The Japanese Tachikaze-class destroyer started its engines and moved off. A group of Japanese naval officers stood on deck, including the ones who had boarded the yacht to inspect it.
“Move off!” A voice came from the destroyer, urging Xia Lei to hurry away.
Xia Lei was in a bind. Driving the yacht away would be the smart thing to do, but he knew that the radar on the Tachikaze-class destroyer would easily detect if the yacht had left. If he drove off and came back again, they would get suspicious. If he went back to Okinawa, the threat of incident with the Naha military base soldiers awaited. From this angle, it seemed that staying and finding the treasure location, then getting the ancient alloy, was the smartest choice.
One side was urging him to leave, and on the other side was danger. Xia Lei was between a wall and a hard place, and he didn’t know what to choose.
Just then, Long Bing drew close. She put her arms around Xia Lei’s neck and kissed him on the lips. She was brazen, and her tongue swirled around Xia Lei’s. Her hands also seemed to be searching his body for something, and quite anxiously too.
Xia Lei abruptly understood what she wanted to do, and he quickly let loose of his restraint. He put his arms around Long Bing, kissing her back as they rolled about the deck. It looked like the two of them could not hold back their lust.
“Whooooah! Hahaha…” Clap clap clap! The speakers of the destroyer blasted sound back at them. Some were cheering, some laughing, and some clapping.
“Do her! Do her!” Someone shouted from the side of the vessel.
Xia Lei, however, stopped, and looked back at the destroyer with embarrassment.
“Haha! That fella got shy!”
“He ain’t got guts. If it were me, I’d fuck her in front of everyone. That chick’s hot. She’s got 65E boobs, aye?”
Raucous hollers came at them, and the Tachikaze-class destroyer moved off, trailing jeers.
It was a Japanese-registered yacht, with two Japanese citizens on it. The naval officers did not suspect anything. The warning from the speakers had been a formality, and they did not urge Xia Lei and Long Bing to move away again. That’s right, those two were on their honeymoon. They were going to make a wish on a cake, and who knows, maybe they’ll fuck and give Japan a new little citizen. It was all good, so why ruin their fun?
“Touch me?” said Long Bing all of a sudden.
“Huh?” Xia Lei didn’t dare to.
“Dumbass. There’s sure to be someone watching with binoculars,” said Long Bing. “Hurry up, don’t be so slow.”
Xia Lei made himself reach his hand into her clothing. Long Bing pressed herself against him again, and her softness twisted around him, holding him like a snake, unwilling to let him go. Out of the corner of Xia Lei’s eye, he saw that quite a few perverts were indeed watching them with binoculars. With great interest.
“Uh, are your chest measurements really 65E?” Xia Lei doubted what that guy had shouted, because what he was feeling was quite different from that measurement.
Long Bing glared at Xia Lei. “You think my breasts are fake?”
“Um, no, no, not at all. Really, I don’t mean that at all.” Xia Lei measured her silently.
Long Bing’s face turned red, and she bit her lip. She hesitated, then said, “60E.”
Xia Lei took in a small breath. This was quite a startling measurement too.
Long Bing smacked Xia Lei’s hand away. “I told you my measurements already, so stop sizing them up. Carry me into the cabin. Make it look like we’re going in to have sex, and we wait till those guys are a distance away before you go down into the water.”
Xia Lei gave a laugh, and carried Long Bing in his arms as he walked towards the cabin.
The sailors on the destroyer dispersed. The live show had retired to the cabin, so they had no more to watch.
A few minutes later, the Tachikaze-class destroyer disappeared into the horizon. Xia Lei and Long Bing returned to the deck. Xia Lei quickly changed into the wetsuit, and went into the water.
The searchlights on the diving suit chased away some of the darkness in the sea. Coupled with Xia Lei’s left eye, he was able to see a radius of 50 metres underwater. This range was already much greater than an average human’s because a normal person would only be able to see a few metres, even in the clearest water.
He continued diving down, down, and the pressure grew, grew. This pressure was uncomfortable for Xia Lei. He felt like sandbags had been attached to his body, and his internal organs and his bones were under tremendous strain. It felt like his bones would break apart, and like his organs would burst.
Xia Lei looked at the pressure gauge and was shocked. He had been in a rush to find the treasure, and descended rapidly. He did not discover that he had already descended to a depth of 350 metres.
