Chapter Two: Nan Bei of the Nan Family (1)
Beside them, a stranger had also finished putting on his diving suit. Judging by the skin left exposed, he was clearly darker and rougher than the people around him. He was probably Cheng Muyang’s guide. The speedboat sped against the wind and waves for a long while before finally stopping at a place marked by a yellow buoy. Without a word, the guide turned over and went straight into the water.
Cheng Muyang gestured for her to enter the water first.
She sat down at the side of the boat, her back to the surface of the water, and leaned backward.
Instantly, water pressure came at her from all sides. She sank two or three meters before finally beginning to stretch out her body and limbs. In her field of vision, deeper down on the lakebed, lights were waiting all along for her and Cheng Muyang.
Once the depth exceeded eight meters, visibility had already become extremely poor.
Although the diving mask had night-vision capabilities, there was nothing particularly special about the lakebed like this, apart from schools of fish constantly darting back and forth.
After they passed thirty meters, Cheng Muyang clearly displayed an astonishing sense of balance underwater. Most of the time, he was waiting for her to adjust to her own underwater swimming. She turned her head and looked at Cheng Muyang behind her, unable to figure out what the “scenery I’ve never seen before” he had spoken of could possibly be.
Three or four minutes later, she finally saw the perfect answer.
An ancient old city lay silent in the darkness of the lakebed.
In waters like these, there could actually be such a strange existence. Especially through the night-vision lenses, the entire ancient city was outlined in monotonous colors, resembling a “mirage.”
When she had first learned to dive, the instructor had joked that weightlessness was the feeling most capable of making a person excited and afraid.
And the only things that could truly let you experience it, apart from walking in space, were diving. Back then, when she descended to the seabed, even touching all kinds of creatures had never made her feel as excited as the instructor had described.
Yet in these few seconds, floating quietly in the deep water, sweeping her gaze over the streets and houses from “above” the old city, even seeing the real, crumbling brick walls, she felt that sensation rise from the depths of her heart. Dozens of meters below the surface, there existed such an old city, its bricks and tiles still intact, its buildings not yet destroyed. It existed vividly, and with that same silence, quietly examined you.
Though swimming in such deep water was exhausting, she still put all her effort into swimming to above the “孝节” (filial piety & chastity) archway, four or five stories high, and reached out to touch the stone-lion carvings on it. Even through her thick diving gloves, she could still feel the intricate ridges and contours beneath her fingers.
Suddenly, a hand reached over and grasped the hand she had placed on the stone carving.
She knew it was Cheng Muyang, but she did not know what he wanted to do this time. With his hand wearing a black diving glove, he spread her palm flat and very slowly wrote with his finger in the center of her hand: “Like?”
Her breathing became uneven. She simply loved the scenery here to death, and soon clasped his hand in return. In the same way, she spread his palm flat, extended her index finger, and lightly drew an “A,” then wrote a lowercase “a.”
Her Russian roommate had once taught her some simple Russian, most of which she had nearly forgotten. Only this character was too interesting to forget. It was the Russian word for “yes,” and when written as “да,” it looked remarkably like “Aa.”
Since Cheng Muyang was proficient in Russian, even if she had written it incorrectly, he would surely be able to guess. To make sure he understood, Nan Bei deliberately repeated it twice more.
They looked at each other through their diving masks, and she tried her best to show him that she was genuinely happy. Unfortunately, in a place like this, there was really nothing she could do. Cheng Muyang seemed to sense it, though.
Soon, he released her hand and placed his right palm over the left side of his chest, very gentlemanly performing a salute with his hand over his heart.
Because of the water pressure, his movement was not quite standard, but it still made her laugh.
The two of them passed through the streets and among the stone steles, following the guide as they toured the entire underwater ancient city. By the time they surfaced, her arms and thighs were so exhausted that they had begun to ache and go weak. The single speedboat they had come in on had become two.
The young man who had brought them drove a separate speedboat, taking the two of them away from the main group.
Because they had been wearing insulating diving suits for such a long time, and because surfacing had taken another ten-odd minutes, Cheng Muyang already had a little sweat on his cheeks when he took off his diving suit. The young man beside him handed him a large bucket of mineral water. He simply stood at the side of the boat, holding the bucket in one hand, leaned his body out, and poured the water from the bucket directly over his hair to rinse it.
Large sheets of water poured down onto the surface of the lake, splashing in every direction.
“How did you know there was an ancient city underwater?” She kept pounding her thighs so she would not have any discomfort tomorrow. “For me, this place is the birthplace of ‘Nongfu Spring is a little sweet.’”
Nongfu Spring (农夫山泉) is a Chinese bottled-water brand whose famous slogan is “农夫山泉有点甜”, literally, “Nongfu Spring is a little sweet.” Nan Bei is joking that the lake is the source of that slogan.
“What you saw just now was Lion City. Farther away, there’s also He City.” He placed the bucket beside the young man driving the speedboat. “Xiao Feng, sorry about using up the water you were drinking.”
The young man shook his fist, pulled a flattened plastic cup from his trouser pocket, pried it open with two fingers, scooped up all the water remaining in the bucket, and drank it clean.
“This place was originally Qianshan Township. Later, in order to build a reservoir, all the residents were dispersed to provinces inland. They released the water and submerged these two thousand-year-old ancient cities.” Seeing that the sunlight was making Nan Bei squint badly, Cheng Muyang placed his fisherman’s hat over her head. “The two elderly aunties who hosted you are from here.”
“A thousand-year-old ancient city?” She calculated the dynasties in her head. “Wouldn’t that mean there are antiques everywhere?”
“More or less.”
