Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 832: Contaminated Creatures
"The Ark's navy." Thirty-three nodded. "This can be considered a 'dark history'. People outside the military system don't know about it at all... and even among the people in the military, only a very few know about this 'dark history'. Well, Lao Gou must know about it, but he probably didn't mention it to you."
"Never mentioned it." Ke Lan said.
"When the Ark first landed on Alpha, the people above also thought about forming a naval fleet... Although the Polar Sea cannot be navigated, the area of the Central Sea is so large that a powerful fleet is definitely necessary if we want to control this sea area."
“But in the first few years after landing, the Ark was busy dealing with attacks from indigenous creatures and had no intention of exploring the sea… This plan was shelved for several years. It was not until the 905th year of the New Era, when the war eased a little, that the military decided to formally establish a navy.
"The two Oberon-class heavy cruisers of the Air Force Fleet were transformed into dual-purpose sea and air warships and renamed the Zhenhai-class. They are the first ship Zhenhai and the second ship Dinghai... This gun barrel comes from the gun on the Zhenhai.
"But the plan to establish a navy was cut short after only half a year. According to the news circulating within the army, the two 'Zhenhai-class' cruisers seemed to have been refurbished too hastily, and accidents occurred one after another, and they sank... I didn't expect them to sink here." Thirty-three looked at the gun barrel with some emotion.
"Although the 'Oberon' class heavy cruiser is a bit old, it is also a warship that can go into space. A hull structure that can go into space can naturally be launched into water, so the renovation project does not take much time at all, and there is no such thing as rushing. All you need to do is replace the jet thrusters with propellers and the missiles with torpedoes. Moreover, it was very common to install anti-gravity devices on warships in that era, and you don't even need displacement tanks, you can directly use the warships as submarines... The cause of the sinking does not seem to be an accident." Ke Lan analyzed.
"It was a battle." Thirty-three held the gun barrel and looked inside from the muzzle, saying, "The inner bore of this gun barrel has very serious signs of wear. You have to know that the Nino alloy content of this gun barrel is more than 90%. To be able to wear it like this, you can imagine how intense the battle that the Zhenhai encountered before it sank was... This is also a smoothbore gun used to launch gun-launched missiles. If it was a conventional rifled gun, the rifling inside would probably have been worn flat."
Thirty-three turned the gun barrel over again. The structure at the other end opposite the muzzle showed obvious signs of expansion and deformation, and the fracture was very rough, as if it had been torn off the gun mount by a huge force.
"And here, how do you think this gun barrel broke?" Thirty-three looked at Ke Lan and asked.
"Exploded?" Ke Lan reached out his hand, stroked the rough end of the barrel, and answered tentatively.
Although Ke Lan can be considered a half-military fan, he has never been a soldier and has never participated in actual combat. All his military knowledge comes from information on paper, and he cannot compare with professional soldiers like Hound and Thirty-Three.
For a question like the one Sanshisan is asking right now, even if you search through all the military books in the library, you may not be able to find a standard answer. The knowledge involved is too broad and too complex. Not only does one need to understand weapon manufacturing, but also materials science, physics, and even the war history of the Ark, indigenous biology, etc. Only by combining the knowledge of these disciplines can one restore the battles that the "Zhenhai" had experienced through such a broken gun barrel.
But Thirty-three and the others don't need this knowledge... What they rely on is experience, the experience accumulated from countless battles filled with the smoke and smell of blood.
"This barrel did explode, but it is made of N90 grade Nino alloy and is forged in one piece. Even if it exploded, it would not break completely like this..." Sanshisan said, turning the barrel over. There was a more obvious dent in the middle of the barrel. He gestured with his palm and continued, "In my opinion, this barrel should have been attacked from this direction and was broken. And it was not a hard object with edges and corners that broke it, but something smooth and tough... I am more inclined to believe that it was an offensive organ of an indigenous creature, such as a tentacle."
