The river from the south descended along the southern edge of the fissure, suspended as a shining waterfall and plunged into the darkness.

The steel ladder is located far from the waterfall, about ten meters down the river.

When we came down the steel ladder, we were standing at the entrance to a south-facing tunnel.

Zhang Quanzhong did not stop and entered the tunnel directly.

The water coming down from the fissure flowed from the west side of the tunnel entrance, where there was not only a dark river, but also flat and wide, more than twice as wide as the moat. Because of this, the river can be vented in a short time.

"Please. "Jingguan Xiaowu caught up and stood side by side with me.

I sniffed hard, and the smell of dampness coming from the tunnel was familiar.

"It's just a revisit. Jingguan Xiaowu said again.

We walked forward side by side, and after only ten steps into the tunnel, I suddenly realized, it turned out that this was the tunnel I had walked through with Jingguan Xiaowu in the illusion. It's just that it is east-west, and now under Zhang Quanzhong's shift, it has become north-south, and the entrance is hidden under the river.

No wonder even Chengbi couldn't find a tunnel after repeated drilling on the east side of Ximen Bridge, it turned out that it had been hidden here by Zhang Quanzhong.

"I remember that the last time we came in before us, there were a lot of people who ended up missing. Where did they go?" I asked.

Those are all living people, with parents, wives and children, as well as families and lives. They disappeared, and families were torn apart.

"Meat eaters despise and fail to plan far. Their fate can only be classified as outcasts, and they will be arranged into dozens of suspicious formations to distract the enemy's attention. Mr. Xia, any success is 'one will become famous and ten thousand bones will wither', so you Chinese ancients left the ancient motto of 'mercy does not command soldiers'. If you want to succeed, forget about the people who died on the battlefield and shrouded in horse leather. Forget, you're not far from success. Jingguan Xiaowu said.

I don't agree with her words, especially when I think that only she and Zhang Quanzhong survived in the Wulongtan Bloody Case, I feel that they escaped by stepping on the heads of all the victims, which seems extremely immoral.

"Let's go, keep up, keep up......" Zhang Quanzhong turned around and summoned twenty steps ahead.

Jingguan Xiaowu and I shut up, quickened our pace, and kept up with Zhang Quanzhong.

"That old woman, the old woman who carried the burden of wontons, was a member of the Five Poisons Sect in Zhaotong, Yunnan, and she had a perverse personality, she poisoned and killed people when she was seven years old, and by the time she was thirty-seven years old, she had more than 400 lives on her hands. At the age of fifty-seven, she competed with the proprietress of the Yamaguchi-gumi in Tokyo for a little white face who acted in a movie, and poisoned 90 people of the Yamaguchi-gumi in one go, almost single-handedly destroying the Yamaguchi-gumi. At the age of sixty-seven, the little white face who had been with her for ten years turned back, gave her sweat medicine, and then tied it up and gave it to the Yamaguchi group. I saved her, bought her life with 100,000 taels of gold, and took the little white face for her with my own hands. So, she threw herself into my disciple and was willing to be a slave for the third life. Don't look at her pitiful, she just needs to add a little special seasoning to the ravioli, and we will die of a rotten stomach. Brother Xia, if I scold her, it is tantamount to treating her as my own, giving her a sense of belonging to her family, and always honestly lurking in the backstreets of Tongyuan Bureau. There are those other people, no matter which one of them is a great traitor, and the least of them also carries a dozen human lives on their backs. They only regard me as the master and grovel in front of me, but I know that this is just a façade, and when my aura is not enough to suppress them, everyone will come to the battle. Miao Jiang Gu Refiner gathers the five poisonous insect refining Gu masters, raises them for life, and never leaves the left and right, becoming a unique magic weapon for Gu refiners to walk the rivers and lakes. Everyone knows that once the Gu Alchemist loses power, the Gu worm will know about it as soon as possible, and then attack its master. Brother Xia, I explain this to you to tell you that as a big person, don't control your subordinates with kindness, gentleness, and warmth, but have a thunderbolt wrist and thunder means......"

He said so much, the most important one is the last sentence.

I smiled bitterly, unable to refute it.

Slightly different from the previous route, we entered a gourd-shaped chamber after successive serpentine turns.

Here, the curved walls are covered with text, densely packed and overlapped, making the most of every inch of space.

There is a section in the center of the chamber that is circumferentially narrowed, which is equivalent to the "waist" of the gourd. Further forward, the diameter of the stone chamber is slightly smaller, which is equal to the upper part of the gourd.

When I looked closer to the wall, it turned out that the writer used the "nested brushwork", in which small characters were embedded in the gaps of each large Chinese character, and smaller characters were embedded in the gaps of the small characters. In this way, the largest word is about the size of a fist, while the smallest word is only the size of a thumb.

