Seeing his wife's pale face, he felt a pang of guilt. It was one thing for him to cause trouble outside, but to make his wife and children suffer along with him was not the behavior of a man.
"No... I want to stay with you, Zhuang Rui. I really didn't know your job was so dangerous..."
A flash of lightning outside the window, followed by a thunderclap, caused Qin Xuanbing to involuntarily snuggle into Zhuang Rui's arms. Meanwhile, the two children, who had been playing all day and were exhausted, were fast asleep with their ears plugged.
"Okay, tomorrow you and the child stay in the room and don't go to the deck..."
Zhuang Rui nodded helplessly. Since the ship belonged to him, he was given the title of deputy commander-in-chief for the salvage operation, which would facilitate command and coordination.
Of course, there were six deputy commanders including him, but this also tied Zhuang Rui to the ship. Many eyes were on him, and Zhuang Rui was too embarrassed to ask for leave to send his wife and children back to Beijing.
Li Zhen was far away in Myanmar at the time, and Peng Fei's daughter had just been born, so he was in Beijing being a stay-at-home dad. Therefore, Zhuang Rui couldn't spare any manpower and could only leave Qin Xuanbing on the ship.
Amidst the thunder and lightning, Zhuang Rui didn't know when he fell asleep. When he opened his eyes the next day, he found a ray of sunlight shining through the curtains into the room, scattering golden light.
"Damn, this is ridiculous! Is the weather like a child's face? It cries one minute and laughs the next?"
Zhuang Rui pulled back the curtains. The blinding sunlight outside made him squint. Yesterday's torrential rain and thunder had completely disappeared. Seagulls were flying over the distant sea, and the sky was calm and clear.
The sea is ever-changing; one moment a gentle breeze may be blowing, the next a towering wave. However, the clearing weather put Zhuang Rui in a good mood. After helping his daughter and son wash up, he took his wife and children to the deck.
Zhuang Rui's group was quite eye-catching. Two adorable children, like porcelain dolls, were bouncing around in front, Zhuang Rui and his wife were walking in the middle, and the person following behind was a bit creepy.
Although King Kong is a primate like humans, it is not fully evolved. Its black fur and height of over two meters made everyone on the ship, except for the old crew members and security guards who were familiar with King Kong, keep their distance.
"Xiao Zhuang, are you on vacation or on work?"
Professor Meng, who had arrived on the deck long ago, was both amused and exasperated by Zhuang Rui's behavior. The country attached great importance to this salvage operation, and Zhuang Rui's actions could easily attract gossip.
"Come on, call him Grandpa Meng..."
Zhuang Rui teased his son and called out to Professor Meng, saying, "Teacher, this job can't interfere with your family, can it? I'll be doing sea salvage operations frequently in the future, I can't just leave them all at home, can I?"
Zhuang Rui was speaking from the heart. If choosing to work meant giving up his family, then he would rather do nothing at all. After all, with his current wealth, it was more than enough for his little brat's grandson to squander.
"Come here, let Grandpa give you a hug..."
Professor Meng bent down and picked up Xiao Fangfang, his face full of loving smiles. He turned to Zhuang Rui and said, "It's good that you think this way. Of course, it's best to be able to balance work and family..."
As he said this, Professor Meng's smile slowly faded. He himself wished he could have done the same, but the economic and political environment at the time simply did not allow him to.
In the early 1980s, Professor Meng was released from Qincheng Prison. At that time, the country was in dire need of reconstruction, and Professor Meng threw himself into his work, not even knowing that his wife had a terminal illness.
It was precisely because of this incident that after his wife passed away, Professor Meng's son had many complaints about his father. After going abroad, he was unwilling to return to China. If it weren't for his granddaughter in China, the old man's later years would have been even more desolate.
"Teacher, put it down, don't tire yourself out, this little guy is very heavy..."
When Zhuang Rui saw Professor Meng frowning, he quickly took Xiao Fangfang and asked his wife to take her out to play. Because he was worried about the weather, he specially asked two security guards to follow closely behind.
"Xiao Zhuang, you can't say the word 'sink' when you're at sea. If an old sailor hears you, he'll curse you out..."
Standing on the deck, looking at the vast and magnificent sea, his mood was just like yesterday's storm—it came and went quickly. After adjusting his mood, Professor Meng and Zhuang Rui started joking around.
"Hehe, I'll have to go pay my respects to the Dragon King of the Sea later..."
Zhuang Rui laughed upon hearing this. Although he did not believe in ghosts and gods, the strange change in his eyes filled him with fear of the unknown in this world, just as the old saying goes: the older one gets in the martial arts world, the more timid one becomes.
"It's better to rely on yourself than others, Xiao Zhuang. Let's find a way to quickly locate the shipwreck and salvage it..."
