Descent into the Microscopic

The Daozu Taiji Fish had originally lacked one of its eyes, leaving behind a bean-sized hole. Yet when Li Weiyi pulled it from his collar once more, the opening was gone—both eyes were now intact. One eye radiated a cyan glow, while the other released crimson clouds of light. Both shone dazzlingly bright, as though condensed from the stars in the heavens. Whoosh! Whoosh! The cyan glow and crimson clouds intertwined like veils of light. Viewed from afar, the two colors of glowing clouds condensed across the boundless ice sheet into a massive Taiji millstone tens of kilometers wide, turning slowly. "It really was the missing eye of the Daozu Taiji Fish! It really was..." Zhao Meng had already suspected as much, but seeing the miracle unfold before his very eyes still shook him to the core. With pious reverence, he dropped to his knees and kowtowed. Li Weiyi looked up at the cyan and crimson lights, their colors reflected in his eyes. "Brother, look," he murmured in disbelief. "Within those lights, profound Daoist scripts and Buddhist sutras seem to be drifting. Do you see them?" Zhao Meng saw neither Daoist scripts nor Buddhist sutras. Instead, he discovered to his horror that the ice sheet around them was fracturing and sinking, sending both of them plummeting toward the depths of the Arctic Ocean thousands of meters below. Earlier, Jiuying had shattered the ice sheet here, and in the wake of the beast's flight, the ice gave way entirely. Seawater surged over Li Weiyi and Zhao Meng in an instant, dragging them toward the freezing, suffocating abyss of the ocean floor. In the distance, the mangled and broken research ship rolled onto its side, slowly sinking beneath the waves. Crash! Though submerged in seawater, Li Weiyi was astonished to see the surrounding waters completely bathed in cyan and crimson light, as bright as if illuminated by an eternal divine lantern. Stranger still, the vibration of sailcloth swelling in the wind sounded in his ears, and he could clearly hear the low, creaking groan of swaying masts. Suddenly, an overwhelming surge of invisible field energy bore down upon Li Weiyi. It dragged frantically at everything around them—Zhao Meng, the bear-like creature, seawater, ice fragments, and the sinking research vessel in the distance were all swept into its grasp. Whoosh— From his arms to his torso, Li Weiyi's entire body shrank inward, ring by ring, at an astonishing speed... The sensation was like plummeting from great heights, like weightlessness—yet a hundred times more agonizing. The Daozu Taiji Fish hanging from his neck floated upward until it hovered level with his eyes, mysterious and unfathomable. Submerged in the freezing sea, Li Weiyi entered a serene, uncanny state, his vision sharpening far beyond normal. He clearly saw patterns resembling mountains and rivers appear across the newly acquired pale-red eye of the Daozu Taiji Fish, presenting itself like a miniature planet right before him. He had only ever seen something similar back in high school when looking at the moon through an astronomical telescope. Even more staggering, a Bronze Ship no larger than a grain of rice flew out from that pale-red planet, setting sail beneath a mantle of celestial radiance and nether mist. Whoosh! Li Weiyi's body shrank drastically once again, accompanied by another wave of weightlessness and vertigo. When his sight returned, the Bronze Ship that had been the size of a grain of rice was now as large as a palm, floating right in front of him. Whoosh! Weightlessness and vertigo struck once more. The Bronze Ship grew to the size of a fishing boat. Bizarre details on board—masts and sailcloth, phoenix corpses and python skeletons, a sea of graves and a forest of tombstones—entered Li Weiyi's view like artworks carved by master craftsmen, burning themselves into his mind. Where had this Bronze Ship come from? Why was it constantly growing? No... The ship was not growing. He was shrinking, ring by ring, becoming infinitesimally small. Li Weiyi had no words for what he was experiencing. He could no longer distinguish reality from illusion, science from mythology. Could this be a dying hallucination brought on by sinking into the ocean? High above the Arctic Ocean, satellites were recording anomalous imagery bound to shock the entire world. Centered around the research vessel Longji, seawater