“If you see a wall that goes up and down and left and right and you can’t see the end, and you never get to its end, what is it?” A calm voice raised in the channel.
Maans looked up in surprise. It was Ye Sheng’s voice.
“That’s death. I used to read a book and now I understand. This is Ye Sheng, both Aki and I are alive, and I am talking to you through the current of snakes. We have arrived at the palace of Norton, the King of Bronze and Fire.”
“Are you sure?” Maans’s voice was quivering.
“Professor, if you see this bronze wall in front of me, you’ll believe it, too.” Ye Sheng said.
At the bottom of the water, Ye Sheng and Aki held each other’s hands tightly, suspended in the deep green water. The shooting lamp’s light from upper is lost in faint green, all directions are the same and endless. Except at their front standing a huge bronze wall that extends in four directions. It looks like it has no boundary, it’s infinite.
The earthquake stopped temporarily. The dust in the water gradually fell, making a clearer view.
Ye Sheng identified a mottled mark in the rust on the bronze walls. It was the same mark as on the clay tablets they had just found. It was a burning face, only much larger.
“This is a… city of bronze?” Aki said quietly. There was a separate line of communication between her and Ye Sheng.
“Like the legendary bronze city he made on the snow and ice in Myth of North Europe.” Ye Sheng said, “We are lucky! We wouldn’t have been able to drill our way through the water until the earthquake opened the fissure.”
“Yeah, who knew it was buried dozens of meters underground? Casting the whole city in bronze, I don’t know how the dragons did it.”
“Professor Von Schneider had a guess. Norton, the dragon king, used the whole mountain as a chisel and poured the copper paste into it from the top. At the same time that the bronze city was being built, the heat caused the rocks to crack and formed a technically impossible behemoth city. A city made entirely of bronze, his habitat.”
“It’s crazy to imagine that.” Aki whispered, “He… Will he be in there?”
“You’ll have to go in and see.” Ye Sheng said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“Ye Sheng, Aki, prepare to withdraw,” Maans said. “I’m afraid there will be aftershocks, and your oxygen reserves are low.”
“Professor, do you know what I see now? It’s the edge between the worlds of dragons and humans. Do you stop breathing when you touch the edge of the world? If an aftershock closes the gap, you’ll regret it. There was something inside,” Ye Sheng said. “I could feel my snakes swimming around something. They are scared.”
Maans was silent for a full minute. “Fear… Is it Norton’s grave that scares the snake?” He took a deep breath. “Ok, I see. I will replace the new equipment for you, but remember, you only have two hours. Both oxygen and electricity will last only two hours, and the helicopter of the Chinese government will probably arrive in two hours when the underwater operation will be forced to stop.”
“Yes,” said Ye Sheng. “but now I wonder where the door of the dragon king’s house is. There’s even no gap.”
“I probably do know. Wait, I’ll bring a locksmith down to you soon.” Maans said.
Maans went to the cabin and dialled. “Principal, a new development of Kui Men Project. We found a city made entirely of bronze in an underwater fissure created by the earthquake.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. “Bronze city. It’s the palace of Norton, the King of Bronze and Fire.”
“We must explore it at once. Even though the wind and rain on the Yangtze river are heavy, it’s risky,” Maans said. “but it’s hard to wait. We have competitors.”
“Competitors? Who is it? There are too few people who can compete with us in the field of archaeological exploration.”
“An underwater expedition, funded by private foundations in Hong Kong, China, is exploring a newly discovered underwater burial site. They don’t seem to know anything about dragons, but they will be diving soon.” Maans said, “If they found the bronze city, we might not be able to keep the secret. Ye Sheng thinks… There’s something in the ancient bronze city… It’s not a dead city.”
“I see. Your request has been granted,” said the principal. “For them, the first is to capture alive, the second is to kill. If this thing is out of control, the whole world will be upside down.”
“Time is limited. May I use ‘the key’ to open the bronze city?
“That’s why I let you take him!”
