Tomb raiding live stream: Starting as the mute Zhang

Hot water washed away the fishy smell and fatigue, he changed into dry clothes, and drank several bowls of hot ginger tea before his frozen bones finally warmed up. But the chill in Wu Xie's heart just wouldn't go away.

Half an hour later, everyone gathered in the small but tidy conference room of the "Sea Eagle". The waterproof diary lay open on the central table, next to it was the snake-browed bronze fish in a transparent sealed bag, along with some other small, heavily rusted items retrieved from the seabed. Outside the window, the fog wall remained, the sky grew darker, and the ship swayed gently with the waves.

Xie Yuchen put on white gloves and carefully opened the diary. Although the paper had been specially treated, the edges were brittle and stuck together due to soaking in seawater and the passage of time, and the writing had also faded considerably. He used a small pair of tweezers, along with a portable cool light, to gently separate the pages one by one and carefully examine them.

The meeting room was quiet, save for the soft rustling of papers and the rhythmic sound of waves lapping against the ship's hull. All eyes were fixed on the diary.

The first half of the diary is mostly a record of the expedition, noting the date, weather, and work content. There are also some hasty sketches of reefs and ocean currents, as well as questions about the "abnormal electromagnetic signals" and "intermittent luminescence." The handwriting is clear and strong, showing that the recorder was a meticulous and conscientious person.

Turning to the middle, the handwriting begins to change, sometimes neat, sometimes messy, and some pages are even completely blurred by water stains. Some fragmented sentences become visible:

"...On July 20th, Wu Sansheng insisted on going down...there was something 'watching' us down there..."

"...The light of the bronze...the model moved on its own...Wenjin said it was a star map..."

"...He's gone mad...Li Sidi (crossed out)...he said there are shadows talking inside the wall..."

"...A bronze fish...a key? Or a curse?... "

"...We can't go back...we can't go back..."

"...It's here..."

On the last few pages, the handwriting was completely distorted and almost illegible, with only some repeated scribbled words: "Eyes...door...water...cold..." On the last page, there was only one line written with force that almost pierced the back of the paper: "Don't believe it!"

Wu Xie stared intently at the three characters "Wu Sansheng," his breathing becoming labored. He looked at Xie Yuchen: "Anything else? About my third uncle..."

Xie Yuchen shook his head and closed the diary: "The rest is blank, or completely smudged. But looking at these records, it's certain that the Xisha archaeological team did find that underwater site and went inside. They triggered some kind of mechanism, saw things they shouldn't have seen, and experienced... inexplicable events. In the end, most of them didn't come out."

"My third uncle..." Wu Xie's voice was dry.

"His fate wasn't mentioned in the diary," Xie Yuchen said, "but since he was the team leader, it's very likely that he also..." He didn't finish his sentence, but the meaning was clear.

Fatty Wang patted Wu Xie on the shoulder: "Tianzhen, don't overthink it. Your third uncle is as cunning as a monkey; he's not that easy to fool. Maybe he slipped away on his own?"

Wu Xie didn't speak; he knew Fatty was trying to comfort him. But the frantic and desperate words in the diary pierced his heart like needles.

"Look at the bronze fish," Zhang Qiling suddenly said, breaking the dull atmosphere. He pointed to the snake-browed bronze fish in the sealed bag.

Xie Yuchen understood, carefully took out the bronze fish, placed it on a piece of black velvet cloth, and examined it closely with a high-powered magnifying glass and a sidelight. The bronze fish was no bigger than a thumb, but its craftsmanship was extremely exquisite. The snake-like, coiled eyebrows were as fine as hair, and under the light, it seemed as if tiny snakes were actually swimming inside. At a certain angle, one could even vaguely see extremely small, three-dimensional structures inside the two dark red fish eyes.

"These eyes..." Huo Xiuxiu also leaned closer to look, "They don't look like ordinary gemstone inlays; it seems like there's something inside."

Zhang Qiling took the bronze fish, placed it in his palm, closed his eyes, and very lightly rubbed the fish's eyes with his fingertips. A few seconds later, he opened his eyes and handed the bronze fish to Zhang Qiling.

Zhang Qiling took it and did the same. Then, he looked at Xie Yuchen: "There are tools, open it."

"Open it?" Xie Yuchen was taken aback. "This is an artifact, and its structure is so intricate. Forcibly damaging it might destroy any information inside."

"It won't break," said Zhang Qiling. "There's a mechanism."

