He had always been fixated on Xu Xuehui's words about corpses, flowers, and treasures.
She wouldn't have said it casually. Since she did, it might mean something truly hidden deep beneath the water, only they hadn't seen it yet because they hadn't dived deep enough.
Seeing Su Li's gesture, Ding Longyun and Gong Xiao turned head-down, weapons in hand, and continued diving deeper.
Su Li followed behind them. The iron rod he held had some weight, making it easier for him to descend.
All three were highly alert. Although the monsters on the two floors they'd just passed seemed to be resting, that didn't mean this area was safe—no one knew if other creatures might appear.
When they sank another three meters and reached the twenty-seventh floor below, they stopped. This floor was also filled with sea spiders.
Su Li quietly approached a window and peered inside. The walls were covered with a dense mass of spiders.
These sea spiders had black-and-white striped bodies, packed together, turning the entire room into a bizarre patchwork of black and white.
Countless sea spiders occupied two floors of the building. Su Li couldn't guess how many there were, but he wondered if the spider queen might be lurking somewhere among them.
He didn't dare disturb them and slowly sank lower.
Suddenly, Ding Longyun, who had dived the deepest, stopped and signaled to Gong Xiao and Su Li with his left hand—telling them there was something below.
Gong Xiao was less than two meters away and stopped immediately upon seeing Ding Longyun's gesture.
By now, Su Li had reached the twenty-sixth floor of the building, submerged more than ten meters deep.
He moved beside Ding Longyun and looked down. About four or five meters below them floated a human corpse.
The corpse had no head. From its neck protruded a translucent white fleshy tendril that extended deeper into the water below. Because their view was obstructed, they couldn't see where the tendril led or what was at its other end.
"What is this?"
The same question arose in all their minds. Su Li recalled Xu Xuehui's earlier words.
"Corpses, flowers, treasures. Could the 'corpse' she mentioned be this one?"
Su Li immediately descended toward the corpse. Soon, he saw a large number of blurry shadows below. As he sank, those shadows grew clearer, and his heart jolted.
The countless blurry shadows below were all corpses—human corpses, sea spider corpses, water rat beast corpses, marine iguana giant lizard corpses...
He couldn't count how many there were. Deeper down, there might be even more. He turned to look at a window beside him. This was the twenty-fifth floor underwater. Inside the room, he saw a mass of monster corpses, some he recognized, some he didn't.
All the corpses they could see shared one feature: a thin, translucent fleshy tendril extending from each body, stretching downward. Now, countless such tendrils intertwined and converged together.
It was impossible to imagine what the depths below were like. Everyone who saw it felt a creeping dread—a primal fear of the unknown and mysterious.
Ding Longyun's scalp tingled. He didn't dare go deeper. He sensed that one more step might lead to irreversible disaster, to unimaginable horror. He repeatedly signaled upward, urging them to return.
Even Gong Xiao, usually competitive, felt the urge to retreat. Looking at the countless floating corpses and the eerie translucent tendrils, he couldn't fathom what lay below. A sinister, terrifying aura seemed to envelop them, seeping into their minds, filling them with fear as if trapped in a nightmare.
Su Li finally understood why Xu Xuehui had looked so terrified when she mentioned corpses. She must have seen this underwater scene, but couldn't fully describe it, so she only said "corpses, flowers, and treasures."
"So the corpses are here—and so many monster corpses. If what she said is true, could there really be treasure beneath all these bodies? But this is too bizarre. How did so many monsters die? And where do those tendrils growing from their bodies lead..."
Ding Longyun and Gong Xiao had already started ascending. Su Li had no choice but to give up. Like them, he was gripped by an unknown fear, feeling that going deeper might invite disaster.
This unease made him abandon further exploration. Even if something valuable lay below, it wasn't worth risking his life—at least not now. Though he felt a pang of regret, he had to let it go.
"Maybe when I'm stronger, I can go down and see. Not yet..." Su Li thought silently, following Ding Longyun and Gong Xiao as they rose toward the surface.
Just then, from a window on the twenty-seventh floor, a shadow as large as a washbasin suddenly leaped out, stirring the water.
The shadow was a large black-and-white striped sea spider. No one knew what had startled it awake, but it burst from the window and landed right above Gong Xiao as he ascended.
The sudden movement startled all three. They weren't afraid of a single sea spider, but they feared waking all the others—that would be trouble.
Su Li hurried upward. Gong Xiao reacted quickly, thrusting his machete upward.
Su Li wanted to warn them that the sea spider's mouthparts carried a nerve-paralyzing toxin—not lethal, but once bitten, it would slowly numb the entire body, leaving them defenseless. But underwater, he couldn't speak to alert them.
Gong Xiao's strike was fast, but the sea spider was faster. It twisted in the water, easily dodging the blade.
Su Li rose further and saw two more sea spiders leap from the twenty-seventh-floor window.
This was bad. Ding Longyun urgently signaled them to get up quickly.
Fighting these monsters underwater would create too much noise, potentially attracting more. They were at a disadvantage.