SES Chapter 47 V2

She jumped to her feet and tried to shout his name, only to panic. Where’s my voice?!

Yi Wansan had already seen her. He jumped off the boat, and Mu Dai frantically pointed at her throat.

“You blew out your voice screaming—didn’t even realize it, huh? Don’t talk,” he said, shooting her a look. “Your screech was so sharp it nearly drilled holes through the boat.”

Mu Dai didn’t have the energy to roll her eyes. She mouthed, Where’s my friend?

“She’s alive. Luo Ren took her to the hospital. Her leg—everything below the knee was all bruised and swollen. Might’ve needed amputation…”

Mu Dai’s face went pale. My first job as a bodyguard, and I got the client half-dismembered?!

Yi Wansan finally finished, “…but luckily, Luo Ren drained the blood in time. If we’d had proper medicine on board, we wouldn’t have needed the hospital.”

Wuzhu Village had been abandoned—no proper beds left. Luo Ren and Yi Wansan had been waiting in the ancestral hall for a day or two, visited only by the occasional bird pooping on the roof.

The so-called “immortal’s guidance” had led them to a ghost town. Great.

Yi Wansan got tired of waiting around. That morning, he went down to the shore to inspect the leftover pearl-diving boats. He told Luo Ren, “This one’s still usable.”

“I brought you back not just for Ping Ting,” he added. “My dad’s ashes are still out there in the sea. That’s always haunted me.”

He mimed how divers used to work—tied to the boat with long ropes, heads wrapped in leather, mouths covered by tin breathing tubes. Some could dive over 100 meters deep.

Yi Wansan searched house to house until he found an old diving mask with a built-in breathing tube. It looked weird, but it worked. Luo Ren was skeptical. “We’re right by the sea—modern scuba gear’s easy to rent. These little wooden boats…”

They flip too easily.

As fate would have it, when Mu Dai and Yan Hong were struggling in the water, Luo Ren and Yi Wansan were on their way back with the new boat. Yi Wansan pointed out the exact spot his mother’s boat had capsized.

That was when Mu Dai called. Luo Ren couldn’t pick up, so Yi Wansan answered. She only said two lines before the call dropped. After that, her phone never connected again.

Well, yeah, Yi Wansan thought, it was underwater.

He’d even speculated she was just messing around at Lashi Lake in Lijiang.

Luo Ren paused for a few seconds before shaking his head. “No. Mu Dai would never call that ‘the sea.’ Call Uncle Zhang. Now.”

Yi Wansan dialed. Luo Ren sped up the boat. And when Yi Wansan relayed that “the little boss lady went to Hepu, Guangxi,” Luo Ren slammed the throttle.

Hearing this now, Mu Dai sighed in relief—thank goodness she told Uncle Zhang where she was going.

She picked up a stone and wrote in the sand: So… what was that thing?

“What thing?”

She wrote: The thing that flipped our boat and grabbed Hongsha’s leg.

Yi Wansan stared at the words, a dark fury churning in his eyes.

At first, all they’d seen was a chaotic mess of splashing. Then came Mu Dai’s screaming—he still described it as “sharp enough to punch holes in a ship.” Luo Ren left Yi Wansan to steer and dove in to rescue them.

Mu Dai had been gripping Yan Hong with a death grip. Luo Ren had to fight to pry her loose.

Mu Dai had swallowed water, but most of it had gone into her stomach, not her lungs, so she recovered quickly. Yan Hong wasn’t so lucky—she had water in her lungs and needed CPR.

Mu Dai scribbled: You gave her CPR?

Yi Wansan pointed to himself. “Do I look like someone who knows CPR? I can’t even drive.”

Mu Dai flung the stone away in frustration.

Yan Hongsahad woken up crying and moaning, pointing at her leg in agony. Luo Ren cut open her pants and saw that everything below her knee was purple and swollen.

Yan Hong couldn’t explain what happened. Luo Ren drained the swelling and took her to the hospital, leaving Yi Wansan to watch over Mu Dai.

As for how she ended up on the beach?

Yi Wansan took a shortcut. He just dumped her there to dry out in the sun.

It wasn’t cold, after all. She’d dry eventually.

“Luo Ren thinks… it was a clam.”

A clam? Mu Dai thought of that desk-sized mollusk from the viral video.

“But even that doesn’t fully explain it,” Yi Wansan said. “First off, clamping someone’s entire lower leg? That’d have to be a monster clam. And I grew up in Wuzhu Village—the biggest I’ve seen was the size of a small basin. Second, clams can’t swim. They move with a foot—ever seen one flap its shell like wings and fly through the water?”

Mu Dai wasn’t listening anymore. She had stood up and was staring toward the distant road.

A black Hummer was approaching, topped with a row of hunting lights.

Luo Ren was back.