a different kind of energy field."

"Like an antenna."

"Yes! They are antennas! These three masks are like three antennas that the ancients placed at the bottom of Tianchi Lake—to receive information from a certain direction!"

Jiang Zhiyu carefully put the three masks into her spatial storage.

On the rock wall deep within the crevice, she vaguely saw some carvings—like some kind of writing, but not any writing she recognized. Before she could examine them closely, Seventeen reminded her, "Host, let's go up first, they must be worried."

She nodded, took one last look at the crack, then turned and swam away.

……

Ascending is much easier than diving, but the cold continues to intensify.

Her lips had turned purple, and sensation in her hands and feet was gradually fading. Seventeen kept reciting depth and data in her mind, and she mechanically swam upwards, her flippers moving rhythmically.

The moment she broke through the water, the cold wind hit her face like a wall.

On the surface of Tianchi Lake, Wang Zhaixing and Li Mancang were pacing anxiously back and forth along the shore. When they saw her surface, Li Mancang almost jumped into the lake to pull her out.

Jiang Zhiyu swam to the shore, removed her oxygen tank and mask, and was pulled ashore by two people.

She wrapped herself in the military overcoat she had prepared beforehand, squatted on the ground, and shivered for a while before she recovered.

"How is it?" Wang Zhaixing asked eagerly.

Jiang Zhiyu took out three masks wrapped in oiled paper from her bosom and handed them over.

Wang Zhaixing took it and carefully unfolded the oil paper—three bronze masks lay quietly inside, eyes closed, half-open, and wide-open, each face facing a different direction.

His hands were shaking.

"Found it..." he murmured, "Really found it..."

Li Mancang leaned over for a look, and his eyes immediately reddened.

These past few days I've been flipping through ancient books, analyzing data, running geomagnetic data, and staying up countless late nights—all of it all on these three masks.

Jiang Zhiyu, wrapped in a military overcoat, leaned against a rock, watching the two of them examine the mask as if it were a priceless treasure, and a slight smile curved her lips.

It was really cold, but it was definitely worth it.