This style of writing is common in the prisons of the White Path, where those who have deep grievances and grudges use every inch of the walls of the cell to write on what they have to say. No matter how wide the wall is, there is always a time when it is full, so the prisoner invented the nested writing method, the large set in the middle, the middle set in the small, and the small set even smaller...... Until the walls, roof, and floor of a cell could no longer be found.

This art of writing eventually developed into a unique prison cell culture that became popular among Western performance artists and spread around the world via the Internet.

After reading only a few lines, I knew that the writer had a deep writing foundation and full of emotion, and his sentences were brilliant and quoted, far better than the sour thousand-word texts in today's newspapers.

"Pity my son, I lost the joy of my parents' teasing when I was young, and I grew up without the help of my parents. He is also in the thaumaturgical gate, and his natural fate is ill-fated, and he is displaced, and the hardships of life can be imagined. However, what is the one who is seeking in the life of my generation of thaumaturgists? Is it just a peaceful life of having children, a happy family, a harmonious husband and wife, and a loving father and son? Therefore, life is in the quality rather than in the quantity, I hope that my future generations can abide by the teachings of our ancestors, do not be happy with things, do not be sad with themselves, worry about the worries of the world first, and enjoy the joy of the world after the world, compare with the sages, follow the sages, and leave a famous name in the world......"

These words are written in an upright tone, and at a glance it is clear that they were written by people with great ambitions and great ideals, and every sentence can be copied down as a motto for future generations.

"I don't know who stayed here, and I don't know what kind of lonely years it was that people had the time and mood to leave these words on the wall?" Jing Guan Xiaowu sighed.

"Where are we going?" I asked Zhang Quanzhong.

"Go to a place that even I can't guess. Zhang Quanzhong pointed forward.

This deep tunnel seems to be endless, twisting and turning, stretching into the dark distance.

"In the world of thaumaturgy, once you are trapped, it is not measured in days, months, or years, but in hundreds, thousands, or even forever. If there is a hundred years of time, let alone these two stone rooms, even if there are two hundred or two thousand, it is not enough to lay out and write. Brother Xia, so remember, never ignore this prisoner's dilemma, even the supreme god of the West may not have a way to survive the long years. Zhang Quanzhong patted me lightly on the shoulder.

I remembered the cicada that was placed at the head of the bed in Jingguan Xiaowu's old house, and she said that Zhang Quanzhong's soul was once hidden deep in it.

From 1937 to 2016, there was a gap of 79 years, and he bent over there in an invisible form, during which he was sweet and bitter, like a person drinking ice, cold and warm and cold.

"Thanks for the reminder. I nodded deeply.

We walked slowly through the gourd-shaped stone chamber.

"Whoa, whoa...... Tom, tom, tom...... Bang, bang, bang......" A strange sound came from low ahead.

Zhang Quanzhong didn't speak, and I didn't ask more.

Further on, we seemed to enter a downward spiral channel, making twenty turns around a space about fifteen paces in diameter.

I secretly estimated that the downward slope of the passage was about 30 degrees, and when we walked down this section of the road, we were already more than 50 meters below the ground.

Wulong Pond is the most familiar spring pool of the old Jinan people, and there are the most legends left in the folk. However, most people only care about the situation of the pool, but they can't imagine that there is something else under the pool.

The strange sounds were getting closer and closer, and with each sound, I felt the ground under my feet tremble slightly, and I had a strange feeling of being in the bilge of a big ship.

In the folklore of old Jinan, Wulong Pond is one of the eyes of the East China Sea, and those who are super strong in water can dive to the edge of the sea eye and see the beautiful scenery of the bottom of the East China Sea.

"It's here. Turning another corner, Zhang Quanzhong reminded in a deep voice.

The first thing that caught my eye was a huge curved window, about ten paces long and about four meters high. The room was very dark, but outside the window, it was blue, like a bottomless deep sea.

I approached the window and immediately felt a biting chill.

"Why don't you ask, what is that place?" Zhang Quanzhong asked.

I shook my head and stared intently.

The blue was mysterious and distant, and at the end of the eye, there was a bright star shining.

Jingguan Xiaowu also walked up, leaned close to the window, and stared out deeply.

"Does that place have anything to do with the merman?" I asked faintly.

When I asked this question, Zhang Quanzhong avoided a lot of explanations, and everyone made time to discuss more important issues.

"Yes, to the point, you guessed it right. Zhang Quanzhong replied.

The boundless, dark depths of the ocean are terrifying, but the star seems to give hope. Of course, this is only a superficial phenomenon, and countless logbooks have recorded the strange incident of "mermaids luring sailors with their songs" in countless logbooks since ancient times.