The record for a human’s diving was 330 metres, and no one could break that. However, that depth was achieved with the help of professional diving equipment. Without that equipment, a human could only get to a depth of about 100 metres. Whether it was the former or the latter, one would die if these limits were crossed.
Xia Lei looked down, down, down, but he could not see the bottom. In other words, there was more than 50 metres to go to the sea bed. It could be 80 metres, a hundred, or even 300.
‘Shit. Why am I so unlucky?’ Xia Lei couldn’t help cursing.
After some hesitation, he braced himself and continued descending.
The underwater pressure was quite unbearable, but he did not feel suffocated or crushed. He felt like he could still go on. There were certain risks associated with this, but he had no other choice. If he missed this chance, it would be difficult to get back to this place again, because this was in the American-controlled zone. Even China’s most advanced submarine could not come to this spot without being discovered.
500 metres went by in the blink of an eye, and there was still no sea bed in sight. Hundreds of units of pressure was on Xia Lei’s chest, and he was at his limits.
‘Damn it, I’m going for it!’ Xia Lei gritted his teeth and continued his descent.
Every metres downwards now felt like he was rolling on the edges of sharp knives.
Another 30 metres went past.
Blub! A mouthful of blood trailed from the corner of Xia Lei’s mouth. The great pressure had made him dizzy, and his body lost its ability to move. He was motionless, but there seemed to be a vortex below him, sucking him down into the darkness of the sea bed.
No way to struggle, and a never-ending pressure. This was a terrible situation, and there could only be one ending – death!
Xia Lei’s consciousness faded, grew heavy, and what flashed in his head were not thoughts of living, but memories of the past. He saw himself reading from the textbook in school, and his deskmate Jiang Ruyi with a ponytail, staring at him with her dark eyes. He saw his mother washing clothes for him, a blurry memory. He saw face after face. Shentu Tianyin’s face, Long Bing’s face, Tang Yuyan’s face, and Ma Xiaoan too. These faces flashed past in his head like a film reel, getting blurrier and blurrier…
This was what it was like to die.
In the last instant before his consciousness blinked out, Xia Lei’s brain suddenly trembled. It was unknown if this trembling started in his left eye, or in his brain, it all happened so quickly. A cooling energy abruptly burst from his brain, travelling through his blood vessels and nerves to reach the rest of his body, his organs, his bones, his muscles! And in that same instant, he seemed to have attained another form – a super form!
The great pressure on his body seemed to have been blown away like a leaf on a breeze to disappear completely. All feelings of discomfort rapidly disappeared too, leaving no trace. In these one, two seconds, Xia Lei had felt like he was going to die, but he now felt like he had only just entered the water, and felt no pressure at all.
‘It’s that strange power again. What the hell is it? Why is it in my body? And why don’t I feel its existence?’ Xia Lei was full of questions, surprise and gratitude. He’d thought he was done for earlier, but he now felt even healthier and stronger than before!
This near-death experience let Xia Lei discover something. This mysterious power in his body, this energy, gave him mysterious potential. He had thought that he had used all of his potential in Oshino Hakkai, but he had barely scratched the surface. Now, at death’s door, his body had attained a new level of being!
Then was this all of his potential?
There was no answer to that!
‘I must solve this mystery!’ said a voice in Xia Lei’s head. He moved his legs, and propelled himself down, deeper down.
One hundred metres, two hundred metres, three hundred metres…
The sea bed appeared in Xia Lei’s field of vision, and he looked at the pressure gauge on his wrist. The numbers shocked him. He had reached a depth of 1058 metres!
This depth exceeded all the limits of humans. Even the current submarines were not able to dive to this depth!
A human had done what a submarine could not. Science could not explain this anymore, not any science.
Good thing Xia Lei had not brought Long Bing down with him. He would not be able to hide the secret of his body from her then, and the secret of AE.
The sea bed was right before him. A mysterious world humans could not tread.
Several glowing species of fish swam elegantly before him, glowing in their grotesqueness. Some never-before seen sea-bottom vegetation grew from the sand, forming a dense ‘forest’. No human had disturbed this place before. Xia Lei was the first in history.
A sunken ship came into sight. A large part of it had collapsed due to the pressure, leaving just a part of the bow intact, and the mast.
Xia Lei took out the compass. The needle pointed to the sunken ship, and it was trembling violently.
‘Found it!’ Xia Lei swam over excitedly.
