Alien Relic Hunter.

Chapter 844 Deep Sea Ghost
……

Due to the existence of the transmission channel, even the step of water injection and pressurization has been omitted. The four of them only need to do well in their seats, and then push the transmission channel through the slide rails. When the surrounding scene returns to normal, the deep dive The device is already in the deep sea.

The deep submersible is equipped with multiple "Scorching Star III" underwater searchlights in all directions, and the maximum brightness of this searchlight can reach 5 million lumens.But in this sea area, the light only penetrated about [-] meters of water, and it was already exhausted.

The seawater in Zhonghai and Extreme Sea absorbs light, and everyone has known this for a long time—if the same five-meter-deep pool is filled with clear water, then the bottom of the pool must be clearly visible under normal light.But if the seawater from these two places is injected, the pool will instantly become a dark and deep pool.

Even though the seawater had been filtered out of all impurities visible to the naked eye before it was injected into it, and it was clear and colorless when taken out of a basin alone, when it reached a certain depth, it would become like ink.

According to the research institute, this characteristic seems to be related to the composition of seawater, and it only needs to go through a few "not simple purification" procedures to erase this characteristic of seawater.

But the research institute only "purified" ten tons of seawater, and the energy consumed was enough to purify hundreds of millions of tons of water for residents of the Ark... And in the Zhonghai and Extreme Seas, there are more than [-] million tons of seawater like this?
Under the blurred light, the outline of the city under the sea appears indistinct, just like a ghost town, full of eerie atmosphere and unreality.

Fortunately, Layton can also synchronize the panoramic scan data of Yagunaktor to the computer of the deep submersible—although the remains of the city below cannot be seen clearly with the naked eye, the fine holographic modeling still captures the exact shape of the city. The appearance is outlined, at least there is no need to worry that the deep submersible will suddenly hit a certain tower or fall headlong on a certain steep slope.

"It's so quiet..." In the deep diving cabin, apart from the beeps from the electronic equipment and the slightly weird-sounding echoes received by the sonar, there are only the breathing and heartbeats of the four people. In this environment, even the hound, who was used to talking loudly, couldn't help lowering his voice.

"Isn't the bottom of the sea supposed to be quiet?" Chi Hanfeng asked puzzled, "If there is any movement, that would be bad, right?"

"I mean the sonar is too quiet." The hound pointed to the hemispherical one on the operation panel, where every few seconds a circle of ripples would spread out from the center, and soon there would be another circle of ripples returning from the edge to the center The screen said, "The sonar can only scan the seabed and the city ruins on the seabed. There are no other sounds. This is not normal."

"It's not normal." Ghost Owl continued, "Although the deep sea has always been called the forbidden zone of life, there are actually many types of creatures living in the deep sea. than 10,000 meters, except for the waters polluted by the corpse of the prehistoric species 'Yinglong', there are a lot of active deep-sea life in other places... The depth here is only 3000 meters, so it shouldn't be completely dead. .”

"That's right, you know, when we first arrived in this sea area, Miss Soma's icebreaker was besieged by giant deep-sea eels... Since there are giant deep-sea eels in this sea area, it must exist Otherwise, what do these giant eels eat?" The hound put his face on the porthole made of several layers of special glass and filled with a transparent semi-liquid supercharger in the middle, staring at the darkness Said the sea water.

"Could it be that Yaguna Ketor scared away all the deep-sea creatures when he dived, and that's why it's so quiet?" Chi Hanfeng raised a guess.

"That's the only possibility." The hound nodded, "Old Chi has at least one point, you are right, quiet is better than lively, I would rather scare myself than see a deep-sea giant eel right in front of my eyes Swim over."

But just after the hound finished saying this, a pitch-black shadow suddenly "floated" past the porthole, so fast that the four of them didn't even have time to see its outline clearly!

"What!" The hound stared wide-eyed, and his right hand had already pulled out the pistol in the holster around his waist—even though this conventional weapon was useless underwater, it was already a good idea to draw the gun immediately when in danger. A soldier's muscle memory is engraved in his bones.

Not only him, Chi Hanfeng, Ghost Owl, and Zhuo Ligetu also stretched out their hands to their weapons immediately.

"You saw it too?!" The hound turned and asked, "Isn't it my hallucination?!"

"It's not a hallucination..." Chi Hanfeng felt a chill running down his spine, "But..." He glanced at the sonar screen several times while talking, "The sonar didn't detect anything near us at all. .”

"Could it be a problem with the sonar?" Ghost Owl whispered, "That thing was not even five meters away from us just now... Otherwise, we don't think it's possible to see it without direct light ! It should have swum past the deep submersible! It’s so close, it’s impossible for the sonar to miss it!”

"No, it's not necessarily a problem with the sonar." The hound shook his head, "The problem may be the thing that floats past. Some creatures have a special fat layer on their skin that can absorb sound waves. When sound waves touch them, they will Like a hammer smashing into cotton, there will be no feedback at all..."

"Old dog, I forgot to tell you that this submersible is equipped with the latest type of high-power sonar, which has the functions of active sonar and passive sonar. If the body of a certain creature can absorb sound waves, then the sonar's There should be an obvious blank on the image, and there will be an obvious gap in the received sound waves, instead of nothing unusual like now." Chi Hanfeng murmured, "Unless it's a ghost, Sound waves go straight through its body without being affected."

"Ghost? Old Chi, aren't you an atheist? Why are you starting to believe in such things?" the hound muttered.

"I'm just making an analogy..." Chi Hanfeng's eyes kept switching back and forth between the sonar screen and the porthole, "It is necessary to completely hide from sonar detection at such a short distance, according to the existing human civilization There are two approaches to the development of technology.”

"Which two ways?" asked the Hound.

