Volume One, Chapter Ten: Dangerous Goods

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Move forward?
I held the communicator in my hand, feeling at a loss.
The bright flashlight beams ahead were gradually withdrawn, leaving me engulfed in an unfathomable darkness.
“Officer Shi, why aren’t you moving yet? Quickly, go left!” The archaeologists, seeing that I hadn’t kept up with the main group, turned back and called to me.
At this moment, I faced a dilemma:
The spy told me to move forward.
The tomb robbers told me to go left.
Frankly speaking—both parties were criminals, so I trusted neither.
Yet, despite their untrustworthiness, what they said must be true. The spy was so eager because the precious artifact he coveted lay straight ahead; once he had the treasure, no matter what tricks he played next, he would ensure I safely carried it out—otherwise, I couldn’t have personally delivered it. As for the tomb robbers, trapped in the underwater cave for so long and having seen the direction of the water flow with their own eyes, they too were desperate to escape and would not lie to me.
In other words, neither had reason to deceive me. This underwater tomb must have two exits.
So, whose advice should I follow?
If I ignored the spy, he might become enraged and do something extreme—perhaps even blow up the entire underwater tomb; but if I didn’t heed the tomb robbers and insisted on moving forward, others would think I was crazy, abandoning hopes of escape, and reckless enough to lead them into near-certain death. I couldn’t offer everyone a reasonable explanation or justification.
As I hesitated, suddenly a head popped out from the left tunnel, startling me. Master Qi had somehow emerged from the cave again.
“Why did you come back this way?” I asked.
“No,” he said, still holding three palm-sized miniature pottery figurines. “I just took a few steps left and found quite a few scattered relics on the ground. It wasn’t convenient to take them out, so I put them back here for safekeeping.”
Master Qi glanced left and right before placing the figurines in a corner of the tomb, clasping his hands together in a bow. “Sorry to disturb you, owners of this place. We’ll escort the bad guys out first, then come back to tidy up your rooms.”
Having done this, he waved at me:
“Let’s go, apprentice. What are you waiting for?”
Instinctively, I pointed to the stone door ahead, honestly suggesting, “Look, there’s another stone door at the end. How about... uh, we check it out on the way?”
Master Qi’s eyes shot up to meet mine. His gray eyes were sharp and fierce. He must have suspected I was possessed by some evil spirit or had lost my mind.
His gaze was like a sword unsheathing in an instant, but upon seeing my rare look of helplessness, he slowly withdrew the edge.
Lowering his voice close to my ear, he teased with a wry smile, “Addicted to cave exploration, Officer Shi?”
I felt a wave of discomfort. I wasn’t used to being this close to others, especially two grown men whispering secrets. And this time he didn’t call me “apprentice,” but emphasized “Officer,” clearly reminding me to remember my identity.
“Officer Shi, don’t get too attached here. Do you know what’s worse than being trapped in an underwater tomb?” Master Qi asked.
I shook my head in confusion.
“After being underground so long, have you forgotten the world above? The colleagues assigned to supervise the case are arriving in West Sea City today. We’re still stuck underwater, anxiously waiting for them to come rescue us,” Master Qi laughed heartily. “The worst part is, when you get ashore and check your phone, you won’t dare to open it because there’ll be 99+ messages from the provincial headquarters. All asking where you went, what you were doing, and why you disappeared during the crucial moments of hosting the guests!”
My mind grew even more chaotic.
“Well, you must have received 99+ messages from the department too, asking where you were and why you disappeared when you were supposed to be with me!” I retorted stubbornly.
“That’s why we have to hurry out,” Master Qi said with a smile, looking at me like he’d finally coaxed a wild little kangaroo into his pouch. “Let’s go quickly. Be careful—I’ll hold the light and guide you.”
I bit my lip, still unwilling to compromise.

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I clasped my hands behind my back, clutching the damned communicator—it might explode next second, or maybe not. Everything depended on my choice.
Master Qi watched me intently, deeply furrowing his brow.
“Shi Guangyin.”
“Ah?” I grew nervous; he rarely called me by my full name.