Maans put the phone away and bent down to stroke the baby in the cradle. The baby, who had been wailing, grew quiet and looked around with wide, innocent eyes. Near the cradle sat a charming woman, about thirty or forty, who had a diamond ring glistened on the third finger of her left hand.
“Honey, did you feel that thing?” Maans pinched the baby’s nose.
“He must be used with care; it is our only ‘key’ at present., it is difficult to find a second people with such high purity of dragon blood, even Chu Zihang cannot compare with him.” The woman said.
“But he is much better behaved than Chu Zihang,” Maans teased the baby. “Don’t act so unbelieving. You are just his foster mother, all of us love him. How much time you have to take care of your daughter?”
“Chen Motong?” The woman said simply, “I don’t see her thinking of me as a mother.”
“Your family problems are complicated… Let’s not talk about that during the work session,” Maans said, picking up the baby and looking at her. “Don’t mind I speak one more line about your family? Unless the daughter treats you as a mother, you don’t treat her as your daughter, isn’t a mother like this too demanding? You have a beautiful adopted daughter.”
“You’re her mentor, and I know you care about her. However, a girl looked at her mother died in front of her, but do not cry, just wait for two days until people knocked quietly, left me no intention to love.” There was no movement in the woman’s voice.
“Well,” sighed Maans, “I just wanted to say that Nuo Nuo can be very eccentric sometimes… But she’s a… very nice girl.”
Maans returned to the front cabin and stood at the window, arms outstretched, waiting for Selma to put him in his diving suit.
His sight wandered through the wind and rain to the mountains above the water. “Bai Di city,” he said. “I like the name.”
“Captain, does Bai Di city refer to the residence of the dragon king or a city?” Asked Selma.
“It’s a city built more than two thousand years ago. Decades ago it was exposed to the air because the Three Gorges Reservoir was built, the water level rose and the main part of the old city was submerged, leaving only the Bai Di Temple on the island. The city was founded by a man named Gongsun Shu, who set up his state here against an idealistic dynastic rebel, Wang Mang. Some people call him the white emperor.”
“The name reminds me of the white king.” The third mate said.
“Not the white king, but the King of Bronze and Fire. He is also known as the Grey King, the noble ancestor of the dragon race, one of the ‘four monarchs’. His name is Norton. Descended from the black king, Nidhogg Directly.”
“Self-fertilization?” Said Selma. “Is Nidhogg his father or mother?”
“According to the current research, dragons are like normal creatures on breeding. For the vast majority of dragons, there are parents. However, the first generations are different, the ‘four monarchs’ are not produced by the mating of male and female bodies. They represent the four elements, which were split directly from the black king. The black king is both his father and his mother.” Maans said, “The Chinese have five elements: gold, wood, water, fire and earth, while the dragons have only four elements: earth, water, wind and fire. You should have learned that in an introductory course in alchemy.”
“Is that Chinese, Gongsun Shu, actually a dragon king?”
“No, it’s someone hiding behind Gongsun Shu. Before he claimed himself as an emperor, he claimed to have seen a dragon rising from the well and lying prone in front of his mansion. In Chinese history, it is recorded as ‘dragon’s appearing’, which is regarded as a good omen by Gongsun Shu.” Maans said, “Sichuan Province was the west on the map of ancient China, and Gongsun Shu thought his luck came from metal. The colour of the metal is white, so he was called the ‘white emperor’. In other words, the so-called ‘Bai Di’ is not the ‘white king’, but means ‘king of metal’ in Chinese. And coincidentally, Norton, the King of Bronze and Fire, had two miracles. First, incredible flame. Second, he refined bronze from the depths of the earth and used it as a weapon.”
“This man… Oh no, why does this dragon do this? Casting such a bronze city is an incredible project!”
Maans spread his hand and took off his cigar. “We never knew that. If we want to figure out what the dragons want to do, we have to figure out what their relationship with humans is. This is an academic problem. We can’t get the answer by only analyzing the fossils of dragons. We may have to catch a living dragon king to torture him.” He paused. “Tonight is an opportunity!”
