North Sea.

As the name suggests, it is north of the European continent, east of the British Isles, west of Jutland and Scandinavia, connecting the English Channel, the Norwegian Sea and the Baltic Sea. In antiquity, it was a wild, icy sea that the Romans regarded as a daunting path, but in Europe's darkest years, it became the stage for Vikings to roam the sea. In the just-concluded world war, the North Sea was the battlefield where the British Empire collided with the German Empire, the Battle of Jutland, Operation Rainbow in Scarpa Bay, leaving countless huge ships on the bottom of the sea, turning into millions of tons of steel corpses, waiting for the dawn of the next century......

The 18th year of the Republic of China, June 28, 1919.

Paris, Versailles.

This morning, in the greatest palace in Europe, the treaty for the distribution of the spoils of the victory of the First World War was signed, and the mines of the Second World War were laid. Of the 27 independent countries present, the only one that did not sign the treaty was the Republic of China.

And in the wilderness outside the hotel in Luteti, where the Chinese delegation is located, a huge rigid airship is preparing to take off.

Timur, the little prince of Ordostoro, was waving goodbye on the ground, his eyelids jumped, and he whispered: "How can I have a foreboding that they will never return?" ”

"No, he'll be back."

Ye Kenan, a detective from the Beijing Police Department, took off his top hat and waved it vigorously at the boys and girls in the airship pod.

At eight o'clock in the evening, the Eurius Caesar airship rises to an altitude of 300 feet, and the majestic Palace of Versailles has shrunk into a pile of toy blocks.

A few stiff whiskers popped out of the young Qin Beiyang's lips, covering his chest with faint pain, watching the sunset sink into the horizon. The cancer cells were burning his life, and the doctors had already sentenced him to death, and the execution date would be about a month or two later.

There are also four men in the airship pod: Qi Yuanshan, a lieutenant in the Beiyang Army, Li Longsheng, a doctor of physics at the University of Cambridge, Qian Ke, a work-study student at the Technical University of Paris, and Giuseppe Caproni, Italy's greatest pilot.

The only girl is a French translation intern of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China, Ouyang Anna, with a pair of glass-colored eyes, staring at the small town tomb beast from the Tang Dynasty underground palace of Bailuyuan - Nine Colors.

On the day the "Julius Caesar" airship set sail from Paris, they were all still young - Qin Beiyang, Qi Yuanshan, Ouyang Anna, and Qian Ke were all nineteen years old, Li Longsheng was twenty-nine years old, Giuseppe Caproni was thirty-four years old, and Nine Colors was 1,200 years old...... They went after the Four-Winged Angel Tomb Beast, which was also 1,200 years old.

This long pursuit will surely change their fate completely.

The diesel engine is powerful, the propeller runs at high speed, and the southwest wind prevails during the season, reaching the English Channel before midnight. The chemical factory where the Four-Winged Angel Town Gravemon was discovered was in Calais, the closest continental European city to the UK, next door to Dunkirk.

Caproni and Chanco spread out an aerial map, and the four-winged angel could go two ways: one was to cross the Channel to England, and the other was to follow the northeast course into the North Sea.

"Try the Nine Colors." Qin Beiyang asked the town tomb beast to observe the map, "Do you know where the four-winged angel is?" ”

Its eyes glowed, its claws pressed against the North Sea on the map, and its chest was hot, as if it had sensed the four-winged angel.

"The hearts of the tomb beasts are all spirit stones." Cambridge Dr. Li Longsheng saw the essence through the phenomenon, "Spirit stones are naturally radioactive, and they will leave radioactive traces in the atmosphere. The human senses are difficult to detect, but not for the Tomb Beasts. ”

The Italians were skeptical, and the airship adjusted to the northeast course and sailed into the North Sea in the middle of the night.

"Beiyang, don't be here anymore, go to sleep and rest."

Anna ordered him to go back to the back of the pod and try to make as little contact as possible with the nine. She sat alone at the front, touching her nine-colored head, staring at the starry sky on a summer night.

By daybreak, she was asleep. Qin Beiyang touched the front again, his face was pale, his lips were purple, and he brought her breakfast.

"Anna, I think of the time two years ago, when I crossed the East China Sea in Chanko's airship and landed on Mount Damo to see you."

Qi Yuanshan is still beside him, Ouyang Anna will never forget that Qin Beiyang landed like an angel at dusk on Dharma Mountain until the day of death.

Qian Ke rubbed the dark circles under his eyes and reminded: "I still can't see the four-winged angel, will it fly farther and farther?" ”

Spread out the aerial map, the eyes of the town's tomb beasts glowed, staring at the morning light outside the pod, their paws pointing due north of the map, the central point between the Shetland Islands of England and the Norwegian coastline, and further north was the Norwegian Sea.

"The four-winged angel is here?" Italian Caproni tapped on the map, "Our course is right, full speed ahead." ”

Taking advantage of the tailwind, the airship with full horsepower reached a speed of 80 kilometers per hour and rushed to the exit of the North Sea.

