Deep Sea Embers

Listening to Tirian's narration, Duncan fell into a short thought. After half a minute, he raised his head and said thoughtfully: "So, in order to satisfy her own exploring heart, she opened a 'submerged Abyss Project', and the essence of this plan is not to explore any subspace at all, but just...literally 'diving into deep water'?"

Speaking of this, he paused, and felt that this matter was quite strange: "But if it's just like this, how can this plan have anything to do with the Lost Home? The warp space that the Lost Home went to and the Frost Queen want The deep sea to be explored is fundamentally two concepts, those rebels should not even be able to tell the difference..."

Tirian didn't 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 a 'taboo'? The city-state's port builders and offshore fishers often dive into the water because of work needs. It is very common to dive for more than ten meters or even tens of meters in safe waters. Why did the Frost Queen's "Abyss Project" become Taboo?"

Duncan's eyes gradually became serious: "...How deep have you dived?"

"It's very deep. I don't know what depth the queen dived to in the end, because I am not a scholar. I just participated in some peripheral assistance as a naval commander, and I will no longer be directly involved in the second half of the plan. , but as far as I know, their manned submersibles reached at least a thousand meters below the surface before the plan started to ... 'go wrong', and they kept breaking that record."

One thousand meters underwater...

Duncan quickly sorted out the knowledge he knew in his mind - on the earth, this seemingly inconspicuous number is actually the limit submerged depth of many advanced military submarines, and the submerged depth of most military submarines is only four or five. 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 period of time by special deep submersibles. The requirements for equipment are extremely high, and often only unmanned equipment.

And the Frost Queen's manned submersible has already touched the threshold of "one thousand meters", which is already an astonishing figure at the industrial level of the world half a century ago, even with the assistance of some extraordinary power .

And behind this astonishing figure... Obviously, there are some more "amazing" things.

Tirian just mentioned that the plan gradually became "wrong" in the later stage, and Duncan did not ignore this word.

He looked at Tirian, his eyes became deep: "I want to know the specifics of the entire exploration plan—tell me as much as you have been involved in."

It seems that because he has already answered many questions, and he has adapted to this kind of communication, this time Tirian did not hesitate for too long. He fell into the memories and slowly spoke in the memories:

"...except for Frost's diving plan, the recorded conventional diving depth of human beings, or 'safe water depth', is 150 meters, and it is limited to the offshore area-our plan was originally at this depth At the beginning, and until the 300 meters, the plan was very smooth.

"It was already very dark. The sunlight on the sea surface could not penetrate such a thick water body, and the high-power lamps carried by the submersible could only illuminate a small area. In order to explore the 'look' under the city-state island, but also to Try to avoid some dangerous 'creatures' in the far sea area, such as the sons of the deep sea. We let the submersible dive along the coast and keep moving close to the offshore area of ​​the island. I still remember the scene described by the explorers at that time when they came up ...

"He said that the island was like an ugly, gnarled pillar covered with thick limestone deposits, and that there were strange creatures inhabiting the hollows of the sediment, and that apart from the 'pillar', There is nothing around, just darkness."

"Is a pillar under the island?" Duncan couldn't help interrupting Tirian, "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 can continue."

Tirian sorted out his thoughts and continued his previous memories: "That was the scene I saw at a depth of about 300 meters, which was also the limit 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 at a depth of 800 meters in one breath, and through the half-meter-thick high-strength glass, 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 at least 800 meters long, is actually very short in proportion. Rather than being a pillar, it is more like a regular disc shape. The base holds an island on it.

"Subsequently, we built a 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. Meter after meter of slow dive, we discovered one thing.

"The 'pillars' below the city-state are actually only 850 meters 'long', and there is nothing further down.

"The whole structure is floating in sea water."

Tirian stopped and looked up into Duncan's eyes: "Now you know why I said it was more like a disc base than a pillar?"

Duncan frowned tightly, he didn't speak, but quickly outlined the entire structure in his mind according to Tirian's description——

People in the deep-sea age "dwell" in city-states. These isolated islands on the 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 are destined to have a certain "size basis" , although there are some small islands, the "basic radius" of most of the big cities that can be named has reached more than ten kilometers or even tens of kilometers. number.

Corresponding to this huge offshore structure is its "base" which is "only" 850 meters deep underwater - the explorers first saw the underwater part of the city-state protruding straight into it at a depth of 300 meters. In the deep sea, I intuitively imagine that this is a pillar that reaches the "bottom of the sea", but in fact, in terms of proportion, the shape of this "pillar" is more like a thin round cake.

A huge city is placed on this "round cake".

As Tirian described: the entire structure is floating in sea water.

But after imagining this model, Duncan had huge doubts in his mind——

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 "stability" of the city-state itself is due to its large enough scale, then the relative position between the city-states is also so stable, how can this be explained?

The waves of the boundless sea are rolling, and these "floating islands" have never changed their positions. Why?

Duncan expressed the doubts in his heart, but Tirian just shook his head: "We also had doubts about this, but we couldn't figure it out in the end, and compared with what happened later...'How did the city-state The question of 'adrift at sea' is irrelevant."

"What happened later?" Duncan couldn't help but wonder, "What happened later? What did you see in the deep sea?"

"Later...the No. 3 submersible continued to challenge the limit depth. It took us nearly two years to advance this 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. During the process, the submersible was actually clinging to the city-state and the city-state's underwater 'structure', but as the dive continued and the explorer moved away from the 'base', something went wrong.

"Aural hallucinations, visual hallucinations, feeling inexplicable lights appearing in the sea, feeling that someone is knocking on the hull outside, and even feeling that someone is turning the handle of the gate outside. The further you go down, the more serious the similar situation is. Even after special training Explorers with strong wills began to feel tremendous pressure in every dive, while the protective effect of the holy oil, sacred books and scripture cloth that they carried with them became less and less obvious.

"Of course, up to here, this is still what we expected - exploring the unknown requires facing the challenge of will, and those scholars who explore the spirit world and the deep sea often encounter this problem, so We are still continuing, but we have strengthened the spiritual protection of explorers according to the strictest standards.

"The problem comes when you challenge the 1,000m from 990m.

"The No. 3 submersible suddenly issued a signal for emergency ascent, and then emptied the pressurized water tank like crazy and rushed up. The explorers inside seemed to be totally indifferent to the fact that this rapid ascent would kill them. After the surface of the sea, the explorer was already crazy, the hatch opened, and he screamed in the sun, as if desperately trying to describe something terrible to us, and after a lot of incomprehensible confused words, he Said the only sober words:

"We all died there."