and ice for dozens of kilometers around were pulled and swallowed by an eerie force, vanishing rapidly into nothingness. The shattered research vessel, along with the giant beast Jiuying that had fled over a dozen kilometers away, were all swept into it. They had not truly vanished into thin air. Rather, caught in the Bronze Ship's field of force, they had plummeted into the microscopic world. *** The numb cold and suffocation of being submerged in seawater seemed to have lasted for days, yet felt like only a split second. With a heavy thud, Li Weiyi slammed hard onto an unfamiliar surface. The successive bouts of weightlessness and vertigo, combined with severe blood loss and this crushing fall, left even Li Weiyi—whose physical constitution far surpassed ordinary people—completely disoriented, his vision going dark. Fortunately, the air had cushioned his descent noticeably, and the ground was not hard. "Such soft soil... Where is this?" Li Weiyi had landed face-up, leaving a body-shaped hollow nearly a foot deep. His whole body ached so severely that he could not move, so he remained unaware that he had landed atop an ash-white grave mound seven or eight meters high. The Bronze Ship was ancient and magnificent. Looking less like a mortal vessel and more like an overturned sacred mountain, its masts rose from the deck like divine wooden pillars reaching toward the sky, while its sailcloth, vast as gray clouds, billowed in the wind amidst dark clouds and nether mist in breathtaking majesty. The deck was sprawling and eerie, lined with countless stone tablets weighing tens of thousands of jin and sweeping stretches of towering grave mounds, exuding a desolate, lonely aura. Li Weiyi had landed on one of those very mounds. The dirt was ash-white, resembling bone ash or lime, yet possessed the cohesive stickiness of true earth. His back, the back of his head, and his left arm, which had been torn by the bear-like creature, throbbed with excruciating pain. A deep exhaustion left him without the strength even to flutter his eyelids. *Wait... I'm still alive.* The moment that thought surfaced, Li Weiyi's eyes snapped open. Seeing the low sky choked with thick, dark clouds, he felt utterly mystified. He had clearly fallen into the Arctic Ocean. How had he survived? He remembered having numerous hallucinations before dying—seeing the cyan and crimson lights, seeing the eye of the Daozu Taiji Fish turn into a planet, and seeing a Bronze Ship set sail... Just as the thought crossed his mind, Li Weiyi saw the research vessel Longji fall from the dark clouds above. Its massive hull tumbled as debris and human figures plummeted from it amid screams and agonizing wails. Its descent slowed steadily, as the celestial radiance and nether mist enveloping the Bronze Ship neutralized the vessel's gravity. Boom! The research ship crashed not far away with the deafening groan of buckling and snapping metal. The entire Bronze Ship shuddered, sending tremors straight through Li Weiyi's heart. His scalp prickled with dread and disbelief. He struggled to push himself up, but failed. A piercing cry like that of a human infant rang out between heaven and earth, grating sharply against the ears. From the dense, dark clouds overhead, Jiuying's body—over two hundred meters long—tumbled downward. Covered in scales, with a torso like an enormous bull, all nine of its heads wailed shrilly. What chilled Li Weiyi to the bone was that he was lying directly along Jiuying's trajectory. If that beast crashed onto him, even with the mysterious force cushioning the fall, he would be smashed to powder. As it fell, Jiuying caught sight of the Bronze Ship below. The terror in its eyes shifted to delight, and its wails turned to joyful laughter, as if it had waited countless ages for this day. Swish! A golden claw, even larger than Jiuying's massive frame, suddenly broke through the thick dark clouds and seized the beast. The claw appeared cast of solid gold, radiating metallic weight and raw power. Incredibly sharp, it tore effortlessly through Jiuying's flesh. Behind the dark clouds, a terrifyingly vast silhouette emerged, exuding a primordial presence vast enough to devour heaven and earth, like a cosmic beast that roamed the stars. Yet the moment it caught sight of the Bronze Ship below, it beat its wings in deep apprehension and fled, vanishing into the