Chapter 342: Mystery of the Magic Lake

"Dead?" My mind buzzed. How could that be?

After Agui said this, his emotions completely collapsed, and he almost fell into the lake. I had to help him up and bring him back to the awning. I got some rice wine from the mule and made him drink it, and he finally calmed down a bit. But he was still deeply depressed and incoherent.

I listened and pieced it together, finally understanding what had happened here.

It turned out that after leaving with me and then returning, Agui found a few people to help transport food and supplies to the lakeside. Seeing that everything seemed fine, Yuncai went back with those people to do other things, leaving him alone to watch the place.

At that time, Poker-face and Fatty had already salvaged quite a few things, and they had discovered where the bodies might be hidden. But then the rain started coming down nonstop, and the water level rose, stalling their salvage efforts.

Then, while organizing the salvaged items, they found a complete set of diving equipment, including a diving suit and tow ropes. It was a heavy-duty diving setup, with an air pipe connected to the surface and hemp ropes for towing. Fatty said they must have used this equipment to salvage those iron blocks from the ancient village at the bottom of the lake.

The whole set of equipment had been underwater for a long time, and most parts were no longer usable. But the diving helmet was made of a very corrosion-resistant material, and when packed in the equipment bag, it hadn't leaked—the inside was still dry, though the outer layer of rubber was peeling off in patches.

Fatty had a sudden idea: he could use this helmet and some of the rubber to make a makeshift diving device. The air in the helmet could provide seven to eight breaths. Since exhaled air still contains a lot of oxygen, that much air was actually quite substantial. If used wisely, it could extend Fatty's underwater time to about five minutes.

For diving, that extra five minutes was a world of difference compared to just one minute. Using this equipment, they found the underwater skeletons. The process was: they used two ropes. One rope was tied around Fatty's waist—since the helmet was heavy, relying on Fatty's own strength alone could be dangerous during ascent, so they needed to pull him up. The other rope had hooks made from bent wire—the wire came from the ribs of a leather suitcase. Fatty would dive down, hook the salvaged items onto the rope, and bring up quite a few things in one trip.

The skeletons were all scattered at the eastern end of the fence. They salvaged them and, based on their positions, used branches to assemble them to determine the number of individuals. The operation was simple and smooth.

After they had brought up all the visible bones and started piecing them together, they discovered a problem.

All the bones formed rough human shapes. They were astonished to find that among all the skeletons, none had a right hand.

According to skeletal analysis methods, the skull and pelvis are the most important indicators for counting individuals, since other bones are too fragmented and losses are not unusual. But having not a single right hand was too strange. It couldn't be a coincidence.

Fatty and Poker-face began to wonder what had caused this. Was there something special about the dumping of the bodies that caused the right hands to be missing, or had they been deliberately cut off? In Pan Ma's account, he never mentioned them cutting off the hands of these bodies, and there was no reason for them to do so. They came up with no explanation. Fatty even joked that maybe these people were all bears, and their bear paws had been chopped off to make a braised specialty dish.

In the end, it was Agui who came up with a conclusion: maybe these people simply didn't have right hands to begin with—all their right hands were fake, made of wood, and the wooden prosthetics had rotted away after being thrown into the lake.

Hearing this, I thought completely differently. The premise that none of them had a right hand was too bizarre. I couldn't think of any situation that would cause this. Instead, I felt that maybe there was some distinctive feature on their right hands, and someone cut them off to hide the victims' identities. Or perhaps, like war trophies, their right hands were collected. But Pan Ma hadn't mentioned this. Could it be that after they dumped the bodies, someone fished them out and re-treated them? However, this idea was soon proven impossible, because in Agui's story, Fatty had also thought of this, but when they looked at the wrist bones of those skeletons, there were no signs of being cut. The right hands seemed to have come off naturally—the joints at the wrists were still there.

In Old Man Pan Ma's account, all those archaeological team members had right hands. Clearly, the right hands went missing after they died. They couldn't figure out the reason, so they dived again to look for clues.

They found nothing else near the fence. Fatty suspected the bones had sunk deeper into the ancient village inside the fence.

From the very beginning, they had an unspoken agreement: never enter the ancient village at the bottom of the lake, only operate in the simpler outer area. Because the village was several meters deeper than the perimeter, and lake-bottom exploration was very dangerous—they hadn't tested the environment, and some parts of the ancient village might be very fragile, collapsing at a touch, requiring more complete diving equipment.

