Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 890 Another City
"Fuck, I didn't feel anything at first, but now that you said that, I feel a little scared..." said the hound.
"Bullshit, you've been scared to death since the beginning." Chi Hanfeng cursed in a low voice, "You're still trying to show off to me, right? How can I not understand what you're thinking?"
"Hey, what's the point of you exposing my past now? Don't think I can't see your pale face just because the lights are off." The Hound counterattacked, "I tell you, on the battlefield, even if my face is as white as paper from fear, I can still pull the trigger at the enemy and hit him accurately every time... As for you, after a defeat, your hands are shaking like a sieve and you can't even hold a joystick. How did you get the title of ace back then? In my opinion, you didn't see enough blood. You guys, a bunch of old soldiers who stay on the airship all day, are not good at other things, but you are first-class at being spoiled."
"You old dog!" After his weakness was exposed by the hound, Chi Hanfeng's originally pale face suddenly turned blue and red in the dark, but he could not find any rebuttal at all. He could only glare fiercely in the direction where the hound was sitting with a tense face.
Although the two men's words were harsh and merciless, this interlude inadvertently eased the tense atmosphere in the submersible chamber, and even the tense nerves of Ghost Owl and Zhuo Ligetu relaxed a little.
"Okay, let's get down to business." The Hound's tone became a little more serious. "We are just going to take it one step at a time. Have you ever thought about one thing..."
"What's the matter?" Gui Owl and Chi Hanfeng asked in unison.
"What if we get to the pyramid and find there is no door and we can't get in?" said the hound.
"You also said that we are taking it one step at a time. There is no point in worrying about it now... If it really doesn't work, let Valentina use the Blasphemer to force a hole out..." Chi Hanfeng said.
"This kind of reckless plan doesn't seem like your style, Old Chi..." The Hound smacked his lips. "If possible, I'd like to keep the pyramid as airtight as possible...assuming it was originally airtight."
"Why do you think the pyramid was originally sealed? This is an underwater pyramid. It has been submerged in the sea for so many years. Maybe the inside has been corroded beyond recognition by the sea."
"You've never worked as a relic hunter, so you don't know much about the Alpha Civilization's construction technology..." The Hound pouted at Ghost Owl and Zhuoligetu angrily, "I'm too lazy to explain this basic knowledge to you... Who of you two is free? Explain it to Lao Chi."
"Let me tell you," Ghost Owl took a breath and said, "The Undersea City is a city built underwater. Since it is a city, there must be residents. Based on the excavation of the remains of the Alpha civilization over the years, we can be sure that the Alpha people need to breathe. Many of the remains buried deep underground are equipped with quite advanced air circulation systems, rather than being completely sealed like tombs. There must be dry space inside the underwater city that can be inhabited by people. This is basically certain."
"But... this building is at least tens of thousands of years old, and no one has maintained it for tens of thousands of years... the dry space may not still exist?" Chi Hanfeng muttered.
"Many of the ruins are tens of thousands of years old, but the mechanisms and equipment inside are still functioning normally, and they can kill people as easily as if they were brand new. It's just a waterproof layer. I believe that with the technology of the Alpha civilization, it will not be a problem for them to maintain their operations for tens of thousands of years without anyone caring about them." The Hound added.
"Old dog, you overlooked one thing." Chi Hanfeng suddenly said seriously, "If the underwater city was built on the seabed from the beginning, then the building may indeed have the function of waterproofing, but according to the clues we have obtained so far, this underwater city may have sunk from the sea surface... Do you still remember the building that our submersible crashed into? Wasn't it filled with seawater? And those aerial tracks for vehicles to move... If this is a city that was originally built on the seabed, is there any need for such a thing as an aerial track? Seawater itself is a very good supporting medium."
"But that pyramid is different." It was Zhuoligetu who spoke. "Even if the whole city is not waterproof, the pyramid must be waterproof...even if it was built on land in the beginning."
"Why do you say that?"
"Obviously, this pyramid should be the core control module of this city... The core control module of the Alpha civilization city can even withstand a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb. Compared to a devastating nuclear explosion, seawater is nothing more than child's play." The Hound reached out and patted Chi Hanfeng on the shoulder. "Old Chi, if we still have time to get out, I'll take you to visit the ruins a few more times next time, and you won't have so many problems."
"Now that you mention it, I'm a little curious... How have you been getting through those years after you retired?" Chi Hanfeng's tone softened a little.
"How else can I live? As usual, I have to risk my life for money... The survival rate of a relic hunter is not higher than that of a soldier." The Hound used his index and middle fingers to pick at his nostrils at the same time, "But at least, I still have the right to choose. I can decide whether to take this job or not... Even if I take it, when the time comes, as long as I am not trapped in the ruins and cannot get out, I can choose to give up at any time. I only need to pay a small penalty... Unlike before, when an order came down from the top, I knew it was a mission to die, but I still had to bite the bullet and go for it."
As soon as he finished speaking, the hound's expression suddenly changed. His huge hooked nose twitched vigorously a few times, and he said anxiously: "Don't talk for now, something is wrong..."
"What?" The atmosphere in the submersible, which had originally relaxed, became tense again.
"The smell of the sea water seems to have changed..." the hound murmured, "I just thought it was my illusion, wondering if the booger blocked my nose... But now I realize that the change in the smell has nothing to do with my nose... It just changed, it's not my illusion."
"What do you mean by the smell of sea water?" Chi Hanfeng was slightly startled. "What nonsense are you talking about, old dog... The submersible is completely sealed. If the sea water outside could come in, we would have died long ago. How can you smell the smell of sea water?"
