Original Text
A merchant was sailing on the South Sea. At the third watch of the night, the boat became as bright as day. Rising to look, he saw a colossal object, half its body emerging from the water like a mountain, its eyes like two suns just rising, casting brilliant rays that illuminated the entire earth. The merchant, terrified, asked the others on board, but none knew what it was. All crouched by the boat's edge to watch. After a while, the giant thing gradually sank back into the water, and the sky darkened once more. Later, when the merchant arrived in Fujian, the people there also spoke of a night that had suddenly become very bright, then dimmed again, and the tale spread far and wide as a strange occurrence. The merchant calculated the time and found it was the very night he had seen the bizarre object on the boat.
Commentary
Although this tale also describes "a giant creature," the author does not delve into what the creature actually is, instead focusing on depicting the strange luminous phenomena it causes.
The passage is not long, yet its descriptions are exceedingly rich and layered. First, it depicts the merchant's sensation within the cabin, where the interior of the boat was as bright as dawn; then it describes what he saw upon emerging from the cabin, a giant creature resembling a mountain, its eyes like two rising suns, casting light in all directions, illuminating the entire earth; next, it recounts how he and the boatmen watched together as the colossal being gradually sank back into the water, plunging everything into darkness once more; finally, it notes that even those on land felt the overwhelming power of the giant creature's radiance.