Listening to Tirian's story, Duncan fell into thinking for a short time. After half a minute, he raised his head and spoke thoughtfully: "So, in order to satisfy her desire to explore, she started a 'submersible' adventure." "Project Abyss", and the essence of this plan is not to explore subspace at all, but just... 'to dive into deep water' in a literal sense?"
Having said this, he paused, and felt that this matter was quite strange: "But if that's all, how could this plan be related to the Homeless Ship? The subspace that the Homeless Ship went to and what the Frost Queen wanted The deep sea to be explored is basically two concepts, and those rebels should not be able to distinguish between them..."
Tirian did not answer directly, but suddenly asked a question: "Don't you find it strange? If you just dive into the water and explore the sea conditions deep in the city-state, what can be called 'taboo'? City-state port builders and offshore fishermen often need to dive into the water for work. It is very common to dive more than ten meters or even dozens of meters in safe sea areas. Why did the Frost Queen's "Dive into the Abyss Plan" become Taboo?"
Duncan's eyes gradually became serious: "...how deep did you dive?"
"It's very deep. I don't know to what depth the Queen dived in the end, because I am not a scholar myself. I only participated in some peripheral assistance as a naval commander, and I no longer directly participated in the operation in the second half of the plan. , but as far as I know, before the plan started to go...'wrong', their manned submersible reached a depth of at least one thousand meters underwater, and is still setting new records."
One thousand meters underwater...
Duncan quickly sorted out the knowledge he knew in his mind - on earth, this seemingly inconspicuous number is actually the ultimate diving depth of many advanced military submarines, and the diving depth of most military submarines is only four or five. Hundreds of meters. As for those "extreme deep diving records" that are often thousands of meters or even nearly 10,000 meters, they are basically completed in a short time by special deep submersibles. The requirements for equipment are extremely high, and often can only be achieved with Unmanned equipment.
The Frost Queen's manned submersible had already touched the threshold of "one thousand meters". Given the industrial level of this world half a century ago, even with the assistance of some extraordinary power, this was already an astonishing figure. .
And behind this astonishing number... there is obviously something even more "astonishing".
Tyrion just mentioned that the plan began to gradually become "wrong" in the later stages, and Duncan did not ignore this word.
He looked at Tirian, his eyes darkening: "I want to know the details of the entire exploration plan - tell me how much you participated in."
It seems that because he has already answered many questions and has become accustomed to this kind of communication, Tirian did not hesitate for too long this time. He fell into memories and slowly spoke in the memories:
"...Except for Frost's abyss plan, the conventional diving depth recorded by humans, or the 'safe water depth', is one hundred and fifty meters, and is limited to the offshore range - our plan was also initially set at this depth. From the beginning, and until the 300 meters mark, the plan was smooth.
"It was already very dark. The sunlight on the sea could not penetrate such a thick body of water. The high-power lamps carried by the submersible could only illuminate a small area. In order to explore the 'look' below the city-state island, but also to Trying to avoid some dangerous 'creatures' in the open sea, such as the children of the deep sea, we let the submersible dive along the coast and keep moving close to the offshore range of the island. I still remember the scene described by the explorers at that time. …
"He said that the bottom of the island is like an ugly and rough pillar, covered with thick limestone sediments, and there are some strange creatures living in the pits of the sediments. In addition to the 'pillar', There was nothing around but darkness.”
"Is there a pillar under the island?" Duncan couldn't help but interrupt Tirian, "It's not a gradually expanding support structure, but a pillar?"
"Yes, at least that's the case with Frost," Tirian nodded, "What's the problem?"
Duncan shook his head: "...No problem, you continue."
Tirian sorted out his thoughts and continued his previous memories: "That was a scene seen at a depth of about three hundred meters, which was also the ultimate depth of the first submersible. After realizing that this depth was far from enough to explore the deep sea, the Queen The scholars were ordered to build a second submersible. This submersible was very successful. It dived into the water to a depth of 800 meters in one breath. Through the high-strength glass half a meter thick, what the explorers saw... Still a pillar, a straight pillar.
