It felt like hitting a cotton ball.

Even in the water, Yan Ling used all his strength, and the feeling was nothing like the sensation of hitting someone's face.

Without the glowing giant fish, Yan Ling's vision was limited to the area illuminated by the underwater searchlight above her head. Only after she had completely turned around and the searchlight was pointed at the person she had hit could she clearly see what the person behind her looked like.

To be precise, the thing behind her could not be called a person.

Although the thing had a human-like appearance, it was covered in seaweed and shells from the lake, which really startled Yan Ling.

At first, she thought it was just a piece of seaweed that had grown into the shape of a human.

Unexpectedly, this thing actually reached out and grabbed her arm as she swung it over, and opened its mouth to bite.

Now Yan Ling could see it clearly: that thing had teeth, and "he/she" was a person!

A normal person would have been terrified, but fortunately Yan Ling reacted quickly enough. She kicked the thing in the stomach and sent it flying.

Following the direction of the thing that had been kicked over, Yan Ling couldn't help but let out a "whoa!"

Everyone was wearing waterproof walkie-talkies, so anyone who made a sound could be heard by the others. Yan Ling's shout almost caused everyone's eardrums to perforate, startling them so much that they had to turn their attention to Yan Ling.

Six or seven deep-water searchlights shone in unison over the area.

The humanoid creature from before became clearer. To everyone's shock, there were not just that one humanoid creature, but hundreds or even thousands of such things. When these creatures saw Qiao An'an and the others, they swarmed towards them like flies to meat.

People with trypophobia would faint at the sight of this scene.

Fortunately, these creatures were relatively slow, and their feet were bound with thick chains, so they could only reach the very top of the submarine at most.

If Qiao An'an and the others swim upwards, they can get rid of those things.

After swimming a distance, the group leaned down to observe the situation below. Due to the limited illumination from the searchlights, the scene below was not very clear, but they could vaguely see that the submarine's bow was docked at a circular altar-like structure, and the humanoid monsters that had attacked them were tethered around the altar.

The monsters swam desperately toward Qiao An'an and the others.

It felt like if they hadn't been chained with heavy iron chains on their legs, they would have pounced on them and devoured everyone long ago.

Yan Lingli, who was closest to these things, asked, "What is this thing?"

Qiao An'an looked at the group of things waving their hands at them like a chaotic mob, and said thoughtfully, "It feels like these people are tied up here and used as sacrificial offerings. And they seem to have been here for a very long time. That big fish was willing to have half of its gills torn off to escape. Was it actually afraid of these things?"

Everyone thought it was very likely.

I just don't know what this thing is, why it's at the bottom of the lake, or how there can be so many of them.

Shen Zhou has loved watching exploration programs since he was a child. He recalled, "It is said that on May 2, 1992, a diving enthusiast named Geng Wei dived to the bottom of FX Lake and found a large number of special stones piled up under the stone beam covered with scale and moss."

Until December 2005, an underwater archaeological team entered FX Lake for underwater exploration and discovered an ancient city consisting of eight ancient building complexes, including a 20-meter-high pyramid and a large building complex similar to those in ancient Rome.

Preliminary research by the archaeological team suggests that this is an ancient city dating back 2,000 years, most likely the ancient Dian Kingdom or Yuyuan City in history.

According to divers who went underwater at the time, countless bodies were found underwater in FX Lake, making it resemble a huge natural morgue.

The most unusual thing about these underwater corpses is that they are all standing upright. The male corpses are leaning forward, and the female corpses are leaning backward. The corpses move with the water flow, but they do not change their standing position, just like living people.

Relevant departments once conducted a large-scale underwater exploration of FX Lake.

YTV will broadcast the entire exploration activity live, aiming to transmit the process and results of the underwater exploration to the world in real time.

However, the live stream was interrupted after only 40 minutes, ending abruptly.

No one knows what incredible thing was discovered at the bottom of Lake FX that led to the abrupt end of the underwater live broadcast that year.

There have been no further reports about this incident, and even the live stream video from that year has vanished without a trace, seemingly disappearing with time.

Twenty years ago, Qiao An'an was still a primary school student, Yan Ling was probably in kindergarten, and Chi Xiaoyu and Ye Jing hadn't even been born yet.

They, who don't watch adventure programs, were completely unaware of what the sunken ship was talking about.

The older Li Jianguo seemed to recall it: "I always thought the FX Lake morgue was just a legend, but I never imagined it was actually true..."

Qiao An'an frowned as she looked at the waxy thing struggling at the bottom of the water: "So this thing has been underwater for 2,000 years and can still move, it's still alive?"

These things are alive and aggressive, but they are not fast.

Chen Zhou grabbed the creature that was swimming closest to them, took out his dagger and stabbed it in the head. The creature immediately stopped moving after being stabbed.

After the thing completely stopped moving, Chen Zhou cut off a piece of flesh from its body: "Judging from the current degree of waxing of the corpse, this thing has been in the water for at least a thousand years. This thing also stopped moving after its head was pierced, which is very similar to a low-end version of a zombie... Could it be that the zombie virus was developed by the underwater laboratory using these things?"

Qiao An'an and Chen Zhou had different opinions: "According to the principle that people turn into zombies when they die, they are most likely infected by a virus that invaded their brains. Is it possible that they are zombies? But because these corpses are old, even if they turn into zombies, they will not be able to move quickly."

Chen Zhou: "It's not impossible."

Li Jianguo was an impatient man: "What's the point of discussing how these things were formed? Shouldn't we be more concerned about how to get through these things to get into the submarine?"

Although these things move slowly, their large numbers make up for it.

The big fish that just escaped was so agile that it didn't dare to venture into the middle of these things, which shows that they are still very dangerous.

Qiao An'an also wanted to rush into the submarine right now: "But there are only seven of us..."

Seven people trying to take on hundreds or thousands of them is like ants trying to shake a tree; everyone fell silent after hearing this.

Only Ye Jing asked, puzzled, "The people in the lab put so many of these things at the entrance and exit. Don't they ever need to come out? Or do these zombies obey their commands and attack wherever they're told?"