The other two immediately saw the change in my expression and Fatty asked, "What is it? What do you see?”

"There’s a shadow under the water." I looked carefully, but I didn't dare approach it. Fatty followed my line of sight and squinted at it for a long time, "Where’s the shadow?"

I pointed to where it was underwater, "Can't you see it?"

Fatty moved towards it, but I quickly grabbed him for fear that he would touch it. Its shape looked distorted—almost like a floating corpse—but I knew it wasn’t going to be good whatever it was.

"Look carefully," Poker-Face told me.

I did as he said and found that there was more than one such shadow floating in the water. There was another shadow in front of the first one I had seen and it looked like a lump suspended in the water. All of them were completely black.

If they were floating corpses that had rotted to the point of blackening, then not only would they have looked like giants by now, but they would've had Fatty's physique no matter how fucking thin they were. But these black things didn't show any signs of rotting or bloating.

"It's black. Black all over. More than one. There’s a line of them in the water.""Black? Like Kobe (1)?” Fatty asked me. "Were there any blacks in the Han Dynasty? Could it be a Kunlun slave (2)?"

"This is a serious situation. Quit talking nonsense!" I said angrily.

"Where’s it facing?" Poker-Face asked me.

I pointed in a direction, which turned out to be a water outlet. Poker-Face said, "Don't touch it. We’ll follow you. Go in the direction they’re facing." Then he said to Fatty, "Look at him, don’t look at anything else."

I nodded and then led the two of them forward. As I carefully bypassed the black thing, I asked Poker-Face, “What is it?”

He didn't answer, but his intense gaze remained fixed on me and even Fatty had all of his attention on me. I was too embarrassed to ask any more questions, so I focused on steering us to the water outlet. We soon entered the outlet’s channel, which was as low as the waterway in the Seven Star Lu Palace. We even had to bow our heads in some places, indicating that the water level here wasn’t very high at ordinary times.

It was probably high tide outside right now.

I had to put out the candle every time we went underwater and then it took a long time to light it again. Each time, I was terrified that the candle would never be lit again.

Those black shadows were placed at random points in the water along the way. By this time, my hands and feet were numb, and I was so afraid that I couldn’t even express my emotions directly. Every time I wanted to stop and take a closer look at the shadows, Poker-Face wouldn’t allow it.We continued moving forward as fast as the water would allow, but we didn't know how long we had been walking. Suddenly, the underwater terrain became higher and the water level dropped from my neck to my chest. That was when I saw it. There was a black shadow in front of me with its head sticking out of the lowered water level.

When I paused, Poker-Face looked at my expression and immediately said, "Tell me."

"That thing is out of the water."

"What is it?" Fatty couldn't stand the fact that he still couldn’t see it.

The three of us moved forward until I could get a closer look at it. The black head looked very strange and we could see that the skin was so thin that our green light could pass right through it.

"That's a leather paper doll (3)," Poker-Face said.

I suddenly remembered the legend of the Mute Emperor and how it had said he liked to use paper soldiers and horses for his army. But the army had been blind because their eyes were made of fried sesame seeds.

****

TN Notes:

(1) Kobe Bryant. He was a famous American basketball player. He died last year.

(2) Black slaves from Southeast Asia in the Tang Dynasty. The majority of Kunlun slaves were dark-colored people captured in Southeast Asia, and some of them were Africans bought from Arab merchants who captured them in Africa. More info here. Note, the Han Dynasty was like 3 dynasties before the Tang Dynasty. The Han Dynasty was from 206 BC to 220 AD, while the Tang Dynasty was from 618 to 907 AD.

(3) Leather paper refers to paper made from bast fibers such as mulberry bark and mountain sap. Think of it as a mix of paper and fabric with a leather-like texture.