Chapter 252: “Subterranean Abyss”
Chapter 252 “The Subterranean Abyss”
Listening to Tirian’s narration, Duncan fell into a short period of contemplation, and only after half a minute did he raise his head and speak thoughtfully, “So, in order to satisfy her exploratory heart, she started a ‘submerged abyss program’, and the essence of this program is actually not exploring any subspace at all, but just …… literally ‘diving into deep water’?”
Speaking of this, he paused, feeling that this matter was rather odd, “But if that’s all it was, how could this program be related to the Lost Country? The subspace that the Lost Country ship goes to and the deep sea that the Frost Queen wants to explore are simply two different concepts, those rebels shouldn’t even be able to tell the difference ……”
Tirian didn’t answer directly, but suddenly threw out a question, “Don’t you think it’s strange? If it’s just a matter of diving into the water and exploring the sea conditions in the depths of the city-state, what is there to call this ‘taboo’? The city-state’s harbor builders and offshore fishermen often dive into the water for their work, and it’s very common to dive a dozen or even tens of meters into safe waters, so why has the Frost Queen’s ‘Submerged Abyss Project’ become a taboo?”
Duncan’s eyes gradually became serious: “…… How deep did you dive?”
“Very, very deep, I don’t know exactly which depth the Queen ended up diving to, since I’m not much of a scholar myself, I was only involved in some peripheral assistance in my capacity as a Naval Commander and stopped being directly involved in the operation in the second half of the plan, but from what I know alone, before the plan started to become …… ‘off’, their manned submersibles reached a depth of at least a thousand meters underwater, and are still setting that record.”
One thousand meters underwater ……
Duncan quickly organized the knowledge he knew in his mind – on Earth, this seemingly insignificant number is actually already the extreme dive depth of many advanced military submarines, and most military submarines even dive to a depth of only four to five hundred meters, and as for those that can easily reach thousands of meters or even close to 10,000 meters of the ” Extreme deep dive record”, basically by the special deep submarine in a short period of time to complete the requirements of the equipment is extremely high, and often can only use unmanned equipment.
The Frost Queen’s manned submersible had already touched the threshold of “1,000 meters”, which was an astonishing figure when put on the industrial level of this world half a century ago, even with the assistance of some extraordinary power.
And this amazing number behind …… obviously also brought some more “amazing” things.
Tirion had mentioned that the program was starting to get “off” at a later stage, and Duncan hadn’t ignored that word.
He looked at Tirian, his eyes became deep: “I want to know the specifics of the entire exploration program – tell me as much as you’re involved.”
Seemingly because he had already answered quite a few questions, and because he was already acclimated to this kind of communication, this time Tirian did not hesitate for long as he fell into his memories, and spoke slowly as he did so:
“…… With the exception of Frost’s Subterranean Abyssal Program, the recorded conventional diving depth, or ‘safe water depth’, for humans is one hundred and fifty meters, and is limited to the offshore range- -Our plan initially began at this depth as well, and it was well planned up until three hundred meters.
“It was already very dark and dark, the sunlight on the surface of the sea could not penetrate that thick body of water, and the high-powered lamps carried by the submersibles could only illuminate a small area, and in order to explore what the city-state’s islands ‘looked like’ underneath them, and also in order to avoid, as much as possible, some of the dangers of the far offshore area ‘creatures’ such as the Deep Sea Children, we had the submersible dive along the coast and stay close to the offshore range of the island, and I still remember what the explorer at the time described when he came up ……
“He said that underneath the island was like an ugly and rough pillar covered with thick calcareous sediments, and that there were some strange and weird creatures inhabiting the pits of the sediments, and that there was nothing but pitch blackness all around except for the ‘pillar’. ”
“A pillar underneath the island?” Duncan couldn’t help but interrupt Tirian, “Not a gradually expanding support structure, but a pillar?”
“Yes, at the very least that’s what happened in Frost,” Tirian nodded, “What’s wrong with that?”
Duncan shook his head, “…… No problem, go ahead.”
Tirian organized his thoughts and continued his previous recollections, “That was the sight seen at a depth of about three hundred meters, the extreme depth of the first submersible, after realizing that this depth was far from enough to explore the deep sea, the Queen ordered the scholars to build a second submersible, this one was so successful that it dived eight hundred meters deep in one breath, and through the half meter thick high strength glass, what the explorers saw …… was still the column, a straight column.
