The world shrank. Once the Long Jiao 01 slipped beneath the waves, the vast, sunlit expanse of the South China Sea ceased to exist. For Commander Li Jie and his crew, reality became a bubble of recycled air and strained steel, a hundred and fifty feet long, suspended in an abyss of crushing, silent blackness. Time itself seemed to warp, losing its familiar rhythm of day and night, stretching into an endless, monotonous twilight governed only by the changing of the watch.
The first days were a descent into a new kind of sensory deprivation. The only light came from the dim, red-tinted bulbs of the control room, a perpetual, bloody gloom designed to preserve the men's night vision for the fleeting moments they might raise the periscope. The only sounds were the internal symphony of the submarine itself. Li Jie found himself learning this new language with an almost religious intensity. There was the low, constant hum of the electric motors, the soft, rhythmic sigh of the air purifiers, the high-pitched whine of the gyroscopes in the torpedoes, and, most unnervingly, the voice of the hull itself.
With every change in depth, the steel plates would groan and creak, a chorus of metallic protests against the immense, relentless pressure of the water outside. It was the sound of their tomb reminding them it was always there, just inches away. At first, the sound had set Li Jie's teeth on edge. Now, he found a strange comfort in it. It meant the boat was still fighting, still holding the sea at bay.
The air grew thick and foul, a palpable entity that coated the back of the throat. It was a stale cocktail of diesel fumes that had never fully vented, the acidic tang of the battery pits, the smell of hot oil, and the sour, human stink of twenty men living in a space smaller than a Beijing courtyard house. They ate cold rations of rice and salted fish, the food tasting of the foul air they breathed. Sleep was a fleeting luxury, taken in narrow, coffin-like bunks, the dreams haunted by the groaning of the hull.
This was the crucible. Weddigen had warned him of it. The enemy wasn't the British Navy; not yet. The first enemy was the sea. The second was the boat. The third, and most dangerous, was the slow, creeping madness of confinement.
On the third day, it found its first victim. A young Qing sailor named Chen, a boy from a farming village in Hunan who had probably never seen the ocean before joining the new navy, began to crack. Li Jie found him huddled in a narrow passageway, his eyes wide with terror, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
"I can't… Commander… I can feel it," the boy whispered, his knuckles white where he gripped a coolant pipe. "The weight. It's pressing on us. It's trying to get in. We're buried alive."
The German chief engineer, a barrel-chested man named Horst with a face like a slab of granite, moved to grab the sailor, his expression a mixture of contempt and annoyance. Li Jie put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
He knelt in front of the terrified sailor, his voice calm and steady. "What is your name, sailor?"
"Chen, sir. Able Seaman Chen."
"Chen," Li Jie said, meeting the boy's panicked gaze. "Look at me. Do you know where we are? We are not buried. We are in the belly of a dragon. The dragon is strong. Stronger than the sea. Every sound you hear is the dragon's heart beating. Every groan is the sound of its muscles holding the ocean back. The Emperor himself chose this dragon. He chose us to guide it. He has faith that we are stronger than the sea. Are you?"
He did not shout. He did not threaten. He spoke with the quiet, unshakable certainty of a true believer. He saw the flicker of understanding, of returning duty, in the young sailor's eyes. The boy's breathing steadied. He nodded, a single, jerky motion.
"Yes, Commander. I am."
"Good," Li Jie said, clapping him firmly on the shoulder. "Then get back to your station. The dragon has need of you."
He had passed a critical test. He had held his crew's nerve together. But he knew it was a temporary victory. They needed a target. They needed a purpose to distract them from the crushing, empty reality of the hunt.
On the fourth night, their chance came. They surfaced under the cover of a moonless, overcast sky, the diesel engines roaring to life to recharge the dangerously low batteries. The first inrush of fresh, clean sea air through the open conning tower hatch was a moment of sheer, intoxicating ecstasy. Men who had been sullen and silent for days suddenly grinned, their faces pale and slick with oil in the dim light, gulping in the night air like drowning men.
Li Jie was on the small, exposed bridge of the conning tower, scanning the horizon with his binoculars, when the call came from the lookout.
"Smoke! Smoke on the horizon, Commander!" The sailor's voice was a hoarse, excited whisper. "Bearing zero-four-five! A faint smudge, but it's there!"
Adrenaline, cold and sharp, lanced through Li Jie's exhaustion. It was like a jolt of electricity through the entire submarine. The weariness, the claustrophobia, the fear—it all vanished, replaced by the singular, predatory focus of the hunt.
"Clear the bridge!" he roared. The diesels were shut down, plunging them into a sudden, tense silence.
"Alarm! Tauchen!"
The klaxon blared, and the Long Jiao 01 slipped back into its natural element, the waves closing over them like a shroud. This time, it was not a slow, cautious dive into the abyss. It was a predator's dive, shallow and swift.
In the red gloom of the control room, the atmosphere was electric. Every man was at his station, his movements sharp and precise. Li Jie was at the periscope, his hands gripping the brass handles, his world once again reduced to the circular image in the eyepiece.
"All ahead full on the electrics," he commanded. The submarine surged forward, the hum of the motors rising in pitch. It was a risky move, a gamble that would drain their precious battery life, but they had to close the distance. They had to intercept.
For the next hour, he conducted the deadly ballet. He could only raise the periscope for a few seconds at a time, a brief, glittering needle breaking the surface, before retracting it to avoid detection. Each glimpse was a snapshot, a piece of a puzzle he was assembling in his mind. The target's course. Its speed. Its identity.
With each look, the silhouette grew larger, clearer. A warship. Sleek, fast, its three funnels trailing a confident plume of black smoke against the grey sky. British. And it was steaming a straight, unwavering course, not zigzagging, not taking even the most basic precautions. It was an animal wandering through its own private preserve, utterly unaware that the nature of the ecosystem had fundamentally, irrevocably changed.
Li Jie twisted the magnification dial, his heart hammering. He could make out the details now. The high bow, the arrangement of the guns. A light cruiser of the Pelorus-class. A sheep, wandering into the wolf's den.
His voice, when he spoke, was low and steady, betraying none of the fire in his veins. "Target identified. British light cruiser, Pelorus-class. Course one-niner-zero. Speed, estimate fifteen knots."
The German torpedo master, Klaus, a grizzled veteran whose face seemed permanently fixed in a scowl, peered over Li Jie's shoulder at the tactical plot being drawn on the chart table. For the first time in the entire voyage, the corner of his mouth twitched into something resembling a smile.
"Arrogant bastard," he grunted in German, the sound a gravelly rumble. "He is serving himself to us on a silver platter."
Li Jie's mind was a whirlwind of calculations. Angles, speeds, distances. All the theory, all the drills, all the whispered lessons from Weddigen, it all coalesced into this single, perfect moment of clarity. He could feel the attack vector in his bones. He saw the firing solution as if it were drawn in fire on the back of his eyelids.
He began calling out the final approach coordinates, his voice the only sound in the deathly quiet control room, each word a step closer to the precipice of history.
"Bearing… mark! Range… two thousand yards! Angle on the bow… ninety degrees starboard!"
He took one last, lingering look through the periscope. The British cruiser filled the lens, a beautiful, grey, doomed machine. He could see the tiny, white-uniformed figures of officers on her bridge, pointing at something in the sky, completely at ease, masters of their world. They had no idea that death was approaching, silent and unseen, from a direction they did not believe existed.
Li Jie turned away from the eyepiece, his face a mask of cold, absolute concentration.
"Both torpedo tubes," he commanded, his voice ringing in the stale, pressurized air. "Stand by!"