The Sea-Serpent reached the trench on the tide. The crew spent two days taking soundings and checking the shallower beds. Each day, Pei Jing took two hours to practice the Water-Cleaving form while they worked. By the third morning, he’d reached eighty percent.
Three heavy anchors held the schooner at the southern shelf. Beyond it the seabed fell away. Eight hundred paces below the ship, the trench mouth lay beyond the last light from above. Only anemones and drifting jellyfish gave off a faint glow.
Pei Jing sank into the dark. A mortal diver’s bell couldn’t take this pressure. Turtle Breathing held his chest still. His heart beat once in twelve seconds, and the Chaos Root braced his channels against the weight of the sea.
He carried no lamp. A few small clicks sent echoes back from the stone below. He could tell where the wall opened and where the trench grew narrow.
After reaching that lip, he followed the wall another two hundred paces down. There, the wall gave way to a ledge covered in blood coral. The branches rose like red antlers under a coat of barnacles and black silt. Among them lay the old breeding beds of the Ghost-Eye Pearl Clam.