Zhang Qiling pinched the head and tail of the bronze fish with his fingers, rotating and pressing them in different directions with a very slight, specific rhythm. The movements were slow and steady. Just as he pressed down on a nearly invisible bulge in the fish's belly for the third time, a very faint "click" was heard.

The bronze fish has split open in the middle.

It wasn't shattered, but rather, like a finely crafted box, it split into two halves along an extremely subtle seam. The fish's belly was hollow, and inside lay a scroll.

It was a small roll of white silk, as thin as a cicada's wing and almost transparent. The silk was rolled into a thin strip and stuffed inside the fish's belly.

"Holy crap..." Fatty Wang exclaimed in disbelief, "There really is something there!"

Xie Yuchen held his breath and carefully removed the roll of silk with tweezers. The silk was made of a special material; even after being soaked in water for a thousand years, it had not stuck together or torn. He placed it on another glass plate and gently unfolded it with a soft brush.

The silk scroll, no bigger than a palm, was covered with an intricate structural diagram drawn in extremely fine ink lines. The lines were densely packed, marked with numerous ancient characters written in tiny, delicate script. At the center of the diagram was a multi-tiered, tower-like structure, connected by numerous pipes, chambers, and arrows representing flowing water. At the top of the tower was a depiction of a door, marked with an eye symbol.

"This is..." Xie Yuchen carefully examined the small characters and structure, "It's the structural diagram of that underwater tomb! Look, this is the entrance water cave. After passing through the passageway, you reach the front hall, which is the arched cave where we found the stone tablet and model. The model here is... a trigger and navigation mechanism. Then, the water flow will pass through here... here... creating a pressure difference, and at a specific time, under the action of the tides, opening the real entrance..."

His finger traced a hidden pipe on the map, labeled "Path to the Ruins," which connected to the tower-like structure at its end. "The real tomb is below! A tower built using tidal forces and water pressure, submerged on the deeper seabed! The light and compass emitted by the model guide the way to the true entrance and the opportune moment!"

"Tides are the key, stars are the balance," Huo Xiuxiu said, looking at the annotation on the diagram. "The stars probably refer to the direction indicated by the glowing bead inside the model, and the tides represent time. You need to follow the direction indicated by the model at a specific high tide time, and pass through the 'Path to the Ruins' to enter the real tomb chamber."

"Where are we now?" Aning asked.

Xie Yuchen glanced at the ship's clock and satellite positioning: "There are about four hours until the next high tide. The model's direction..." He pulled up the last data from the underwater recorder and compared it with the nautical chart, "It points southeast of our current location, about three hundred meters away. That should be the entrance to the 'Path to the Ruins'."

"So that means we have to go down again in four hours?" Fatty Wang's face was a little bitter. "And we have to go through that 'Path of Return to the Ruins' again, which doesn't sound very auspicious?"

"We have to go." Zhang Qiling put away the bronze fish that had been broken in two, while Xie Yuchen carefully put away the silk. "There's something inside."

Zhang Qiling nodded: "The clue is in the tower."

Wu Xie took a deep breath, suppressing the chaotic thoughts in his mind about his Third Uncle's whereabouts, and forced himself to concentrate. He pointed to the door marked with an eye on the top floor of the tower on the structural diagram: "This door... does it look like the one on the map of the Prince of Xian?"

Zhang Qiling and "Zhang Qiling" simultaneously looked at the pattern on the door. Zhang Qiling was silent for a few seconds, then shook his head: "Not the same. But... they're related."

"It could be another kind of 'door,' or part of a passage," Zhang Qiling added.

"Wang Zanghai really knows a lot," Xie Yuchen concluded. "This underwater tomb is not only his own mausoleum, but also more like a huge information repository, or... a transit station, constructed using water power and the art of divination. We must go in."

With the plan set, everyone took the time to rest, eat, and check and adjust their equipment again. When Lao Hai learned that they were going to go into the water again, and to a deeper place, he simply took a puff of his pipe in silence, said "Watch out for the undercurrents," and said nothing more.

The levitating live-streaming sphere hovered silently above the conference table. The live-streaming signal recovered considerably after leaving the underwater area, and comments scrolled across the screen.

The Prophet: Chen Wenjin's Diary! Packed with Information!

A trick to refute societal experts: a map hidden inside a bronze fish, Wang Zanghai knows how to play the game.

The male fan club: He's going into the water again, husbands, please be careful!

Four hours passed quickly. Dusk was approaching, but thick fog obscured the view, shrouding the sea in twilight. The tide began to rise, and the waves grew larger than before.

