Chapter 529
Submersible No. 3
She glanced at the life monitor; Jiang Nian's temperature had dropped to 33.5 degrees Celsius, and his pulse was weak.
"We can't wait any longer." Lin Yue made up her mind. "We must risk surfacing and take the shortest route to the entrance of the safe house! There are shielding fields and defensive firepower there. If we can get in!"
"How big is the risk?" Lao Dao asked.
"Nine out of ten chances of survival," Lin Yue said bluntly. "But if we stay, we're doomed. His body can't hold on any longer, and we can't outlast the organization's search network."
She restarted the submersible, pushing the remaining power to its limit. Like a startled swordfish, "Submarine III" burst out of the iceberg's cover and sped towards the Svalbard coastline.
Underwater navigation became thrilling. They no longer tried to conceal their tracks; speed was everything. Sonar constantly detected other high-speed objects moving in the distance, but Lin Yue used her familiarity with the terrain and the small, agile advantages of the "Submarine III" to narrowly avoid potential interception time and time again.
Amidst the violent turbulence, Jiang Nian alternated between consciousness and unconsciousness. He felt his body growing colder and his consciousness becoming increasingly blurred. Only the tenacious energy flow of the marking system and the "resonance" from the deep sea, which seemed a little clearer than before, acted like two thin threads, barely holding back his drifting consciousness.
I don't know how much time has passed.
"We can see the coastline! The safe house entrance is underwater in the fjord ahead!" Lin Yue's voice was tinged with excitement. "But... there's an energy reaction near the entrance! Is it an organization patrol boat? Or an ambush?"
Outside the porthole, the seawater lightened, revealing a faint glimmer of sunlight filtering through the ice above. Ahead, the entrance to a deep, subglacial fjord resembled the maw of a giant beast.
Outside the fjord entrance, sonar detected two stationary spots of light.
"A small underwater detection platform," Engineer Chen judged. "It should be an automated warning node deployed by the organization. Forcing its way in would trigger an alarm."
"Can we avoid it?" Old Dao asked.
“The fjord entrance is the widest and deepest point; other places are either too shallow or blocked by ice.” Lin Yue gritted her teeth. “We have to take them out. ‘Submarine III’ also has a sonic jamming missile, but we need to deal with two nodes at the same time, otherwise the other one will still trigger an alarm.”
"I'll go," Old Dao suddenly said.
"What?" Lin Yue was taken aback.
"Give me a set of light diving gear." Old Knife struggled to his feet, ignoring his leg injury. "I'll swim over and manually sabotage it. Keep the chaff and flares as a backup plan."
"Your leg……"
“We can still move.” Old Knife had already walked to the equipment cabinet. “This is the safest way. Before they find us.”
Looking at Lao Dao's determined eyes, and then at Jiang Nian who was on the verge of death, Lin Yue finally nodded: "Be careful. The node has passive sonar and optical sensors, don't get too close. Use this." She handed Lao Dao a device about the size of a cigarette box, "Strong magnetic attraction for EMP pulses, stick it on, it will release after a three-second delay, it can paralyze it for thirty seconds. Enough for us to rush over."
Lao Dao quickly changed into a light diving suit and put on his equipment. Engineer Chen and Xiao Li helped open the emergency exit on the side.
The icy seawater rushed into a small isolation chamber. Old Dao took a deep breath, crawled out, and quickly disappeared into the dark water.
The cabin was completely silent, save for Jiang Nian's faint breathing and the ticking of the instruments.
Time seemed to stand still.
Every second felt incredibly long.
Suddenly, one of the stationary dots on the sonar screen flickered briefly and then went out!
"Old Dao succeeded!" Xiao Li exclaimed in a low voice.
A few seconds later, the second spot of light also went out!
"Quick! Full speed ahead!" Lin Yue immediately pushed the control stick.
Like an arrow released from a bow, "Qianjiao No. 3" rushed towards the entrance of the fjord.
Just as the bow of the ship was about to enter the fjord—
A sudden change has occurred!
A third point of light, from a location never detected by sonar, suddenly lit up at extremely close range! Right above and to their side!
"There's a third one! It's bait!" Engineer Chen exclaimed.
The third node emitted a thin beam of blue light, not as an attack, but as a scan!
Blue light swept across the hull of the "Divemer III".
"I've been marked!" Lin Yue's heart stopped.
Almost simultaneously, a piercing alarm sounded from that point, traveling through the water in all directions!
