Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 835: Deep Sea Ghost
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Due to the existence of the transmission channel, even the steps of filling water and pressurizing were omitted. The four people only needed to sit still in their seats and then push the transmission channel through the slide rail - when the surrounding scene returned to normal, the submersible was already in the deep sea.
The submersible was equipped with multiple "Zhenxing III" underwater searchlights in all directions, the maximum brightness of which could reach 35 million lumens. However, in this sea area, the light only penetrated about 100 meters of water before it was completely exhausted.
The water from the Central and Extreme Seas absorbs light, which is something everyone has long known. If a five-meter-deep pool is filled with clean water, the bottom of the pool will be clearly visible under normal light. But if the water from these two places is filled, the pool will instantly turn into a dark and deep pool.
Although all visible impurities have been filtered out of the sea water before being injected, and a single basin of sea water is clear and colorless, when it reaches a certain depth, it becomes like ink.
According to the institute, this characteristic seems to be related to the composition of seawater, and it can be eliminated through a few "not-so-simple purification" procedures.
But the research institute only "purified" ten tons of seawater, and the energy consumed was enough to purify hundreds of millions of tons of drinking water for the residents of the Ark...and in the Central and Arctic Oceans, there are more than hundreds of millions of tons of seawater like this.
The outline of the underwater city appeared hazy under the blurred light, just like a ghost town, full of eerie atmosphere and unreality.
Fortunately, Layton was still able to synchronize the panoramic scanning data of Yaguna Tor to the computer of the submersible. Although the remains of the city below could not be seen clearly with the naked eye, the detailed holographic modeling still outlined the accurate appearance of the city. At least there was no need to worry that the submersible would suddenly collide with a tall tower or crash into a steep slope.
"It's so quiet..." In the submersible, apart from the beeping of electronic equipment and the slightly weird echo received by the sonar, there were only the breathing and heartbeats of four people. In this environment, even the hound, who was used to speaking loudly, couldn't help but lower his voice.
"Shouldn't the seabed be quiet?" Chi Hanfeng asked puzzledly, "If there really were any noise, that would be terrible, right?"
"I mean the sonar is too quiet." Hound pointed to the hemispherical screen on the control panel, where a circle of ripples would spread out from the center every few seconds, and then another circle of ripples would return to the center from the edge. "The sonar can only scan the seabed and the city ruins on the seabed. There is no other sound. This is not normal."
"It's not normal." Ghost Owl continued, "Although the deep sea has always been called a forbidden zone for life, there are actually quite a few species of creatures living in the deep sea. The 'Eye of Hell' abyss in the extreme sea is more than 10,000 meters deep. Except for the waters polluted by the corpse of the prehistoric 'Yinglong', there are a large number of active deep-sea life in other places... The depth here is only 3,000 meters, so it shouldn't be completely dead."
"That's right. You know, when we first arrived in this sea area, we happened to encounter Miss Soma's icebreaker being besieged by giant deep-sea eels... Since there are giant deep-sea eels in this sea area, there must be other deep-sea creatures. Otherwise, what do these giant eels eat?" The hound put his face against the porthole made of several layers of special glass and filled with a transparent semi-fluid pressurizer in the middle, staring at the pitch-black sea and said.
"Could it be that when Yaguna Tor dived, it scared away all the deep-sea creatures, so it's so quiet?" Chi Hanfeng made a guess.
"That's the only possibility." The Hound nodded. "Old Chi, you're right about one thing. Silence is always better than noise. I'd rather scare myself than see a giant deep-sea eel swimming past me right now."
But just after the hound finished saying this, a dark shadow suddenly "floated" past the porthole, so fast that the four people didn't even have time to see its general outline!
"What is that!" The Hound's eyes widened, and his right hand had already pulled out the pistol from the holster on his waist - although this conventional weapon is completely useless underwater, drawing the gun immediately when encountering danger has become a soldier's muscle memory engraved in his bones.
Not only him, but Chi Hanfeng, Gui Xiao and Zhuo Ligetu also reached for their weapons at the first moment.
"You saw it too?!" The Hound turned around and asked, "It wasn't my hallucination, was it?!"
"It's not an illusion..." Chi Hanfeng felt a chill down his spine, "But..." He glanced at the sonar screen several times while speaking, "The sonar didn't detect anything near us at all."
"Could there be something wrong with the sonar?" Ghost Owl whispered, "That thing wasn't even five meters away from us just now... Otherwise, without direct light, we don't think we could have seen it! It should have swum past the submersible! It's so close, there's no way the sonar couldn't detect it!"
"No, it's not necessarily the sonar that's at fault." The hound shook his head. "The problem might be with the thing that floated over. Some creatures have a special fat layer on their skin that can absorb sound waves. When the sound waves touch them, it's like a hammer hitting cotton. There won't be any feedback at all..."
"Old dog, I forgot to tell you that this submersible is equipped with the latest high-power sonar, which has both active and passive sonar functions. If a creature's body can absorb sound waves, there should be an obvious blank space on the sonar image, and the received sound wave pattern will also have a very obvious gap, instead of being normal like now." Chi Hanfeng murmured, "Unless it is a ghost, the sound waves will pass through its body directly without being affected in any way."
"Ghost? Lao Chi, aren't you an atheist? Why do you start to believe in this kind of thing?" the hound muttered.
"I'm just giving an analogy..." Chi Hanfeng's eyes kept switching back and forth between the sonar screen and the porthole. "To completely hide from sonar detection at such a close distance, according to the current development ideas of human civilization technology, there are two ways."
"Which two methods?" demanded the Hound.