(Note: N90 grade Nino alloy refers to a material with a Nino alloy content of more than 90%. Generally, the material number containing Nino alloy is prefixed with N + a number (Nino alloy content percentage), plus the number of other metal elements or artificial alloys. For example, a boiling steel with 0.03% Nino alloy and a carbon content of 0.08% is labeled "N003-08F". As for some materials with more complex compositions, a single label can even fill up half a sheet of paper.)
"I understand what you mean." Ke Lan continued, "Maybe the one who sank the Zhenhai was... the fusion creature in the Abyss Hatchery."
Thirty-three nodded in agreement. "It seems that the Undead Crew has already discovered this underwater city. The two heavy cruisers that were transformed into the Zhenhai Class are not actually used to form a navy. The navy is just a cover. This underwater city is their real target."
He continued , "Moreover, you and the people on the Pioneer icebreaker are not the first to enter the underwater city. It has been explored as early as 950 years before the New Era."
"I think we can now make finding the wreckage of the 'Zhenhai' and 'Dinghai' our primary goal." Sanshisan said, throwing the barrel to Ke Lan, "Zeluo, please use this as material to help me build a weapon of sufficient weight."
"Weapons? What shape do you want?" The voice of Ze Luo, who was used as a human forging machine, rang in Sanshisan's ears.
"A long-handled battle axe, with the center of gravity as far forward as possible, is best if you can swing it like a hammer... The blade doesn't need to be very sharp, even if it's a blunt weapon, with the weight, the destructive power is completely sufficient. I only have one hard requirement, which is that it must be strong enough."
Thirty-three knew very well that the enemy they needed to face was most likely the monster that had cut off the gun barrel...
"You're right, but the problem is that the main wreckage of the Zhenhai and Dinghai is not in this city." Ke Lan sighed, "There are only three possibilities. The first possibility is that the Zhenhai and Dinghai did not sink, but were secretly moved to other places by the Undead Crew after the mission was completed. The second possibility is that the Zhenhai and Dinghai did sink, but the wreckage was salvaged by the personnel sent by the Undead Crew later. The third possibility is that the wreckage of the two warships is indeed still on the seabed, but they either sank into the Abyss Hatchery or are somewhere else outside the sea platform. The former is a restricted area for us, and the latter is like looking for a needle in a haystack... Oh no, salvaging a ship."
"Even if the main wreckage is not here, there must be some scattered parts, like this gun barrel... Oh, now it's an axe." Sanshisan took the battle axe processed by Ze Luo and swung it a few times. Ze Luo removed all the impurities in the gun barrel, and then used the power of space to forge the remaining pure Nino alloy, transforming it into a very rough long-handled battle axe.
The radius of the axe blade alone is 1.5 meters, and the entire axe weighs 900 kilograms, which is more than 20 times heavier than the "82-jin Green Dragon Crescent Blade" exaggeratedly described in the novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms"... If Sanshisan did not have the ability to manipulate Nino alloy, he would not be able to lift this axe even if he underwent three more strengthening operations.
"Well, you can search a little more carefully...be careful!" Before Ke Lan finished speaking, he suddenly turned around, raised his hand and shot out a sharp blade in space.
The spatial blade that was originally invisible to the naked eye drew a crescent-shaped vacuum track in the water, and in an instant it cut a native sea snake into two pieces. This sea snake had been lurking in the ruins of a building. Not only did the color and pattern of its body surface become almost the same as the surrounding environment, but even its heartbeat and blood flow had completely stopped, and its body temperature was exactly the same as that of sea water... Although Ke Lan had caught a glimpse of this sea snake before, he thought it was a corpse or a leftover snake skin until the sea snake suddenly jumped up and attacked Sanshisan who turned around.
The spatial blade hit the sea snake's "three inches" right away, but the severed snake head still opened its mouth wide and bit towards Thirty-three. Fortunately, Ze Luo solidified the spatial barrier in front of Thirty-three in time and blocked the snake head.
