Chapter Sixty: Embarrassment

I gently stroked Mengya’s cheek, reddened by my own hand, feeling deeply remorseful. Yet Mengya simply waved her hand, showing no sign of accepting my apology.

We walked to the foot of the hill, where Grim Face Zhang awaited us with two workers, all holding their diving equipment.

"I knew it—I couldn’t just let you two go alone. Since you’re both so determined, I’ll escort you to the edge of the Heavenly Pool," he said.

"That won’t be necessary," Mengya replied coldly.

Grim Face Zhang seemed unsurprised, perhaps slightly irked by her tone, but he ignored Mengya’s refusal. Slinging his long knife across his back, he led the workers down the mountain, with us following close behind.

The mountain was still steep and treacherous. Without Grim Face Zhang and his men helping to carry the gear, Mengya and I would probably have taken a whole day just to reach the pool. Even so, it took us more than an hour of downhill trekking before we finally stood at the water’s edge.

At the shore, I looked out over the pool. From above, the water had seemed an ethereal blue, yet up close it was less clear. Still, I could vaguely make out small fish darting about beneath the surface.

Grim Face Zhang glanced at the two of us, as if doubting our capabilities, but kept his thoughts to himself. He turned to his two men and said, "What are you standing around for?"

The workers nodded, pulled an inflatable raft out of their pack, and attached the air valve. The thing looked like a piece of ragged clothing at first, but after a few minutes of pumping, it became a large raft capable of carrying five or six people.

They pushed the raft into the water and climbed aboard, Grim Face Zhang following suit.

"Aren’t you coming?" Grim Face Zhang called to us.

Only then did I realize he still doubted our competence and had decided to accompany us for that reason.

"If you’d told us sooner, we wouldn’t have come," I said.

"Enough talk. Get on," he snapped.

I nodded, and Mengya and I hopped into the boat. The workers rowed, while the rest of us scanned the surroundings. The lake was stunning, the waters calm and undisturbed—there was not the slightest sign of a "prehistoric monster."

"Nothing out there at all," I muttered to myself, glancing at Grim Face Zhang. He seemed to have relaxed, lighting a cigarette as he gazed into the distance. I shook my head. "Uncle, shall I dive down and take a look?"

Grim Face Zhang glanced at me, stubbed his cigarette out in the water, and waved his hand. "No need. I’ll go myself."

I immediately felt I was being dismissed as useless again, a flicker of resentment crossing my mind. But Mengya just smiled, "We’ll leave it to you, Third Uncle."

Without a word, Grim Face Zhang stripped down to black boxer shorts, smoothed back his white hair, and put on a wetsuit with his men’s help. He checked his oxygen tank and mask, said nothing more, and then slipped backward into the water.

Perhaps he, too, was nervous; he was only down for a few minutes before surfacing. We helped him back on board, and he shook his head. "Plenty of fish, but no prehistoric monsters." He pointed to the north side of the lake. "There’s a narrow passage over there—it opens up much wider beyond that. We may have to go there to find the underwater tomb."

I nodded. Grim Face Zhang sat on the raft and took off his wetsuit, about to remove his wet underwear as well before remembering Mengya was present. He stopped abruptly and muttered, "What a nuisance."

Mengya shot him a look of disdain but said nothing.

Seeing that the day’s task was done, the workers turned the raft around and rowed back to shore. They deflated the raft and packed it up. Grim Face Zhang, bare-chested, took a dry pair of underwear and ducked beneath a tree to change.

Suddenly, a huge splash echoed across the lake, droplets spraying us where we stood.

Startled, I looked out and saw, deep in the lake, a massive black shape—just as yesterday, it was trumpet-shaped and terrifying.

"What’s going on?" Grim Face Zhang’s words had barely left his lips when, in an instant, clouds rolled in, turning the bright sky to pitch-black.

A crack of thunder split the sky as rain poured down in torrents.

Staring intently, I saw the black shadow: an enormous figure looming from the lake’s center, soaring upward, dancing among the clouds. All around it, the water rose in towering waves, two to three meters high, like a wall.

"Run!" Grim Face Zhang shouted, and the workers yelled as they ran for their lives.

My legs felt as if they had turned to stone. Terror rooted me to the spot—so much for saying there was nothing out there. That black phantom clearly meant to kill me.

Just then, Mengya grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the mountains.

We scrambled up onto a terrace partway up the slope, escaping the waves that crashed into the pool below. Looking around, it seemed we were out of danger. Safe at last, my curiosity flared again. Catching my breath, I pulled the powerful searchlight from my pack—the one we’d left on the raft—and thought, Let’s see what this dragon really is.

"Are you trying to get us killed?" Grim Face Zhang hissed.

I waved him off, switched on the thousand-watt searchlight, and shone the beam onto the dragon’s body.

"This—this is!" Grim Face Zhang spat. "I almost ran all the way back to Beijing out of fright. Looks like my Third Door’s luck is running out."

I couldn’t help but laugh, and cry at once. The towering dragon rising from the water—was nothing more than a waterspout!

A waterspout is simply a tornado that forms over water, a rotating vortex that draws water upward into its center. If a land tornado moves toward the sea, it can become a waterspout. With the high elevation, frequent convection, and high humidity here at the Heavenly Pool, waterspouts are common. And yet we mistook this natural phenomenon for a dragon—how foolish we were.

The waterspout vanished quickly, leaving us embarrassed. Grim Face Zhang, usually so proud, was utterly dejected, not even daring to smoke on the way back, lost in thought, his pride wounded.

An hour later, we returned to camp, finding it quiet. Dragon King hurried over as soon as he saw us.

"Third Brother, did you see the dragon? We thought it had eaten you! Thank heavens you made it back alive!" Though he was in his sixties or seventies, he nearly burst into tears.

Grim Face Zhang sighed deeply, saying nothing as he sat on the ground.

His behavior was unusually subdued, unlike him at all. Dragon King, bewildered, looked to me and Mengya. "Nephew, what happened?"

I sighed and, forcing a wry smile, explained everything about the true nature of the "Heavenly Pool Dragon."

When the others heard the dragon was just a waterspout, the mood turned awkward—especially for the polymath, the team’s so-called brains, who felt he’d disgraced himself by being so terrified of a mere waterspout. He was so ashamed, he joked about diving into a puddle to drown.

After my explanation, Grim Face Zhang sighed again. "We’ve really disgraced ourselves—if the other two brothers find out, we might as well kill ourselves in shame."

I chuckled inwardly. Who do you think you are, Yu Qian, ready to die for the world?

The polymath, shameless as ever, laughed it off and said, "Oh, come on. Luckily there’s no outsider around. If we keep quiet, who will ever know?"

Grim Face Zhang glared at her but said nothing more, instead pointing north. "I scouted the terrain earlier. On the north side of the lake, there’s a narrow passage, and it’s likely that what we’re looking for lies beyond. Of all the possible sites, the north side seems the most promising. Let’s rest here tonight and head for the passage tomorrow morning."