Listening to Tirian's narration, Duncan fell into a short period of thought, and after half a minute, he raised his head and said thoughtfully: "So, in order to satisfy her own desire to explore, she started a 'Hidden Abyss Project', and the essence of this plan is not to explore any subspace at all, but only...... Literally 'diving into deep water'? ”

Speaking of this, he paused, and felt that this matter was quite strange: "But if this is all there is to it, how can this plan have anything to do with the Lost Country?" The subspace that the Lost Country went to and the deep sea that the Frost Queen wanted to explore were two different concepts at all, and those rebels shouldn't even be able to tell the difference......"

Instead of answering directly, Tirion suddenly threw out a question: "Don't you think it's strange?" If it's just to dive into the water and explore the sea conditions in the depths of the city-state, what is 'taboo' about it? The city-state's port builders and inshore fishermen often need to dive into the water for their work, and it is common to dive ten or even tens of meters in a safe sea, so why has the Frost Queen's 'Abyss Plan' become taboo? ”

Duncan's eyes gradually became serious: "...... How deep did you dive? ”

"It's deep, it's deep, I don't know exactly how deep the queen dived to because I'm not a scholar myself, I'm just involved in some peripheral assistance as a naval commander, and I was no longer directly involved in the operation in the second half of the program, but all I know about it, before the program started to get ...... 'right,' their manned submersible reached at least a thousand meters under the water, and it's still breaking that record."

A thousand meters under the water......

Duncan quickly sorted out what he knew in his mind - on the earth, this seemingly inconspicuous number is actually the ultimate diving depth of many advanced military submarines, and the diving depth of most military submarines is even only four or five hundred meters, as for those "extreme deep diving records" that are often thousands of meters or even nearly 10,000 meters, they are basically completed by special deep submersibles in a short period of time, and the requirements for equipment are extremely high, and often only unmanned equipment can be used.

And the manned submersible of the Queen of Frost has touched the threshold of "one thousand meters", which is already an astonishing number at the industrial level of this world half a century ago, even with the assistance of some extraordinary powers.

And behind this staggering number...... Apparently something even more "amazing" was also brought.

As Tirion had just mentioned, the plan was starting to get "wrong" in the later stages, and Duncan didn't ignore it.

He looked at Tirien, his eyes darkening, "I'd like to know the specifics of the entire exploration program - tell me as much as you've been involved in." ”

As if because he had already answered a lot of questions, and because he had become accustomed to this kind of communication, this time Tirion did not hesitate for too long, he fell into the memory, and slowly spoke in the memory:

“…… With the exception of the Frosty Abyss program, the recorded conventional diving depth, or 'safe depth', is 150 meters and is confined to the offshore range – and our plan started at this depth, and it went well until 300 meters.

"It was already very dark, the sunlight on the sea surface could not penetrate such a thick body of water, and the high-power lamps carried by the submersible could only illuminate a small area, and in order to explore the 'appearance' under the city-state's island, and also to avoid some dangerous 'creatures' in the far sea area as much as possible, such as the children of the deep sea, we let the submersible dive along the coast and keep moving close to the offshore range of the island, I still remember the scene described by the explorers when they came up......

"He said that the underside of the island was like an ugly, rough pillar, covered with thick calcareous sediment, and there were some strange creatures that inhabited the craters of the sediment, and there was nothing around but the 'pillar', only pitch black."

"There's a pillar underneath the island?" Duncan couldn't help but interrupt Tirien, "Not a gradually expanding support structure, but a pillar?" ”

"Yes, at least that's what Frost is like," Tirion nodded, "What's wrong with that?" ”

Duncan shook his head: "...... No problem, you continue. ”

Tirion sorted out his thoughts for a moment and continued his previous recollections: "It was seen at a depth of about three hundred meters, and it was also the ultimate depth of the first submersible, and after realizing that this depth was far from enough to explore the deep sea, the queen ordered the scholars to build a second submersible, and this submersible was very successful, it dived into the water at a depth of eight hundred meters in one go, and through the high-strength glass half a meter thick, the explorer saw ...... Still a pillar, a straight one.