The snake's head that "hit the wall" was bounced away, but the mouth full of fangs continued to bite, and a large amount of light blue toxin was sprayed out from the venom glands in the mouth, spreading in the sea water.
"This toxin is highly toxic and corrosive. If humans come into contact with it, their central nervous system will be completely paralyzed within fifteen seconds. Even a level nine modified human who has undergone toxin resistance enhancement will not survive for more than a minute." Ze Luo said to Ke Lan and Sanshisan, "Moreover, this toxin cannot be antidote or treated with human technology. It is a deadly poison that will kill anyone who comes into contact with it."
"I didn't expect that such an inconspicuous little snake could have such a terrible toxin?" Thirty-three sighed in a low voice. Although the venom had been isolated by the space barrier, when he saw the venom spreading towards him, Thirty-three still subconsciously took two steps back.
Although Ke Lan wanted to see if his "special physique" could withstand the poison, his reasoning successfully stopped him from doing such a meaningless act - the poison directly acts on the central nervous system, and Ke Lan was not sure whether his own recovery ability could have any effect on the brain... He could experiment on other parts of the body, but he absolutely dared not touch the brain.
"There is a familiar smell in the poison." Ze Luo said again.
"A familiar taste?" Thirty-three was stunned for a moment, "You...you tasted it?"
"You can understand that I have tasted it." Ze Luo continued, "This toxin should come from a primitive species, and this primitive species has encountered Ke Lan in some special way."
"The primitive species I have encountered? Leviathan? Or..." Ke Lan subconsciously thought of the primitive species that was once trapped in the underground laboratory on an unknown desert island.
But the problem is that he only saw the image of that wild creature in his memory, and he didn't really encounter it...
"It's Yinglong." Ze Luo said, "I tried to analyze the gene sequence of this toxin and found that it is highly similar to the genes of Yinglong's eggs... Moreover, according to relevant literature, the sea area was also contaminated by the poison it released. That toxin should be very similar to the toxin secreted by the venom gland of this sea snake."
"Yinglong... Are you saying that this sea snake is Yinglong?" Thirty-three looked at the still moving snake head in astonishment and exclaimed.
"No, it can only be said that it has a very small amount of Yinglong bloodline... It is also possible that the original genes have been contaminated by Yinglong genes. The toxin secreted by this sea snake is only a weakened version of Yinglong's poison, but its toxicity cannot be underestimated." Ze Luo said.
"Isn't Yinglong's burial place in the Central Trench of the Polar Sea, in the 'Eye of Hell' abyss? If you say Yinglong died in the Central Sea, then this sea snake would be contaminated by Yinglong's genes, which makes sense, but the problem is that the Polar Sea and the Central Sea are completely different, and Yinglong's genes can't be passed on at all. This sea snake, or its ancestors, can't break through the permanent ice cap of the Polar Sea and cross most of the Alpha Star land to get here."
"Yinglong has wings, so it can fly..." Ke Lan shook her head, "Besides, we may not be in Zhonghai now."
"Tsk... You're not trying to tell me that this is the Arctic Ocean, are you?" Thirty-three sighed, "The seawater temperature is wrong, and the salt content and composition are also wrong. This can't be the Arctic Ocean."
Ke Lan did not respond, but picked up the sea snake's body and scratched it lightly with his fingernails. The space blade extending from the front of the fingernails cut the body open along the spine of the sea snake.
The meat inside the sea snake has a transparent and lustrous texture. If this thing is not poisonous, its appearance alone would probably be enough to sell it for a sky-high price in a high-end restaurant... However, the most eye-catching thing is not its meat, but its bones.
The skeleton of this sea snake had been completely crystallized, with a lavender sheen, just like a gem. But when Ke Lan stretched out his finger to touch it, the crystallized skeleton quickly melted away.
Ke Lan was stunned for a moment. This scene seemed familiar.
The creatures captured in Block 1 of Yagunakotor also had similar crystalline tissues in their bodies...and they would also quickly degrade themselves after the death of the main body.
