"My family really didn't pass down anything!" Zuan Shan Bao said with a bitter face. "I swear to heaven."

I said in a deep voice, "Then did your father tell you anything? Like, what he used to do? What strange things he encountered?"

"Nothing!" Zuan Shan Bao said, "My dad was just a common teacher. He didn't do anything big in his life…"

Just as Zuan Shan Bao was talking, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck my mind: "I know, the way to open the mechanism isn't with the Huang family, it's in that half-sung water ghost song."

I explained, "What kind of person is Zuan Shan Bao? In the end, Zuan Shan Bao is just a bandit."

"Bandit leaders have the habit of hiding treasure. They don't know when their gang will fall into the hands of others, so bandit leaders will hide their treasures to make a comeback."

"They also know that the clues to many things can't be left out in the open, otherwise, someone will scheme to get them sooner or later. What they leave to their descendants isn't necessarily a token or a map, but some hidden clue."

As I spoke, I pointed to the water: "Look for yourselves, doesn't that stone statue below look like a water ghost locked at the bottom of the river?"

"And that temple, here in the Northeast, as long as a temple is built, no matter what's enshrined inside, it has to be given a respectful title. Even if it's a ghost, it has to be called a 'fairy temple'. According to the Northeast way of calling it, that temple should be a Water Fairy Temple. The fact that it's called a Water Ghost Temple is a hint in itself."

"The water ghost song says: 'The water ghost peeks out, don't go into the river; the water ghost reaches out, don't touch the water.' What if all the water ghosts come out?"

Ye Yang's eyes also lit up: "How did I not think of that? Let's go down and take a look!"

"I'll do it!" I swam to directly above the stone statue, took a deep breath of true qi, held my hands flat in front of me, pressed my left hand on the back of my right palm, poured true qi into my arms, turned upside down, and plunged into the water, pressing down on the top of the stone statue's head.

As my palms collided with the stone statue, the silt at the bottom of the river stirred up in all directions under the shock of the true qi, and the water became chaotic. However, I could clearly feel that I had pressed the stone statue into the mud.

After a moment, the stone statue completely sank into the mud. Ye Yang and I began to withdraw a few meters away, looking again at the river water mixed with mud.

I vaguely saw the stone statue that I had pressed into the riverbed, as if a drowning person was sticking his head out of the mud. The riverbed behind the stone statue suddenly trembled violently, and an undercurrent that I didn't know where it came from rushed straight towards Ye Yang and me.

Under the push of the water, we spun several times before breaking free from the control of the undercurrent and heading towards the opposite bank: "Zuan Shan Bao, come over here, get ashore first."

Not long after we pulled Zuan Shan Bao, who had followed us, onto the riverbank, the second undercurrent arrived.

I clearly saw that the Qing River was instantly cut off by the horizontally rushing torrent, and then the two streams of water crossed each other and spun in the river.

The stone statue that I had pressed into the water should have climbed out halfway. The meaning of "the water ghost reaches out, don't touch the water" should be that when the stone statue has climbed out of the riverbed halfway, you should quickly get out of the water. In such crisscrossing currents, even a fish can easily be knocked unconscious, let alone a person?

I stared at the surface of the water and said, "Get ready to go into the water! If my guess is correct, after all the stone statues are out of the water, the water flow below will change direction and take the people in the water to another place."

Ye Yang said in a low voice, "How did I not think that the stone statue is actually the key placed next to the lock. The stone pillar below is the lock cylinder?"

I laughed, "You were misled by the chains tied to the stone statue's body. You thought that by activating the chains, the stone statue would pull the iron rope forward like a horse, opening the stone door hidden in the riverbed, right?"

"It's a good thing you didn't try it. If you had tried it, we might have lost our lives."

"While the other side was misleading you, they actually left you a killing move!"

Ye Yang glanced at me sideways and said, "Don't you not know how to pick locks?"

I laughed, "I really don't know how to pick locks, but I'm a child who grew up in the mountains. There are definitely a lot of legends about bandits in the mountains of Northeast China, and my master also had friendships with the older generation of the Four Great Pillars. I've heard more about these things than you have!"

Ye Yang squeezed out a sentence from between his teeth: "Show-off!"

Zuan Shan Bao asked in confusion, "Hall Master, didn't you say that Cai Jin Tang should have been standing in the water at that time? Did they dare to go into the water?"

I pointed to the river surface where the undercurrents intersected and said, "Look for yourself, the center of the vortex is sometimes the safest place."

"I'm sure that the time when the water flow changes direction for the third time will be very short. It's easy for them to miss that time while carrying a coffin into the water, so they can only risk waiting in the water. And…"

Before I could finish speaking, the water flow really did change direction, heading straight back towards the outlet.

"Go into the water!" I was the first to jump into the water.

Without the burden of the coffin, the three of us were swept towards the opposite side by the direction of the water flow after entering the water.

At that time, I almost didn't have time to look at the surrounding environment. I was like a piece of wood being pushed forward by the water, rushing into a dark tunnel with the water flow.

When my eyes lit up, I was already in a relatively calm area of water.

This is an underground river.