The group, fully armed once again, gathered at the ship's side. This time, with a clear objective and a map, they felt much more at ease, but the tension still lingered as they faced the unknown "Path to the Ruins" and the even deeper underwater towers.

"Remember," Xie Yuchen concluded, "once you enter the passage, stay close to the group, pay attention to changes in pressure, and communicate frequently. If you encounter any danger that you cannot handle, immediately press the distress signal and retreat is the first priority."

Zhang Qiling and "Zhang Qiling" were the first to enter the water. This time, they had a clear objective and dived in the southeast direction indicated by the model. The others followed closely behind.

After swimming about 300 meters, a huge, downward-sloping seafloor fault appeared ahead. The edges of the fault were jagged with reefs, resembling the teeth of a giant beast in the dim underwater light. According to the map, the entrance was located at a specific point in the middle of the fault.

Zhang Qiling and "Zhang Qiling" searched along the edge of the fault and soon discovered an inconspicuous crack, barely wide enough for one person to pass through, behind a dense thicket of deep purple coral resembling a giant sea anemone. The crack's edges were smooth, showing signs of human intervention. At that moment, a cold, powerful current of water was gushing out of the crack, clashing against the rising tide.

"This is it," Zhang Qiling said in the communicator. "Tidal power has been activated."

"Go in." Zhang Qiling gestured and took the lead, squeezing into the crevice sideways.

Inside the crevice was a narrow, steep, downward-sloping natural rock fissure, but it had clearly been widened and modified. The water flow became exceptionally rapid here, pushing people forward and downward, requiring them to cling tightly to protruding rock faces to control their speed. The rock walls were slippery, covered with various mosses and fungi that emitted a dim phosphorescence, providing some eerie light sources.

As they descended, the pressure gradually increased. The depth readings on the dive computer fluctuated rapidly. The surrounding temperature also decreased.

After swimming for about five minutes, the passage ahead suddenly widened, forming a gourd-shaped cave. At the bottom of the cave, a huge, tightly closed stone door appeared. The stone door was carved from a single piece of black rock, its surface covered with traces of wave erosion, but in the center was a huge "Eye of the Ruins" pattern, identical to that on the stone tablet. At this moment, at the pupil of the pattern, at the center of the vortex, a faint blue light was flashing, synchronized with the bronze model.

On the rock walls on either side of the stone gate, there is a bronze statue about half the height of a human. The statues are strangely shaped, neither fish nor human, with their hands holding a bowl-shaped depression in front of their chests. The depression is filled with a dark green, viscous substance that seems to wriggle slightly as if it were alive.

"A mechanism?" Zhang Qiling approached the stone gate to observe.

"Both mechanisms need to be triggered simultaneously." Xie Yuchen looked at the annotation on the map. "During the specific phase when the blue light illuminates, place the weight into the 'Eye of Return to the Void' in the bronze statue's hand. This weight... is very likely the bronze fish, or the jade eye."

Zhang Qiling took out the Jade Eye of Unity and looked at the bronze fish that had been split in two. He swam to the bronze statue on the left and, at the moment when the blue light from the vortex of the stone gate was at its brightest, placed one half of the bronze fish into the indentation in the bronze statue's hand.

Almost simultaneously, as the blue light on the right bronze statue illuminated, Zhang Qiling placed the other half of the bronze fish inside.

The moment the two halves of the bronze fish were placed in, the dark green gel in the bronze statue's hand suddenly "came to life," quickly enveloping the bronze fish and then spreading upwards along the statue's arm, instantly activating the entire bronze statue! The inside of the statue emitted a "creaking" sound of mechanisms operating, and its eyes lit up with red light.

At the same time, the "Eye of the Ruins" on the stone gate shone brightly, and the entire pattern seemed to come alive, beginning to slowly rotate. The heavy stone gate slid open to both sides with a low rumble, revealing the dark and deep passage behind it.

A stream of water, colder and more stagnant than the seawater outside, as if it had been stagnant for a thousand years, gushed out from behind the door.

The levitating live stream sphere passed through the opened stone gate. The live stream chat paused briefly, then several comments appeared:

Prophet: The door is open!

To quell any dissent from so-called experts: What the hell is that gelatinous stuff?!

The guy's fan club: He's in! Exciting!

Zhang Qiling and "Zhang Qiling" exchanged a glance and swam into the opened stone door first.

Behind the door lies the true "Path to the Ruins".