"Of course, compared to the radius of the city-state itself, this 'pillar', which was already at least eight hundred meters long, was still very short in proportion, and was more like a regular disc-like base with an island on it than a pillar.

"Then we built a third submersible – this submersible was much less improved than the second one due to technical limitations, and it had to dive carefully to challenge the record of Submersible No. 2, and it was in the slow dive of meter after meter that we discovered something.

"The 'pillars' below the city-state are actually only 850 meters long, and further down, there is nothing.

"The whole structure is floating in the sea."

Tirion paused and looked up into Duncan's eyes, "Now you know why I said it was more of a disc base than a pillar?" ”

Duncan frowned tightly, he didn't speak, but sketched the whole structure in his mind as quickly as Tyrion described—

People in the deep sea era "dwell" in the city-states, these sea islands initially gave Duncan the impression of being crowded and narrow, but in fact, as a fully functional, self-sustaining place to live, these city-states are destined to have a certain "size base", although there are also some small islands, but most of the big cities that can be named have a "base radius" of more than ten kilometers or even dozens of kilometers, and Frost as the largest city-state in the cold sea, its scale will not be less than this number.

Corresponding to this massive offshore structure is its "base" at a depth of only 850 meters - the explorers first saw the underwater part of the city-state plunging straight into the deep sea at a depth of 300 meters, and intuitively imagined that it was a pillar that reached the "bottom of the sea", but in reality, the shape of this "pillar" was more like a thin round cake in terms of proportion.

The huge scale of the city is placed on this "round cake".

As Tyrion described, the entire structure is floating in the sea.

But when imagining this model, Duncan's mind was filled with huge doubts-

Is this the case in every city-state?

If every city-state is like this, they are all "floating objects" without roots, then how are they so stable? If the city-state itself is "solid" because of its size, how can it be explained that the relative position between the city-states and the city-states is also so solid?

The endless sea is rough, and these "floating islands" have never changed their position, why is that?

Duncan voiced his doubts, but Tirion only shook his head, "We also had doubts about this, but in the end we couldn't figure it out, and the question of 'how did the city-state float on the sea' doesn't matter compared to what happened later......." ”

"What happened next?" Duncan couldn't help but wonder, "What happened next?" What do you see in the deep sea? ”

"Later...... Submersible 3 continues to push the limits of depth, and it took us almost two years to advance this record from 850 meters to 950 meters, and as you can imagine, during this dive, the submersible is gradually moving away from the 'base' of the city-state – remember what I said at the beginning? In order to avoid problems in the open sea area, we let the submersible dive in the 'offshore safety zone' close to the coast, and during the whole process, the submersible was actually close to the city-state and its underwater 'structure', but as the dive continued and the explorer moved away from the 'base', things started to go wrong.

"Auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, the sensation of inexplicable lights in the seawater, the sensation of someone banging on the hull outside, and even the sensation of someone turning the handle of the gate outside, the further down you go, the more serious the situation becomes, and even the specially trained and strong-willed explorers begin to feel tremendous pressure with each dive, and the protective effect of the holy oil, sacred books, and scripture cloth that they carry with them becomes less and less obvious.

"Of course, this is still what we expected so far - exploring the unknown requires a challenge of will, and those scholars who explore the spirit world and the secluded seas often encounter this problem, so we continue to do so, but to strengthen the spiritual protection of the explorer according to the strictest standards.

"The problem is when you challenge a thousand meters from 990 meters.

"Submersible No. 3 suddenly gave an emergency signal to ascend, and then emptied the pressurized water tank like madness and rushed up, the explorer inside seemed to be completely unconcerned that this rapid ascent would kill him, and after rushing to the surface, the explorer was already crazy, the hatch opened, he roared and shouted in the sun, as if desperately trying to describe something terrible to us, and after a large mass of incomprehensible confusion, he uttered the only sober word:

"We all died there."

(End of chapter)