Chapter 478.

Chapter 478 – Diving
Under Duncan’s slightly rusty and careful maneuvering, the submersible slowly adjusted its heading.

The “base” below the Frost City State was like a wide and rough sea cliff, moving slowly in the dark water outside the porthole.

The sunlight from the surface of the sea above had already faded, and the only light left in the water was the column of light from the three sets of large searchlights in front of the submersible, which projected a huge spot on the surface of the “cliff”, and beyond the spot, there was an unknown depth of darkness.

The low humming sound and some valves automatically adjust the air pressure hissing sound into the ear from time to time, and these monotonous and lifeless sound but more and more people feel a kind of …… loneliness.

That is the individual away from the group, the mind away from the civilized territory produced by the loneliness, is their own gradually sink into a boundless darkness, by the endless sea water wrapped produced by the uneasiness.

Agatha quieted down, she stood in front of the porthole, for a long time only “staring” in one direction, after an unknown period of time, she softly broke the silence: “All the light is fading …… but I can still ‘see’ it! ‘see’ the base of the Citadel, it still emits a very, very faint light, the only thing visible to me in the darkness.”

The world she observes is clearly not quite the same as an ordinary human’s vision.

“Do you know what I’m thinking?” Duncan’s voice suddenly came from behind her.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that this may be the way we see the world,” Duncan’s tone was low and slow, as if mingling with the hum of the machines around him, “the earthly world is like the sea, and to see the whole of civilization as a whole would be as if we were submerged in such a limitless oceanic abyss.

“The darkness of the unknown covers the whole world, and from the lights of civilization we peep cautiously at the landscapes that occasionally emerge from the darkness, and try to surmise and piece together the outlines of the whole world from those flickering images, and yet we almost never have the chance to really know the whole truth behind those lights and shadows– –

“Behind a small leaf is a forest, behind a rock is a mountain, behind a vine in the light is a tentacle of a mythical beast – beyond the shimmer is the unknown, within the shimmer is only a partial impression of the truth as it is presented to us in a particular place and at a particular time. The shimmering light is the unknown, and the shimmering light is only a one-sided impression of the truth in a particular location and time.

“And it is in this careful submergence that there are those who accidentally glimpse the part beyond the light, and so they go mad, and there are those who try to expand that light, and they are called by us the pioneers – and in many cases there is not even a clear line between these pioneers and the mad. As for the greater number, they gathered inside the ark of ‘civilization’, within the limited but sufficiently bright light to illuminate their feet, heads bowed and eyes carefully narrowed.

“They are called ‘ordinary people.’

“The knowable and measurable world gave them a precious sense of security, and they could no longer cast their eyes into the darkness beyond the Ark. …… But it was these weak and powerless commoners, who made up the largest percentage of the population, who kept the whole Ark going, and even sustained the pioneers as well as the madmen. ”

The sound of seawater being pumped into the ballast tanks came from underfoot, and the submersible slowly adjusted its angle and began to accelerate its descent, while the concave and undulating crags continued to rise upwards in the area of the spotlight struck by the searchlight outside the observation window in front of it – in the next moment the view in the light spot might turn into an empty, dark body of water, but then again, maybe not .

Duncan withdrew his gaze and looked around himself.

Cabin lighting poured down from above, bathing everything inside the submersible in light, and after gazing out into the darkness for too long, glancing back at the restful cabin did indeed bring a heartfelt sense of relief.

But the occasional creak from somewhere in the hull is a constant reminder to the crew that only a fragile layer of spherical steel separates this comfortable, brightly lit chamber from the billions of tons of seawater outside.

This layer of fragile spherical shell steel plate is countless “ordinary people” a little bit of hammering, hammer casting things, those who may not step out of the city-state half a step in their lives of craftsmen, with their skills and wisdom, will be this simple submersible into the endless abyss below the city-state.

Agatha was silent for a long time, and spoke softly, “In fact …… I occasionally feel grateful that this pair of eyes of mine can now see more than ordinary people, as you said, we all dive in an infinite darkness, then this pair of eyes of mine, I can now see a little further where the light can not be illuminated , but again I am often frustrated because this slightly farther vision seems meaningless in relation to this endless darkness ……”

“Yes, to this endless sea, a slightly farther gaze is insignificant,” Duncan said softly, but then the words changed, “but to us, who are diving in the darkness, even just being able to see out an extra meter means a lot. ”

He casually turned off the main lighting in the cabin, leaving only the necessary lights on the console.

