Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 139: The Sea of Hidden Dragons (6)

Dragon Raja 3

Caesar stood up and threw his headset to Chu Zihang. “I don’t want to talk to that lunatic anymore. You keep in touch with him; there’s only enough oxygen left for 8 minutes. I set the password myself, and only I can guess it. If I haven’t managed to come back in 8 minutes, it means no one can detonate the nuclear power chamber, and you should let him recover the safety cable.”

“Boss, you, you, you…” Lu Mingfei stuttered.

“I said before we descended, I am the leader; you two are here to assist me, so don’t act on your own,” Caesar said coldly. “Do as I say. If I don’t make it back, Chu Zihang will take my place. It seems recording a farewell letter in advance was useful after all.”

“Boss, I, I, I…” Lu Mingfei said.

Caesar grabbed his neck and pushed him away. “You haven’t recorded a farewell letter yet, so think about who to record it for while you still have a few minutes.”

“I’ll go; you’re the leader,” Chu Zihang said as he prepared to unbuckle his safety belt.

Caesar pressed down hard on his shoulder, forcing him back into his seat, his expression unchanging. “Don’t think I’m doing this because I’m willing to sacrifice myself for you two. I’m a man with a fiancée, and my life is worth more than yours. I just don’t want a situation where one of you dies in this sea while I survive. I wouldn’t know how to explain that part of my life to anyone; it would be too shameful, so shameful that I could swallow a gun and commit suicide over it.”

“You really are a person who only lives for pride,” Chu Zihang said quietly.

Caesar turned his head, looking down at Chu Zihang. In the depths of the sea, 8,600 meters down, in Caesar’s blue eyes, Chu Zihang seemed to see blinding sunlight.

“They… they’re coming!” Lu Mingfei said hoarsely.

Chu Zihang looked out through the observation window below. A scarlet mist surged from the ground of the ruins, the dragon’s blood flowing beneath the ruins began to spread. From the cracks in the ground emerged slender living creatures, tearing through their amniotic sac. Their bodies gleamed with a metallic luster, and their pupils were a fierce gold. After such a long slumber, they couldn’t rise yet and crawled on the seabed, twisting their elongated lower bodies. But nourished by dragon blood, their bodies quickly regained the strength of ancient times. As they crawled, they suddenly leaped up, their long tails thrashing as they shot upwards. They passed by the side of the Trieste, not casting even a glance at the brightly lit metal object. In their eyes, there was only the endless darkness above, and hundreds of thousands of them finally broke free from their sealed restraints, ready to return to the world of humans.

“Serpent-tailed, human-bodied,” Chu Zihang murmured. “These are not purebred dragons; they were hybrids in life. This is not a dragon city; it was built by the ancestors of hybrids!”

“Just like the dragons ascending to heaven,” Lu Mingfei muttered.

In the view above, countless elongated shadows flailed their long tails, illuminated by the lava. They gathered together like a golden vortex.

“Once they reach the surface, they will become a serious problem. Even if one gets captured by the media, it would be the headline in every newspaper worldwide tomorrow,” Caesar said. “But that’s not our concern anymore; it’s time for those Japanese to step up. Our task is just to level this place, whether it’s the Lenin, the embryos, or Takamagahara. The very existence of these things is a problem.”

“The underwater walking gear can only support them for five minutes at most,” Chu Zihang said. “I’ll have the submersible lower a bit.”

“Time is enough.” Caesar climbed into the pressurized chamber on the side of the cockpit and closed the thick hatch that was 10 cm thick.

Outside was an unbelievably high-pressure environment. The Zeppelin gear that could be used in such an environment was not humanoid like ordinary diving suits; it was a nearly spherical metal device that maximized pressure resistance. Even though it was made of aviation-grade titanium-magnesium alloy and the outer wall was over 5 cm thick, it still couldn’t hold up for long. The spherical chamber was filled with high-pressure saline, and only the mask contained gas. The person walking in the deep sea relied not on their own limbs but on the metal prosthetics on the device. Caesar mentally reviewed the operating procedures one last time as he drilled down into the Zeppelin gear from directly below. High-pressure saline filled the chamber, the lights in the helmet illuminated, and Caesar firmly grasped the operating handle of the metal prosthetic, blowing into the microphone in the helmet: “Chu Zihang, try the communication device.”

“I can hear you clearly. Can you hear me?” Chu Zihang tapped the microphone in the cockpit.

“The call quality is good,” Caesar paused. “Aren’t you proud as well?”

Chu Zihang was taken aback.

“Your way of being proud is just different from mine,” Caesar said. “Although your pride can be uncomfortable, if you weren’t proud, you wouldn’t even qualify as my rival. Those old folks in my family want to target you, but that has nothing to do with me. Don’t think I would resort to such lowly means against you. If it comes down to me dying and you living, then go on living proudly… just don’t let the bastards I look down on defeat you.”

As the pressurized nozzle expelled the Zeppelin gear, Chu Zihang saw Caesar extend his hand into the spherical helmet and give him a thumbs-up, though he wasn’t sure if it meant “victory.”

Caesar descended slowly into the seawater, occasionally brushing past the agile Corpse Guardians. The ruins felt like the underworld that imprisoned souls; at this moment, the gates of the underworld were wide open, and the souls fled recklessly. The Corpse Guardians had lost their minds, but they still retained their animal-like instincts. It was as if all the Corpse Guardians sensed the impending destruction; they were frantically trying to escape this desperate situation, attacking nothing along the way. Caesar couldn’t understand how the Corpse Guardians could sense that Takamagahara would be destroyed in a nuclear explosion; predicting a nuclear explosion clearly shouldn’t be within the capabilities of the Corpse Guardians.

These long-dead hybrids, some were intact, while others were damaged, resembling mummified remains but crafted with even more powerful alchemical techniques that preserved their vitality in immortal bodies. Some were missing half their skulls, while others had perforated abdomens, seemingly remnants of a brutal battlefield. The ancient alchemists had used these remains as materials. Caesar recalled the battlefield carvings he had seen on that torii gate; it seemed that war had indeed taken place in history, perhaps it was what ultimately led to the destruction of this city.

The Trieste hovered directly above him, connected to Caesar by a rope around his waist. The Trieste was also linked to the Sumeru Throne through a safety cable, and the Sumeru Throne was anchored to the seabed by an anchor chain, layer upon layer like a blood relationship.

In the light of gas and lava, both the nuclear power chamber and the Lenin were clearly visible. The elongated nuclear power chamber was thrown into a pile of lung snails not far from the Lenin, with millions of lung snails writhing nearby. Caesar fell into the pile of lung snails, these tiny creatures continuously detaching from the Lenin, hitting the Zeppelin gear with dull thuds. Caesar struggled to maneuver his cumbersome prosthetic limbs to regain a standing position, trekking through the pile of lung snails, inching closer to the nuclear power chamber. The ocean currents were too chaotic; he didn’t dare float forward, so he couldn’t release the lead weights on the Zeppelin gear and could only remain close to the seabed, somewhere between walking and crawling. Above him, numerous Corpse Guardians passed by; how many had already regained their vitality? Hundreds or thousands? Caesar couldn’t count. This Takamagahara was buried beneath countless walking corpses at the height of its glory. These hybrids, with serpent tails and human bodies, seemed to have directly inherited the civilization of the dragons, completely unlike humans.