novelraw Chapter 316: The Deep Sea
Chapter 316: The Deep Sea
A chill, white mist enveloped the gray sea surface, waves lapping against a wooden pier covered in barnacles.
The air was thick with the mingled smells of coal smoke, dead fish, and sea salt.
A pitch-black ocean-going freighter lay quietly moored at the far end of the dock.
On its hull, the words "Messenger" were painted in white, next to which hung a somewhat tattered British merchant flag.
This was a perfect disguise.
Beneath this shell of oil stains and rust was a high-speed vessel equipped with the Redgrave family's latest, most advanced steam turbine.
Lin Jie stood by the gangway.
He wore a dark gray heavy wool overcoat, its collar turned up against the piercing morning sea breeze.
Before him stood two people who had come to see him off.
Ethan and Hawk.Hawk stepped forward.
This Native American man, a head taller than Lin Jie, extended his scar-covered right hand, clenched into a fist.
Then he punched Lin Jie's left chest with great force.
"Thump."
That was the highest form of respect among Blackfoot warriors.
It represented the resonance of heart to heart, representing treating the other's life as one's own.
Lin Jie smiled and likewise clenched his fist, returning the gesture to Hawk's chest.
"Hold the fort here," Lin Jie said.
"Unless I die," Hawk replied, brief and powerful.
Ethan walked over. This former playboy, now the family's helmsman, had slightly reddened eyes.
He opened his arms and gave Lin Jie a tight hug.
"Stay alive."
Lin Jie patted his back.
"Don't worry."
"My life is tough."
"And," Lin Jie released Ethan and pointed to his own head. "I'm the 'Scalpel'. I'm the one who cuts others out."
Ethan laughed.
He pulled out an exquisitely crafted silver cigarette case from his coat and stuffed it into Lin Jie's pocket.
"For the road, to pass the time. The best Cuban stuff."
A steam whistle suddenly sounded.
"Woo—"
It was the signal urging departure, startling a flock of seagulls on the dock.
"Time to go," Lin Jie said.
He picked up his luggage at his feet, turned, and stepped onto the gangplank leading to the deck.
Evelyn was already waiting for him by the railing, clutching tightly the black case containing the Tesla Coil Glove.
The mooring lines were cast off, the massive anchor chain slowly rising with the rumbling of the windlass.
The propeller began to turn, churning the harbor's calm waters. The freighter shuddered and began to slowly pull away from the dock.
Lin Jie stood by the stern railing.
He watched the two figures on shore grow smaller and smaller until the morning mist completely swallowed their outlines.
He then turned his head to look at the massive copper statue standing on Liberty Island.
"Goodbye, New York."
He murmured softly, then headed towards the cabin.
...
The Messenger was no ordinary freighter; its interior had undergone an extremely thorough transformation.
The original captain's quarters and chart room had been completely opened up, becoming a spacious, fully functional "Mobile Operations Room."
This was Lin Jie and Evelyn's base during the long voyage.
At the center of the room was a large wooden table covered with the latest world nautical charts, marked with different colored inks indicating ocean currents, wind belts, and possible supply points.
Several spare Winchester rifles and revolvers hung on the walls.
By the window sat a state-of-the-art radio transmitter, an experimental model Ethan had procured at great expense from Marconi's company.
On the other side of the room was a simple chemistry and mechanics laboratory.
Various glass test tubes, beakers, microscopes, and precise brass tools were neatly secured on specially designed shockproof racks.
This was Evelyn's domain.
The days that followed became regular and monotonous.
Apart from necessary watch duties and meals, the two spent almost all their time in this operations room.
Lin Jie was organizing his notes.
All the information he had collected during his time in North America about the Brotherhood of Light, the Black Lotus Sect, and various UMAs.
He was trying to find some pattern, some clue that could connect everything.
Evelyn, meanwhile, was engrossed in debugging and improving the Tesla Coil Glove, and she was also attempting to repair the damaged Echo Goggles module.
The scenery outside the window changed daily.
From the gloomy swells of the North Atlantic to the azure waters of the Strait of Gibraltar.
They passed through the Suez Canal. In that narrow waterway, Lin Jie gazed at the distant desert and thought of William, still recuperating in Cairo.
Then the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean.