The submarine dims, but with the contrasting lights, the column of light from the high-powered searchlight outside the porthole grows brighter in the darkness, and the details of the surface of the crags become clearer in the range of that patch of light.

“You describe a world of near despair, but your attitude seems eternally optimistic,” said Agatha, “which surprises …… me.”

“I describe a desperate world to you, and that’s because the world is so bad in the first place, and my attitude is optimistic, and that’s because I’m an optimistic person in the first place,” Duncan said casually, “We can’t change the world, but ‘attitude ‘ belongs to us.”

“I didn’t realize that you were such a character, and even more so, that you could be so good-natured,” a smirk seemed to appear on Agatha’s face, “Yes, I always accidentally forget that you were originally the greatest explorer in the world.” Duncan merely smiled and did not respond, his eyes fell on the porthole, using the light from the searchlight to scrutinize the rising “cliff”.

The texture looks like stone, surface climbing some similar seaweed, coral parasites.

But such a vertical structure, such a regular “base”, but no matter how you think about it, it does not seem to be naturally formed things.

He maneuvered the submersible cautiously forward, hovered at a very close distance, and then, slightly rusty, found a lever on the console and released the mechanical arm located directly in front of the submersible.

In the light, the arm slowly unfolded, and the sharp structure at its end touched the “cliff” in front of it, tapping and scraping gently.

Some debris falls slowly through the water.

But inside the debris seems to be a harder structure.

“I’ve always wondered one thing,” Duncan suddenly broke the silence, “In all these years, in all these city-states, there’s never been any shortage of digging deeper into the ground-mining, or building underground facilities, or just plain old research Behavior or not …… has no one ever dug through this ‘base’?”

Agatha was stunned for a moment, the question seemed a bit jumpy to her, but after a brief moment of thought she shook her head, “As far as I know …… there has been no such ‘digging through’. Because the underground is dangerous, the lower you go below sea level, the higher the probability of mutations in the darkness, and even with the protection of steam and fire, mental contamination and bizarre accidents in the mines occur year after year, not to mention digging deeper down with such a crazy idea as ‘digging through the city-state’, and… …”

She paused for a moment, organizing her memories, and then spoke, “And even if one does hold such crazy thoughts of digging deeper down, it seems that no one has ever succeeded, I once heard that the Truth Academy had made an attempt in this regard, and their conclusion was that …… when the digging reaches a certain depth, the drill bit just hits can’t go on, and the further down it goes, the harder it gets, until the hardest, most advanced drills break off.”

“Harder and harder the further down you go?” Duncan frowned and turned his head to look out the porthole at the robot that was hammering away at the “crag”, which had now knocked off some of its attachments, and after the loose debris had been dislodged, the inner layers of the crag were revealed to be a much darker, denser structure.

It was impossible to tell if it was rock or metal.

But its surface seems to have a vaguely more regular pattern, just like the grooves and furrows of …… some kind of biological epidermis.

Duncan maneuvered his robotic arm and tried in vain to scrape some samples off the dense black structure.

The power of the arm is insufficient, and the layer of black material is harder than imagined …… Some kind of “bottom shell”?
Duncan’s mind flooded with all kinds of speculation, and even came up with some bold detection program, but in the end he tried to suppress this curiosity, began to control the submersible to continue to move into the deep sea.

After all, exploring the “huge unknown entity” right underneath the Frost was the primary goal of his trip, and he couldn’t afford to waste the submersible’s precious endurance time on the premise that he wasn’t sure if there would be a second chance to dive deeper.

Along with the noise from the ballast tank, the submersible continued to dive.

After an unknown period of time, they finally crossed the “fault line” under the base of the city-state.

Very suddenly, the “cliffs” within the range of the searchlights came to an abrupt end, and the huge patch of light was swallowed up by darkness as if it had been swallowed up by darkness, and an infinite body of dark water came with it.

Even the most powerful searchlight couldn’t find a target in such an open expanse of water – Duncan could only see a hazy border of light stretching out the porthole, but there was no point of reference, either in or out of the light.

The oppressive feeling of sinking deeper into the vast darkness and sinking ever deeper was far better than facing that eerie great void straight on in the depths of the boiling gold mines.

Agatha also gripped the handrail in front of her slightly nervously.

The last glimmer of light in her “vision” disappeared.

(End of chapter)