Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 839: The Disappearance of Yaguna Kotor
"Major Chi, and Uncle Nick... why are you here?" Valentina was also full of doubts. "Is this... a submersible? Do you know where this is? The Blasphemer's external environmental monitoring system shows that the water pressure outside is terribly high. Ordinary vehicles cannot reach this place at all."
"This is the bottom of Zhonghai." Chi Hanfeng sighed, "It's the underwater city that Lao Gou and the others mentioned before."
"Is this the underwater city?" Valentina whispered. Although she vaguely associated this place with the mysterious ruins on the seabed when she saw the underwater ruins after the teleportation was completed, it was not until she heard Chi Hanfeng tell her with her own ears that this was the underwater city that she dared to be sure that she had really come to this S-level ruins that "she had only heard of but never seen its shape."
After all, before she officially became a relic hunter, the sea area where the underwater city was located had already been sealed off by the Undead Crew Club.
As the only S-level relic that has been officially banned, the underwater city has been a hot topic of discussion in the hunter circle in the past two years. In addition, only the advance team and the God Hunting Group had explored the relic back then, and no hunting group or lone hunter has been allowed to explore it since then. The sense of mystery has made those hunters who claim to be extraordinary in strength itch.
Many people said that the Ark's top management discovered incredible treasures in the underwater city. In order to prevent the relic hunters from getting a piece of the pie, they decided to seal off the entire relic and even the entire sea area, and monopolize the development of this S-class relic.
In fact, if you look closely, this statement is full of loopholes. Among so many S-level ruins, there are a large number of Alpha civilization heritages that are enough to change human society. But before this, the Ark official has never banned any S-level ruins... Even for "special ruins" like Yagunakotor, a relatively open bidding model has been adopted. There is no reason to seal up such an underwater ruin that is extremely difficult to explore.
With the arguments of a few discerning people, the second statement gradually surfaced: there is something in the underwater city that is enough to destroy the entire Ark and the entire human civilization. In order to bury that thing deep in the seabed forever, the Ark’s top management decided to seal it up.
Unfortunately, driven by human greed, most people believe the first statement.
…
Even though her guess had been confirmed by the person she trusted most, Valentina still had a strong sense of unreality at this moment - you know, the distance between the Central Sea and the Gray Mist Forest is 18,000 miles, and even if you take the fastest warship, it will take several hours to fly this distance.
"Major Chi, are you exploring this ruins?" Valentina asked again, "But before Ke Lan left, didn't she say that all manpower and resources would be invested in the exploration of Yaguna Kotor? Why..."
Before Valentina could finish her question, the hound interrupted her: "Do you think we came here on our own initiative?"
As he spoke, the hound sneered, "Haha... We fled like a lost dog, and were forcibly abducted to this broken place by some unknown force. Fortunately, you found us. If you had delayed for a few more days, there would probably be only four bodies left in this iron coffin."
"This is not the place to talk." Ghost Owl suddenly interrupted, "We are not sure whether the torpedo killed the thing we encountered before. Maybe it is wandering around now... My suggestion is to return to Yaguna Kotor first and then make plans."
"Yaguna Kotor?" Valentina was stunned for a moment. "Here too?"
"It's less than 300 meters from the seabed," said the Hound. "Very close, so close that if your Blasphemer floats up a little, it can hit the bow of the Yaguna Tor."
"Ghost Owl is right. This is indeed not the place to talk. The danger is not over yet." Chi Hanfeng agreed. "Valentina, our submersible has lost its ability to move. We need you to take us back to Yaguna Kotor."
"Okay. " Valentina responded immediately. The Blasphemer mecha opened its arms and directly held the submersible in its arms. Driven by the thrusters, the body and the submersible slowly floated upwards.
Including Valentina, the other five people stopped talking. Chi Hanfeng stared at the pile of large and small instrument panels on the console, while the other three looked out the porthole vigilantly... When they thought that they could escape from the desperate situation soon, the desire to survive that had already dissipated was immediately rekindled. In the process of escaping, the biggest threat was naturally the "monster" that looked like a ball of hair.
The atmosphere, which was originally filled with a hint of joy at escaping a desperate situation, became tense again. The hound's huge hooked nose was almost entirely pressed against the porthole, its nostrils humming slightly, and even its breathing became cautious.
The Blasphemer mecha, carrying the submersible, floated out of the wreckage of the building and headed towards the waters directly above the underwater city... one minute, two minutes... until the fifth minute, Chi Hanfeng finally broke the silent atmosphere.
"wrong."
"What's wrong?" the Hound asked immediately.
"Although the depth gauge is broken, I have calculated the surfacing speed of the Blasphemer mecha. According to this speed, we are now nearly 400 meters away from the seabed." Chi Hanfeng faced the hound's gaze and said word by word, "If the position of Yaguna Kator has not changed, we should have hit it by now."
"This..." The Hound shuddered and felt a chill on his back. "Could it be that the shock wave just now pushed us too far? We have already left the range of Yaguna Kator."
Although the Yaguna Tor was inserted into the sea at a vertical angle, the teardrop-shaped bow was still able to cover an area of seabed with a radius of several kilometers. Even if the shock wave just now was very strong, it would not be possible to push the submersible out of this range.
"I've tried laser communication, acoustic communication, and sonar in all directions... but couldn't find Yaguna Kotor." Chi Hanfeng's face looked a little pale.
"It's impossible for such a big thing to just disappear like that!" The hound said firmly, "It must still be there. Maybe there's only a layer of sea water several dozen meters away from us, but we just can't see it."
"Old dog, calm down and think carefully about how we got here." Chi Hanfeng said.