"Never mind! Charge in!" Lin Yue pushed the engine to its limit!
"Qianjiao No. 3" plunged into the dark fjord.
The faint roar of engines could be heard from behind—the organization's rapid reaction force had been alerted!
The fjord was winding and narrow, with ice walls almost brushing against the hull. Relying on her memory and skillful technique, Lin Yue piloted the submersible through the ice tunnels with incredible speed.
A faint green light appeared ahead, flashing rhythmically underwater.
It's a signal indicating a safe house!
"We've arrived! Get ready to dock!" Lin Yue shouted.
The submersible aimed at the light and entered a square tunnel hidden behind an ice wall. At the end of the tunnel was a heavy alloy gate.
The scanner on the gate quickly scanned the ship's hull. "Identity confirmed, 'Submarine III,' entry permitted," a cold electronic voice announced.
The gate slowly slid open to both sides, revealing a buffer chamber filled with a pale blue liquid inside.
The submersible entered, and the gate closed behind it. The buffer chamber began to depressurize, and the air pressure was equalized.
When the hatch finally opened, bright lights and warm air rushed in.
Several people dressed in the same work clothes were already waiting outside, pushing a stretcher.
Lin Yue was the first to jump out: "Seriously injured! We urgently need an operating room!"
Jiang Nian was carefully lifted onto the stretcher. In his last moments before losing consciousness, his blurred vision saw Lao Dao swim into the buffer tank from the water behind him, dripping wet, but Lao Dao gave him a thumbs up.
Then he saw the underground dock—a sizable underground space with pipes and equipment lining the rock walls, and in the distance, passageways leading deeper into the area. This was Dawn's safe house in Svalbard.
The stretcher was quickly pushed away and driven deeper into the passageway.
Before he sank completely into darkness, the deep, ancient "resonance" from the deep sea seemed to tremble slightly, as if letting out a sigh that no one could hear for the temporary safety of him, the "key".
Meanwhile, deep in the Greenland Trench, the massive shadowy outline appeared to have shifted its orientation very slightly in unmonitored sonar images.
The winds of the Gobi Desert, carrying sand and gravel, relentlessly batter the base's thick concrete walls.
Jiang Nian stood in front of the observation window, gazing at the endless yellowish-brown expanse outside. The blood-red and deep blue beneath the Greenland ice sheet seven years ago had long been washed away by time into a faded negative deep in her memory, only occasionally rippling with a chilling ripple in the dead of night, accompanied by certain frequencies or pain.
His skin is now covered with large patches of pale pink, strangely textured proliferative tissue—scars left from the combined effects of a marking system and state-of-the-art biological tissue regeneration technology after his severe burns years ago. It doesn't quite resemble skin, nor does it quite resemble… anything else; it has a slight, constant warmth to the touch, as if some low-intensity energy flows beneath it rather than blood. The bones in his right shoulder and left shin have been reinforced with high-strength alloys and bioceramics, occasionally emitting a slight grinding sound when he moves.
The cost was enormous, but we survived.
Survival gives one value. This is true for "Dawn," and even more so for Elder Qin.
Although the anchor point was destroyed, the "gate" to the Ruins of Return did not disappear, and the organization never ceased its activities. For seven years, the struggle between the two sides in the shadows has never stopped, only the battlefield has changed—from the deep sea to the starry sky.
"Jiang, the final full system self-test of 'Crescent Moon No. 7' has been completed, and the data has been uploaded to the main control console."
The young technician's voice sounded behind him, tinged with a barely perceptible sense of awe. Jiang Nian turned around and nodded. He was now one of the chief engineers of "Project Crescent Moon," nominally affiliated with a semi-official commercial satellite development company, but in reality, a key node in "Dawn's" strategic layout in the aerospace field.
This base, located deep in the Gobi Desert, ostensibly conducts research and testing of civilian high-resolution remote sensing satellites, but secretly, under Qin Lao's guidance, it is building a batch of extremely special satellites.
"Crescent Moon" series.
Their purpose is top secret within the base. Only a very few core personnel know that these satellites do not carry ordinary optical or radar sensors, but are specially tuned detectors capable of capturing and analyzing a specific "spectrum." That spectrum does not belong to any known electromagnetic waves or particle radiation, but rather... the "traces" that "Gui Xu" may emit, or rather, the high-altitude reflection of the "resonance" that Jiang Nian sensed in the deep sea back then.
