Chapter 347: Come True

I froze instantly, my legs went weak, my whole body lost all strength, I dared not move an inch, nor could I look away, the flashlight kept shining in that direction.

Under the powerful flashlight beam, the human figure was quite clear, but what was hair-raising was its posture. This person's posture was extremely strange, the whole body almost standing upright, the shoulders completely slumped. My first impression was that this person was floating like me, but the figure seemed perfectly still, which only a waterlogged corpse would do.

The suffocating feeling had reached its limit; this might be the most unbelievable thing I've ever encountered. If this were on land, there would be countless explanations, but this was at the bottom of a lake, sixty or seventy meters deep, where this shadow stood serenely, completely motionless—definitely not a diver.

What the hell was this thing? A monster, or a water ghost?

No one can survive underwater without an oxygen tank, and no one can stand like that underwater. I felt a chill; this time I had really hit the jackpot. Agui was right—it might really be a water ghost, I couldn't help but believe it.

Thinking of water ghosts, I immediately thought of the skeletons we had been searching for: were these the corpses of the archaeology team that had turned into zombies after dying in the water? Or the spirits of the villagers after the village was flooded? Had Poker-face and Fatty's disappearance been caused by these things?

If it was a zombie, that was manageable; fully equipped, I couldn't possibly run slower than it. But if it was a ghost, I might have to become its substitute victim. If Fatty and the others had met with misfortune, I didn't know if they would come out to help me.

I was completely at a loss, not daring to advance or turn around, because I was afraid that if I turned, this thing would immediately pounce on me. I would rather watch it kill me than suddenly feel something behind me, so I could only stare fixedly at the shadow.

However, after stiffening for a moment, I noticed that the shadow was completely motionless. The stillness was very strange, like a stone carving, not even a hint of movement. At the same time, I had an even stranger feeling—I felt that this shadow, damn it, I seemed to have seen it somewhere before.

This feeling miraculously grew stronger and stronger, as if my subconscious was guiding me. I summoned my courage, but the shape of the shadow on the screen began to change bit by bit.

Cold sweat came again uncontrollably. As I watched the shadow's change, the feeling of déjà vu became stronger, even overwhelming my fear for a time. After moving about seven meters, this feeling reached an extreme, and in that instant, I remembered.

Oh my god, this shadow, this screen—wasn't this the shadow in Brother Chu's photo! Before I came to Banai, I received a photo sent by Third Uncle's old friend Brother Chu. It showed the interior of an ancient building, and there was a screen in it. Behind the screen, there was also a human shadow. Recalling it, this human figure was exactly the same as what I was seeing now.

Because the back of that photo said "Ghost Building in Golmud," I had judged at the time that the photo was taken inside the Golmud Ghost Building. Now it seemed I was wrong. Could it be that the note on the back wasn't a description of the photo itself? Was that photo actually taken here?

But that photo showed no traces of being underwater. That is to say, if it was taken here, then at the time the photo was taken, this underwater ancient village had not yet been submerged.

That kind of photo should date back at least to the 1930s or 1940s. Could it be that this ancient village was submerged not as long ago as I had thought?

A photo... a shadow... the bottom of the water... Could the photo Brother Chu gave me contain a deep meaning I didn't understand, and I simply treated it as a piece of letter paper? He gave me that photo so that I would come to find the shadow in the photo? My mind suddenly became clear, but was then filled with countless strange thoughts.

What made my mind a mess was that shadow; in the photo, the shadow's posture was so bizarre, but now this shadow was almost exactly the same as in the photo.

If that photo was taken here, that meant after the photo was taken, this shadow hadn't moved at all and had been here all along? Then it couldn't be a water ghost, because at that time this place wasn't underwater yet. This shadow should be an inanimate object.

I stood there stunned, then suddenly mustered a surge of courage. I found a brick, kicked my fins, and swam straight toward the screen. Just as I reached the screen, I hurled the brick at it, thinking "Fuck you." But before I even finished the thought, I regretted it.

The screen had been soaked so long it couldn't withstand any force. The stone hit the screen's pillar, and the screen collapsed all at once. The corroded material floated up like snowflakes, rushing toward my face. I immediately backed away, shining the flashlight at it, but everything I saw was debris. I used my hand to push aside the debris and shined the light forward. In the chaos, something extended out from the floating debris and suddenly rushed at me.

I instantly freaked out, struggling backward while stabbing wildly with my military bayonet. I stabbed a dozen times but hit nothing, and instead lost the regulator from my mouth.

I fumbled to grab it back. The floating debris in front of me had been dispersed by the water current. In front of me was just a white piece of driftwood.

I cursed, kicked it away, and used the flashlight to shine at the position of the shadow behind the screen.

That shadow was still standing there. The floating debris gradually thinned, and its true appearance was more or less revealed.

It was a humanoid thing, with a head, hands, and feet, standing there. Its whole body was covered with white attachments, posed in a very stiff gesture, like a stiffened corpse that had been hung up, somehow waxed, and the body encased. Or maybe like a stone statue—very hard to describe.

Its face was completely covered, whether it had an expression or not was unknown, but it indeed looked like an inanimate object, because if it could move, the attachments on its body wouldn't have accumulated so thickly...

What the hell was this? My confusion deepened.