Professor Meng was also a little frightened by yesterday's storm, as it could happen every few days during this season, so he wanted to complete the salvage mission as soon as possible.
"Don't worry, teacher, as long as there are shipwrecks in this area, we'll definitely be able to salvage them..."
Although he hadn't yet used his spiritual energy to survey this sea area, Zhuang Rui was confident enough. He wouldn't say it was like finding a needle in a haystack, but as long as there were objects containing spiritual energy on the seabed, Zhuang Rui would definitely be able to find them.
As the two were talking, their day's work began. According to the plan, the first step was for divers to descend to the seabed and monitor the dynamics of the seabed in real time. Then, based on the findings, they would target specific areas to remove silt and salvage the ship.
This sea area is not far from the coastline, and the water is only a few tens of meters deep. It has long been affected by the strong undercurrents in the deep ocean, so the seabed structure is relatively complex and very difficult to survey.
Unlike the flat, sandy seabed of the deep sea, the seabed here is mostly composed of silt. More than sixty years have passed since the sinking of the Awa Maru, and the seabed has long been unrecognizable.
"Professor Meng, everyone is assembled. Would you like to say a few words? Among the salvage team this time, you are the only one who participated in the last salvage operation..."
The people who went underwater this time were all divers from the Maritime Safety Administration of the Ministry of Transport. A staff member came over and invited Professor Meng over to explain the characteristics of the Awa Maru to the divers.
As for Zhuang Rui, the deputy commander-in-chief, he couldn't get a word in edgewise. After listening for a while, Zhuang Rui simply turned around and went back to the cabin, heading straight to the ship's monitoring room.
"Boss, when are we going to the Atlantic or the Pacific? That's where a captain should be..."
As soon as Zhuang Rui stepped into the monitoring room, he saw the bearded Captain Clyde lounging around watching American adult films. Upon seeing Zhuang Rui enter, Captain Clyde quickly changed the subject with a serious expression.
"Captain Clyde, shouldn't you be in the captain's cabin right now?"
Zhuang Rui chuckled inwardly. This old man actually had such thoughts. However, he still sternly chased Clyde out. With someone around, he felt a little unnatural releasing his spiritual energy.
Chapter 1016 Finding a Needle in a Haystack (2)
When Zhuang Rui was kicking the bearded captain out, he said he would assess the crew's performance based on the surveillance footage to see if the captain was competent. This scared Clyde so much that he ran back to the captain's cabin and used the internal communication system to warn the crew.
After closing the door, Zhuang Rui turned off all the dozen or so monitors that were flashing in front of him, sat quietly by the window, and closed his eyes slightly.
Invisible and colorless spiritual energy overflowed from Zhuang Rui's eyes, extending downwards through the deck. In a short while, Zhuang Rui felt a coolness in his eyes, as the spiritual energy had entered the seawater.
"Huh? Shark? No, wait..."
Suddenly, Zhuang Rui sensed several swimming creatures within the spiritual energy range. Each of them was over a meter tall. He was taken aback for a moment and quickly enveloped them with his spiritual energy.
"Wow, so he's a diver?"
After "seeing" the situation inside the spiritual energy cluster, Zhuang Rui chuckled. Several divers from the Maritime Safety Administration had already gone down into the sea and were using propulsion to move towards the seabed, which was tens of meters deep.
The spiritual energy bypassed the group and continued to seep into the seabed. Groups of fish seemed to sense Zhuang Rui's presence and kept hovering and weaving around the spiritual energy. However, Zhuang Rui controlled the spiritual energy to prevent it from leaking out, so the fish did not benefit from it.
The divers following behind couldn't resist taking pictures of the colorful fish gathered together, creating an exceptionally beautiful scene under the sunlight, and started filming with their underwater cameras.
Leaving aside these divers who were not doing their jobs properly, Zhuang Rui's spiritual energy had already reached the seabed. However, he could not see the situation on the seabed directly, so he could only spread his spiritual energy in all directions from the cruise ship as the center.
"There's something..."
As soon as Zhuang Rui saw the range of his senses expand, he felt a surge of spiritual energy. However, the thing was not large, only about the size of a little fingernail. Although the spiritual energy was abundant, it was probably not the wreckage of the sunken ship.
"Is this a pearl?"
Zhuang Rui was stunned for a moment. He let out some of the spiritual energy that was enveloping the object and immediately felt that the spiritual energy had decreased. He realized that this should be a pearl inside a clam.
"If I have time later, I'll dig it up..."
The current task is to find the shipwreck wreckage, so Zhuang Rui had to put Pearl aside, remember its location, and continue searching along the seabed.
"Ten meters...thirty meters...fifty meters..."
Since the ship sank due to an explosion and disintegration, the items on board were likely scattered. Therefore, Zhuang Rui searched very carefully, thoroughly examining any place that seemed to have even a hint of spiritual energy.
