Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 908: Giant Brain
"This drainage tank should be specially used to allow people from outside to enter... One thing is indeed correct, this underwater city was built in the sea from the very beginning." Chi Hanfeng said.
"Do you want to go in?" Ghost Owl took a deep breath and asked the question he was a little reluctant to ask.
"Go in!" The Hound said firmly, "We've come this close. If the thing inside had consciousness, it would have sensed us by now... There's no reason for it to have no reaction."
"Could it be that they are deliberately luring us in?" Chi Hanfeng said cautiously, "It may be a trap below..."
"Even if we know there's a trap down there, we can only go in anyway." Hound touched the holster on his waist. "We don't have enough time left to look for another valuable clue... Besides, it's very likely that what we can find here are all similar things... Rather than rushing into a trap when the oxygen runs out, I'd rather search the entire building first when I'm fully prepared."
Although Hound's words were a bit confusing, the others immediately understood what he meant.
"My idea is similar to Lao Gou's. If we miss this opportunity, we may not be able to find the next 'breakthrough'." Zhuo Ligetu said.
"Let's take a gamble!" Chi Hanfeng gritted his teeth, "Anyway, no matter how bad the situation is, it can't be worse than before."
…
The four of them entered the drainage cabin, while Valentina and the Blasphemer mecha were outside responsible for support and rescue. When the airtight door of the drainage cabin was closed again, the four of them couldn't help but feel an inexplicable chill crawling up their spines.
"Old dog, I seem to see you shaking..." Chi Hanfeng said in a low voice.
"Bullshit, it's pitch dark, there's no light at all, how can you see me shaking?" The hound cursed immediately, "I'm shaking for no reason, what's the use of shaking? Once the arrow is shot, there's no turning back, it's no use regretting it now."
The airtight door seemed to be semi-automatic. After it was closed, the valve on it started to turn by itself, locking the four of Hound inside.
Although Hound said he was not afraid, in fact, the moment the valve started to turn, he almost called Valentina to let her use the mecha to forcefully break the airtight door.
"If someone with claustrophobia and thalassemia came to this kind of place, he would definitely be scared to death." Chi Hanfeng joked.
"For people with that kind of problem, a submarine in their eyes is like a mecha cockpit in your eyes, basically equating it with a coffin... Forget about this place, it would be better to kill them than to let them get into a submersible." As the Hound spoke, he pulled out the flashlight hanging on his shoulder and turned it on.
The sudden light made the four people feel a little more relaxed - this place was just a normal drainage cabin, with square metal walls and floors. The interior environment was very clean, without any complicated equipment or disturbing weird things. The first impression it gave was that it was like the cargo hold of an old spaceship.
"Speaking of which, how do we drain the sea water? I don't see any place where we can do it, and the walls and floors are tightly fitted..." With the help of the flashlight, the ghost owl quickly scanned the base of the wall.
"Let's look for it, there must be something there." The hound said casually, squatted down and began to feel around on the floor.
The floor was very smooth, and the highly corrosive seawater did not seem to have any effect on it over tens of thousands of years. If it was really an old aircraft carrier soaking in the seabed, after tens of thousands of years, there would probably be nothing left except a bumpy skeleton.
"Could it be voice-controlled?" Chi Hanfeng suddenly asked.
"Oh no, if it's voice-activated..." The Hound slapped his forehead, "Things from the ruins of the Alpha civilization must be activated using the Alpha language... Damn it, none of us know how to do this!"
"As for Alpha language..." Chi Hanfeng turned his head and looked at Ghost Owl, "Does it only need to be Alpha language? It doesn't matter what you say? Then... Ghost Owl, you just..."
“Don’t look at me, don’t look at me!” Ghost Owl waved his hands repeatedly, “I can only vaguely understand the meaning of that whisper. If you hadn’t told me the English version of that sentence, I wouldn’t even know what it said… If you asked me to read it out loud, I can’t do it at all!”
"What should we do?" Chi Hanfeng tapped the floor with his fingers, "We can't just use violence..."
Before they uttered the word "force" in "violence", a dark red light suddenly lit up in the water - this red light was not emitted by the equipment on the four of them, but seemed to be a luminous component floating in the water that they had previously ignored.
The first reaction of the four people when they saw the red light was to quickly retreat and distance themselves from it. When the four people were close to the inner wall of the drainage tank, they suddenly discovered that the red light was located right in the middle of the drainage tank.
"What...is this?" the hound couldn't help but ask.
"It's no use asking me. I don't know." Chi Hanfeng shook his head very straightforwardly, and then added, "They definitely won't know either."
"I didn't fucking ask you." The Hound stared at the red light, "I... I was asking it."
However, the red light did not respond to the hound. After flashing twice, it spread out on the horizontal plane at a speed that could not be captured by the naked eye, and turned into a circular halo.
This circular halo swept over the four people from head to toe, then flashed twice and went out directly. Only some afterimages of the red halo remained on the retinas of the four people, and these afterimages also disappeared within just a few seconds.
Everything returned to the way it was before the red light came on.
"What happened?" The hound touched his body blankly. He didn't have any missing limbs, and even the diving suit he was wearing was intact.
"It seems to be... a scan?" Chi Hanfeng said uncertainly, "That red light scanned the four of us?"
Just when the four were wondering, a crack suddenly appeared on the ground, which seemed to be one piece, and quickly expanded. In the blink of an eye, a passage leading to the lower level appeared in front of the four.
"This...this...this...it's open already?" The hound touched the back of his head in astonishment.
"The more I look at it, the more it looks like a trap..." Chi Hanfeng put his hand on the holster.
