Chapter Seventy-One: The Source of the Siphon

“Hold on tight!” Ghostface Zhang said quietly, then raised his long knife and struck the rebar fixed to the stone stalactite. With a creak, the boat slid down the slanted path of the rebar and plunged into the water.

My heart tightened as if I were riding a log flume at an amusement park. Thankfully, the boat’s landing wasn’t too rough; the current wasn’t too fierce, and with the three ferrymen rowing, we remained relatively stable.

The suction of the water was not very strong at first, so Ghostface Zhang didn’t swing his knife to clear the obstacles ahead. But the calm didn’t last. As we drifted along the water, the current’s pull began to intensify, and we started to drift apart on the boat.

Suddenly, a violent wave surged toward us like a wild beast, tossing the raft as if it were a roller coaster. Fortunately, our weight was evenly distributed; otherwise, we might have been thrown entirely into the lake.

“Hold on! Don’t let yourselves get thrown off!” Ghostface Zhang called out, steadying himself.

But as soon as he spoke, there was a shout. One of the three ferrymen, after being jolted violently, lost his footing and was thrown into the churning water with a cry.

“Oh no!” Lord Dragon gasped in alarm, watching his companion disappear beneath the surface. He seemed grief-stricken and made as if to jump after him, only to be stopped by Iron Crutch Liu. “Seventh Brother, even the best swimmer is helpless in water like this.”

Lord Dragon sighed deeply, glancing back at the water, his face heavy with sorrow.

Just then, a stalactite the size of a basketball hurtled toward Lord Dragon’s head. He gasped and froze, too stunned to dodge.

Crack!

At the last critical moment, Iron Crutch Liu thrust his cane and deflected the stone into the water. Lord Dragon wiped the cold sweat from his brow, realizing that had the rock struck his head, it would have been smashed to pieces. He thanked Iron Crutch Liu, careful not to provoke Ghostface Zhang, who stood at the bow, hacking at stones.

Whether intentionally or not, Ghostface Zhang snorted coldly at Lord Dragon and said in a grave voice, “Don’t worry about others—take care of yourself first. Make sure you get out alive before anything else.”

As expected, the suction in the water grew ever stronger. But what was truly baffling was that the greater the pull, the more waves crashed against us. In theory, with the current drawing inward, there shouldn’t be surging waves pushing us forward—they’re opposing forces, so how could both exist at once?

Wave after wave rolled over us like a tsunami. Our boat, caught in the torrent, was like a trapped rat in a toilet bowl, utterly beyond our control, swirling aimlessly forward. Luckily, the suction pulled in just one direction, keeping us on course.

I felt as if I were on a pirate ship ride, my stomach churning. Now I understood why Ghostface Zhang had only brought those barely edible ration biscuits—it was to keep us from eating much, so that when the waves tossed us, we wouldn’t end up vomiting everywhere. The thought alone was enough to make one shudder with disgust.

We drifted in this dizzying, nauseating state for an unknown time. My vision sparkled with stars, twinkling as if from the heavens. I could almost hear Black Cloak and Mengya asking if I knew how to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Just then, Ghostface Zhang’s startled cry yanked me back from the stars.

“What is that?!”

At first, I thought he’d seen something glittering in the waves, but when I looked ahead, I was scared out of my wits!

Ahead, the cave seemed to come to a dead end. But instead of a flat wall, the quartz-crystal-laden surface flared out like the bell of a trumpet. At its center was a bottomless chasm, the source of the siphoning current that drew everything inward. Most terrifying of all, in the darkness at the mouth of this trumpet, an enormous, indistinct shadow loomed—at least ten meters high, with two massive fins like giant palm fans beating the water, sending wave after wave surging toward us. This was the cause of the unnatural, opposing waves.

“It’s really a dragon!” Kaleidoscope cried out, trembling.

“Third Brother, what do we do now? We can only hold out another five or six minutes. If this keeps up, we’ll be sucked into the siphon for sure,” Lord Dragon said.

Ghostface Zhang was clearly caught off guard. He hadn’t expected the dragon of the Heavenly Lake to be the source of the siphoning tide. This was far beyond his ability to handle—a primeval behemoth.

“Could this be an illusion?” Ghostface Zhang muttered.

“An illusion?” Kaleidoscope scoffed. “Third Brother, have you lost your mind? Waves this huge—can that be an illusion? This torrent—can that be an illusion?”

Ghostface Zhang was about to reply when another wave tossed the boat. When things calmed, he looked at Black Cloak, who sat beside me, hand protectively around me. “What do you think we should do about this?”

Black Cloak’s expression was grim—her claim that there were no dragons in the Heavenly Lake had been shattered. She could only hedge her answer: “At this point, I think we have no choice but to see what’s inside that siphoning current.”

“What?” Before Ghostface Zhang could answer, Kaleidoscope shrieked as if he’d stepped on a landmine. “Go in? Are you trying to get us all killed? You saw it yourself—there’s a monster dragon at least a dozen meters long in there. If it were just a giant python, we’d have a chance, but use your head—that’s a dragon! Can you handle that?”

No one else had anything to say. We all knew our chances of survival were slim. Lord Dragon sat in the boat, performing some unknown ritual, as if preparing to face judgment. Only the roar of the rushing river echoed in the cave.

After about a minute of silence, Ghostface Zhang’s cold snort broke the deathly stillness. “If it’s fate, it’s fate. If it’s disaster, you can’t hide from it. Looks like there’s no going back for us. If we’re doomed, there’s nothing we can do.”

After this pronouncement, the others could only nod or shake their heads. I, too, felt a deep sadness. Then I remembered—we’d come all this way to rob tombs, a trade where life and death are at the mercy of fate, never knowing if you’ll make it back alive. At the moment of death, perhaps it isn’t so frightening after all. With that thought, a kind of peace settled over me.

We were about to be sucked into the siphoning current when the raft became wedged at the trumpet’s narrow mouth. We couldn’t go in or out, only inching forward and back, just like when Lord Dragon had stuffed the raft through the gourd-shaped opening earlier.

“Master Zhang!” Black Cloak cried out.

“I know,” Ghostface Zhang replied without turning, as if they shared a telepathic understanding. “Get ready, everyone. I’ll go ahead and clear the way.” With that, he leaped from the bow to the stern, slipped through the narrow trumpet mouth, and jumped onto the second raft, beginning to sort through his equipment.