The ocean holds endless treasures, and this doesn't just refer to shipwrecks from thousands of years ago; the pearls hidden inside those sea oysters are also highly collectible.
"Hmm? Found it..."
When Zhuang Rui measured a distance of more than 200 meters from the cruise ship, he suddenly sensed a dense spiritual energy. Zhuang Rui was overjoyed and withdrew the spiritual energy that had been scattered in all directions, wrapping it around the object in that location.
"This... should be a box of gold, right?"
The object was about one meter long and wide. Zhuang Rui was very familiar with the spiritual energy inside it. He had sensed it in a gold mine in Myanmar not long ago, so he was absolutely certain that he was right.
"According to the records at the time, there should have been at least forty tons of gold on the Awa Maru, and it certainly wasn't just this one box..."
After memorizing the location of the box of gold, Zhuang Rui spread his spiritual energy and began to survey the area around the gold. If there were any more, they should not be far from here, since these items were all placed together at the time.
Zhuang Rui's guess was correct. More than ten minutes later, he found sixteen or seventeen more boxes scattered around, but many of the boxes seemed to be rotten, with chunks of gold scattered on the seabed.
Fortunately, these boxes were settled under the seabed silt; otherwise, the gold would have been hard to preserve and would have been washed away by the tides.
"Where's the skull? Could it really not be on the Awa Maru?"
To Zhuang Rui's dismay, although he found more than a dozen boxes, and not all of them were gold, some of the boxes contained ceramics and gold and silver artifacts. Although they were antiques, Zhuang Rui did not find the Peking Man skull fossil he had imagined.
Zhuang Rui's search area has now expanded to more than two kilometers, and he has basically found no more shipwreck remains. This means that the hope of finding Peking Man skull fossils is becoming increasingly slim.
"Xiao Zhuang, where are you? Come down for a moment..."
Just as Zhuang Rui was about to expand the search area, the walkie-talkie on the table rang, and Professor Meng's voice came through.
"Teacher, I'll go down right away..."
Zhuang Rui agreed and reopened all the screens in the monitoring room. He found that several divers had returned to the deck from the seabed and were removing their equipment.
This surprised Zhuang Rui. He had only been searching for a little over an hour; could it be that the divers had already made a discovery? ...
"Teacher, have you noticed anything?"
When Zhuang Rui arrived on the deck, a group of people were recording video in front of a makeshift monitor. When they saw Zhuang Rui, the deputy commander, arrive, they made way for him.
"Xiao Zhuang, come and take a look..."
Professor Meng beckoned to Zhuang Rui and pointed to the screen, saying, "It seems unlikely that we can find the wreckage of the Awa Maru manually..."
Upon hearing this, Zhuang Rui looked at the screen, and what he saw left him dumbfounded. This was not the seabed at all; it looked like a garbage dump.
The footage taken under the strong light was very clear. What was first revealed was actually all aquatic plants. Upon closer inspection, Zhuang Rui realized that these aquatic plants were growing on fishing nets.
In the middle of the fishing net, there were countless pebbles and silt. What stunned everyone the most was that there were also many disposable lunch boxes mixed in. It was a mystery how these things got caught up in the sea and into the fishing net.
Under such circumstances, the divers naturally could not make any discoveries; they could only take pictures of the underwater scene and bring them to the ship.
"T-Teacher, what...what happened? How did the seabed become like this?"
Zhuang Rui couldn't understand it at all. In a place not far from the coastline, the ebb and flow of the tide would normally be enough to wash away all this garbage, but the reality overturned his understanding.
"Well... I don't know why either..."
Professor Meng was also completely baffled. He was an archaeologist, not a marine expert, and could not answer Zhuang Rui's question.
"Ahem... Xiao Zhuang, let me explain this..."
A man standing next to him spoke up. Zhuang Rui turned around and saw that it was Director Wu of the Maritime Safety Administration. Like himself, he was the deputy chief commander of the shipwreck salvage operation. However, he had more real power and was a professional. He was the highest representative of the Ministry of Transport on the ship.
"This isn't exactly open sea yet. Fishermen from Fujian usually fish in this area, so over time, it's become like this..."
After listening to Director Wu's explanation, everyone finally understood that all of this was caused by human error.
These days, fishing is no longer done with small sampans and wooden boats; it's all done with extremely modern fishing vessels, and usually, two or more vessels are used when going out to sea to fish.
The two fishing boats spread out their nets by hundreds of meters and then moved forward in parallel. After they had spread out for a while, they used the hoisting system on the boats to pull the nets out of the water.
In this way, the huge seine net can basically catch all the fish in this area. However, there are special cases where the water is not deep enough and the net gets tangled in seabed reefs or shipwrecks. In such cases, the fishing boat has no choice but to discard the net.