"It's the paradise of the sharks, and it's also the hell of the sharks. Jingguan Xiaowu said.

"Is there any other way to get rid of the control of the 'Lord of the Sharks' other than to redeem oneself?" I asked.

Although I already have another answer, I want to get confirmation from Zhang Quanzhong and Jingguan Xiaowu.

"There is a way, but it is harder than climbing to the sky. That is to kill the Lord of the Sharks, or join forces with others and replace him. Zhang Quanzhong replied immediately.

This is also the answer I got after thinking about it repeatedly, but unfortunately, as Zhang Quanzhong said, it is more difficult to do this than to ascend to the sky.

The lord of the merman is the overlord of the sea, and the emperors of the past dynasties are the overlord of the land, and the balance of the coexistence of the two powers is not easy to maintain. Throughout human history, we know that every few hundred years, emperors have been overthrown by latecomers, and new arrivals have been eliminated by new rebels after generations. One after another, there are many changes. On the contrary, the lord of the merman has always dominated the sea, passed down from generation to generation, and has never heard of being overthrown by any force.

"It's really hard. I nodded slightly.

Zhang Quanzhong walked over and stroked the window, with an indifferent smile on the corner of his mouth.

"Mr. Zhang, what are you laughing at?, have you found a clue to defeat the Lord of the Sharks?" I asked.

In the battle of the backstreet of the Tongyuan Bureau, he did his best to do the game, and only with the help of the visitors from Mount Fuji, Wang Yu, me, and Lian Chengbi, he barely helped Jingguan Xiaowu to survive the catastrophe. For the rest of his life after the catastrophe, he showed this kind of confident expression, and he must have found some kind of favorable opportunity.

"Someone's already there—" He leaned forward, his forehead pressed against the window.

The window is not inlaid with glass, but with high-quality natural crystal, so it can resist high pressure and high cold, and it will last for a long time.

I didn't want to be led by the nose, and I was like him, with my forehead against the crystal window.

This time, I deeply felt that outside the crystal window was the boundless deep sea, and the entire tunnel, Wulong Pond and even Jinan City and Shandong Province were suspended above or in the sea.

The Japanese are anxious about living on a fragile island, fearing that one day they will become the second Atlantis to fall along with the collapsed continental shelf and slide into the Pacific Ocean Trench, as fictional in the movie "Japan Sinks."

At the moment, I have the same anxieties as those Japanese.

"Human beings always need to choose, morality to the left, selfishness to the right, the greater self to the left, the small self to the right, gain to the left, lose to the right...... The timid and selfish will always choose the path that is beneficial to them, but the great and noble will always face the sea, and the spring flowers will bloom. I believe that those two have thrown themselves into the deep blue sea and embarked on the road of assassination without recklessness. Guess what's a good thing or a bad thing for you?"

Zhang Quanzhong's question is elusive to me, even if someone launches an assassination operation to kill the lord of the merman, what does it have to do with me directly?

"Mr. Zhang, don't deliberately embarrass me. I'm not you, and I can't figure out the answers to those questions. I said.

He went to such great lengths to bring me here, not just to ask me a few questions.

"Brother Xia, do you really promise us to go to the merman ghost market?" Zhang Quanzhong stared at my eyes, his gaze blazing, like a torch.

Jingguan Xiaowu was next to me, and I didn't want to answer this question vaguely, so I nodded solemnly.

"Well, I'll take you there before dawn. Zhang Quanzhong breathed a sigh of relief and waved his hand vigorously.

I realized that every time he made a big decision, he would use it as a way to accentuate his tone and boost his confidence.

"Where?" I asked.

Zhang Quanzhong wanted to speak and stopped: "You'll know when you arrive." ”

When we were talking, Jingguan Xiaowu also pressed her forehead against the crystal window, closed her eyes, and clasped her palms together, presumably praying. The only difference was that her palms were not erect on her chest, but slightly upward, with the tips of her middle fingers against her chin.

"I will do my best to do what I promised. I said.

"Okay, good!" Zhang Quanzhong completely relaxed, and when he said these two "good" words, his tone became jumpy and free.

Unlike him, as soon as Jingguan Xiaowu walked into this space, he was deeply immersed in great sorrow.

I'm not a merman, so I can't understand the feeling of a merman when he looks at his hometown from afar, but I guess it must be an absolute "dilemma".

The sea is the eternal habitat of the mermaids, and it is also their only destination after death. She fell in love with Zhang Quanzhong like a swimming fish falling in love with a bird, either jumping on land and desperately trying to love, or diving underwater to forget the light in the eyes of the two during this rendezvous.

Jingguan Xiaowu chose the former, and had to bear the pain of leaving his hometown and wandering.