As the voyage progressed, the temperature began to rise, the air becoming humid and sticky.
That was the unique scent of the tropics.
...
Half a month later.
Central Pacific, a remote stretch of ocean.
Late night.
Lin Jie sat in the operations room, cleaning the Serene Heart.
Suddenly, Evelyn jumped up from the corner piled with instruments.
She wore a pair of bulky headphones and held a freshly printed sonar chart.
"Lin! Come look at this quickly!"
Her voice held a trace of shock and excitement she couldn't quite hide.
Lin Jie immediately put away his gun and walked over.
"What is it?"
"The sonar picked up an anomalous signal."
Evelyn pointed at the series of regular wave lines on the chart.
"This isn't mechanical noise, nor is it whale song."
"It's a kind of... language."
"Language?" Lin Jie frowned.
"Yes, very complex, very regular," Evelyn said rapidly. "It contains a kind of mathematical logic, like... Morse code, but infinitely more advanced."
"And."
She paused.
"The signal source is huge. Unbelievably huge."
"How huge?"
"Based on echo calculations," Evelyn swallowed. "That thing's length... exceeds one kilometer."
One kilometer.
Lin Jie's pupils contracted slightly.
In the understanding of this era, the largest creature on Earth, the blue whale, was only a little over thirty meters.
A one-kilometer-long creature was a Leviathan that existed only in myths and legends.
"Where is it?"
"Right under our ship," Evelyn pointed downwards. "Depth eight hundred meters, ascending."
"Ascending?"
Lin Jie didn't hesitate.
"To the deck!"
The two grabbed their gear and rushed out of the operations room.
On the deck, the sailor on watch duty was leaning over the railing, pointing at the sea and shouting something.
His voice was filled with awe.
"My God... is that the aurora?"
Lin Jie rushed to the ship's side and looked down.
The sight before him made even this hunter, accustomed to bizarre monsters, hold his breath.
It was a miracle of the deep sea.
Countless dim blue points of light suddenly lit up beneath the pitch-black sea surface.
The lights were initially scattered, like a handful of crushed diamonds thrown into the sea, but they quickly began to converge.
They flowed, swirled, and combined in the deep seawater.
Finally, at a depth of several dozen meters below the surface, a "giant whale" composed of light, with a body vast enough to cover the entire freighter, slowly took shape.
It was too beautiful, beautiful beyond belief for an earthly creature.
It had the streamlined form of a whale, with enormous pectoral fins and a tail fin.
Its body was composed of hundreds of millions of glowing particles, each one flickering, breathing.
It swam gracefully in the seawater, each flick of its tail stirring up vast patches of phosphorescence on the sea surface, illuminating the entire area as bright as day.
"What... is that?" Evelyn murmured to herself.
She put on the Echo Goggles.
In her vision.
The truth of this "giant whale" was finally revealed.
"Not one..."
Evelyn's voice trembled.
"They aren't a single creature, that's... a swarm."
Through acoustic imaging, she clearly saw the true forms of those glowing particles.
They were palm-sized, soft-bodied creatures resembling squids or jellyfish.
They were transparent all over, with a luminescent organ inside.
Hundreds of millions of these tiny creatures were densely packed together, maintaining an extremely strict formation.
Communicating through some kind of sound wave and light signals incomprehensible to humans, they shared thoughts, shared senses.
Together, they formed a massive "phantom" with a collective consciousness.
"Swarm Phantom Whale."
This was the name Lin Jie instantly gave this unknown UMA in his mind.
"What... do they want to do?" Evelyn was a bit nervous.
Her hand instinctively moved towards the Tesla Coil Glove at her waist.
"Don't move."
Lin Jie pressed down on her hand.
"Don't show hostility."
His intuition told him this behemoth wasn't aggressive.
It didn't carry that nauseating aura of decay, nor that chilling desire to kill.
What it had was a sense of grandeur, a sense of calm, and an ancient sadness.
"Listen."
Lin Jie closed his eyes. The sound penetrated the ship's hull directly, vibrating in the air.
"Woo—"
It was an extremely deep, extremely drawn-out call.
Like a horn from antiquity, or like the sigh of Earth itself.
"They're singing," Evelyn said, looking at the sonar screen.
The waveform on the screen was drawing complex geometric patterns.