boundless, dim chaos. "What... what is this place? Am I really still alive?" Overwhelmed by shock and confusion, Li Weiyi gradually slipped into unconsciousness. Blood continued to seep from the wound on his arm, mingling with the ash-white soil of the grave. Defying all reason, the blood began tracing along the soil, flowing ever faster toward the interior of the tomb. "Weiyi! Weiyi..." Zhao Meng shouted anxiously through the fog-shrouded cemetery, running and searching until he finally spotted Li Weiyi atop the mound. He lifted him from the body-shaped hollow. Not a single trace of blood remained in the hollow's dirt, but Li Weiyi's face was as pale as paper. After Zhao Meng carried Li Weiyi away on his back, a set of white-bone wind chimes hanging from the tombstone before that mound swayed in the breeze, chiming clear and sweet, lending an uncanny charm to the terror and silence of the dark night. *** As if waking from a dream that had lasted for years, Li Weiyi's exhausted consciousness drifted back like wisps of silk. The sound of waves lapped in his ears, and a gentle breeze caressed his face. He opened his eyes slowly. His blurry vision gradually sharpened. "You're finally awake! An athlete's constitution really makes a difference—I thought you weren't going to make it!" Qi Shanshan smiled faintly, her voice tinged with surprise, before turning to walk out the door. Though Li Weiyi caught only the sight of her graceful, white-clad back, he knew she was Doctor Qi, the physician assigned to the expedition. "He's awake, but still very weak..." Doctor Qi's voice carried in from outside, though he could not clearly hear what else she was saying to someone. Li Weiyi surveyed his surroundings. The bed beneath him seemed to have been salvaged from the research ship. The room itself was constructed from the ship's wreckage, resembling a spacious corrugated-metal shed, with plenty of scrap materials still strewn across the floor before anyone had found time to clear them. A blood bag hung from a wooden pole. A needle was inserted into his right arm, administering a transfusion. Six other people lay inside the shed: some with broken legs, some paralyzed from their injuries, and others unconscious. Through the makeshift doorway, the bulwark of the Bronze Ship was visible a few meters away. Thick patina encrusted the bronze, lending it an ancient dignity alongside the desolation of having been abandoned for centuries. He could hear the rhythmic lapping of the sea and feel the faint shudder as waves struck the hull. The breeze came blowing through the open door, sweeping over the bronze bulwark. "Everything that happened wasn't a hallucination... It was all real?" Li Weiyi whispered. "Of course it was real. We seem to have fallen into a completely unknown realm of seas... mm, quite likely at a microscopic scale." Before Cai Yutong even entered, her cool voice reached him first. She walked inside together with Qi Shanshan, who wore a white physician's coat. Both women were tall and strikingly poised. Li Weiyi was taken aback. "A microscopic scale? What does that mean?" "I don't really understand either; that's just what the directors were saying. Something about a Buddha relic, a microscope, a Bronze Ship... It seems they knew some inside details all along." Cai Yutong maintained her usual aloof demeanor. She rested her fingers against Li Weiyi's forehead, nodding with satisfaction. "At least your fever broke. It wasn't in vain that they drew my blood for three days to give you transfusions." Qi Shanshan undercut her without hesitation, teasing with a chuckle, "Oh, claiming credit already, are we? When they were drawing your blood, I knew this little cabbage had an ulterior motive." Qi Shanshan and Cai Yutong had shared a dorm room as undergraduates, both of them dazzling, gifted young women in the chemistry department. When things were good, they were as close as sisters. When things were not, they were always quietly competing. Later, one entered medical school while the other pursued chemistry further. With no more rivalry between them, their bond had only grown closer. Qi Shanshan had learned about this Arctic expedition from Cai Yutong, using her status as a best friend to 'command' her into recommending her to the directors. She was pragmatic and skilled at seizing opportunities, always taking the initiative to advance herself.