"Of course, compared with the radius of the city-state itself, this 'pillar', which is already at least 800 meters long, is actually still very short in proportion. It is not so much a pillar as it is more like a regular disk. The base holds an island.
"Subsequently, we built the third submersible - due to technical limitations, the improvement of this submersible was much smaller than that of the second submersible. It had to dive carefully to challenge the record of the second submersible. As we slowly descended meter after meter, we discovered something.
"The 'pillar' below the city-state is actually only 850 meters long, and there is nothing further down.
"The entire structure floats in the sea water."
Tirian stopped and looked up into Duncan's eyes: "Now do you know why I just said it is more like a disc base than a pillar?"
Duncan frowned tightly. He did not speak, but quickly outlined the entire structure in his mind according to Tirian's description——
People in the Deep Sea Age "dwelled" in city-states. These isolated islands at sea initially gave Duncan the impression that they were crowded and small, but in fact, as fully functional and self-sustaining residences, these city-states were destined to have a certain "size basis" , although there are some small islands, the "basic radius" of most big cities that can be named has reached more than ten kilometers or even dozens of kilometers. As the largest city-state in the Lenglie Sea, Hanshuang will not be smaller than this. number.
Corresponding to this huge offshore structure is its "base" that is "only" 850 meters deep underwater - explorers first saw the underwater part of the city-state plunging straight in at a depth of 300 meters. In the deep sea, I intuitively imagine that this is a pillar reaching the "sea bottom", but in fact, in terms of proportion, the shape of this "pillar" is more like a thin round cake.
A large-scale city is placed on this "round cake".
As Tirian described it: the entire structure is floating in the sea.
But after imagining this model, Duncan was filled with huge doubts——
Is this the case in every city-state?
If every city-state is like this, a "floating object" without a foundation, how can they be so stable? If the city-state itself is "stable" because it is large enough, then the relative position between city-states is also so stable. How can we explain this?
Despite the rolling waves of the boundless sea, these "floating islands" never change their positions. Why is this?
Duncan expressed his doubts, but Tirian just shook his head: "We also had doubts about this, but in the end we couldn't figure it out. And compared with what happened later...'How did the city-state The question of floating on the sea is irrelevant."
"What happened next?" Duncan couldn't help but become curious, "What happened next? What did you see in the deep sea?"
"Later... the No. 3 submersible continued to challenge the ultimate depth. It took us nearly two years to push the record from 850 meters to 950 meters. As you can imagine, in this dive In the process, the submersible is gradually moving away from the 'base' of the city-state - remember what I said at the beginning? In order to avoid problems in the open sea area, we let the submersible dive in the 'offshore safety zone' close to the coast. This whole process During the process, the submersible actually stayed close to the city-state and its underwater 'structure'. However, as the dive continued and the explorers moved away from the 'base', things began to go wrong.
"Auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, feeling like there are inexplicable lights in the sea, feeling like someone is knocking on the hull of the boat outside, and even feeling like someone is turning the handle of the gate outside. The further down you go, the more serious the situation becomes. Even after special training, , and tenacious explorers began to feel tremendous pressure with every dive, and the protective effect of the holy oil, sacred books, and scripture cloths they carried with them became less and less obvious.
"Of course, up to this point, this is what we expected - exploring the unknown inherently requires facing challenges in terms of will. Scholars who explore the spiritual world and the deep sea often encounter this problem, so We are still continuing, but strengthening the explorer's mental protection to the most stringent standards.
“The problem comes when challenging from 990 meters to 1,000 meters.
"The No. 3 submersible suddenly sent out an emergency resurface signal, and then emptied its pressurized water tank and rushed up like crazy. The explorer inside seemed completely unconcerned that this rapid resurfacing behavior would kill him, and was rushing up. After reaching the surface, the explorer went crazy. The hatch was opened and he screamed in the sun, as if he was desperately trying to describe something terrible to us. After a lot of incomprehensible and confusing words, he He said the only sober words:
"We all died there."
(End of chapter)
