"And then—tell me, how do we take down that old bastard?"
Tony's voice was suppressed with rage.
Lin Huai looked at him calmly and said, "That day will come. But before that, we have to get out of here alive."
His words brought Tony back to reality from his vengeful fury.
"Dammit!" the pilot's panicked voice rang out. "The backup navigation is shot too! We've completely lost contact with the mothership!"
Another engineer's face was pale. "The sonar system is overloaded; all scientific instruments are completely paralyzed!"
Despair, like the water pressure of the deep sea, silently throttled everyone's throat.
Everyone turned their pleading eyes toward Tony Stark.
"Do you not know how to do anything without electronic systems? Switch everything to manual operation."
Tony looked irritably at the blacked-out screens; his science, everything he took pride in, had completely failed at this moment.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
Then, he turned his head and looked at the only calm person in the submarine.
Lin Huai.
"Fine..."
Tony exhaled a breath of turbid air. "In this deep-sea round, my science admits defeat for now."
He walked up to Lin Huai, his signature pride hanging once more at the corner of his mouth.
"But don't get it wrong, Lin. One day, I'll analyze your 'magic' until it's crystal clear."
"But for now..."
Tony spread his hands and gave the order in a tone mixed with helplessness and anticipation.
"...it's time for that expensive 'fish finder' of yours to get to work."
Under everyone's gaze, Lin Huai calmly walked to the instrument encased in a high-tech platform.
He reached out, placed his hand over the cold crystal, and closed his eyes.
The next second.
On the holographic nautical chart that had just been displaying a mess of data, all the noise vanished instantly.
Countless golden data points began to emerge and converge... finally, a stable, clear golden arrow appeared in the center of the pitch-black chart.
—
The arrow pointed toward a dark direction that had never existed on any map.
—
"Sir," the pilot instinctively objected, his voice trembling, "that direction... records show it's an area of unknown undersea cliffs and jagged reefs! Going there is suicide!"
Tony ignored him.
His gaze was fixed intently on the golden arrow, a terrifying light erupting in his eyes.
This wasn't scientific.
But it was so... fascinating!
"Forget your records!"
Tony's voice wasn't loud, but it carried an unquestionable decisiveness.
"From now on, this stone is our only GPS!"
"Follow it!"
—
the explorer resumed its voyage.
An unprecedented "blind voyage."
A top-tier technological creation worth billions of U.S. dollars was now completely dependent on the guidance of a crystal, stealthily moving through absolute Darkness and silence.
The next few hours became an experience the crew would never forget.
They watched as the golden arrow precisely guided the submarine time and again, avoiding undersea mountain walls that could have torn the vessel apart without any warning.
From initial fear and doubt to later numbness, all the crew's emotions eventually transformed into awe for the young Eastern man resting with his eyes closed.
Who knows how much time passed.
Just as the silent voyage was about to crush their spirits—
The golden arrow that had been moving steadily on the chart for hours stopped without warning.
Immediately after, it began to flash with golden light in a slow, rhythmic manner.
Lin Huai, who had been resting with his eyes closed the entire time, slowly opened them.
—
He looked up at Tony Stark, who had also noticed the anomaly, and calmly stated a fact.
—
"We've arrived."
—
Silence filled the submarine.
Several crew members looked at each other, their faces full of the relief of survivors and confusion.
Arrived?
Outside the porthole was still boundless Darkness and the terrifying Water pressure displayed on the gauges, enough to crush steel. There was nothing here.
"We're here?" Tony raised an eyebrow and walked over to Lin Huai. "Your compass shows the fish is right beneath us?"
"No," Lin Huai shook his head. "It shows that the fish's 'home' is right beneath us."
He looked up at Tony.
"Now, it's time to use the bait."
Tony understood immediately, a wicked grin characteristic of a mad scientist appearing on his face.
He turned to the console and ordered the sonar engineer: "Activate the backup sonar array, load the 'Ancient Ballad' audio file, and broadcast it directly downward!"
"Execute the order!"
With trembling hands, the engineer entered a series of commands.
—
A strange, disordered sonar Sequence, inaudible to human ears, spread toward the unknown dark trench below like a pebble tossed into a deep pool.
—
Inside the submarine, it was deathly quiet.
Everyone held their breath, waiting for some unknown verdict.
One minute... two minutes... nothing happened.
"Cough, cough-cough..."
Suddenly, the pilot coughed violently, as if he were choking on something, his face turning bright red.
"What's wrong with..." the engineer started to ask but stopped abruptly.
An invisible force throttled his throat; he felt as if his chest were being filled with icy seawater, with immense pressure squeezing his lungs from the inside out!
"Ugh... ah..."
He opened his mouth wide but could only make meaningless rasping sounds, desperately trying to breathe, yet inhaling a void that seemed to freeze his very soul!
Then, another person!
All three crew members in the submarine were like fish thrown onto the shore, painfully clawing at their necks, their eyeballs bulging with terrifying bloodshot veins from the lack of oxygen!
"Dammit!"
Tony felt it too!
The suffocating sensation of drowning came out of nowhere; his brain frantically told him it was an illusion, but his body was experiencing the most realistic death!
"Gas leak?!" He gritted his teeth and struggled to roar out the words.
"Alarm... system... no abnormalities..." Jarvis's voice also became intermittent, as if the signal were being interfered with.
It wasn't a physical attack! It was a stranger, more incomprehensible Erosion!
Amidst the chaos, only Lin Huai remained standing quietly, as if the invisible "current" were automatically avoiding him.
His gaze pierced through the porthole, looking toward the bottomless Darkness.
"Turn on the lights!" he commanded in a low voice.
Tony, enduring the intense pain and dizziness from cerebral hypoxia, roared out the command: "Turn on... all searchlights!"
Boom—!
Several bright searchlight beams, like swords of divine punishment, instantly pierced through the eternal Darkness of the ten-thousand-meter deep sea!
The light illuminated the area in front of the submarine.
There was nothing there.
No giant beasts, no mountains, only a hollow, endless Darkness.
The suffocating sensation grew stronger; the crew members had already begun to convulse.
Tony's vision began to fade to black.
Just at the moment he was about to lose consciousness.
At the edge of the searchlight's beam, something... moved.
—
It was an octopus.
Its body was only a few sizes larger than an ordinary octopus, making it seem somewhat small in the vast deep sea.
It rose slowly from the Darkness below, making no aggressive movements, even appearing somewhat curious.
However, under the intense light of the searchlights, its astounding peculiarities were completely exposed!
Its skin was covered with countless spots that emitted a faint blue light, distributed like stars!
These points of light were connected by dimmer lines, forming vast, distorted, and bizarre patterns that were completely beyond human cognitive understanding!
The patterns seemed alive, slowly flowing and changing across its skin.
Merely gazing at those patterns caused a needle-like sting in Tony's brain!
The suffocating feeling of drowning reached its peak at that very instant!
Everyone in the submarine finally understood.
That suffocating sensation, that Shadow of death, all originated from this "tiny," extremely eerie, and beautiful creature before them!