"You found this at the bottom of the ocean?" Looking at the picture on the screen, Zhou Xin frowned and asked in a solemn tone. Not long ago, Atlas reported the discovery in a tone similar to his.

"Hmm." The little girl nodded with a serious look, "Originally, this object was buried in the sediment at the bottom of the sea, and only one head was exposed. It was only later that they noticed something unusual when they examined the footage captured by the detector, and then asked the detector to go back and dig the thing out of the sediment. ”

When Atlas introduced the origin of the object in the picture, Zhou Xin kept looking at the object in the picture and was silent, until the little girl finished speaking, he remained silent. Not only Zhou Xin, but everyone in the command cabin today, including Dart and Spred, was already speechless in shock because of the object on the screen. After a long time, Zhou Xin finally spoke slowly: "This pot - I'm afraid it can't be naturally formed on the planet." ”

That's right, the object that appeared on the screen at this time was a kettle that Zhou Xin and the others often saw and even used every day. Although the shape is different from that used on the Voyager, it is badly damaged, and there are signs of severe erosion by the sea. But judging from the half I have seen now, there is no doubt that it is indeed a kettle. Even if its original function was not to hold water, it was at least clearly a container used to hold things. Although it seems to be just an ordinary pot with no use, it is very special given that it was found on a planet.

"Obviously, it's a man-made thing." As soon as Zhou Xin's words fell, Spred continued, "In this way, this planet is not as simple as we thought before. ”

"Could it be that there is some kind of high-level civilization on the planet that we haven't discovered yet?" Dart rushed to say the speculation in everyone's minds.

"Or maybe it was." Atlas added thoughtfully, "I found this thing at a depth of about two hundred meters. ”

"Isn't it possible to be an undersea civilization?" Dart said half-seriously and half-jokingly, but he didn't expect that it was his words that made Zhou Xin and Spred serious.

"It's basically impossible." The little girl thought for a few seconds and replied, "Judging by the shape of that pot, it doesn't look like an underwater utensil." And Da Brother, have you forgotten? The place where the pot was found was originally a land thousands of years ago. If there had been a civilization on the planet's land thousands of years ago, it would have been impossible for them to survive after sinking to the bottom of the ocean. As for the possibility that this civilization came into existence after the land was submerged-" Speaking of this, Atlas laughed, "Do you think that a thousand years is enough time to develop a high-level civilization?" ”

"Maybe the pot wasn't where we found it, but was brought up by people living deeper at the bottom of the sea?" Dart's sentence is obviously a strong word, but in the next sentence, the meaning is completely different, "For example, what attack we have been subjected to before? Maybe the civilization of the deep sea did it, and after destroying the probe, the other party hid in the deep sea, so we haven't been able to find the culprit until now. ”

"This-" At this moment, even Atlas could not deny that Dart's idea must be wrong, and she said with a hesitant tone, "The probability of this happening is very low, no matter how much they hide in the deep sea, they can always find some traces under our search intensity." ”

"Like this pot?"

"If this statement is followed, then the other party must have left more than just this broken pot." Zhou Xin said thoughtfully, "The probe must have overlooked a lot of things in the previous search. ”

"People are already rechecking all the images sent back by the detector." Atlas replied, "In the past, the focus of the search was all on the water, and not much attention was paid to the bottom of the sea, but now it seems that this is an oversight." ”

For the rest of the day, Atlas conducted a careful search of the ocean floor. Sure enough, she eventually found a number of things at the bottom of the ocean that could be identified or suspected to be man-made. However, with more and more discoveries came Dart's growing disappointment. Because, all the things found by the probe on the seabed have been corroded by seawater without exception, and judging from the traces above, it is obvious that all those things have gone through a long period of time, and it is impossible that they were made within nearly a thousand years. Especially the newly discovered ruins of a building, it can be roughly inferred from the bottom of the remaining building that the original building is very likely to have been directly pushed down by a huge horizontal external force, as for the source of this external force, Zhou Xin and they already know it without even thinking about it.

On the third day of discovering the wreckage of the building, the probe inadvertently discovered the ruins of a small town somewhere on the ocean floor at a depth of 270 meters. Now, Atlas is reporting the discovery to Zhou Xin.

"Brother Captain, after investigation, the buildings in this town, like the one I found a few days ago, were all directly destroyed by external forces. The large amount of wreckage that was destroyed was mixed with some items that might be the daily necessities of this civilization, starting from the town and spreading in the direction of the shallow sea to nearly thirty kilometers outside the town, and the number of wreckage found further away was significantly reduced. There is no doubt that only the rapidly rising waters can turn an entire town into what it is today. Speaking of this, even the tone of the little girl's speech became serious, "In addition, a large number of incomplete corpses of some kind of humanoid creature have been found in the ruins within the town, and there is no doubt that the original intelligent life on this planet is undoubted." This shows that at least in the sea near this town, the disaster struck suddenly, otherwise the people in the town would not have run out of time. ”

"As for the remains of the humanoids that were found." Seeing that he stopped, Zhou Xin did not speak, and the little girl continued to add, "The family has asked the probe to collect some of it, and then we are going to study it in detail." Judging from the appearance and structure, the probability that the protolife can survive underwater is extremely low......"