20demayo 042 Bronze City
042 Bronze City
Even in summer, the water in the Qutang Gorge, fifty meters deep, remains icy cold. Wetsuits can only slow down heat loss, not completely isolate the body. The chill begins at the extremities and gradually spreads up the torso, like a slow embrace.
Lu Mingfei was very familiar with this feeling of being completely enveloped by liquid; it was always associated with some kind of ominous premonition.
LCL solution, insertion plug. When that liquid is poured into your nasal cavity and lungs, your body screams to tell you this is not where you belong. Then the neural connection is activated, and your brain is forcibly connected to a huge bio-weapon. You can feel every nerve, every muscle, every inch of armor of Unit 3, as if that behemoth has become your new body.
You possess the power of a god, capable of withstanding a nuclear explosion, yet you cannot save anyone.
In the final apocalypse, the world was submerged by the LCL sea. Lu Mingfei stood in the ruins, watching everyone disappear one by one, powerless to do anything.
Every time he was enveloped in liquid, it was never a good thing.
But this time is different.
Lu Mingfei opened his eyes in the darkness underwater.
This is a real river, a world he has lived in for eighteen years. Fifty meters below the surface, two real people are waiting for him. They are still alive, not yet swallowed by anything, not yet vanished before his eyes.
This time, he was in his own world.
Lu Mingfei's descent speed suddenly increased.
The depth gauge numbers jumped rapidly inside the mask, and he felt a slight pressure on his eardrums. He swallowed, his Eustachian tubes opened, and the internal and external pressures balanced.
Fifty meters underwater.
Lu Mingfei saw two beams of searchlight in the murky river. He swam toward the beams and saw two figures floating with their backs to him. Signal lines extended from their waists toward the surface of the water like two thin umbilical cords.
Before them stood a massive bronze city wall.
Lu Mingfei suddenly flipped over and hovered beside Ye Sheng and Ya Ji.
"Lu...Lu-kun?" Aki exclaimed in surprise. Under the high pressure of the deep water, the boy moved more easily and freely than he would on land.
"Let's catch up when we get up there, let's get started."
"Received, S-rank."
Ye Sheng made a forward gesture.
The thickness of the city gate exceeded everyone's expectations; they advanced nearly fifteen meters before reaching the end. The searchlights on their helmets swept across the walls on either side, revealing intricate patterns covering the surface.
"These patterns are arranged very regularly," Aki said, leaning closer to examine them. "They're about five centimeters apart, all the same depth, and the lines intersect at a 45-degree angle. It looks a lot like..."
"Threads," Lu Mingfei finished for her. Having experienced the previous world, Lu Mingfei was no longer surprised by such spectacular architecture.
Then, the three people looked up along the lines, and the spotlight beam moved upwards following the direction of the lines.
"The Moniach, have you seen it?" Ye Sheng asked in a low voice.
On the bridge, Mans and Selma stared at the images coming from the screen.
In the image, a bronze pillar covered with parallel diagonal lines is slowly moving.
"What the hell is this thing, a hydraulic press?" First mate Grayson leaned closer.
Selma rolled her eyes at him and said, "At present, all we can tell is that it is a bronze screw with a diameter of at least three meters and an unknown length."
Mans' eyes scanned the screen rapidly, from the rotation speed of the threads to the pitch of the grooves, to the direction the screw extended in the darkness. As the information increased, the model he assembled in his mind became increasingly terrifying.
Threaded drive, gear meshing, linkage mechanism, cam push rod.
Mans paused, looking down at his wrist, where he wore an Omega Seamaster 300m diving watch.
"I feel like I'm swimming inside a watch movement," Ye Sheng said.
"Professor von Schneider once speculated that the Dragon King Norton hollowed out the entire mountain as a mold, poured molten copper into it from the summit, and as the bronze city took shape, the intense heat caused the mountain rocks to crack, thus casting a bronze city. It seems he was right," Mans said. "Keep moving forward and find the end of the screw. I want to see what it connects to."
The three continued swimming forward.
In the nearly thirty-meter-long bronze passageway, searchlights continuously swept across new structures—the second screw, the third, and the fourth. They were arranged parallel to each other within the walls on both sides of the passageway, connected by gear sets with astonishingly large tooth pitches, each tooth nearly a meter high.
"The transmission system," Mans murmured on the bridge. "It's a complete transmission system."
"Where is the end of the transmission?" Selma asked.
"It should be at the end of the passageway. If this is a complete transmission system, the rotation of the screw must be to drive some mechanism..."
Mans' words came to an abrupt end.
The space in the transmitted video suddenly opened up, and above the three of them was a huge dome covered with patterns.
The patterns had clear directions, branches, and closed-loop structures, resembling circuit diagrams or graphical equations. When the headlamp beam swept across the characters, the characters themselves glowed faintly, like phosphorescence that had slumbered for millennia being awakened by the intruder's breath.
"Dragon pattern?" Aki suddenly realized what it was.
"Back up, back up quickly!" Mans exclaimed excitedly.
A faint bio-electric current emanated from Ye Sheng's diving suit, and countless invisible "electric snakes" darted rapidly along the tunnels of the Bronze City. They were Ye Sheng's eyes and tentacles, frantically probing through the cracks in the bronze brick walls.
"Found them!" Ye Sheng suddenly opened his eyes. "Professor, we've found the snakes! They're right below us."
"Well done!" came Mance's cheer over the channel. "Head to recovery immediately!"
"Aki, you stay here and film the dragon pattern. Lu Mingfei..." Ye Sheng looked down into the darkness, "Please stay here and cover Aki, be ready to provide backup for me at any time. I'll go in and get it alone."
Ye Sheng checked the remaining oxygen level.
"We have 40 minutes of oxygen left. If I don't return within 30 minutes, we're to evacuate immediately."
"Understood." Aki took out a waterproof camera from her bag.
Ye Sheng smiled behind his mask.
He turned to look at his partner. The beam of the searchlight outlined a slender silhouette beside her, her wetsuit clinging to her long, shapely figure, and a signal cable hanging from her waist, swaying slightly with the current in the water.
"Although Aki isn't good at this or that," Ye Sheng said, "at least she's very well-behaved."
"Although Ye Sheng is not good at this or that," she said without turning her head, "at least he is very self-aware."
Then Lu Mingfei's voice cut in.
"I have a suggestion. I'm an S-rank here, so if something goes wrong, shouldn't they listen to me?"
"Listen to you?" Ye Sheng's laughter was drowned out by the sound of flowing water. "Lu Mingfei, you need to understand, this is the Dragon King's palace, which is of the highest level."
"According to you, we should listen to the Dragon King's suicide and return to heaven."