The tips of Ling Anlan's fingers were wrapped in water, and the coldness penetrated straight to the bone marrow. The moment her consciousness awakened, she realized she could actually breathe. Mike's flashlight beam pierced through the dark river water, and countless suspended particles slowly drifted in the light and shadow, like a frozen galaxy.
"Oxygen tank..." She reached out to touch her back, but the breathing mask was already gone.
"God witness, we are breathing liquid air." Mike's trembling voice came through the waterproof communicator. He pointed overhead; the place that should have been the river surface now had a suspended bronze bell-shaped outline, with thousands of glowing runes rotating clockwise, casting a blurred spacetime projection in the deep green water.
A sudden stabbing pain shot through Ling Anlan's cervical spine. The floating patterns on the surface of that bell were clearly the "Xiantian Wuji Talisman Array" she had restored in her doctoral thesis. But when these Ming Dynasty Taoist talismans overlapped with the Freemason square and compass symbol inlaid on the top of the bell, they combined into a new geometric structure—a regular heptadecagon enclosing the Tai Chi双鱼 (Tai Chi双鱼), with each edge precisely corresponding to important port coordinates on the East Coast of North America.
"Franklin's private ship log..." She murmured unconsciously, her lungs stung by the words in her memory. In the航海日志 (航海日志) she had accidentally found three years ago in the basement of the University of Pennsylvania, the founding father had used cryptic language to record that the "Twin Keys" had been sunk at the mouth of the Hudson River.
A violent tremor interrupted her thoughts. The underwater gravel rose like a flock of startled birds, and the bronze bell suddenly split into twelve golden rays, weaving a holographic projection around them: Philadelphia in July 1776, twenty-three Freemasons sitting in the basement of Independence Hall. On the stone platform in the center of the crowd lay broken bronze vessels, their fragment patterns identical to those they had salvaged at the bottom of the river.
"That's the司徒雷登 (司徒雷登) family crest!" Mike suddenly pointed to the edge of the projection. An Asian-faced man was drawing符咒 (符咒) on rice paper; the rank badge on his python robe was embroidered with a spreading blue luan—exactly the signature seal from the ancestral "Yunji Tupu" in Ling Anlan's grandfather's study.
A sharp whistle on the water shattered the illusion. Three Coast Guard helicopters cast searchlights into pale beams, their turbine roar shaking the riverbed. Ling Anlan then realized they had been suspended ten meters below the river surface, and the vacuum tube formed by the overhead vortex was rapidly contracting.
"Hold on!" Mike tore off the grappling gun from his tactical belt. The moment the steel cable broke through the water, some viscous resistance wrapped around their limbs. Ling Anlan saw a bluish-purple talisman mark appear on the inside of her wrist, its shape perfectly matching the phoenix pattern on the bronze fragments.
As the helicopter winch pulled the two out of the water, the entire Manhattan power grid suddenly瘫痪 (瘫痪). The torch of the Statue of Liberty extinguished in the sudden rain, and the steel cables of the Brooklyn Bridge emitted an ominous hum. Inside Ling Anlan's waterproof bag, the bronze fragments were emitting continuous high-frequency vibrations, exactly matching the resonance frequency of the ancient New York subway tracks.
In the New York University laboratory, the MRI scanner screen exploded into snow noise. Professor Richard stared as the energy readings冲破 (冲破) the safety threshold, and sudden sparks from the console掀翻 (掀翻) him to the ground. The bronze sample stained with Ling Anlan's blood悬浮 (悬浮) in mid-air, oozing asphalt-like black substance from its surface.
"Shut down the particle beam!" The assistant frantically typed on the keyboard, only to find all equipment had gone out of control. A black tide涌 (涌) from the ventilation ducts swallowed the alarm red lights, and the substance on the floor converged into the outline of eight trigrams, with the Qian position pointing directly toward the Hudson River.
At the same moment, in the underground archives of the New York Public Library. White-haired archivist William Hawthorne removed his reading glasses, his枯槁 (枯槁) fingers brushing a 1776 New York city planning map. He tremblingly opened an anonymous package received that morning—in the yellowed parchment's underground waterway map drawn with silver powder, a cinnabar-marked node was glowing directly beneath the library.
"St. Andrew's Brotherhood..." The old man's cloudy pupils contracted violently, remembering the rainy early morning three days ago. An uninvited guest in a silver mask had whispered in Latin beside his pillow, demanding the "Hermetic Covenant" sealed for two centuries. The gold ring in the drawer, inlaid with jade, now bore patterns identical to the talismans on the bronze fragments in the news photos.
In the riverside temporary command center, FBI Agent Kate Moss stared at the sonar images from the drone. Regular brick structures emerged deep in the riverbed rift, their Gothic vaults惊人地相似 (惊人地相似) to the Trinity Church crypt on Wall Street. But the thermal imaging showed the building轮廓 (轮廓) as a perfect regular octagon, with all entrances precisely corresponding to the奇门 (奇门) directions of ancient China.
"Abandoned air-raid shelters from the Manhattan Project?" She turned to ask the geological expert, receiving only a confused shake of the head. When the data model completed 3D reconstruction, everyone gasped—the building hidden beneath the sediment had a main structure clearly modeled after the "Unfinished Pyramid" symbolizing cosmic order in Freemason rituals.
Ling Anlan sat wrapped in a blanket in the ambulance, when her phone suddenly received an encrypted email. The attachment was a blurry black-and-white photo: Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945. Her great-grandfather Ling Hongming stood on the deck of the USS Missouri as an Allied translator, holding a lacquered box whose surface vaguely showed patterns blending the eight trigrams and the All-Seeing Eye.
Rain lashed the ambulance windows, and distant thunderstorm clouds gathered at the top of One World Trade Center. She摩挲 (摩挲) the ancestral jade平安扣 (平安扣) around her neck, suddenly noticing thin hair-like metal wires浮现 (浮现) inside the jade, forming the Ming Dynasty二十八星宿 (二十八星宿) chart the moment lightning flashed—a certain constellation position directly pointing to the glowing建筑群 (建筑群) at the bottom of the Hudson River.