Chapter 72: The Deep Sea

"Get closer?" I asked Hongyue.

"You will be discovered even closer."

"What should I do?"

"There are many ways to do it, it depends on whether you want to help them or make trouble."

"What does it mean?"

Hongyue said: "If you want to help, go straight to explain the situation. If you want to make trouble... aren't you okay?"

"I don't know this guild. I don't know whether they are looking for things for China or for the Japanese. It's really hard to make a decision for a while. The situation was a bit strange when I saw them last time, and it was hard to say."

"What a strange method?"

"At that time, the Japanese were in front and they were in the back. The distance between them was not too far, but they did not find each other. Moreover, they did not respond to such a big disturbance in the war. The situation can be understood as they were chasing the Japanese and wanted to grab things back from China. It was indeed far-fetched at that time, so they didn't hear it. But this explanation is a bit far-fetched. Another direction can be understood as they were the delivery party, and the Japanese were here to receive the goods. They were simply colluding, one to send the other to pick them up. Pretending to pursue the Japanese was actually escorting the Japanese to leave."

"It's a big problem for you to say that."

"So I don't know if I should destroy their actions."

"Or we'll try other methods."

"What method?"

"Didn't your magic pet know how to act in the water? Find a player to pretend to be a player and then come out."

"Isn't that a warning?"

"Can anyone defeat us in the darkness? If it really doesn't work, knock down those night pearls, and there is only black around us that we can see things, and we are afraid that we can't deal with these idiots?"

"Then try it!"

A few minutes later, Adina wore a set of armor I had put on for her and pretended to be a player and swam down the chain. The other party was stunned when he saw Adina, but there seemed to be no hostility. Adina fell on the hull and shouted: "I am the progress supervisor sent by the Japanese side. How are you doing? We don't have much time."

A person who was well dressed ran out of the wreckage of the ship below. Because it was underwater, everyone used a full-coverage mask and couldn't see clearly. The man swam to Adina. "If you are anxious, you'll just come and catch it yourself. We've given you the last time. What's the matter with you who were discovered and sunk?"

I could clearly hear the voice Adina heard with spiritual contact, and now I understood everything. Adina received my instructions and stopped entangling. "Adina, anyway, you guys are quicker, the urge is tight." After that, she turned around and swam up.

Adina swam all the way until she was completely out of sight before she turned around and turned around again. I helped her take off the armor she was wearing outside. "It's really good. I didn't expect you to have the talent for acting."

"Of course, don't the master know that mermaids are born performers?"

"Okay, okay, just blow it!"

Hongyue pointed to the other side and said, "They seem to be preparing to evacuate."

I quickly observed the other side, and indeed saw those people running around. But these people stopped before running far, then turned around and looked at the battleship. The chains shook for a while, and then they heard the sound of metal twisting and tearing. It seemed that they were starting to salvage.

But the situation seemed different from what was expected. The warship did not leave the seabed after being pulled by the chains, as if the pulling force was not enough. Just as we were confused, the warship suddenly shook for a moment, and then suddenly rose. The chain pulled the warship up, and then suddenly loosened, and the warship hit the seabed and roared loudly. The sound was easier to spread underwater, and we felt as if the warship was landing beside us.

The chains did not mean to pull up the warships, but kept lifting them up and putting them down. They were hitting the hull. The warships were originally hit by us, and when they sank, they broke into several pieces due to water inlet problems. Now they were hit repeatedly by them and were almost completely disintegrated. Fortunately, the deep sea and seabed are not full of mud like in the lake, so the water was not mud. The sand and stones here were pressed quite densely by pressure, so they could sink quickly after floating up.

The repeated impact finally dispersed the warship. The broken iron sheet and the parts flew in various ways, and messy things were thrown everywhere. This was their purpose. The lifting equipment was not to salvage the warship but to disperse it.

The wreckage of warships was scattered around, and the players gathered back to the warships and began to search. They must have not found what they were looking for just now, so they deliberately dispersed the ship for easy search. After all, the inside of the warships was deformed due to shelling, some gates could not be opened, and other aisles might also be deformed and unable to pass. It would be better to scatter and find them.