"This is... a navigation signal."
"They're migrating."
Yes, migration.
This was a life expedition spanning half the globe.
This "phantom whale," composed of countless tiny lives, was following ancient ocean currents, heading towards some unknown holy land.
It was passing by here, merely passing by.
It noticed the small ship on the sea surface. The massive, light-formed whale head tilted slightly as it passed beneath the freighter.
Lin Jie opened his eyes.
He saw, in the position of the "eyes" formed by countless light points, what seemed like a gentle gaze penetrating the seawater and falling upon him.
No malice, only the indifference and curiosity of a higher life form towards a lower one.
"It's looking at us," Evelyn held her breath.
"Yes," Lin Jie nodded.
He took off his glove, walked to the ship's side, and gently placed his right hand on the cold iron railing.
Reverberation Touch.
Normally, this ability could only read the memories of the object touched.
But water was an excellent medium.
And this ship was currently floating in this sea area saturated with high concentrations of spiritual energy.
Lin Jie's consciousness extended along the ship's hull into the seawater.
In that moment, he felt himself become a drop of water, merging into that sea of light.
He heard countless voices.
The whispers of hundreds of millions of tiny consciousnesses.
"Home..."
"The path is long..."
"So cold..."
"But must return..."
Those voices converged, forming a grand will.
That will was filled with weariness, filled with a longing for survival, and also filled with a calm acceptance of death.
It was a loneliness similar to that of the Deep Sea Moon God. They had wandered in this pitch-black deep sea for tens of thousands of years.
They had witnessed continental drift, witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations.
In their eyes, this steam freighter, representing the pinnacle of human industrial civilization, was but a floating speck of dust.
"Do not disturb them."
Lin Jie withdrew his hand. The massive flow of information made him feel dizzy.
But he wasn't harmed, because that will held no aggression towards him. It had even conveyed a trace of goodwill.
Perhaps the aura of the White Vulture's Mark on him made them see him as a kind of kin.
"Maintain course," Lin Jie turned and ordered the first mate on the bridge.
"Shut down the engines, keep only minimal power for steering."
"No whistles, no searchlights."
"We... will just watch quietly."
The first mate was an experienced old sailor. Though afraid, he could also see this thing meant no harm.
And so, a strange spectacle appeared in the silent heart of the Pacific.
A pitch-black freighter floated on a glowing sea, while beneath it, that light-formed giant whale accompanied it, slowly moving forward.
Evelyn leaned over the railing, having completely forgotten her fear.
As a scientist, an explorer, the scene before her fulfilled all her fantasies about the unknown world.
She frantically operated her instruments, recording every spectrum, every change in the light signals.
"So incredible..." she murmured. "Is this collective consciousness?"
"Individuals are so small and fragile, but when they gather, when they resonate for the same goal."
"They become a god."
Lin Jie stood silently beside her, lighting a cigarette. The smoke dissipated in the sea breeze.
He watched the giant whale slowly swim towards the deep sea. The light points began to gradually dim, the song becoming more and more ethereal.
Until finally, it completely vanished at the horizon's edge.
The sea returned to darkness and dead silence.
"Did you record it?" Lin Jie asked.
"All of it," Evelyn patted the wax cylinder drum storing the data. "It's priceless."
"This biological structure, this method of information transmission... if we can decode it, it might completely revolutionize our communication technology."
Lin Jie nodded.
"That's good."
He looked east, where a sliver of dawn was already coloring the horizon.
In this world, the forms of power weren't just guns and claws. There was also this kind of grand, silent resonance connecting hundreds of millions of individuals.
"The artificial god the Black Lotus Sect wants to create."
Lin Jie suddenly spoke.
"Maybe... is a twisted version of this kind of thing."
Evelyn was stunned for a moment, looking at Lin Jie's profile.
"What did you say?"
"If they try to forcibly fuse the consciousnesses of countless people, or the spiritual natures of countless UMAs," Lin Jie flicked the ash off his cigarette.
"What they create might not be a god, but a monster."
"We need to speed up."
Lin Jie threw away the cigarette butt.
"Full speed ahead."
With that order.
The Messenger's smokestack once again belched thick black smoke. The massive propeller churned the seawater anew as the freighter cut through the waves, speeding away at full throttle.