Ocean Hunting Grounds

"Run! Run, now!" Wang Half-Moon stretched out his thick neck like a turtle looking for a mate, poking his rather round head out of the bronze coffin and shouting at the top of his lungs.

In the ghostly glow of the lantern, his bloodshot eyes bulged like a pair of great brass bells, wide with terror.

And with Wang Half-Moon’s oversized head emerged several triangular ones—serpents—snake heads!

Huge snakes with triangular heads had coiled around Wang Half-Moon's own, forming a grotesque wreath. Man and serpents, head to head, stared at each other in a silent stand-off.

More and more snakes raised their triangular heads high, hissing and flicking their blood-red tongues as they slithered out from the coffin in winding lines.

Crisscrossed patterns like demonic faces in red and green covered their bodies. Under the lamp’s light, the snakes’ scales shimmered in eerie, mottled hues with every ripple of their muscular forms.

With each massive serpent emerging from the bronze coffin, everyone present stood frozen like rabbits paralyzed by a tiger’s glare, their eyes round as grapes and bodies rigid with fear.

Time passed, silent as water dripping in a dark corner. No one knew how long it lasted until Wang Half-Moon’s wailing cry finally shattered the deathly quiet. "Ah! Ah... Master Jiang, save me!"

His desperate shriek snapped me out of my trance. By now, several enormous snakes had tightly wound themselves around him, binding him like a dumpling until he was utterly immobilized.

Sensing the danger, I