Before the four men took any action, the water level in the drainage tank began to drop rapidly, as if all the water was sucked into the passage, without even a drop of water left on the ground.
The four of them waited for a while, and seeing that nothing came out from below, they took a deep breath and bravely walked towards the entrance.
But after just a few glances inside, they retracted their heads - the passage had a turn, and they couldn't directly see the scene on the next floor from the entrance. If they wanted to know what was on the next floor, they had to take risks...
"If only we had a drone now," sighed the Hound.
Although drones are a standard tool for exploring ruins, they are not equipped on submersibles - the reason is that all current drone models cannot withstand the water pressure on the bottom of the Central China Sea. Coupled with the interference of the Central China Sea water, the connection between the console and the drone will be lost as long as the distance is slightly far.
Instead of adding a drone storage compartment that would affect the structural stability, it would be better to spend the budget on improving the submersible's own detection capabilities - the submersible that Hound and his crew were riding was designed under this guiding ideology.
"It would be great if Layton was here." Chi Hanfeng said, "He has three mini drones hidden in his robotic arm, all of them are top-of-the-line ones."
"Alas, there's no point in talking about this now. Let's take off the diving suit first." The Hound said as he unscrewed the airtight screws on the helmet and the shoulders of the diving suit and took off the heavy helmet.
Although this diving suit is considered lightweight, the weight of a single suit is still an astonishing 35 kilograms. In addition, in order to resist water pressure, the interlayer of the diving suit must be filled with semi-fluid anti-pressure fluid, which will cause the total body weight to exceed 100 kilograms after putting it on, and it will also cause serious hindrance to the joints of the body when moving.
Because of the buoyancy in the water, it might not feel too strenuous, but now all the seawater in the drainage tank has been drained out, and it is almost impossible to move forward in these deep diving suits.
The four of them took off their diving suits with some effort and piled them in the corner. Chi Hanfeng took one last look at these bulky equipment and said with some concern: "With the speed of drainage just now, if the seawater pours in again, we won't have time to put on our diving suits again."
"Please stop talking." The Hound rolled his eyes at Chi Hanfeng. "If this was said by that crow-mouthed Layton, I would put this thing back on even if it takes me several seconds to take a step."
"I'll lead the charge, and you guys will provide fire cover." Zhuoligetu took out a foldable hand shield from his backpack, unfolded it, and fixed it on his left arm. He held his usual battle axe in his right hand, and entered the passage with his body bent. The other three followed closely behind him, holding guns and flashlights, aiming at the depths of the passage from both sides of the shield.
Although it is ammunition for a special underwater pistol, its power should not be underestimated when used in a dry environment due to the presence of crystal energy bombs.
"The interior of this building looks much more solid than those collapsed ones." Ghost Owl whispered, "Most of the buildings in the Undersea City are made of metal frames and polymer walls... but this building's interior is made of all metal, completely abandoning the polymer materials that would be corroded by seawater..."
"This metal is not simple." Chi Hanfeng, who is proficient in materials science, said as he touched the wall of the passage. "Judging from the luster and texture, it doesn't look like it has been mixed with Nino alloy, but it can be immersed in seawater for such a long time without showing any signs of corrosion or oxidation... Anyway, with the current level of human technology, it is impossible to smelt such an alloy."
"Indeed." Ghost Owl nodded. "The skeletons of those collapsed buildings have been corroded beyond recognition, but here, it looks like new."
"Okay, keep quiet. We're almost at the first corner." The Hound interrupted their conversation and put his right hand on Zhuo Ligetu's shoulder, signaling him to slow down.
The four people's nerves were tense. They almost moved to the corner little by little, sticking to the wall on one side, and then took a big step sideways in one breath.
“I see!”
This is the first and last corner of the passage. The end of the passage after the corner suddenly becomes clear... Judging from the degree of reflection of the flashlight, it seems to be a huge space.
The four of them couldn't help but quicken their pace, walked through the last section of the passage, and entered the "hall".
"Damn it... this place doesn't look that big from the outside!" muttered the hound.
The height and area of this hall were at least ten times larger than the outer contour of the building, but one thing that was certain was that the depth they had just descended was not enough to enter the part below the ground.
"It's space technology..." Chi Hanfeng sighed, "It's similar to the space technology on Yaguna Kotor... The interior space of this building is much larger than what we see from the outside... No wonder the life response detected by Valentina is blurred. The space inside the building is folded, and the information detected by the detector will naturally be disturbed..."
"But no matter what, the reaction of life does exist, and it is right here." The Hound took a step back and stood back to back with Chi Hanfeng. "When I think that there are living beings other than us in this place, I feel a chill down my spine."
The flashlight's maximum illumination angle was only forty-five degrees, and it was unable to scan the entire "hall" at once. But just as the ghost owl opened its backpack to look for the flashlight, the entire hall suddenly lit up.
"Induction lighting? Or... was the switch turned on by something?" Chi Hanfeng was stunned for a moment, but just as , his spine instantly straightened and the hairs on his body stood up.
Not only him, the reactions of the other three people were not much better... because what they saw was really shocking.
It was an extremely huge...brain.
In other words, more than one brain.
Countless biological organs that look similar to the human brain are connected together by pipes to form a "giant brain". This giant brain with a diameter of more than 50 meters is immersed in a transparent culture tank. From time to time, bubbles emerge from the inside of the "giant brain", slowly rise to the top of the culture tank, and then are sucked away by the ventilation device... It looks like this "giant brain" is breathing.
"…Core Mastermind?"