Fatty couldn't wait and thought it was no big deal just to take a look. So there was some conflict. But since I wasn't there, and Poker-face didn't say anything, and Agui couldn't argue with the boss, Fatty went ahead and dived.

This time, an unexpected accident occurred.

The rope Agui brought from the county was nylon, very strong, and they had bought three hundred meters of it. Fatty wasn't worried at all—he could dive deeper. Fatty went down, gradually going deeper. As usual, Agui wasn't too concerned. He watched the time, ready to pull Fatty up when the time came.

They had agreed on four and a half minutes, because it took about thirty seconds to a minute to ascend—ascending too fast could cause decompression sickness.

Underwater, four minutes feels very long, but on the surface it passes in an instant. Soon, Agui started tugging the rope. Unexpectedly, after a few tugs, the rope suddenly went taut and wouldn't budge, as if something was biting it from below.

His first thought was that it might have gotten snagged on the fence. They had encountered this before—the fence, soaked for who knows how many years, was soft like soggy cake. Just pull hard. Agui pulled hard a few times, and sure enough, the rope moved.

Agui pulled up quickly, but this time he felt something was off. The rope felt much lighter, very easy to pull.

This feeling was kind of terrifying, like when you're fishing and the fish bites the hook, but after a brief struggle the line goes slack—it means the bait was taken but the fish got away. Now, the bait was Fatty.

Cold sweat broke out on Agui. The more he pulled, the more uneasy he felt. As the water surface approached, the rope grew lighter. When he could finally see the dark shape underwater, he almost stopped breathing. As the shadow broke the surface, he found that Fatty was gone. He had only pulled up the helmet.

He figured the rope had snagged on something. Fatty, seeing the situation was bad, must have taken off the helmet and tried to surface on his own. After he took it off, somehow whatever had snagged the rope let go. That meant Fatty should be surfacing soon.

But after waiting for over a minute, nothing came up.

He felt something was very wrong. Unlike other situations, being underwater for a minute—an ordinary person would definitely drown.

At that time, Poker-face was on shore. Agui started to panic. Originally, this was a good job—easy money, and as long as you could swim, you could handle the bosses. Now an accident had happened, and he would be held responsible. In a small place like this, such an incident could be talked about for a lifetime. He took off his clothes, shouted to shore, and when he saw Poker-face running toward the lake, he jumped in, holding a stone to sink himself. But he was inexperienced—after sinking a few meters, the stone slipped from his hands, and he struggled back up. Just then, Poker-face arrived. Agui explained the situation, and Poker-face immediately put on the salvaged helmet and jumped in as well.

Agui held the rope and prayed. What he didn't expect was that after waiting five minutes, not only had Fatty not come up, but Poker-face, who had gone down, also made no movement. The rope just hung there in the water.

He pulled on the rope, and that familiar feeling came again. When he hauled it out, the same thing happened again: on the other end of the rope, Poker-face was also gone, leaving only the diving helmet.

After listening, I was stunned. My mind was a complete mess. I didn't want to accept it—it felt too absurd, how could such a thing happen? But at the same time, I knew clearly that Agui wouldn't lie. And that made it all the more terrifying for me.

I asked Agui when this had happened. He said it was almost two weeks ago. After the incident, he waited on the lake for a day, but nothing floated up.

Two weeks? Even a whale would be dead after two weeks underwater. No wonder Agui said they were dead. Whatever caused them to take off their diving helmets underwater, death was certain.

After that day, Agui would come to the lake every day to look, hoping to see a body surface. But no bodies ever appeared. He once thought there might be some strange fish at the bottom that had eaten them, but clearly there were no bloodstains or signs of attack on the diving helmets.

I looked at the helmet and noticed that Fatty had made some interesting modifications. Those modifications made the helmet very hard to take off underwater, which turned it into a "problematic" thing. I had been underwater and knew what it was like. Although entering the ancient village had potential dangers, it wouldn't make them go to such great lengths to take off the helmet.

I wondered if it was decompression sickness. When diving to greater depths, the oxygen ratio needs to be adjusted, or you might get oxygen toxicity. But oxygen toxicity isn't like being drunk—you don't take off your clothes from it.