The large lifting arms hang up the remaining large wreckage, and some players enter the inside to search, while most players start to slim down their targets in the pile of garbage like scavengers. This way, the targets are not actually very big, otherwise it would not be so difficult to find.

"What do you think will make them so troublesome?" Hongyue asked me.

"Anyway, it's not equipment, otherwise it wouldn't be transported by warships. It would be safer to find someone to carry it. So this must be something that cannot be put into storage space."

"Then are things used on warships or in cities?"

"That may not be possible. In addition to the technology used by cities and warships, there are many things that meet the conditions, such as creatures. However, it seems that this transport is not a living thing, otherwise it would not have been solved in such a rude way."

"That's one of the two?"

"No surprise, yes."

"Look there." Hongyue suddenly pointed at a person over there. The guy was holding a box in his hand and shook it hard. Everyone around him gathered. But after a while, they seemed to have a quarrel, and one of them threw the box away. The box was empty and there was no stuff in it. The reason for the quarrel was probably because the box that should have the things they needed was empty.

The box fell more closely to the periphery. I told Hongyue not to move and fumbled to approach the box by myself. With the help of the blocking of the rocks under the sea, I successfully touched the rock next to the box. While they were not paying attention, I pulled the box into my hand as fast as possible and then touched it back to Hongyue.

Hongyue took the box and studied it and said, "This is just a very ordinary box, nothing special!"

I took back the box and said, "There is a lot of information on it. First of all, from the shape of the box, the thing we are looking for is a spherical object, or similar to a spherical shape. Judging from the size, this thing is a little larger than a basketball and is very heavy. The box is lined with a steel support frame, which is obviously for reinforcement. Also, the surface of this box does not have a soft lining, which means that this thing is very strong, at least it is something that is not afraid of falling."

"The analysis makes sense, but there is still one missing."

"Ah? Missing?"

Hongyue snatched the box and pointed it at me. "Have you seen it here? There is something obviously embedded in this place. This shows that there are three to five prominent parts on the spherical object."

"I really can't tell that you still have the care of a woman?"

"What do you mean? Do you say I am not like a woman?"

"No, no!" I accidentally stabbed the hornet's nest and quickly interrupted. "Look at this place."

"What's the matter?"

"The locking device of this box seemed to be forcibly knocked out by something."

Hongyue looked at it for a long time and said, "That thing is no longer in the box, which means the box has already opened before it sinks to the bottom of the sea. And this thing must have been placed in an important part of the ship at that time, so this should not happen unless..."

"It was hit by a shell." Hongyue and I called out at the same time.

Hongyue continued to reason: "You said that this ship was sunk by our fleet, which means it was sunk after being shelled. Judging from the wreckage of the hull, the armor of this warship is very ordinary. If it were the secondary guns of our warship, it should be able to shoot shells into the deep cabin. Perhaps a shell hit the storage place of this thing and exploded the lock of the box."

I then reasoned later: "Later, the ship broke, that is, the cabin with a broken place became an exposed position. If the box was in the nearby cabin at that time, it would have probably fallen out of the battleship when the warship sank."

Hongyue then raised a question. "But the box is near the wreckage and has not traveled far. But why is the things inside gone?"

I continued: "The only possibility is that there is only one. Someone took the thing away. This thing is so important and it is impossible for no one to take care of it. The man found that the thing inside the hull broke and ran out and chased it."

"But the Japanese didn't get anything."

"That means that the man was unable to save the item."

Hongyue suddenly said: "Maybe he saved the items but failed to send them to another ship."

I nodded and said, "At that time, all the ships around were wiped out, and all the people in the water were killed by rapid-fire cannons. Maybe the Japanese were killed together."

"That means that this thing sinks later than the time the boat sinks. The water flow in the ocean is unstable. If the falling time interval is relatively large, the things may be distributed to different locations."

"Wait." I stopped: "It seems that's not the case. Our analysis is wrong. If a Japanese once saw that something was off the hull, why did they still search for the ship? Since it was the Japanese who asked them to come and find it, they would definitely tell them that the thing was no longer in the ship. So no one should see the thing when it left the ship."

Hongyue said: "What's the reason?"