“What a pity.” She stretched out her legs, no longer caring about the blazing sun, feeling that simply sitting like this was the most enjoyable thing in the world. “How about we go into the water again tomorrow? I’ll go move a few Song-dynasty floor tiles and take them home as souvenirs.”
He laughed. “No problem. Aren’t you afraid of encountering a water ghost?”
“If you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t be afraid.” She wrinkled the tip of her nose, somewhat regretful. “If this were Scotland, I’d actually rather run into a water ghost. You know, the various ghosts in Chinese legends always have all kinds of ugly descriptions. But in Scotland, a water ghost can be a very handsome horse, or an especially handsome young man. He’ll make you fall in love with him, and then willingly walk into a watery grave.”
There was still water in the ends of his hair, catching the sunlight and reflecting tiny glints of light.
She looked up at him and, smiling faintly, said, “At the very end of the legend, every girl is told that if she wants to tell a gentleman from a water ghost, she should look at his hair. Usually, you know, a water ghost’s hair is wet.”
Cheng Muyang seemed not to mind her way of putting it. Instead, he half-crouched and extended his right hand toward her. “Then, beautiful young lady, would you be willing to come with me? Hmm?”
“Very willing.” Smiling brightly, she gave his palm a light slap before withdrawing her hand. “No need to provide food and lodging. As long as there’s water to drink, that’s enough. Cheng Muyang, don’t tell me there isn’t a single drop of water left on this speedboat?”
The young man called Xiao Feng still had the plastic cup between his teeth. Hearing this, he immediately burst out laughing.
The lake stretched vast and hazy, covering nearly a hundred square kilometers, with more than a thousand islands scattered across it like stars. Unfortunately, there was not a drop of drinking water around them.
Cheng Muyang looked at her, then turned to gaze into the distance and told Xiao Feng to pass between the two mountains and head toward the nearest fishing boat.
The speedboat raced across the water, the waves it split apart spraying more than three meters high. In areas with more people, the lake water was also considerably clearer, at least enough to see nearly seven or eight meters below the surface.
Five or six fishing boats were scattered loosely across the lake.
The instant she saw these traces of ordinary human life, she suddenly found it wondrous. At the bottom of the lake lay a thousand-year-old ancient city from half a century ago, while the descendants of those generations had long since scattered to different places. Yet the people now living around the lake here were not the people of this place.
The Qianshan Township of that time had become today’s Qiandao Lake.
As the speedboat approached the fishing boat, Xiao Feng suddenly made a sharp turn and stopped one meter away from it.
The waves that splashed up were a full three or four meters high, startling the middle-aged man and woman on the fishing boat who were gathering in their nets. The two sun-reddened faces stared wide-eyed as Cheng Muyang jumped from the speedboat onto their wooden boat.
The fisherman quickly growled out two sentences, his attitude extremely resistant.
With his back to them, Cheng Muyang actually answered in the local dialect. Before long, the unpleasantness caused by the speedboat’s startling arrival had completely dissipated. The fisherwoman brought out a bowl of water from the cabin, handed it to Cheng Muyang, and said something in a gentle, soft voice.
Nan Bei took the water from his hand and drank a large mouthful directly from the rim of the bowl. Soon, she sighed contentedly. “Sure enough, it’s a little sweet.”
From being exposed to the blazing sunlight, she already had sweat beading across the bridge of her nose.
Cheng Muyang watched her continue drinking. It seemed she really had been parched. In his ear came the fisherwoman’s quiet laughter as she spoke to her husband: Sure enough, he asked for water because of that girl.
They ate seafood by the river for dinner. When they returned to their lodgings and Nan Bei went to shower, she discovered that her back had already been completely sunburned. It was precisely this kind of delicate skin that had often made her Western classmates envious when she was studying. In their eyes, the fine texture of Asian skin really was as delicate as if it could be broken with the slightest touch.
But she had also hated this kind of skin terribly. When she was a little girl, all she had to do was sleep in the wooden house for an hour and she would inevitably be targeted by poisonous insects. No matter how much insect-repelling herb her older brother gathered, it was useless. At its worst, her brother would use a very small knife to make a cross in the swollen area, digging out all the rotten flesh.
Even now, when she thought about it, she could still feel the pain seeping through clenched teeth.
At first, she would cry. Until one time, she saw her brother treating a wound from a snakebite. To stop the venom from spreading, he directly heated the knife until it glowed dark red, then plunged it into the wound on his arm, burning away an entire patch of flesh. At the time, she had been so frightened that she went completely numb.
After that, she never cried again.
Though that did not seem quite right. When she was shot in Belgium, she really had cried until she could hardly breathe.
When the two elderly aunties saw her sunburned back, they made a huge fuss and took out what they claimed was a secret-recipe medicinal ointment. After carefully applying it to her back, they instructed her that she absolutely had to sleep lying on her stomach. Nan Bei did not want to suffer unnecessarily, and she had no reason to disobey them, so naturally, after eleven o’clock, she obediently went back to her room and slept on her stomach.
Cheng Muyang seemed especially fond of bamboo and rattan furnishings. All the furniture was made of these materials.
Under the dim light of the wall lamp, everything she could see was either emerald green or yellow-green.
Even in that state between sleep and wakefulness, she had the illusion that there was the scent of a forest here.
When she woke again, it was still pitch-black outside. The effect of the sunburn ointment seemed to have worn off, and her back was unbearably itchy. And because she had never been accustomed to sleeping with the air conditioner on, a layer of sweat had already risen over her body on top of the itching and pain.
Nan Bei pulled on a loose camisole and walked barefoot out of the room. The instant the door was pushed open, the cold air from the air conditioner, mixed with the smell of gunpowder, rushed into her face.
Suddenly, there was a faint sound.
The sound of a shell casing hitting the ground.
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