In the pitch-black water, only the beam of his flashlight illuminated the world around him.
Pulled ever deeper by the black hair, Chen Ge was drawing closer and closer to the thing that resembled a coffin.
"How can something like this be at the bottom of the reservoir? Did someone put it here on purpose?" Before jumping into the water, Chen Ge hadn't expected it to be this deep. The oxygen in his lungs was dwindling fast, and his body was starting to protest.
He swung the flashlight around, its beam sweeping over the area surrounding the coffin. Black "seaweed" drifted lazily along the reservoir floor. It wasn't until he descended another meter or two that Chen Ge saw clearly — it wasn't seaweed at all. It was human hair.
Dense, matted, woven together into an endless tangle. The sight made Chen Ge's eyelids twitch violently.
"Wenwen's sister wants me to pass through the middle of this black hair?"
The moment the thought entered his mind, his body couldn't help but shudder.
The black hair coiled around Chen Ge's arm, and once the "seaweed" at the bottom of the reservoir was pushed aside, what lay beneath was a pale, bloated face.
"A woman." Her eyes were closed, her body floating upright along the reservoir floor. Something appeared to be tied to her legs, connecting her to the coffin.
After a rough survey, Chen Ge spotted a hole in the reservoir floor. The coffin was wedged in it, and the corpses floated above the entrance like sentinels. Their hair had fused with the seaweed, spreading into one vast, dark canopy.
To enter the hole, he would have to push through the seaweed and the dead women's hair.
Chen Ge had never encountered anything this macabre. The mounting tension was burning through his oxygen faster, and the suffocation was growing more and more intense.
He reached out and parted the seaweed and hair, slipping past the floating corpses.
The hole at the bottom of the reservoir was deep, and the coffin was lodged just a short distance from the entrance.
The moment Chen Ge entered the cavern, the black hair wrapped around his fingers loosened — Wenwen's sister couldn't get any closer to the coffin.
Unable to speak, he resorted to hand signals. Fortunately, Xu Yin and Chen Ge had worked together enough times that he understood quickly.
A splash of crimson surfaced beneath the dark water, as though blood had been poured in. Xu Yin tried to follow Chen Ge into the cave, but the moment he drew near, strange sounds echoed from below, as if some monstrous thing lurking inside was slowly waking up.
Xu Yin urged Chen Ge to pull back. He sensed that something deeply wrong was hidden in that cavern.
"Is Wenwen's sister's body deep inside the cave, or is it in the coffin?"
Water had seeped into his ears, his breathing was labored, and Chen Ge's condition was deteriorating rapidly. He had to make a decision immediately.
"Open the coffin! If Wenwen's sister's body isn't inside, we retreat at once."
None of the ghosts were willing to go near the cave — something was definitely wrong with it. Whatever the reason, it was bad news for Chen Ge, who had no ghosts at his side.
He'd dealt with all manner of spirits, and the only things that could truly frighten ghosts were ghosts that were fiercer, more terrifying.
Chen Ge was a poor diver, so he had no choice but to grab onto the seaweed and the dead women's hair near the coffin, hauling himself closer hand over hand.
The flashlight Zhang Dapo had given him wasn't designed for underwater use — its beam flickered in and out, threatening to die at any moment.
His light was about to fail. The suffocation pressed in relentlessly. Every additional second beneath the surface raised the odds that something would go wrong.
Gripping the seaweed and the corpses, Chen Ge finally entered the cave. At the same time, he saw that the corpses' feet were bound by ropes, and the other ends of those ropes disappeared into the coffin.
Every last strand of rope led inside. It almost looked as though whatever was in the coffin held absolute power over their lives and deaths — their master.
It took another second or two, but Chen Ge at last laid his hands on the coffin inside the cave.
He shifted his position so the flashlight's beam could reach deeper into the cavern.
"That man from the fishing association saw a large number of water ghosts in the East Ridge Reservoir, but there are only four corpses near this cave. Could the rest of them all be hiding inside?"
The flashlight couldn't penetrate far enough into the cave for him to see what was really in there.
"Once I'm out, I'll have to report the corpses to the police. As for this cave, I'll leave it to Captain Yan and his team." Chen Ge badly wanted to suggest to Captain Yan that they drain the reservoir, but he doubted that was feasible. The East Ridge Reservoir sat upstream, connected to the tributaries of several major rivers. Unless they cut off the water source entirely, there was no way to pump it dry.
"No point overthinking it." His brain was already starting to fog from the lack of oxygen.