Chapter 1343 - 1340: How Many Secrets Are Hidden Within

Chapter 1343: Chapter 1340: How Many Secrets Are Hidden Within

Zi Ruoxi gazed at the bottomless surface of the sea, that heaving, overflowing deep ocean—just how many secrets did it hold...

In an instant, her bright, sparkling eyes were filmed with a tenderness as deep as seawater. She had once been so afraid of water; she still remembered the embarrassing incident back in college when she fell into a river... From then on, she’d resolved to overcome her fear of water. And once she made up her mind about something, she always did it well. Even though sticking with it was anything but easy, she never lost heart or got discouraged, and at last she obtained the nationally certified level-three professional swimmer qualification.

Maybe it was precisely that experience that forged a love so unforgettable it cut to the bone. Thinking of those days overflowing with Wen Xin’s warmth... even now, there was still a faint lingering taste. Not intense, yet suffused with a delicate hidden fragrance.

Zi Ruoxi adjusted her mask, gripped the handrail on the side of the boat, and looked out over the deep sea. A sense of intimacy gradually rose in her eyes. In her heart she called out, "Sea, I’m coming!" With two quick kicks of her legs she went "splash!"—her body like a flood dragon—as she dove into the bottomless ocean.

She followed the momentum down, wrapped in fine shards of sea breeze, while above her there drifted down a loud, hoarse shout.

"Hey, wait for me! Who gave you permission to act on your own?" Qiao Junlie bellowed, cursing under his breath, Damn it! That idiot actually went off ahead of me! What if something happens to her? Idiot! Idiot!

He hastily pulled on his mask, didn’t even have time to run to the rail, just grabbed the handhold on the deck at his side, leaned forward, and flipped straight down into the ten-thousand-fathom-deep sea.

"Splash!" With an even louder splash he sent water spraying several meters high. In no time, Qiao Junlie surfaced, and without pausing to think he struck out hard, swimming toward the spot where Zi Ruoxi had gone down. Her shadow was already gone from the surface; chances were she’d already dived to the seabed. Qiao Junlie’s heart clenched. He plunged his head down and dove into the boundless deep...

The two of them ended up playing a game of chase on the seafloor. Zi Ruoxi’s excellent swimming immediately showed. Down below she frolicked with ease, moving as she pleased. Around her swam all kinds of beautiful fish in brilliant colors. Zi Ruoxi’s heart swayed; she swung her slender arms, dancing with the fish, lost in delight.

After playing for a while, Zi Ruoxi’s body stretched downward. She was now at roughly forty meters, near the seabed. Because it was still dusk, the glow of the evening clouds streamed down into the depths, casting five-colored, mottled patterns of light—so breathtakingly beautiful it was like a dream. When that light shone across all kinds of strange and wonderful coral reefs, it was as if they glimmered with mystical radiance, a gorgeous scene of endless variety... Seeing all this, Zi Ruoxi became deeply, lingeringly enchanted... 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

Her body floated gently at this depth, circling these beautiful reefs, looking and drifting around them. Under the protective mask, her big eyes grew even softer, overflowing.

Many of the plants on the seafloor she didn’t even know the names of. There were also gentle herbivorous fish: butterflyfish, barracuda, blue damselfish; and some carnivores: groupers, beltfish, large yellow croaker, and so on. There were even rarer omnivores that fed off decaying matter on the seabed, such as spotted fish and leaf trevally.

In short, they were all mischievous yet adorable creatures. Zi Ruoxi fluttered among them like silk, like threads on a loom, gliding and playing at their side. Without even realizing it, her body drifted further down. She had no idea how deep she’d gone now.

Suddenly she saw a strange white creature with spread wings streaking toward her. Zi Ruoxi’s heart gave a jolt. Could this be the legendary Devil fish? Although this wasn’t her first time diving, she’d never gone into the sea alone before. In the past she’d always gone down with two or three other divers, keeping distance as they swam and watched out for one another. If they ran into danger, they could rely on numbers and position.

It had two fleshy appendages on its head, somewhat like the big claws at the front of a crab; those were the cephalic fins of the Devil fish. Zi Ruoxi watched them flipping forward and protruding, twisting freely. This creature was truly massive—its full span was about the size of a medium shark. Yet it looked somewhat like a crab and somewhat like a bat, white and faintly luminous, very beautiful.

But this beautiful behemoth was doing something close to harassment. It moved very fast. Zi Ruoxi had barely swum a few strokes before the thing bumped into her. Strangely enough, it made no violent attacking moves, just kept circling around her. From time to time it used its spread "wings" to "offend" her body.

By now Zi Ruoxi was sure this Devil fish was actually a Manta Ray. Its appearance was intimidating, but in truth it was gentle, feeding only on crustaceans or schools of small fish and shrimp. So it wouldn’t actually harm her. Come on—she was a nationally certified professional swimmer, trained in the field. She was at least broadly familiar with the theoretical knowledge.

With that thought, Zi Ruoxi relaxed her body and started playing with it.

But she had no idea that even the most gentle of fish, once they’re counted among the "big brothers" of the deep, carry a certain danger.

The Manta Ray was getting riled up by her teasing. Its broad, thick "wings" slapped toward her, as if it wanted to scoop this lively little "chick" into its arms. Zi Ruoxi was startled; she quickly arched her body backward, pushing out with both hands until they landed on the edge of its wing. Her palms flared with pain. Before she had time to think, she tried to dart away, but the crafty Manta swung its right wing after her, about to smack into her body.

Zi Ruoxi was scared witless, her mind a blank. If that thing hit her, that’d be it—she’d suffer fractures on the spot. Panicked and at a total loss, she could only watch that white, glowing mass grow larger in her pupils, then squeezed her eyes shut, heart tightening.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, faster than words. Like a meteor dropping from the sky, she suddenly felt a force from above driving her straight downward. She shot along a vertical line, plummeting farther. How many more meters she’d gone, she couldn’t tell. Zi Ruoxi only knew that her body, which had still held some warmth, was starting to grow cold. She must have already reached waters around a hundred meters deep.

And at that very moment, something even more dangerous was silently, slowly descending upon her.

A Red-tailed Black Shark, its skin covered in shield-like scales, was charging straight at her. Zi Ruoxi was so horrified she didn’t have time to react before a force shoved her to the side. Then she saw a scene that took her breath away.

It was a small shark. Its skull had no sutures, but there were gill slits along the sides of its head, and its teeth were razor-sharp. It looked vicious, emitting a muffled sound as it rushed at the diver. The man’s figure flashed aside in a blur. He drew the metal dagger strapped to his foot. As the shark lunged toward him, he seized the moment and drove the blade hard into its rank green eye.