Jiu Se began to go berserk, dragging Qin Beiyang's trouser leg forward. Qi Yuanshan, who has excellent eyesight, found a small black spot in the sky, raised the telescope to observe, and saw four wings.

Four-winged Angel Town Gravemon. You can almost see the beast's head. There was jubilation inside the airship. Everyone competes to touch the head of the nine colors, and they can be the pioneers of radar.

Suddenly, the four-winged angel swooped downward, approaching sea level. The airship floats to inflate hydrogen into the airbag, while the descent is the opposite, and the closer you get to the surface, the more dangerous it is.

"The four-winged angel is smart, but as long as there are nine colors, it can't run." After discussing with Caproni, Chanco decided, "Let's levitate the airship for the time being and wait and see." ”

Qian Ke exclaimed: "The compass is out of order!" ”

Over the gloomy and misty North Sea, the Four-Winged Angel Town Tomb Beast disappeared without a trace. The airship lost its compass navigation, and it was useless for Caproni to mess around.

Qin Beiyang watched the sun disappear into the thick clouds, and the arc of the sky was like a recurve bow: "I learned from my father to build a tomb, and the compass is also a tool to find the dragon vein." The good fortune of people is affected by the cosmic aura, and the Chinese put the five elements of yin and yang, the twenty-eight stars, and the heavenly and earthly branches on the compass. ”

Li Longsheng raised a finger and gestured: "The earth's magnetic field, like a magnet, has two poles, one S-level and one N-level. ”

"Yin and Yang?" Qin Beiyang looks like a chicken and a duck and says, "It's like Tai Chi gives birth to two instruments, and two instruments give birth to four elephants." ”

"The earth also has two poles, but the earth's magnetic poles are not at the north and south poles, but there is a certain angle that is constantly changing. Every time the Earth's magnetic field changes, it can affect the compass. ”

"You say, how can the Tomb Beast discern its way in the dark? For example, in the depths of the dark thousand-year-old underground palace, why can the tomb beast be so agile and move like a bat? ”

Qian Ke frowned: "When we repaired the Nine Colors, we found that it could make and receive sounds that were inaudible to the human ear. ”

"One more thing." Qin Beiyang remembered the fourth house of the "Nine Palaces of Beast Making", "In the process of making the tomb beast, a natural magnet needs to be placed on the head to play a role similar to a compass. ”

"The magnet in the body of the tomb beast? It makes sense. Li Longsheng stared at the nine colors, as if he could see the magnet, "In the past two days, the earth's magnetic field has changed, which has seriously affected the compass and radio communication, and even gave the four-winged angel tomb beast an erroneous command. ”

Veteran pilot Caproni said: "It's very close to the North Pole magnetic point. Europe is at high latitudes, and many pilots have this experience, and the closer you get to the North Pole, the easier it is to lose course. ”

"Now, the nine colors are our compass."

Qin Beiyang spread out the map and showed it to Jiuse, asking it to find the nearest land.

"That's not right." Li Longsheng is not optimistic, "The earth's magnetic field activity will affect the compass, and it will also affect the nine colors. ”

Before the words fell, the North Sea changed again, and a black wall was erected between the sea and the sky, as if a devil had opened his mouth...... The airship fell into the wind and rain, thick clouds and black fog, falling from noon into midnight, and he couldn't see his fingers. The pod is like a small boat on a bumpy sea.

"Leave it to fate."

Chanko can't do anything, an emergency descent is tantamount to suicide, and the airship will be swallowed up by a rough sea.

The Italian Caproni is still praying; Li Longsheng observes the wonders of nature; Qi Yuanshan lay on the side of the pod and vomited; Qin Beiyang touched the nine colors; Anna grabbed his hand and prepared for the worst, if they went to heaven or hell together......

A rare summer storm struck without warning, raging in the dark for more than ten hours. If a ship passes by at sea, I wonder how many people will die in the belly of the fish?

The people on board the "Julius Caesar" suffered enough, and Qi Yuanshan almost vomited out the yellow bile water, and fell to the corner dying. Qin Beiyang is still holding on, probably because of the cancer cells in the lobes of his lungs, which have raised the threshold for tolerating pain.

In the middle of the night, the storm gradually subsided. Caproni stuck his head out of the pod, unable to see anything in the darkness, unable to tell if it was the sea or the land below. He tried to discern his direction through the starry sky, but unfortunately the clouds were too thick, and he could only see a few stars through the gaps.

"Where have we been?"

Anna was also so tired that she was about to collapse, and the young Cambridge doctor Li Longsheng replied succinctly with two words: "Earth." ”

The propeller and tail rudder of the airship were damaged in the storm, and everyone could only float in the sky with the wind.

At dawn, Qin Beiyang was the first to open his eyes, and he found that there was still a blue ocean under the pod, but there were large pieces of white floating by.

Iceberg.