"My nose is different from yours." The hound shook his head solemnly. "Although compared with Ke Lan and that kid Asano Akira, my ability is not good enough, but at least, I have escaped death several times with this..."
"Then tell me, what did you smell?"
"Before, that smell was just the normal fishy smell of seawater, but it also had the peculiar stink of the poisonous and radioactive seawater in the Central Sea... Alas, you wouldn't understand even if I told you, unless you dared to pour the seawater into your nose and smell it carefully. But I guess your nose would rot before you can smell it... But I can smell it. Even when I'm in the submersible, I can still smell the smell of the seawater outside... This is also the strangest thing about the seawater in the Central Sea..."
The hound paused for a moment and continued, "It's not that my nose is so sensitive, but this smell has a strong ability to penetrate. Even if the shell of the deep-sea submersible can block the seawater, it can't block this smell... If you block my nose with cotton and put a glass of fine liquor for me to smell, I may not be able to smell it, but if it's a glass of seawater, I can smell it... That smell, nothing can block it."
"The water in Zhonghai does have many strange features... I believe what you said." Chi Hanfeng nodded seriously, no longer doubting, "Then tell me, what happened to the smell of the sea water just now?"
"... there is a smell that is hard to describe..." the hound said as he sniffed again. "Wait, let me find a word to describe it... Tsk... how should I put it, it's a bit like the smell of some kind of rusted metal, but I can't tell what kind of metal it is... Anyway, it gives me a very damp feeling."
It might seem a little strange to say the word "wet" on the bottom of the sea, but at this time, the others didn't pay attention to the "inappropriate" adjective of hound.
"The smell of rusted metal?" Chi Hanfeng hesitated. "Why is it emitted from the buildings of the underwater city? The building materials of the underwater city contain a lot of metal materials. After being soaked in seawater for so long, even if the metallurgical technology of the Alpha civilization is very good, it is bound to rust... And we are now diving, getting closer and closer to the underwater city, so you can smell this smell?"
"No, it's not because of that." The Hound rejected it immediately. "It's not like we haven't been to the underwater city before. I didn't smell this smell at all then... Even when we were pushed into the building by the shock wave of the torpedo explosion, I didn't smell it... And even if it was the smell of rusted buildings, it would have dissipated gradually... And I just smelled it suddenly... The concentration of this smell didn't increase little by little from zero to one, then to two, but jumped directly from zero to one hundred... Do you understand what I mean?"
"I understand." Chi Hanfeng nodded. "Cliff-like stratification. When we break through a certain depth, we go from an area without this smell to another area full of this rust smell. There is an invisible boundary between the two areas. The seawater between them does not flow... or in other words, the substances with this rust smell do not flow."
"That makes sense. After all, we haven't been to this area of water just now." Zhuoligetu whispered, "So the existence of such an area makes perfect sense."
"Could it be that the smell is coming from the rusty parts of the submersible, and not from the sea water at all?" Ghost Owl interrupted.
"Impossible." This time, it was Hound and Chi Hanfeng who said in unison.
"My nose can still distinguish them... This rusty smell is mixed with the fishy smell of sea water, just like two snakes entangled together. There's no way to mistake them," said the hound.
"The parts inside the submersible are all made of special alloys. Even those non-Nino alloy parts will not have the problem of rust. There will be no signs of oxidation within at least a hundred years. I can guarantee this." Chi Hanfeng followed.
"There's definitely something wrong with this smell," the Hound said. "Everyone, be alert... I think the trouble will come sooner than we expect."
The four of them tensed their bodies at the same time.
At this moment, Valentina's voice came over: "Major, Uncle Nick, according to the Blasphemer's detection equipment, our current depth is still one hundred meters away from hitting the bottom."
"One hundred meters..." The hound hesitated for a moment, then said resolutely, "Turn on the light!"
With a swish, the searchlight that had been extinguished for a long time lit up again, illuminating the shadowy ruins below. However, Hound and others only took a look and a look of uneasiness filled their faces.
"Where's the pyramid? Why is it gone?" Ghost Owl muttered, "It...it should have been in that place..."
"Could it be that the coordinates are set incorrectly... No, it's impossible. Even if there is a certain deviation, such a large landmark building cannot completely disappear from sight..." Chi Hanfeng also said, "Even if our diving position is at the edge of the city... No, this is the central area, we haven't deviated!"
"That can only mean one thing..." the Hound said in a deep voice.
The four of them might have remembered other architectural details of the underwater city incorrectly, but the fact that the pyramid had disappeared was clearly before them - what's more, the purpose of their action was to enter the interior of the pyramid, but now even the goal had disappeared, and the original plan had become a meaningless piece of waste paper.
“This is another underwater city.”
"Another underwater city?" Ghost Owl opened his mouth slightly, "Why... did we come here... No, I should ask, why did it appear before our eyes?"
"No one knows." The Hound pinched his nose, "But there is one thing I can tell you. When Ke Lan dived, he went to another underwater city... If there is no third identical underwater city, the one we see now should be the one he went to at that time."
The Hound recalled the architectural style of the underwater city that Ke Lan and he had described, and it basically matched the buildings in his sight - compared with the ruins of the first city that sank to the bottom of the sea, the architectural style of this city was a real underwater building: many houses had arched roofs in order to disperse the pressure of the sea water to the greatest extent, so that the buildings would not be deformed or even collapsed under the heavy pressure of the sea water.
"I remember Ke Lan said that he was also diving, and somehow he came to this place," Zhuoligetu recalled. "At that time, Liao Zilang encountered an underwater undercurrent, but Ke Lan didn't encounter anything. The water around him was completely calm... just like us now."
