Daomu Biji

Among us, Fatty, Menyoupin and I are all a bit watery, and Agui can swim, but they usually live in streams and don't have the habit of treading water for a long time, so I'm afraid it won't be of much help. Yuncai is very good at water, but without a swimsuit, we can't let her help me dive in a little vest. I'm afraid the fat guy won't be in the mood to do anything.

It’s really hard to say how long you can hold your breath. The fat man said he had big lungs and could hold his breath for five minutes. I said it was impossible. You are so big and the pressure you experience when diving underwater is much greater than us. Generally, you can hold your breath for three minutes. The person is already a god. Don't show off, this stuff is no joke.

The fat man said that he was not very worried about this. We would definitely test the water in a shallow place first when we go down. The problem is that we don’t have flippers, so diving down is very slow, and we may run out of air before reaching the bottom.

I nodded. In fact, free diving is not completely bare-handed. It also requires relevant equipment and protective measures. The most important thing is the person's psychological quality. When I was in Xisha, I heard several divers tell us that the most important thing in deep-water diving is psychological quality. All deep-water divers, especially free-deep divers, will do yoga meditation training. In deep water, the surroundings are pitch black, as if you are in a void. At this time, people will panic unconsciously. Under water, you can't calm down when you panic, and things can easily happen. When you have scuba, your oxygen consumption will also increase significantly. Without scuba, you may directly suffocate psychologically.

Unfortunately, the water in the Xisha area is too shallow and too clear. I didn't experience that feeling, and I don't know what it would be like if I actually encountered it.

However, free diving is not demanding on equipment. We can find some alternatives. For example, as the question raised by the fat man, we only need to use stones to accelerate our descent. The lake here may have been very deep originally, but the water level cannot have dropped more than 100 meters over the years. I think fifty meters is the limit, and of course we have to explore before diving.

We discussed some details and all three were excited. We got up very early the next day. While the sun was not out, I continued my last search on the shore. Determine your impressions from yesterday. There was a layer of mist around the lake, but only as far as the outer reaches of the lake. Yun Cai and the others were used to getting up early and had cooked breakfast early. It was very thin porridge. Fatty could drink ten bowls of it by himself, but Yun Cai's porridge was not delicious.

After eating, Fatty also came to help search. This time I brought dogs. The fat man teased the dogs and said, "Look for bones, look for bones. If I find bones, I will match them with bitches." But the dog went to the lake to drink and play, completely ignoring him.

By the time the sun came out, I had already turned around again and was sure that it was unlikely to be found. Together with them, I determined that we should enter the water, and the time was set in the afternoon when the water was slightly warmer. So as planned yesterday, I started to collect and prepare a long rope, a small floating raft, and a few stones of suitable weight.

Agui and Yuncai helped us weave the straw rope, it doesn’t need to be too strong. As long as it can be used to measure depth,

But make it as long as possible. The fat man cut a lot of grass with a sickle and spread it out to dry, but not all the grass was suitable for braiding, and most of it could not be used.

Menyouping and I used braided ropes to tie two small floating rafts the size of the Eight Immortals table. Then we found stones the size of thighs and tied them with straw ropes to make ballast.

The straw rope was braided in three lengths and was only about ten meters long. It was amazing that two people could achieve such an achievement in one morning. Because it has not been processed well, it is very rough. But I didn’t care. I didn’t expect it to last a few months. As long as you can hold on for a few hours.

In addition, I cut off the fat man's nylon bag, pulled out the nylon thread inside and coiled it into a coil, and tied a small stone to it as a small anchor to detect the depth.

After we were ready, we piled all these things on the small floating raft, then stripped down to our underwear and slowly walked into the lake. Menyoupin's underwear was bought by Fatty. There were two chicks on it, which made Yuncai laugh so hard that he almost fainted.

It was already about two o'clock in the afternoon, and the surface of the lake was still cold, so it must be connected to living water. If there was no sun and such a big temperature difference, we might get cramps when we get into the water.

As we tread water all the way, the color of the water under our feet soon becomes darker, which makes us feel a little guilty. We always feel unsafe when we can't see the bottom. However, after experiencing strong winds and waves, that feeling passed in a flash. The lake is not big, so we quickly reached the center of the lake.

The lake breeze is very cool and the summer heat is gone. In the center of the lake, you need to exert more force to keep your balance while treading water. The fat man wiped his face with his hands and asked, "Captain Innocent, what do you want to do first?"

"Measure the depth of the water first," I said.

The fat man picked up the nylon thread tied with small stones and threw it into the water. The stone pulled the silk thread and kept sinking, and the silk coil kept turning in the fat man's hand. Soon, only the thread was visible and the stone sank into darkness.

After waiting for more than a minute, the coil stopped rotating. The fat man broke the end of the thread and pulled the thread up bit by bit while counting the number of turns. Finally, he determined that the water depth was more than 33 meters.