“Shi Guangyin, can we have a talk?”
I nodded, suppressing my anxiety, about to follow Master Qi to a quiet corner. But he grabbed my wrist before I could react and snatched the communicator from my exposed waist with an annoyed tone:
“Our private conversation doesn’t need ‘him’ listening in, right?”
—“Him”? The spy on the communicator?
My heart began to pound uncontrollably.
—How do you know about the spy?
“Apprentice, you’ve been chatting away on that communicator the whole time. If I couldn’t tell, I’d have been shot in the head countless times by now.” Master Qi sighed, casually tossing the communicator aside, then pressed me against the stone wall and asked in a low voice:
“What exactly did that guy tell you?”
Compared to that question—I glared at him and thought, before asking that, why did I give myself away?
We were used to criminals’ counter-surveillance tactics from fieldwork and knew how to conceal ourselves. Yes, I did hold the communicator suspiciously, but I swear neither the spy’s words nor mine were overheard by anyone. Unless... unless Master Qi could read minds like that spy! Otherwise, he couldn’t have discovered this secret.
“I don’t read minds,” Master Qi said calmly, ignoring my shocked expression. “It’s just basic national security training. I can tell roughly what you’re thinking from subtle movements and micro-expressions.”
My defenses began to crumble. I dared not let my thoughts run wild before him anymore. No wonder he was so competent in national security and capturing spies—only those equally skilled could play this kind of mental game.
“Shi Guangyin, everyone hides their emotions. You don’t dare reveal your heart because you fear deeper wounds. I understand that.” Master Qi rested his head on my shoulder and took a deep breath. “But the more you hide, the clearer I see.”
“Everyone knows when people lie, their eyes unconsciously shift up and to the right, or avoid direct eye contact, and so on. But these habits are easy to overcome, especially with our training to suppress such tells.”
“But when you just lied, your eyelids flickered upward slightly and then immediately met my gaze. That’s a common move of a skilled liar—on one hand to avoid suspicion, on the other to gauge my reaction.”
Master Qi pointed at my hands: “Also, at that moment your fingers were tightly interlocked and rubbing together, indicating inner anxiety. But the slow pace suggests you didn’t want to attract attention while wrestling with a difficult choice.”
“When I first called you to hurry up, your emotions went through a series of subtle changes. Though you tried to hide them, I still saw your face shift through unease, fear, disgust, and tension—four emotions.” Master Qi held up four fingers.
“When you felt ‘unease,’ your pupils briefly contracted and your eyes opened wider than usual. Your eyebrows lifted overall, but the inner ends dipped slightly.”
“Especially when I mentioned ‘him,’ you skipped over fear and jumped to ‘terror’—your brows furrowed deeply and pressed downward. Yet your eyes still hid beneath those furrowed brows, trying to stay wide open.”
“This means your eyelids tried to lift but were squeezed into a diagonal crease by the orbicularis oculi and corrugator muscles. Meanwhile, your eyebrows, pulled up by the frontalis muscle, formed a faint inverted ‘U’ shape on your forehead.”
Master Qi gently smoothed my knitted brows with the back of his hand.
“Such an expression usually doesn’t last long. It proves you weren’t faking—you really felt fear. A fear too deep for words.”
Seeing me stunned, Master Qi continued: “As for the third emotion, disgust—you furrowed and pressed your brows together tightly. Your chin muscles lifted but your mouth corners pulled down, creating a nasolabial fold around your nose. Though you appeared calm outwardly, careful observation of your facial muscles reveals your disgust. Whenever you hold the communicator alone for a while, you return with this micro-expression of disgust.”
I found it absurd. “You actually applied these psychological tactics used to probe foreign spies on me?”
Master Qi chuckled softly. “How could I resist? It’s just a habit from work. I always observe people casually—just a glance on the street and I know their identity and character. Shi Guangyin, you’re truly my apprentice. I never taught you this, but you’re a little liar; you hide your emotions very well. Besides these micro-expressions, I hardly found any flaws. But once I find an opening, your whole body is full of them. Like your nose... stop touching it! You wouldn’t notice yourself, but your nose betrays your nervousness.”
