Chapter 96: The Undersea World

The next day, after sending Feifei on her way, Zhuang Chen had nothing to do, so he came to Sanya to take a look at the villa. He had always heard people say that if you were truly loaded, then in winter your whole family had to spend the New Year by the sea.

"We are at eighteen degrees north latitude, blessed with more than three hundred days of dazzling sunshine every year, an annual average temperature of 25.5 degrees Celsius, two kilometers of breathtaking coastline, underwater visibility of eleven meters, and the third beach in the world that can sing: Qing Shui Bay."

"Each villa occupies more than three mu of land and sits just fifty meters from the sea. The floor plan covers 1,200 square meters and includes an oversized infinity pool, a private lawn, a private beach, and a sweeping blue shoreline with an unrivaled first-line ocean view..."

"Every bedroom is independent. When the doors and windows are open, it feels like a pavilion; when they are closed, it becomes a private space. Outside each bedroom suite there is a private little courtyard and a spa pool, ensuring that every member of the family has their own exclusive retreat..."

"There are only twelve in the world, and this is the very last one. You absolutely cannot miss it!"

After making a full circuit with the sales director, Zhuang Chen found that Chenglu in Blue Bay Town, developed by Greentown Group, was indeed quite good. Since he was a platinum member, he got a final discount of five percent off, and the place was settled for 88 million yuan.

At the BMW dealership, the newest X7 had just been launched and looked pretty good. The top configuration was 1.8 million yuan, which seemed quite cheap.

Zhuang Chen asked the two brothers whether they could dive. Xia Long answered honestly, "Yes, but we never trained professionally, and we haven’t been in the water for many years."

Diving was the most popular tourist activity in the local travel industry. Almost every visitor who came to Hainan wanted to descend beneath the sea and meet, just once, that romantic encounter with marine life. Zhuang Chen was no exception. He had long wanted to see what diving felt like, so he drove straight to Wuzhizhou Island, known as the mainland’s version of the Maldives.

For thirty thousand yuan, they chartered a yacht and went out to sea with two professional diving instructors. The surrounding waters were clear as glass, with visibility reaching more than twenty meters, giving one a true sense of what it meant to see all the way to the bottom.

The three essentials for snorkeling: mask, snorkel, and fins. Floating on the surface, one could see colorful, lively fish swimming right before one’s eyes. You wouldn’t see huge schools of fish or sprawling coral reefs; you didn’t need to know how to swim, and you didn’t need an instructor. With a little practice, you could get into the water.

Since he had come all this way, of course he had to try something more exciting: deep diving. The yacht headed for deeper waters, and Coach Li began explaining how to float, clear water from the snorkel, and kick with the fins. Even a complete beginner who couldn’t swim could master the basics of diving.

"Actually, diving is just moving forward underwater while wearing a tank on your back. Unlike swimming, you don’t need to surface for air. As long as you aren’t afraid of water and can learn the techniques and equipment, most people can enjoy diving..."

"Once, a female client asked whether she could get into the water during her period. She even worried that if she bled, would she attract a great white shark?"

"Every diving instructor has only one attitude toward attracting sharks: we’d be delighted!"

"Because sharks have no interest in human blood at all. There are hundreds of shark species, and the number of species known to attack people can be counted on one hand, and most of those incidents involve surfers in colder waters."

"Very likely the shark just has poor eyesight. It mistakes someone for a sea turtle or a seal, comes up and takes a bite, then loses interest the moment it realizes the meal isn’t fatty enough. Don’t be misled by the movies. If anyone could really lure a shark over, I’d definitely treat them to dinner!"

As soon as they entered the water, Xia Long and Xia Hu showed their experience and adapted quickly. Zhuang Chen, on the other hand, was a bit nervous. The instructor stayed beside him, offering support and telling a few jokes to ease his tension.

With a professional instructor helping, plus two elite bodyguards, the four of them protected him on all sides. Little by little, Zhuang Chen grew accustomed to it and finally began to descend.

After getting past the initial discomfort in his ears, it was as if he had entered another world. Everything fell suddenly quiet. Before his eyes spread a rich variety of coral, dazzling with color. Gentle sunlight poured down, and countless small fish of every hue roamed and darted through it all.

Everything underwater shimmered with a deep blue glow. Between the scattered reefs swam free schools of fish and aquatic plants. Fish moving serenely among the rocks, unnamed underwater vegetation—this was a world almost never touched by human feet, a paradise for the creatures of the sea.

Why do people fall in love with diving?

Everyone has a different answer. Some love the many colors and forms of life in the sea; others love the weightless sensation of neutral buoyancy.

Some enjoy drift diving, carried along by the current; some love underwater photography; others prefer exploring ancient ruins on the black seafloor. Many people are simply curious and seek excitement.

Zhuang Chen quietly watched the colorful creatures before him, the adorable little fish, and the coral almost close enough to touch. He felt the coolness rising from the ocean depths and the peaceful silence of being immersed in the blue sea.

At fifteen meters down, breathing inside the mask felt especially clear. Coral stretched endlessly around him, radiant with beauty. Schools of fish flowed past on every side, and he himself seemed like an intruder, or perhaps a voyeur, gazing curiously at this miraculous world.

The six-hundred-meter seabed cliff was just to the right, where the coral wall suddenly vanished. All he could see was a stretch of dark blue, a blue so deep it seemed bottomless...

As he gazed, he suddenly felt just how boundless the ocean truly was, how awe-inspiring. In its presence, at that moment, he suddenly felt incomparably small, and all the other troubles of the world seemed far less important...

Passing through a coral garden, strolling by a turtle graveyard, and being led by the instructor into the heart of a jack storm, the water around him was filled everywhere with little fish, like an underwater tempest...

At twenty-eight meters down, a sudden warm current carried him back from the seabed to the surface in one sweep, giving him the illusion of returning abruptly to the human world.

Back on the boat, his whole body felt weak. He lay flat on the deck and did not want to move at all. The feeling of the seabed was wonderful. In the future, whenever he had nothing to do, he would come again and maybe even get a diving license for fun.

That evening, they returned to the harbor and went to the fisherman’s home recommended by the instructor, where they heard there was fresh grouper. Sure enough, their luck was good that day: a wild grouper had just been caught, so they quickly got it ready.

Old Zhang, the fisherman, laughed and said, "This kind is called red grouper. There used to be plenty of them, but after all the fishing these days, wild ones are getting rarer and rarer. Sometimes you won’t see a single one for ten days or half a month."

He rubbed a layer of salt onto the cutting board to remove the mucus from the fish’s surface, then tied several hacksaw blades together with rope and used them to scrape off the scales in reverse.

After cleaning out the innards and washing it, he rubbed salt over the body and cavity, then marinated it with cooking wine for fifteen minutes. Two chopsticks were laid across a long platter, the fish was placed on top, shredded ginger was scattered over it, and peanut oil was drizzled over the body before it was put into the steamer.

The remaining oil and soy sauce were poured into a bowl and placed in the steamer as well. It was steamed over high heat for ten minutes until just done. Once removed, it was sprinkled with shredded scallions and drizzled with hot oil and soy sauce, preserving the nutrients to the greatest extent possible. The pure original flavor was the most satisfying of all.

Watching it being cooked, Zhuang Chen thought that grouper came in many varieties. The priciest were leopard coral grouper and giant grouper. In upscale restaurants they could cost over a thousand yuan per jin, and many were farmed, so they could not compare with wild-caught fish.

He then recalled a report he had once seen and asked curiously, "I heard there are people here who specialize in betting on fish roe?"