"The first method is to add a layer of 'lubricating' coating on the surface of the object, so that the sound waves can slide across the surface... This can be easily done by the Alpha civilization, and their optical camouflage devices use this principle, Refract the light, and the things that need to be hidden are hidden in the 'dead angle' formed by the refraction, and naturally they will not appear in the visible light field of view. Sound waves are the same as light, and they are both waves. Naturally, this method can be used in To be invisible in front of sonar, the technical difficulty is even lower than that of optical camouflage." Chi Hanfeng explained to the other three in a low voice but quickly, "Another way is to 'simulate' to absorb the sonar The emitted sound waves are analyzed, and then the "echo" sound waves under "normal conditions" are simulated to deceive the sonar... This method of camouflage is more complicated than the first method, but it is more difficult to achieve It should be lower, in my impression, before I retired, this technology had already been implemented on some experimental vehicles, but because there are too few occasions where it can be used, few people know about it.”

Chi Hanfeng swallowed, and continued: "But no matter what kind of technology, if you want to improve the success rate of camouflage, it is inseparably positively related to the distance. The farther the distance, the harder it is to be discovered... ...And the distance like just now, no matter what kind of technology, it is impossible to achieve perfect concealment."

"I just checked the sonar records again, and I didn't receive any abnormal feedback sound waves." Zhuo Ligetu said, "All the scan results are exactly the same as the results predicted by the computer."

The meaning of this sentence couldn't be more obvious. According to the sonar detection, there is nothing in this water area except the undersea city directly below and Yagunaktor floating in the sea not far away.

Otherwise, as long as there is a trace of abnormality in the sound wave, even if there is only a ten-thousandth deviation from the predicted result, the computer will immediately send out a reminder.

However, from the time the four people glimpsed the black shadow until now, the sonar did not call the police—if the portholes were closed, no one would know that something had just swam past the deep submersible.

The hound took a deep breath, raised his hand to wipe off the sweat dripping from his forehead, and said to Chi Hanfeng, "Contact Layton immediately and ask him if Yagunaktor's panoramic scan has captured anything." Unusual stuff."

"I asked just now, and Layton said that the panoramic scan did not see anything." Chi Hanfeng said immediately, "He has been staring at us the whole time, and there is nothing around the deep submersible except sea water."

"Is it really a ghost?" The hound clings to the back of the seat behind him, as if this can provide him with a comforting sense of security, his eyeballs are constantly glancing at the porthole on one side... He wants to die He stared out of the window, not letting go of the slightest change, but he was afraid that he would see something. He wanted to see something but didn't dare to look at it. Contradictory emotions were fighting wildly in his heart, making him feel that the skin all over his body was Seems to be starting to itch and tingle.

"Could it be a hallucination?" Ghost Owl whispered, "In some ruins, the affected hunters will have group hallucinations. Is it possible that the black shadow just now is the hallucination of the four of us? If there is really something, the sonar on the deep submersible can’t find it, so with Yagunaktor’s technological level, it’s impossible to not find it, right?”

"I'd rather be hallucinations." The hound continued to take deep breaths to control his soaring heart rate. "At least, hallucinations are not fatal...at least most of the time they are not fatal."

"Then what should I do now?" Chi Hanfeng asked, "Do you want to continue searching for that black shadow just now?"

"Don't worry about it. Let's not talk about whether it is an illusion or not. Even if there is something in the water, it just got so close to us and didn't do anything to us...Then let's pretend that we didn't see anything and continue doing what we should do. said the Hound. "Dive down and go to the 'city'."

Chi Hanfeng didn't answer, but he also knew in his heart that in this situation, instead of wasting oxygen and energy here like a frightened bird, it would be better to continue to implement the original goal... If that "thing" is really If they want to launch an attack on the deep submersible, they can't prevent it at all.After figuring this out, the fear lingering in my heart has actually subsided a lot.

Chi Hanfeng switched the control mode of the deep submersible to full manual operation, slightly pressed down on the joystick, and the front end of the deep submersible tilted slightly. Slowly approach the city ruins below.

"It is diving, and it is 45 meters away from the seabed. The current depth is 190 meters."

"Closer." The hound said, the six searchlights in front of the deep submersible concentrated the beams of light, and the outlines of the originally shadowy buildings finally became clear little by little.

"Is this the city under the sea..." Looking at the ruins of the ruined city outside the porthole, but its former grandeur can be vaguely seen, Zhuoligetu couldn't help but sigh in a low voice.

"The damage to the building is very serious." Ghost Owl said, "Look, the thing that was broken into pieces, if I read it correctly, should be the 'empty track' that is common in Alpha civilization cities."

The empty track in Alpha City is not the same as the "air rail train" inside the earth and the ark. This thing can be regarded as a "highway" built in the sky. The empty track itself is just a three-meter-diameter The structure, but with the empty track as the center, can expand a gravitational channel with a diameter of about 20 meters. The vehicles of the Alpha civilization can glide at high speed on the inner wall of this gravitational channel, which is invisible to the naked eye, and it looks like it is flying.

"I have led a team to explore the ruins of many cities of Alpha civilization. This kind of empty track generally only appears in cities above the 'B' scale. The towers used to support the empty track are generally around 500 meters to 1000 meters. ... I think this kind of traffic should not appear in an underwater city."

Class B cities are equivalent to "provincial capitals" on the earth. As for Class A, they are capitals or cities at the level of cultural, political, and economic centers.

"This city sank from the sea, Ke Lan told me." The hound murmured, "He said he saw a burning city sinking into the sea with his own eyes..."

"See it with your own eyes?" Ghost Owl was stunned for a moment, "He...where did he see it?"

[PS Thank you for the 3000 starting coins rewarded by the giraffe who read the book; thank you for the 1500 starting coins rewarded by Soap Youda. 】

(End of this chapter)