Ye Sheng felt that the uneasiness of the “snake” he had left inside the bronze city had increased, it was swimming much faster.
The beam of spotlights came down, a figure was swimming towards them. Maans did not speak, but tapped his helmet and mask in greeting and let out a string of bubbles. He looks like a pregnant woman because his special diving suit has a transparent material pouch in front of him. Inside is a baby wearing a very small diving suit. In this underwater world, which adults can’t help but fear, the baby was miraculously not crying. He turned his head slowly around, the golden light was flowing in his pupils.
Maans took the new signal line, and after the connection, he replaced the oxygen cylinders for Ye Sheng and Aki.
“Ooh! The key!” Ye Sheng patted Maans on the stomach to tickle the baby. “Professor, you look like a diving kangaroo.”
“Then you are like a fox who came here to steal my wallaby! Remember, two hours, “Maans said, raising two fingers. “Get ready. I’m going to open the door.”
Ye Sheng and Aki floated behind Maans, each of them put a hand on his shoulder. Maans folded his hands across his chest and gave his favourite students a firm pat on the hand.
Maans closed his eyes, pressed his hand on the bronze wall and murmured. Like singing and roaring, the majestic voice directly penetrated the depth of Ye Sheng and Aki’s mind. Maans suddenly opened his eyes and did what will freak out normal divers. He opened the mask on his pressure suit 120 meters below the surface. This will allow the huge water pressure directly to press his fragile human body, his blood in every bubble will scramble to escape, may burst his blood vessels!
Maans’s voice echoed in the water. At this moment, he released his speaking spirit.
Speaking Spirit – Undusted.
The water around Maans swirled, and a transparent shell of water expanded rapidly outward around him. Water was forced out of a spherical space several meters. The vortex swirled around them at high speed, and the high-pressure oxygen leaking from the oxygen cylinder of Maans filled the space in the bubble. They are standing in the air!
Where Maans’s hand had touched, as the wind blew over the surface of the bronze walls, chunks of copper rust had been stripped away, revealing new metal surfaces with a greasy-black sheen. The pattern on the wall was clearly visible, a raised face with a burning log in its mouth. It was a strange picture, its face twisted in pain, but it would not let go of the teeth that held the log.
“Baby, the rest is up to you.” Hanging from the bronze walls with steel claws, Maans lifted the baby carefully from the belly of the suit.
Silence, only the sound of high-speed rotation of the vortex. The baby with the golden pupils remained silent for a long time, then bent down hard and stood up, standing on the palm of Maans’s hand. He looked only a few months old, with a sucker in his mouth, a one-piece baby suit with cows of all sizes, and only a few stray hairs on his head. But such a child straightened his back solemn as a priest. He gazed into the bronze man’s face, and stretched out his little chubby hand slowly, put a finger between its eyebrows.
A bronze bulge between the eyebrows cut the baby’s delicate fingers, and blood ran over the anguished face. For an instant, Aki saw the face twisted with a happy expression. Ye Sheng reached out and caught the pacifier that had fallen from the baby’s mouth. The sound, low as a bell, gushed out of the child’s mouth. The bronze wall stated to react.
The baby’s blood poured into the bronze face’s mouth as if it had been forcibly sucked. But the infant stood in the martyr’s impassive attitude, completely ignored the loss of blood without expression. He bent slightly as if to kiss the mouth of the bronze man. Maans hugged him and stopped the appalling act forcibly. He took out the tourniquet, wrapped it around the baby’s pinkie carefully and patted his face. “Key, that’s enough, you’re wonderful.”
After sucking the blood, the bronze man fell silent for a moment, then slowly opened its mouth like yawning. There was a terrible noise of metal being heated and broken up deep in the bronze wall. A dark hole about one meter appeared on the bronze wall. Around were the teeth of the bronze face, not human teeth, the sharp edges were like daggers.
“This is the entrance.” Ye Sheng whispered.
