The new tunnel had a very familiar quality that Rui Yifu thought he had experienced the last of.

It was very moist.

There were stairs, similar to the ones before in that they seemed to have been cut out from the rock rather than inserted in. But in this case it was accompained by the squelch of muddied ash and the occasional echo of sloshing water further below. It also had a very gradual curve to it, that turned into a downwards spiral. The walls were not bare here, illuminated with luminescent growths that reminded him of things that lived deep in the abyss. The walls also contained carvings, geometrics shapes that felt familiar to him. He did not spend much time ruminating on them as he continued to limp down the stairs with the quiet Bo leaned against him.

The smell of salt water grew stronger and unbidden memories rose to the surface in his mind.

He could recall swimming deep down, deeper than any human body could go, and then simply drifting with the currents for a time. Even with higher faculties than other sharks, there was still something that he found enjoyable at that age about allowing the ocean to carry him where it may.

Rui Yifu wearily thought to himself that no matter how many books he read or how many different bodies he was in, at the end he was still first and foremost a shark.

There was a philosopher once, a princeling whale, who suggested that the gift of thought was no gift at all, but a curse.

Despite everything, Rui Yifu was not too sure. There were benefits of being able to think and talk, he squeezed Bo's hand and readjusted the other man who continued to lean heavily on him. The ashy mud beneath their feet thinned, slowly becoming more clear. Eventually the mud was completely gone and only puddles of water remained. The sloshing far below was becoming closer and now sounded akin to a tide's flow.

The slow spiraling walk finally came to an end with the stairs meeting ground strewn with rocks and oddly shaped stones as big as a man that were scattered haphazardly around. The new place they had stepped into seemed to be, for all intents and purposes, another massive cavern. Some feet away was dark water, coming in and other like the tide. It sunk through the rocks like blood before withdrawing, lapping softly at the larger stones. Close to the edge of the water was a large stele that had become corroded with time despite being made of stone. Buildings of coral and ocean-stone poked their heads from the water further out, while near them were those towers again. The towers broke the surface of the water like daggers, stabbing upwards into the recesses of the darkness far above.

Between the crevices of stone and rock were the ground up bits of bones from unidentifiable things. All had been reduced to bits and pieces by the slow flow of tide and time. Rui Yifu pulled Bo with him to the stele and looked up at it to feel some surprise.

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There was writing on it, still legible, in the ancient geometric script of a period of Fish People history that went far beyond the time they had been struck down by the gods. Had this place been part of the Ancient Ocean at one point? He wondered. Did it leak down below where it passed beyond a broken world?

"Rui..." Bo sputtered, wheezing.

Rui Yifu startled a little, having been lost in thought. "Yes?"

"How much longer?"

"I don't know."

"....Hnn..."

He looked back at the stele. It was twice as big as him, both vertically and horizontally, and the writing on it had been chiseled incredibly deep so that even once time would wear at it, it would take a very long time for the writing to fully disappear. As it was, Rui Yifu could still read most of it. "Hmmm..."

It was an epitaph.

It spoke of a world with a quietly fading sun, where life on land slowly withered. The survivors fled beneath the waves in... Rui Yifu could read the word but not understand it... and built redoubts near oceanic vents. Yet they missed the light of land, they reached out for something to soothe their despair, and something did come. Rui Yifu glanced back over to the towers that dwarfed the buildings beside them. Something had come to these people and promised them escape from their false-lights and cramped underwater lives. Humans were not meant to live under the oceans, after all. By the time some came to realize the truth of what the being promised, it was too late.

The stele had been erected by the surviving ghosts who still retained their sense of self after so long and a set of explorer scholars from the Mother Ocean, but in tradition of a more ancient time no names were truly provided.

"Rui, you're quiet, are you reading the thing?"

"Mmhm," Rui Yifu nodded, "this was another place that Baichan got to, it seems but..." he chewed his lip, his teeth slicing through the skin but he barely felt it. "It seems some of my people had actually come all the way down here at some point. So they must have gone past the ashen city above, but I do not remember anything about this in our history lessons or books."

"Maybe it's recent?" Bo suggested, sounding half-way close to sleep.

"No, they refer to the 'Mother Ocean'. That term is older than humans, nobody has used it in millennia," Rui Yifu shook his head.

Maybe the answer was something simple, he thought. Perhaps the reason was simply so nobody would come look for this place, which was better left to its fate to be slowly obliterated by the tides. He looked past the stele then, and saw a path floating upon the water. It was made of smooth bone-colored blocks that sat solidly in the dark waters, trailing off into the darkness.

As Rui Yifu stared in the darkness he felt a spark of hate stir in his chest, sending warmth and energy back into his tired limbs. Wang Huaqing had to be back there somewhere, waiting for them. Or at least something that thought it was Wang Huaqing.

This time he would make sure there would be nothing left of him. He would tear him to shreds and devour what was left. There would not even be a drop of blood left of that man, and Rui Yifu wanted to see Baichan try resurrecting that!

"Uhm... that's not good...." Bo mumbled. Rui Yifu noticed his head was turned in the direction they had come and followed his line of sight back to the entrance.

Slender white roots were gripping the edges of the entrance, spilling down from the stairs, and slithering their way slowly through the rocks.