“Isn’t it that the route of Yaguna Kotor was changed…” The Hound’s words stopped abruptly. After changing several times, his facial expression finally froze on a face of shock and anger. “You mean, after we left Yaguna Kotor, the route was changed for the second time, and it has already left here?!”
Chi Hanfeng didn't say anything, just nodded silently.
"Why? The person who modified the navigation... or rather, the 'will' that modified the navigation, what was its purpose? Was it just to throw the four of us into this underwater city? Is it sick? If it wanted to kill us, there would be no need to go to such great lengths?" The hound scratched the short hair on the back of his head and frowned.
"Things are not that simple. By the way, Valentina, tell me in detail what happened in the Gray Mist Forest." Chi Hanfeng said.
Ever since she met Mo Jue's team of lumberjacks, Valentina had been talking about how she had been separated from Ke Lan and the others. After being left alone, she had tried many methods, but still could not find the exact direction in the gray fog. The method she used to determine the direction based on the density of the fog was soon proven to be meaningless... Many times, after Valentina had walked for a distance in the direction of thicker fog, the fog in that direction would suddenly become thinner, as if she had turned a 180-degree turn on the spot.
But the motion recording equipment installed in the mecha clearly told her that she was walking in a straight line from beginning to end.
Valentina was on the verge of collapse, but just as she was starting to give up and was driving the Blasphemer mech around aimlessly in the gray fog forest, she suddenly crashed through a wall of fog and came to an empty square without any fog.
In the center of the square stood a tower so high that the top was out of sight. But before Valentina could get close to the tower to take a closer look, a stone tablet under the Blasphemer's feet... or rather a floor tile, suddenly emitted a soft gray light, wrapping the entire machine together, and the surrounding scenery began to gradually blur... Valentina, who had many experiences of teleportation, was not unfamiliar with this kind of change. She knew that she must have accidentally triggered a teleportation device, but just when she thought she would be teleported into the tower, she found that she and the Blasphemer had come to an underwater world with incredible pressure. Everywhere she could see, there were ruins of the city.
Valentina operated the Blasphemer and walked through the ruins until she reached the place she had just been at. She found the submersible that had been smashed into the wreckage of the building. It was the only thing emitting light in the waters. Out of curiosity, she decided to get closer to take a look. Unexpectedly, she heard the voices of Chi Hanfeng and the hound in the submersible.
"During your journey here, have you seen... well, any moving things, other than us?" asked Zhuo Ligetu.
"No." Valentina rejected it outright.
"According to the timeline described by Valentina, when she was teleported here, the shock wave caused by the torpedo explosion had already dissipated." Chi Hanfeng lowered his head, tapping the table with his fingers, and analyzed slowly, "So she was not affected by the shock wave... As for the place she arrived before being teleported..."
At this point, Chi Hanfeng's eyes suddenly lit up, and he asked Valentina for confirmation: "Did you just say that there is a tower in the center of the square that you can't see the top of?"
"Well... I can't see the top because the surrounding fog blocks my sight, but the part exposed outside the fog is at least several thousand meters high." Valentina replied.
"But the mist and the tower are not in contact, right?"
"Well... there is a gap between the tower and the fog."
"I roughly know where that is..." Chi Hanfeng nodded, "A tower several thousand meters high will break through the thick fog anywhere in the Gray Fog Forest, exposing the top of the tower... But according to the observation images from low-Earth orbit , there is no such tower. There is only one place that can tightly wrap the entire tower."
"The core area, you accidentally stumbled into the core area of the Gray Fog Forest!" The hound finally reacted, "Oh my goodness, that thing that wraps the tower is the 'fog mountain' in the core area! I didn't expect that there is no fog in the core area of the Gray Fog Forest. It's like the calm eye of a storm... Speaking of which, where did Ke Lan contact us before?"
"I remember he said he also successfully reached the core area of the Gray Mist Forest, and found a relic of the Alpha civilization." Zhuoligetu recalled, "Could the relic he mentioned be the tower that Valentina saw?"
"It should be correct..." Chi Hanfeng pulled a lock of short hair on his forehead and thought hard, "The series of events that happened in the Gray Mist Forest, including what happened to Ke Lan and the others, what happened to Valentina, and what happened to us, are obviously connected... But I have no idea where to start to find the connection... It's just a mess."
"Major Chi, what happened here?" Valentina couldn't help but ask.
"It's a long story, I'll try to tell you as briefly as possible." Chi Hanfeng said, "We were attacked by a mysterious fleet without any warning, and then Ke Lan, who was far away in the Gray Mist Forest, inexplicably contacted Yaguna Kator, and then used a 'weapon' hidden inside Yaguna Kator to destroy the entire mysterious fleet. Afterwards, we were identified as rebels by the Undead Crew. Fortunately, the brothers of Fleet Zero chose to revolt and did not obey the orders of the Undead Crew to attack us... Out of helplessness, we had to flee the original anchorage with the survivors of Fleet Zero. We originally planned to go to the Gray Mist Forest to meet up with you, but halfway through, the connection between Ke Lan and Yaguna Kator was suddenly interrupted, Yaguna Kator's console was also locked, and it changed its destination to Zhonghai..."
Chi Hanfeng was halfway through his words when the hound slapped its forehead suddenly, and then let out a scream because the wound was touched.
"Old dog, what's wrong with you?"
"I realized we made a serious mistake!" The Hound gritted his teeth and said, "The route was modified before because of that waste nuclear beacon. When the transmission channel was opened, we should have thrown that thing into the sea instead of leaving it on the ship... Now that Yaguna Kator is missing, it must be that thing causing trouble again!"