“Of course, compared to the radius of the city-state itself, the ‘pillar’, which was already at least eight hundred meters long, was actually still short in proportion, and rather than a pillar, it resembled a regular disc-shaped base holding an island.
“We then built a third submersible – this one far less improved than the second due to technical limitations – which had to dive carefully to challenge the record of the second submersible, and it was during the slow dive, meter after meter, that we discovered something. “The ‘pillars’ below the city-state are actually only eight hundred and fifty meters ‘long’ and further down, there is nothing.
“The entire structure, is floating in the sea water.”
Tirian paused and looked up into Duncan’s eyes, “Now do you see why I said earlier that it was more like a disc base than like a pillar?”
Duncan frowned tightly as he didn’t say anything, but instead sketched out this entire structure in his mind as quickly as Tirian had described it – the
The people of the Deep Sea Era lived in city-states, and these islands initially gave Duncan the impression of being crowded and small, but in reality, as fully functional and self-sustaining habitats, these city-states were destined to have a certain ‘size base’, and although there were some small islands, most of them could be called ‘disc bases’. Although there are also some small islands, but most of the big cities that can be named have a “base radius” of more than ten kilometers or even dozens of kilometers, Frost, as the largest city-state in the Cold Sea, its size will not be smaller than this number.
The opposite of this huge sea structure is its underwater “base” which is “only” 850 meters deep – the explorers initially saw the underwater part of the city-state at a depth of 300 meters! The explorers initially saw the underwater part of the city-state at a depth of 300 meters, and when they looked straight down into the deep sea, they intuitively imagined that it was a pillar reaching down to the “bottom of the sea”, but in reality, the form of the pillar was more like a thin pancake in terms of proportions.
The city, which is huge in scale, is placed on this “cake”.
As Tirion describes it: the whole structure, floating in the sea.
But after visualizing the model, Duncan’s mind was filled with a great deal of doubt…
Is every city-state like this?
If every city-state is like this, a “floating object” without foundation, then how are they so stable? If the city-states themselves were “stable” because they were large enough, then how could the relative positions of the city-states also be so stable?
How could it be that these “floating islands” had never changed their positions in the waves of the Boundless Sea?
Duncan said the doubt in his heart, but Tirian just shook his head: “We also had doubts about this, but in the end we could not figure out this problem, and compared to what happened later …… ‘How did the city state float on the sea’ this question is also irrelevant! ‘ the question would be irrelevant.”
“What happened later?” Duncan couldn’t help but get curious, “What happened later? What exactly did you see in the deep sea?”
“Then the …… III submersible continued to push the limits of depth, and it took us almost two years to advance that record from eight hundred and fifty meters to nine hundred and fifty meters, and as you can imagine, during this dive, the submersible was gradually moving away from the Citadel’s ‘ base’ – remember what I said at the beginning? In order to avoid problems in the far offshore area, we had the submersible dive close to the coast in the ‘offshore safety zone’, and throughout this process, the submersible was actually staying close to the city-state and its underwater ‘structure’, but as the dive continued, the explorer moved away from that ‘base’, things started to go wrong.
“Hallucinations, visions, the feeling of inexplicable lights in the sea water, the feeling that someone was banging on the hull of the boat from outside, even the feeling that someone was turning the handles of the gates from outside, and the further down they went, the worse the similar conditions became, and even the specially trained and hard-willed Explorers began to feel a tremendous amount of pressure with each dive, while the holy oils, sacred books, and the scriptural cloths were able to produce a sheltering effect that became less and less obvious.
“Of course, up to this point, this is still all the situation we expected – exploring the unknown inherently requires facing challenges in terms of will, and those scholars exploring the Spirit Realm and the Profound Seas have often encountered troubles in this regard, so we’re still continuing, only strengthening the spiritual protection of the explorers in accordance with the most stringent standards. Explorers’ mental defenses have been strengthened to the strictest standards.
“The problem comes when challenging one thousand meters from nine hundred and ninety meters.
“Submarine number three suddenly signaled for an emergency surfacing, and then came barreling up emptying the ballast tanks like a madman, and the explorer inside seemed completely unconcerned that this rapid surfacing would kill him, and after it had rushed to the surface the explorer had gone mad, and the hatch was open, and he hissed and shouted in the sunlight as if desperately trying to describe to us something terrible something, and after a mass of unintelligible and confused speech he uttered the only sober word:
“We all died there.”
(End of chapter)