Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 162: Cycle of Catastrophe (5)

Dragon Raja 3

“I understand.”

“Quite impressive for a humanities guy to understand it in one go, old friend.”

Anjou couldn’t tell if it was a compliment or a jab and chose to stay silent.

“Japan lies between the Eurasian and Pacific plates, two of the six major plates. The crust within these six plates is generally stable, but the faults between them are often earthquake and volcanic zones. The magma river the Trieste saw on the seafloor was a plate fault. The river was bottomless, leading to the mantle, which is several thousand kilometers thick and contains trillions of tons of magma. In this unique geographic position, Japan’s foundation is inherently unstable. Here’s an animation showing the changes in Japan’s terrain from 500,000 years ago to today.” Pompeii clicked play, and the shape of the land began to change. Sometimes the foundation collapsed, and seawater flooded inland; other times, volcanoes erupted with magma, which solidified, and the newly formed black mountains re emerged from the ocean to form islands. Over millennia, islands connected to form land—a true transformation of land and sea.

“Does this have anything to do with Takamagahara sinking?”

“Not much…”

“Not much, and you wasted so much of my time?” Anjou was dumbfounded.

“Don’t rush, don’t rush, it will be related soon enough. I had to lay the groundwork first, or you’d be asking a million questions later. From a geophysical perspective, Japan, as an unstable landmass, is destined to sink, but it’s a very slow process—millions of years, theoretically. So tectonic changes can’t explain how Takamagahara sank. Throughout history, there have been other ancient cities submerged by rising seas, but those were only submerged in shallow waters, maybe tens of meters deep, and even divers can find them. Takamagahara, however, lies in the depths of the Japan Trench, which has existed for millions of years.”

“Maybe Takamagahara was originally built underwater. Judging by the form of the Death Servitors, the ancient hybrids had human upper bodies and snake-like tails. Maybe they could live on the ocean floor.”

“No, that city was originally built on land. A city surrounded by air and a city surrounded by water would be designed very differently. On land, cities face wind and sand erosion, while underwater, they face the impact of currents—a force thousands of times greater than wind erosion. From a fluid dynamics perspective, Takamagahara resembles a land-based city. Its tall, thick walls and straight streets are just too much like those of a land city. It must have sunk into the sea,” Pompeii explained. “The only question is how exactly it sank. This question inspired my imagination. After learning that you found Takamagahara in the trench, I rushed to the library to check Japan’s earthquake records. Among the disorganized papers, I found one particularly interesting one that said geological evidence suggests a crisis nearly destroyed Japan around ten thousand years ago—a near-magnitude-ten mega-earthquake that almost collapsed the entire Japanese archipelago.”

“An earthquake could collapse a country of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers?”

“It’s not impossible. Japan’s land is really that fragile,” Pompeii pulled up another image. “Let’s take a closer look inside Japan’s crust.”

It was a cross-sectional diagram showing the structure of Japan’s land. The upper layer was the black crust, beneath which lay the red mantle. Red serpentine lines extended from the mantle into the crust, with thicker lines leading to Mount Aso in Kyushu and Mount Fuji on Honshu.

“What are those?” Anjou pointed at the red lines.

“Magma channels. Japan’s crust is full of magma rivers. Being on the plate boundary, Japan is one of the most geologically unstable countries on Earth. It has hundreds of active volcanoes nationwide, including Mount Fuji. Back when it erupted, the magma formed a black volcanic mountain over three thousand meters tall. You can imagine how impressive the volcanoes of ancient Japan were—countless black smoke columns rising to the clouds and magma fountains shooting thousands of meters into the sky. Years of earthquakes created numerous cracks in the crust, which were filled with seawater and groundwater. When solid material mixes with liquid, it becomes highly fluid. We call this type of soil ‘liquefied soil.’ To put it simply, the depths of Japan’s crust are filled with silent magma rivers, while seawater has dissolved the upper crust. In geology, this is called the ‘dissolution effect.’ And it doesn’t end there—magma nourishes bacteria in the strata, and these bacteria produce large amounts of methane during anaerobic respiration. This methane has been accumulating in the hollow spaces of the crust for millions of years and accounts for over seventy percent of Earth’s methane. Methane acts as a lubricant for tectonic shifts.” Pompeii stacked sugar cubes on the tea tray and quickly pulled out the bottom one. “When a mega-earthquake strikes, Japan’s foundation shifts between magma, seawater, and methane, and eventually—collapse.”

Anjou pondered for a moment. “Japan is like a skyscraper built on quicksand?”

“Exactly! Ten thousand years ago, a mega-earthquake hit—nearly a magnitude ten. It was a disaster on the scale of an asteroid impact. The already fragile geology of Japan was shaken, compressing a million-year-long sinking process into a single day. If you observed Earth from space that day, you’d see a splash in the calm Pacific—except that ‘splash’ was several hundred kilometers wide. The massive wave first struck the coasts of China and Korea, then hit Vladivostok hours later, and a day later, the wave reached North America, flooding California’s deserts. A hundred-meter-high tide broke through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean, splashing water onto the ice cap, cracking it open with fissures spanning thousands of kilometers.”

Anjou furrowed his brow. Even imagining such an apocalyptic scene was terrifying—only someone as nonchalant as Pompeii could describe it with such relish.

“Is a magnitude ten earthquake even possible?”

“Normally, no. The largest earthquake recorded by humans was the Chile earthquake, which reached 9.5 on the scale. A magnitude ten earthquake exists only in theory,” Pompeii stared at Anjou’s eyes. “But it’s not only tectonic stress that can cause earthquakes—you and I both know that.”

“You mean?”

“Didn’t Fenrir’s ‘Shiva’s Dance of Destruction’ nearly destroy Beijing?” Pompeii shrugged. “It’s strange—every time there’s a disaster of that magnitude, my son is right in the middle of it.”

“A magnitude ten earthquake was caused by… a Yanling outbreak?” Anjou shivered slightly.

There had indeed been similar catastrophes in history—such as the Wanggongchang explosion, the suspected nuclear-destruction of the ancient Indian city Mohenjo-Daro, and the Tunguska explosion caused by ‘Rhein.’ However, the disaster Pompeii described was on an even more terrifying scale.

Pompeii nodded. “Let me describe the disaster from ten thousand years ago for you. When the Dragon King awakened, it released the ultimate Yanling. The earth shook, and from Kyushu to Honshu, all the dormant volcanoes erupted, spewing lava that turned night into day. Liquefied soil, lubricated by methane, began to collapse. A super tsunami nearly one kilometer high approached, crashing into Mount Fuji, and the splashes transformed into the most violent rainfall the world had ever seen. The ground cracked open, and seawater mixed with lava in the earth’s crust, causing steam explosions. The skyscraper built on sand was teetering. It looked like Japan was about to sink… but unexpectedly, it survived.”

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