I took a breath. Although it was similar to what I expected, it still felt a bit scary when I heard it. Moreover, this was not necessarily the deepest place. For this kind of stone lake, the deepest place was not necessarily in the center of the lake.

"Thirty-three meters, first mate, we have to dive more than ten stories deep."

"Damn it, why did you immediately demote me as soon as you heard about thirty meters?" I cursed, while holding on, "it's like a ten-story building, damn, I'm afraid of a ghost."

After saying that, we plugged our ears with mud and took a few shallow dives to adapt to the water temperature. We asked the fat man to watch from above for the time being. He is fat and it is not easy to dive. We will try to get it done in one go so we won't need him. As I said this, I tied a straw rope with a big stone around my waist, picked up the sickle and the flashlight in the plastic bag, and winked at the oil bottle.

We took a deep breath, and when our breath reached the limit, we pushed the stone from the raft into the water. The stone slowly sank, driving us directly into the water.

In Sudan, this is how the cheating wife of a sheikh is executed. I looked up at the water. Without diving goggles, everything was hazy. I could vaguely see the fat man’s lower body and the shadow of the raft, and I could also see the halo of the sun on the water. But these scenes soon faded away, and the surrounding area fell into absolute silence. Looking further down, there is a pitch-black abyss, and only Mengyoubo's flashlight can be seen. He is as nimble as a water bat with his head down.

This won't last long, I tell myself. As the surrounding light dropped sharply, and at the same time there was a huge water pressure, my eardrums and chest began to feel very uncomfortable, forcing me to exhale the air in my lungs.

Soon, my flashlight illuminated the underwater scene. It was a piece of green stone gradually approaching me. As I sank, the bottom of the water became clearer and clearer. I found that the rocks under the water were deep and shallow. It was obviously not flat, but a slope.

It was almost at this time that I couldn't hold my breath. I looked at my watch and saw that I had only been in the water for less than thirty seconds. I started to feel a pressure going up my nose and it was really hard to breathe in.

The oil bottle on the other side was still diving. I looked up at the top of my head. My God, the top of my head was blurry. There was only a little halo in the distance. You can imagine that you are in a dark place thirty meters high. Looking up at the bowl-sized skylight in the auditorium, I couldn't help but feel frightened and confused, feeling like I couldn't hold on anymore.

So I pulled out the sickle from my waist and tried to cut the straw rope that was holding me. What I didn't expect was that the water-soaked straw rope was very tough. I cut it twice, but only half of the straw rope was broken, and the other half couldn't be cut. .

I panicked immediately, and reflexively told myself to take a deep breath to calm down. As a result, I choked on the water in my lungs every time I took a breath, and my whole body started to cough.

After finally holding back the water in his lungs, there was a vibration from one end of the rope, and the stone had fallen to the bottom. I tried to steady myself and looked down. The bottom of the water was indeed a large monotonous steep rocky beach. Like the rocky beach on the shore, it was full of large and small stones. However, these stones have been soaked in water for many years and are covered with a layer of water. What makes me feel strange is that these stones are completely "clean", unlike the bottom of the water I have seen before, where some algae and screws will grow on the stones. .

The stone beach is very steep. My "weight-bearing stone" got stuck in a few stones on the stone beach and did not slide down the steep slope. However, there was a deep place under the stone beach, and it seemed that I could still dive.

I don’t know how many meters the depth is now. The place where the oil bottle dived on the other side must be much deeper than me, because I have already seen the light of his flashlight sinking, like a blurry flare in the dark night.

The air in my lungs had been exhausted, and I began to sink to the bottom of the water. Soon I was lying on the bottom of the water. At this time, I felt that I could hold it in for a while. The sense of urgency just now was probably caused by the pressure of the water pressing against my chest. I held on, lifted my "weight-bearing stone" from where it was stuck, and threw it down the slope.

The weight-bearing stone slipped down, driving me down again, and rolled down another seven or eight meters. The slope of the stone beach slowed down, and the stone stopped again.

I grabbed the rope and sank again, and wanted to lift the stone. Then I suddenly noticed a huge and blurry shadow appearing in the deep blue-gray water below me, like the head of a crocodile.

My vision under the water was very blurry. I could only see roughly, and I couldn't help but be frightened. I thought there would be water monsters in this kind of lake?

When I shined the flashlight, I saw that the shadow was actually an old-style wooden building that collapsed in the deep ditch at my feet. There was only a rough shelf, covered with cotton-wool-like sediment. I grabbed the rope to stabilize my posture, approached the wooden building and turned the flashlight. I saw more than one wooden building like this, and there were many crisscrossing black shadows below, and even dilapidated tile-roofed houses. Looking down the slope of the deep ditch, there are stone steps and fences, all of which are quietly sinking into the lake.

Oh my God, I was shocked. What I saw was an ancient village of the Yao people. (To be continued)