"Sticky?"

That word pierced the old fisherman like an awl. The white-haired elder reacted even faster, hurrying to the cabin door. Using the lantern light, he examined it closely. After a moment, he couldn't help but gasp.

When the elder turned back, his eyes were fixed on the corpse from the previous dynasty. The terror on his face was beyond description. The skinny man's pupils constricted, and he let out a sharp cry, "He... he opened the door! This corpse is alive!"

These words instantly ignited the fear in everyone's hearts. But the boat was so small, where could they escape? Guarding this strange corpse, they were overcome with anxiety.

In the end, the old fisherman made a decisive decision. He grabbed a rope and, with the elder's help, tightly bound the corpse and the wooden plank beneath it together. During this process, they were extremely tense, fearing that the corpse would suddenly lash out, or that its tightly closed eyes would suddenly open. But fortunately, everything remained calm.

From beginning to end, the corpse lay there peacefully, just like any ordinary corpse. But the unease in the old fisherman's heart not only did not diminish but instead grew stronger. He had a premonition that something was about to happen.

After confirming that the corpse had been bound, everyone retreated from the cabin and closed the door. Only when they could no longer see the corpse did their emotions gradually calm down.

"Everyone has seen the situation. If we want to live, we need to figure out what's going on here."

As the mainstay of the group, the elder soothed everyone's emotions. Whether they could leave here alive depended entirely on how they responded next.

The current situation was not optimistic. After all, everyone before them had failed to return alive.

The bald man, holding the rope in one hand, suddenly asked, "Look, what's this?"

The rope was long, at least twenty meters. The other end was tied to a large stone. This was not uncommon for fishermen who made a living by the water. It was used to measure the depth of the water when fishing in unfamiliar waters. If the distance to the bottom of the lake was too shallow, there was a risk of the net getting caught on rocks or broken trees on the lakebed. They were all poor fishermen, and the net was their livelihood.

But what was strange was not the rope, but the large stone tied to it. The bald man picked up the stone and showed the other side to everyone.

The old fisherman, who was closest, suddenly narrowed his eyes. He saw that the stone was covered in a layer of black mud, and under the black mud, some red things were faintly visible, like blood.

After wiping off the black mud, a strange red pattern appeared on the stone. The pattern was embedded in the cracks. When he scraped it with his fingernail, he could even scrape off some red things. The elder brought it close to his nose and sniffed, and said with certainty, "It's cinnabar."

Hearing this, everyone's slightly calmed hearts became uneasy again. It was well known that cinnabar could ward off evil spirits. And the more the old fisherman looked at the red pattern on the stone, the more mysterious it felt, like a talisman drawn by a Taoist priest in a Taoist temple.

Suddenly, he recalled that when he had just left the cave, he had overheard a conversation between the scarred man and another person. The seemingly fierce scarred man was very respectful to that person and even called him Celestial Master.

This talisman was likely drawn by that Celestial Master.

The stone had obviously been thrown into the water, and the corpse in the cabin had only been fished out recently. He didn't believe that there was no connection between them.

Staring at the red talisman, the bald man tentatively said, "This stone looks like an exorcism object, so... so there are monsters under the water, right?"

No one answered. This was an obvious question. Moreover, Spring God Lake was large and deep, and countless legends had been passed down since ancient times. Even the most experienced fishermen were unwilling to fish in the depths of the lake. It was rumored that the Water God lived there, and if you disturbed the Water God's peace, you would be left behind by the Water God, turning into something that was neither human nor ghost.

Of course, the rumors were exaggerated, but after all, no one had ever seen what the Water God looked like. Some rumors changed as they were passed down. But it was true that no one dared to fish in the depths of the lake, not entirely because of the fear of the mysterious Water God, but because the water conditions in Spring God Lake were complex. There were many undercurrents near the heart of the lake, and the weather was changeable. Just a moment ago, the sky was clear and cloudless, and in the blink of an eye, large swathes of dark clouds would drift over. The terrifying wind and waves on the lake were enough to capsize fishing boats that didn't have time to return to shore.

Looking at the surrounding mist, the old fisherman was at a loss for a moment. He just had a feeling that an invisible hand was pulling them into the depths of the mist.

In a daze, the old fisherman shivered. He finally realized what the problem was. He leaned over the edge of the boat and looked down. All he saw was the pitch-black water of the lake, but that wasn't the main thing. The main thing was that the boat was moving, and moving very steadily. But they hadn't been rowing for a long time. After discovering the corpse, all their attention had been drawn to the corpse.

Everyone present was a fisherman. After a moment, everyone realized that something was wrong. The boat was too stable. Under normal circumstances, the flow of the lake water would not be so stable. It was as if something was dragging them along.

"Not good, there's something under the water!" the elder exclaimed. To be able to drag their boat forward silently, the thing under the water wouldn't be small. It was definitely a big guy. "Quick, throw the sounding stone down!"

The skinny man, who was the most timid, was trembling with fear. His voice changed with nervousness, "If we throw the stone down, aren't we afraid of alarming the thing below?"

The old fisherman reacted quickly and ignored him. He grabbed the sounding stone and threw it down. With a "plop," the sounding stone fell into the water. The rope left on the boat was quickly pulled down. But to everyone's surprise, after sinking for a short time, the rope suddenly stopped moving.

At this moment, there was still a long length of rope left on the boat. The old fisherman estimated in his heart that the rope that had sunk was only 7 or 8 meters at most. And according to their current position, the depth to the bottom of the lake was obviously much more than that. In other words, the sounding stone had hit something else.

Before everyone could recover, suddenly, a strange sound came from underwater, "Thump! Thump! Thump!" The sound was muffled, the kind of muffled that made one feel suffocated, like someone was slapping a wooden board with their palm.

No, no, it was underwater... something underwater was slapping the boat!

The few people on the boat were instantly pale with fright. Even the usually calm old fisherman and elder felt their legs go weak. At this critical moment, they didn't dare to think about what could be slapping the boat underwater.

But the next second, everyone on the boat was stunned, because another series of slaps sounded, this time, from the cabin.