“The great achievement of alchemy was to contain the spirit in the purest substance and then serve as the guardian here,” said Maans. “You have about two hours, and the spirit will be closed.”
“About?” Ye Sheng said, “So imprecise? If we were exploring the moon, would you say we have about two hours to land on the moon? It’s even more dangerous than the moon!”
“Then we shall save a minute for discussion,” Maans said. “I will take back my speaking spirit, and you can enter after the passage is filled with water.”
The pale gold in the baby’s eyes faded. He held up his bandaged finger to himself, looked at it in surprise, and burst into tears.
“Oh-oh-oh, don’t cry don’t cry, that’s good enough for you.” Maans put the baby back into the pouch with a helpless father’s look on his face.
“Remember, two hours,” Maans looked into Ye Sheng’s eyes and told him again, “it’s not time for Norton to wake up. The goal is to find his eggs, but if not, destroy it.” He passed a black tin box. “Something from the Equipment Department. It can destroy the egg but you must move at least 50 meters before its detonating.”
Ye Sheng gave a thumbs-up and Maans put his helmet back on. He took his speaking spirit back, the huge ball of air broke into countless bubbles in a flash, rising rapidly towards the top, and the surging water made Ye Sheng and Aki almost unable to breathe. The professor was as agile as a fish, diving back into the water on a bronze wall while turning on the hydro-assist device behind him and leaving at high speed.
Aki looked up at Maans disappearing into the distance. Darkness had returned, and the only light was the spotlights on Ye Sheng’s helmet.
Aki suddenly felt the cold, devastating cold on the edge of the world.
“Ye Sheng!” She called back.
“Here I am.” Ye Sheng held out his hand and shook with her through thick gloves, smiling.
Maans stepped back to the ship and took off his fins. He was so hurried that he didn’t take off the diving suit and went ahead to the cabin.
“Life parameters normal, signal unobstructed. They’ve gone deep inside, and there’s a lot of bronze statues, space station tunnels, and… Anyway, you won’t believe it. My god, people who haven’t seen it with their own eyes won’t believe it!” Selma came up with excitement.
“Put it on the big screen,” Maans said.
Dark green video footage appeared on the big screen, which was sent back from underwater by Ye Sheng and Aki. In the spotlight column, ripple shown an incredible round bronze. Around it is a circle as sharp as spikes. At first sight, it reminds people images of it whizzing in eerie arcs and spinning around the neck of an enemy if thrown.
“Incredible craftsmanship.” Whispered Maans.
“It looks like some kind of weapon.” Said Selma.
“It’s not a weapon, it’s a gear, a part of a system.” Answered Maans.
The camera kept pulling away, and it seemed that Ye Sheng was swimming away slowly with his helmet-mounted camera, which rose above the water.
“There’s a lot of residual air in there, which buys us a lot of time,” Maans says.
“No, the composition of the air is so low in oxygen that the oxygen is used up by the oxidation of the metal.” Said the first mate, “They only have enough oxygen for an hour and 35 minutes… No, for 33 minutes.”
A second metal disc appears in the shot, followed by one and another… Countless metal discs covered a huge wall of bronze, with teeth clenched together. Maans looked down at his wrist, there was a mechanical Omega diving watch.
“This is Ye Sheng reporting. I feel like I’m swimming in a huge mechanical watch.” Ye Sheng said.
“It’s a kind of alchemy machine,” Maans said. “By looking at the complexity of it, I can tell that Norton is a great machinist. However, this is not surprising. Ancient Chinese story said that people were able to create wooden birds that could fly in the sky without falling. You have only 50 minutes, Ye Sheng, Aki, find the bedroom of Norton ASAP.”
“Roger that, I can feel the snake’s position is getting close to me.” Ye Sheng said.
He touched the black box and turned to Aki. “You can take pictures and samples here, I’ll find the snake under us. Pay attention to my vital data. If I have a problem, don’t rescue me. Evacuate first. This is the order of the group leader.”
“Yes,” Aki said.
Dragon's Raja 