He explained that psychological pressure alters airflow in the respiratory tract, which changes the shape of the nostrils. So whenever I felt nervous, my nostrils unconsciously flared.

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He pinched my nose, laughing. “There’s even a thin layer of sweat here.”
“Finally, you said you wanted to check out the fourth stone door, but your toes silently and unconsciously pointed toward the left niche. That shows you wanted to go left with us, but for some reason had to go forward.”
I lowered my head, feeling like a transparent person, seen through from head to toe by Master Qi. In the silent stone walls, only our breathing echoed as we exchanged blows.
“Apprentice, I’m old, and my rambling isn’t very logical, but here’s the gist,” Master Qi said. “First, the person on the communicator isn’t a good guy, which makes you anxious, disgusted, and forced to obey; second, you’re likely threatened by him and must go forward and open that stone door. Right?”
I regretted it, almost wanted to cry, unsure what to do. I wanted to push him away or hug him fiercely. In the end, I just cursed:
Bastard.
You bastard! You saw through it all along yet let me be toyed with by the enemy like a puppet for so long!
“The person on the communicator is a foreign spy. He speaks Chinese. He wants a national artifact from this underwater tomb, so he deliberately set us up to help him explore and retrieve it. The flood just now was caused by him blowing open the stone wall on purpose. He’s now in international waters, jamming the communicator and navigation—next, he might interfere with surface warships. He blew open the cave and killed the previous tomb robbers; next, he might kill us all!”
I grew angrier and almost cried.
“Do you know how much pressure I’ve borne all this way? And what are you doing? Just flaunting some boring psychology like watching a show, treating me like an experiment, letting the enemy lead me by the nose!”
“Alright, alright, it’s my fault,” Master Qi admitted readily. “I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I never paid much attention to your emotions. I thought you were steady and capable. Since you decided to hide things from us, I didn’t dare ask. I never imagined you’d encounter such a huge problem.” Master Qi relaxed his grip. “You’re a quiet kid who keeps things to yourself and carries burdens alone. Have you thought whether you can bear it?”
“You were really scared by that spy, huh? You haven’t dealt with these kinds of people enough to know their nature.”
“They’re blusterers with empty shells, embroidered pillows!”
“They use psychological warfare—first sweet talk you, then deceive with a mix of kindness and threats, making you feel they’re everywhere watching your every move, causing great psychological pressure. But think—who has x-ray vision? Who can see through a hundred meters of underwater stone tomb?”
“The spy probably figured out in advance that we entered with the archaeologists, so we couldn’t suddenly speed up or stop for long like special forces. He might have personally inspected the tomb or used instruments to measure its dimensions, then calculated our progress by our walking speed and duration.”
“The tomb is very quiet, only our voices echo, so he could guess our predicament from our conversations. Using sweet words, he made you believe him quickly.”
“As for his claim to blow up the entire underwater tomb... apprentice, when you return, you must change your suspicious nature. Remember, we started deploying defenses around the sea area three months ago, and archaeologists only began diving three days ago. How powerful could that spy be to secretly move ships, measure depth, drill holes, and plant explosives or expansion devices, all without detection? To successfully break the rock?”
“Our professors at the police academy taught us about blasting calculations. You should know the volume of underwater rock blasting. Even if he was lucky to blow a hole, how could he demolish the entire tomb at once? Ridiculous. Do you think our archaeological protection measures outside are just for show? That spy clearly lied to you!”
I remained silent, ashamed, unable to meet his gaze. I nervously avoided his eyes in the darkness.
Seeing this, Master Qi didn’t press further. He glanced at the communicator, squinting displeased. “This is a dangerous item. Hold on to it; if that bastard barks again, hand me the radio. I’ll tell him to scram back across the Pacific and stop bullying our kid.”
Master Qi rubbed my head.
“As the main leader, I’m now aware of this matter and will take responsibility. This time, we’ll follow your lead and move forward—I’m curious too about which artifact ‘renowned at home and abroad’ caught their attention.”