The cold, oily sensation, paired with that high-frequency electronic screech, surged through the narrow cavern. In that instant, my brain felt as if it had been shoved into a high-speed industrial shredder. The searing pain in my eardrums made coherent thought impossible. As a Yale PhD in Architectural Engineering, I had spent my life seeking stability in structural mechanics, but now, the logic I relied on was disintegrating in this black, stagnant water.

  "Damn it! Where the hell are the guides?" Barney’s voice exploded in my ear, thick with the desperation of a cornered animal. He jammed his pulse rifle into his shoulder, the infrared laser dancing frantically across the dark, finding nothing but an empty stern.

  I turned my head stiffly. The spots where the old guide and the brutish boatman had sat were vacant. All that remained were two tattered sheepskin pads and a wooden pole still swaying with the river’s momentum. The water was unnaturally calm—not a single ripple indicated a body hitting the surface. It was as if their "physical volume" had been erased from the plane of existence by the cave itself.

  "They... they just evaporated right in front of us?" I heard my own voice trembling. My mind raced: Impossible. According to the conservation of momentum and displacement logic, the disappearance of two adult males must involve a gravitational signature or acoustic feedback. Unless... the space on this boat is warped.

  "Forget the dead. Look ahead!" Uncle Arthur’s voice was like a shard of ice. His hand was clamped onto his Colt, his eyes as sharp as a hawk that had spotted its prey.

  Within the rolling, fragrant mist, the figure in the Victorian silk shroud remained seated on the rock. Her mechanical combing had stopped. Her hair, long as sea kelp, trailed into the water, drifting with the thick, black current. At the edge of my flashlight’s peripheral glow, I saw her neck begin to twist at an angle that defied every law of human anatomy.

  Snap. Crack.

  The sound of bone being forcibly displaced beneath the flesh.

  "To hell with this. Whatever you are, go comb your hair in the afterlife!" Barney finally snapped under the suffocating pressure. He flipped the charging switch on his pulse rifle.

  "Don't fire!" Caspian suddenly reached out, his two unnaturally long fingers clamping down on Barney’s barrel.

  His voice remained flat as a mirror, yet carried an undeniable authority. "That isn't a physical entity. It’s a refraction of 'Qi.' Your EMP will shatter the magnetic equilibrium here and draw up everything from the bottom."

  Cold sweat dripped from Barney’s chin onto his weapon. He hissed through gritted teeth, "Then what do we do? Just watch this lady snap her own neck? My heart isn't made of titanium, kid!"

  I took a sharp breath, forcing myself into a state of academic detachment. I looked down into the black water. Under the flashlight, the pale corpses pinned by bronze spears remained in their kneeling posture.

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  "Uncle Arthur... look at the water," I whispered, my voice barely a thread.

  In the flickering reflection, amidst the shadows of our four figures on the boat, there was a fifth. It was attached to my own reflection—a spindly, elongated shadow with a waterfall of black hair. Through the dark mirror of the water, it was staring directly into my eyes.

  In that heartbeat, a sensation like a frozen needle pierced the back of my neck.

  "It’s not in front of us. It’s on our backs," I forced the words out. As an architect, I was trained to analyze space, but I never imagined a sense of space could be replaced by such precise visual deception. The white figure on the rock was a projection; the real threat had been lurking in our cognitive blind spots all along.

  "Zhen Chen Bu Wen, Shui Ying Qi Shen (The Sunken Needle is restless; the water-shadow preys upon the host)," Arthur muttered an ancient Vance family code. "This is a phantom field of the Ossuary Wraiths (Gu Xiang Yao Ling). Elliot, do not turn around! If your gaze connects with its eyes, it will synchronize with your brain frequency. You’ll believe you’ve become one of those rotting corpses on the riverbed."

  Barney was pacing the small deck. "So what? I’m supposed to just let it sit there? I’m gonna turn around and rip its damn head off!"

  Caspian stood up. Ignoring Barney, he walked to the edge of the boat and leaned down until his face nearly touched the black water. His violet pupils glinted with an eerie, cold light in the dark.

  "The things below are coming up," Caspian said tonelessly.

  As he spoke, the calm black surface began to boil. Thousands of fist-sized beetles, their backs patterned with grotesque human faces, erupted from the corpses below. These were Scavenger Beetles (Qian Shui Qiang Lang), their obsidian shells glistening with a sickly sheen.

  "That’s why the bodies haven't decayed..." I stammered, my mind bridging the biological gap. "The beetles parasite the remains, secreting an acidic compound that waxes the flesh."

  "OPEN FIRE!" Arthur roared.

  Barney had been waiting for the word. The pulse rifle spat out brilliant blue arcs. Crack-boom! Crack-boom! Each pulse that hit the swarm vaporized a cluster into charred ichor. But there were too many. They crawled up the sides of the wooden boat like a black tide.

  A beetle sank its mandibles into my ankle. It felt like a piece of red-hot iron being pressed into my flesh.

  "Agh!" I cried out.

  That was when Caspian moved.

  He didn't bother with the beetles on the boat. Instead, he drew a pitch-black broken blade from his vest and slashed it across his own palm. The moment the blood welled up, a pungent, almost paralyzing scent filled the air. It didn't smell like human blood; it smelled like a primal bio-repellent that had been concentrated for a thousand years.

  Caspian slammed his bloody palm onto the water's surface and barked a single syllable:

  "BEGONE!"

  In that instant, the swarming black tide—which had been violently battering the boat—reacted as if it had received an absolute divine command. They let out a shrill, infant-like wailing and scattered in every direction.

  The "water-shadow" attached to my back seemed to be struck by the aura of the blood. It let out a soul-shredding shriek, and the icy weight on my spine vanished, followed by a heavy splash in the water.

  "Row! Now!" Arthur grabbed the long pole.

  Our boat shot forward like an arrow released from a bow, clearing the field of corpses.

  When I dared to look back through the white mist, the figure on the rock had picked up her ivory comb again, rhythmically stroking her black hair. Beneath her, the corpses pinned by bronze spears seemed to turn their heads in unison, their empty sockets following our retreating silhouette.

  "That was just the welcome mat," Caspian said, his back to us as he wrapped his hand in a torn strip of cloth. His tone was terrifyingly calm. "The real Iron Prince is much deeper."

  I stared at his lean, upright silhouette. The mystery of who he was had become deeper than the cavern behind us.