Something must have happened underwater that forced them to remove their helmets, and moreover, Poker-face also took off his helmet, indicating this was definitely an unavoidable process. Poker-face wouldn't have a sudden whim like Fatty would.

So after taking off their helmets underwater, why didn't they reappear? Could it be that the incident they encountered ultimately led to some accident?

I had traveled a long distance, physically and mentally exhausted, and suddenly faced with such a thorny situation, I was truly at a loss. But I absolutely refused to admit they were dead. We had been through so many things together—we could have died anywhere, yet we always survived against all odds. How could they possibly die on a trip that was half tourism and half investigation?

Even as I said that, as I pondered the matter carefully, my heart still tightened, forcing me to abandon any false hope. Because I knew that accidents don't reason with you. No matter how great the danger you've faced before, when it's your time to die, you can't escape. Many great heroes in history lived illustrious lives only to die at the hands of nobodies. Was God playing with me? Had the two of them really just vanished like that?

After thinking it over, I still couldn't accept it in my heart. I grew agitated, thinking that it had been raining at the time, and visibility on the lake must have been poor. Maybe they had surfaced but were far from Agui's position, so Agui didn't see them. Then, for some reason, they might have gone ashore on their own.

Regardless, there was one thing I had to do. Whether or not they had met with an accident, I had to dive down and see for myself—alive, I want to see them; dead, I want to see their bodies.

The rain was still as heavy, as if mad. In Hangzhou, such heavy rain couldn't last this long.

Agui couldn't help anymore. I guessed he was afraid that I would end up like them—he couldn't take such a shock again. I told him about Pan Ma bringing me here and warned him to be careful of Pan Ma, though I felt that this time Pan Ma might really have fallen apart.

He wanted to remove those dead bodies, but I said no. Keeping them there might prevent Pan Ma from coming back. Given Pan Ma's state, it would be very hard to reason with him. I really hadn't expected him to be this ferocious.

Returning to the mule's side, I took the scuba gear I had brought and hurried into the lake. I couldn't wait another minute; I had to go and verify things.

After putting on all the equipment—I had become very familiar with diving in Hainan, so I wasn't nervous now—I pushed the raft and swam toward the center of the lake in the rain.

Wearing fins, I quickly reached the center of the lake. The rain lashed the lake's surface, thousands of rain threads producing a deafening sound. This indescribable noise actually calmed me down. I looked around for the buoy we had left but realized it was impossible to find in these conditions. So I picked a general area, put on my diving mask, and sank into the water.

With the experience from last time, I was a bit more composed. I knew that this method of diving would never let me reach the very bottom, so I planned to hover above the trench for a while to observe the general situation.

When I reached the previous position, I cut the rope again and expelled all the air from my lungs, so I wouldn't float up quickly. At the same time, I moved my arms and legs to keep myself suspended at a fixed depth.

With the diving mask, everything underwater was very clear. Unfortunately, the light was much dimmer now. I used my legs to maintain balance while sinking as low as possible, and with one hand, I moved the diving light, shining it into the depths. Soon, a grayish-green but clearly outlined lake-bottom world appeared before me. I began swimming forward, kicking my fins.

Since the flashlight could only illuminate parts at a time, I couldn't see the whole picture. I had to rely on memory to piece together what I saw in my mind. Fortunately, being an architecture student, I had a special way of remembering things—I could form a complete image in my mind from the parts I saw.

It was a monochrome world, everything in the dark green of the lake water. Swimming a short distance forward, I found that it was exactly as I had thought: from the mouth of the trench all the way down to the very dark part, this steep slope was covered with wooden buildings buried in sediment. The lake bottom was not flat at all, but rather a deep, irregular underwater canyon. The village was built along the mountain on the southern slope of the canyon.

Over the next period, I kept surfacing and diving, changing my position, observing the conditions at the bottom in short one-minute intervals.

More details emerged before me. The underwater ancient village, ghostly and dim, seemed comparable in size to the Yao village we had come from—about fifty or sixty households, most of them stilt houses. But from the details, I could tell these ancient buildings were not modern constructions; they were very archaic, with distinct Yao ethnic features, unlike many current stilt houses that look neither traditional nor modern.

I still had some impression of our previous diving spot. Fatty had also mentioned a place with fences. Searching that area, I soon found the small buoy and saw the fences. I immediately sank down. Underwater, there was nothing—no trace of their presence, nor anything unusual.