I said, "The currents you just mentioned may be the reason."

"Western current?"

"Let's summarize the key points of the matter now. First, the battleship broke when it sank, and most of the things inside fell out. Second, the box was broken by a shell before it fell into the water. It could open it on its own and fall out at any time. Third, the sea is here, and the ocean current is very unstable, and that thing may fall anywhere."

Hongyue said: "I understand. You mean that the box was opened by itself after it fell into the water, and the things inside fell out."

"Yes. That thing must have fallen out. Otherwise it will be discovered with the box. Different things have different abilities to drift with ocean currents because of their different specific gravity and appearance. Things with larger specific gravity are not easy to drift. They will appear very close to the sinking place, while things with smaller specific gravity may be taken far away."

Hongyue said: "The box has been reinforced, and the things inside are of great mass. Judging from the size of the box, it means that the thing is not very heavy. The round shape is not easy to be taken away by ocean currents. So that thing must be at a certain point between the place where the accident happened and here."

I said, "But I don't know where we started the war."

"Then follow the ocean current to look upstream, and that thing must have hit the bottom in advance in the upstream."

I quickly said to Adina: "Can you feel the current?"

"Of course. If you can't even feel that this is not a marine life!"

"Then take us up now."

Adina did not take us away immediately but whispered: "I sounded like something was missing from your conversation just now."

"What did we miss?" Hongyue looked at Adina waiting for her answer curiously.

Adina replied: "You may not know these things if you are not grown up in the sea, but I know very well. The sea water is not like lakes and rivers, and its flow direction is not stable. The ocean currents in some places change severely with the seasons, and may even turn completely upside down."

"But it's only a few days before the ocean currents will not change so seriously, right?"

Adina said: "The problem is not only seasonal currents. There is also a problem with laminar currents. The water flow in the ocean is layered. The surface water flows differently from the sea water below. In some places, the sea water will change direction three or four times in a row. The surface water is driven by the wind, the middle sea water is affected by the salinity and temperature of the sea water, and the bottom sea water is driven by the gravitational force of the seabed topography and the moon. This change will be very large, and there is no way to determine the direction of the ocean current as you said. We mermaids once experimented with throwing a stone from the same point on the sea surface every 1 minute, and a total of 100 pieces were lost. As a result, they fell in 100 discontinuous positions, and the two farthest stones were more than 700 kilometers apart. That day, when the ocean currents were relatively stable, if there were winds and waves or something else, it would be over."

Hongyue and I were both dumbfounded. There is such a strange situation in the sea? It seems that we have made things simple!

I asked Adina, "So how can we determine the specific location of that thing based on your understanding?"

Adina said: "It is impossible to completely reproduce the ocean currents of that day. If you know the ratio of the resistance coefficient in the water of that thing and its specific gravity, I can calculate the approximate possible range radius near its inlet point. But you don't even know what the thing looks like, which seems impossible. There is another unfortunate news that I said you must withstand it."

"Is there anything worse than this?"

"Of course there is. For example, a giant marine creature swallowed that thing as food...! From what you analyzed just now, it cannot be digested. If the creature pulls that thing out, its appearance may cover the entire earth. For example, creatures like whales that like migratory will run around the earth, and maybe the thing will be pulled out by it. Maybe in the Pacific Ocean, maybe in the Atlantic Ocean, it is just looking for needles in the sea. If that thing cannot come out of its stomach, it will be even worse. It is more troublesome to find something in the sea that can run around than finding needles in the sea. You can't catch all marine creatures and find them openly, right? Besides, based on the size of that thing, the number of individuals that may swallow it is calculated in billions. It is impossible to make sure."

"Isn't that just that I can never find it?"

"The only way is to find possible areas and hope that nothing will eat it. Most marine organisms will not eat lifeless things, so the possibility of being eaten is not too high. Don't worry too much."

I rekindled my hope: "So how big is this area? I'll see how long it takes to search."

"It's at least 5,000 square kilometers!"

"Forget it, I didn't say it." After searching for such a large area, the National War should begin. It's okay to find such a large area on land, but it's impossible to find such a large area in the sea.
To be continued...