"The first method is to add a layer of 'lubricating' coating on the surface of the object so that sound waves can slide through the surface... This is something that the Alpha civilization can do easily. Their optical camouflage device uses this principle to refract light, and the things that need to be hidden hide in the 'dead corner' formed by the refraction, and naturally they will not appear in the visible light field of view. Sound waves are the same as light, both are waves, so this method can naturally be used to achieve invisibility in front of sonar, and the technical difficulty is even lower than optical camouflage." Chi Hanfeng explained to the other three in a low but fast voice, "Another method is 'simulation', absorbing the sound waves emitted by the sonar, analyzing , and then simulating the 'echo' sound waves under 'normal conditions' to deceive the sonar... This camouflage method is more complicated than the first method, but it is actually less difficult to implement. As far as I remember, this technology had already been installed on some experimental vehicles before I retired, but because there are too few occasions where it can be used, few people know about it."
Chi Hanfeng swallowed his saliva and continued, "But no matter which technology you use, if you want to improve the success rate of camouflage, it is closely related to distance. The farther the distance, the less likely it is to be discovered... and at a distance like just now, no matter which technology you use, it is impossible to hide perfectly."
"I just checked the sonar records again and didn't receive any abnormal feedback sound waves." Zhuoligetu said, "All the scan results are exactly the same as the computer predicted."
The meaning of this sentence is obvious. According to sonar detection, there is nothing in this area of water except the underwater city directly below and Yagunakotor floating in the sea not far away.
Otherwise, as long as there is a slight abnormality in the sound wave, even if there is only a one-ten-thousandth deviation from the predicted result, the computer will issue an alert immediately.
However, from the time the four people caught a glimpse of the black shadow until now, the sonar had not sounded any alarm - if the portholes were closed, no one would know that something had just swam past the submersible.
The Hound took a deep breath, raised his hand to wipe away the sweat oozing from his forehead, and said to Chi Hanfeng: "Contact Layton immediately and ask him if the panoramic scan of Yaguna Kator has captured anything abnormal."
"I've already asked, and Layton said that the panoramic scan showed nothing." Chi Hanfeng said immediately, "He was staring at us the whole time. There was nothing around the submersible except seawater."
"Did I really see a ghost?" The hound pressed against the back of the seat behind him, as if this could give him a sense of security. His eyes kept glancing at the porthole on one side... He wanted to stare out the window and not miss any movement, but he was afraid that he would really see something. He wanted to see but didn't dare to. The conflicting emotions were fighting wildly in his heart, making him feel that his skin all over his body seemed to start to itch and sting.
"Could it be an illusion?" Ghost Owl whispered, "In some ruins, affected hunters will have collective hallucinations. Is it possible that the black shadow just now was an illusion of the four of us? If there really is something in the water, the sonar on the submersible can't find it. Then with the technological level of Yaguna Kator, it is impossible that it can't be found, right?"
"I'd rather it's an illusion." The Hound took deep breaths to control his soaring heart rate. "At least, illusions aren't fatal... at least not most of the time."
"What should I do now?" Chi Hanfeng asked, "Should I continue searching for the black shadow just now?"
"Don't worry about it. Regardless of whether it's an illusion or not, even if there really is something in the water, it was so close to us just now and didn't do anything to us... So we should just pretend that we didn't see anything and continue doing what we should do." The hound said, "Dive down to the 'city'."
Chi Hanfeng didn't respond, but he knew in his heart that in this situation, instead of wasting oxygen and energy like a frightened bird, it would be better to continue to carry out the original goal... If that "thing" really wanted to attack the submersible, they would not be able to defend it at all. After thinking this through, the fear lingering in his heart was reduced a lot.
Chi Hanfeng switched the control mode of the submersible to full manual operation and gently pressed down the joystick. The front end of the submersible tilted slightly, and under the triple effects of the tail propeller thruster, the external drainage tank and the anti-gravity device, it slowly approached the city ruins below.
"We are diving now. We are still 45 meters from the seabed. The current depth is 3,192 meters."
"Come a little closer." The hound said. The six searchlights in front of the submersible focused the light beams, and the originally vague outlines of the buildings finally became clearer little by little.
"Is this the underwater city..." Zhuo Ligetu couldn't help but sigh in a low voice as he looked at the ruins of the city outside the porthole, which, even though dilapidated, still vaguely showed its former grandeur.
"The damage to the building is very serious." Ghost Owl said, "Look, those broken pieces, if I'm not mistaken, should be the 'Skyrail' commonly seen in Alpha civilization cities."
The sky rail in Alpha City is not the same as the "sky rail train" on Earth and inside the Ark. It can be regarded as a "highway" built in the sky. The sky rail itself is just a structure with a diameter of about three meters, but with the sky rail as the center, it can expand into a gravity channel with a diameter of about twenty meters. The vehicles of Alpha civilization can glide at high speed on the inner wall of this gravity channel that is invisible to the naked eye, and it looks like they are flying.
"I have led a team to explore many city ruins of the Alpha Civilization. This kind of sky rail usually only appears in cities of 'Class B' or above. The towers used to support the sky rail are usually around 500 to 1,000 meters high... I think this kind of transportation should not appear in an underwater city."
Class B cities are equivalent to "provincial capitals" on Earth, while Class A cities are capitals or cities at the cultural, political, or economic center level.
"This city sank from the sea. Ke Lan told me so," the Hound murmured. "He said he saw with his own eyes a burning city sinking into the sea..."
" Saw it with your own eyes?" Ghost Owl was stunned for a moment, "Where did he see it?"