Qin's theory is that the Ruins of Return are not simply geographical locations or dimensional fissures; they are a "state," a "phenomenon," intertwined with certain deep physical laws of the Earth and even the solar system. The role of the anchor point is to forcibly create a "weak point" on the Earth's surface, allowing this phenomenon to manifest locally. The "Crescent Moon" satellite's goal, however, is to monitor the global "fluctuations" of this "phenomenon" from high altitude in a more macroscopic and covert manner, searching for its patterns, sources, and... new anchor points that the organization might establish.
"Engineer Jiang, connect Elder Qin's encrypted communication to line three," the deputy whispered a reminder.
Jiang Nian walked towards his private office. The heavy, blast-proof door slid open and closed silently, isolating him from all outside noise. The room was simply furnished. Apart from the necessary office equipment and a cot, the most conspicuous thing was the huge electronic star chart on the wall, which marked the orbits of the six "Crescent Moon" satellites that had been launched, as well as several flickering, unidentifiable, and weak signal sources.
He sat down at the console, entered the multi-level verification password, the screen lit up, and Qin Lao's familiar, slightly hoarse voice came through the high-quality audio channel, but there was no video.
"Jiang Nian, how are you feeling?"
"I can still work," Jiang Nian replied succinctly. Seven years was enough time for him to learn to express the necessary meaning with the fewest words possible, and enough time to wear away many unnecessary emotions.
"That's good. Has the launch window for 'Crescent Moon 7' been confirmed?"
"Seventy-two hours later, in Jiuquan, aboard the Long March-C-3 modified rocket, everything is ready," Jiang Nian reported. "The final payload calibration is complete, and the monitoring sensitivity for the Greenland-Svalbard region and the Circum-Pacific Trench has been improved by 15 percent."
There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the communication.
“Greenland…” Old Qin repeated slowly, “Seven years have passed, and the ‘thing’ down there is still moving.”
Jiang Nian's eyes narrowed. Although he had been away from frontline combat for many years, he had never forgotten the "resonance" he felt deep in the ocean and the sonar anomaly data Lin Yue later shared. After his medical treatment at the safe house, he underwent a year-long "observation" and "evaluation." Elder Qin and the higher-ups of "Dawn" were clearly extremely concerned about the connection between the marking system and the Void. Ultimately, he was given a new identity and mission, moving behind the scenes. This was partly to protect him as the "key," and partly to utilize his unique "perception" abilities to guide the sensor design for Project Crescent Moon.
"Any new data?" Jiang Nian asked.
"Satellite No. 6 has detected seventeen unusual, brief 'spectral spikes' in the North Atlantic-Arctic Ocean boundary region over the past three months." Old Qin displayed a set of waveforms on Jiang Nian's screen. "The duration ranged from 0.3 seconds to 3 seconds, with very low energy intensity but clear characteristics. They match the 'resonance' frequency you described back then by 73%. Their location..." Old Qin paused, "...is right on the extension of the trench where the original anchorage was located, and...it seems to be slowly moving southeast at a speed of about 0.5 nautical miles per day."
"Moving?" Jiang Nian frowned. A massive "thing" whose outline could be detected by sonar was moving at a depth of nearly four thousand meters? "Where are the signs of the organization's activity?"
"It's very quiet. At least in that area, our monitoring hasn't detected any large-scale man-made signals or signs of engineering. But we can't rule out the possibility that they used a more covert method, or... that the movement of that thing is unrelated to them."
"What do you think it is?" Jiang Nian asked directly. There was no need for beating around the bush when dealing with Old Qin.
“I don’t know.” Old Qin’s voice was unusually heavy. “It could be part of the natural evolution of the Guixu phenomenon, it could be some kind of ‘geological aftereffect’ caused by the anchor point explosion, or it could be… something else that has been awakened. One of the important tasks of ‘Crescent Moon Seven’ is to intensify the continuous observation of that area and try to build a clearer spectral model. We need to know what it is and what it wants to do.”
"Understood. I will personally monitor the initial data after launch."
"There's one more thing," Old Qin's tone turned serious. "The organization has been very active in the low-Earth orbit commercial satellite launch market recently. Through several shell companies, it has booked launch services for a batch of small satellites. The destination orbital parameters are quite scattered, but several combinations can form uninterrupted coverage of specific areas, including the locations of several of our ground monitoring stations." (End of Chapter)