boyutpedia Chapter 88: Ocean Whirlpool
Chapter 88: Ocean Whirlpool
Chapter 89: Ocean Whirlpool
This is a sea area where even the intense sunlight has become subdued.
The Yoda Perfume was pulled by two giant Yoda sea serpents, breaking through the dead silence of the dark blue sea.
Looking around, apart from the white spray from the ship's hull, the entire sea area presented an unsettling emptiness.
There were no seagulls, no driftwood, not even a single flying fish leaping out of the water; the seawater was so deep it was almost viscous.
"It's so quiet it's unsettling."
Tori Thomas lay on the ship's side, looking down at the almost lifeless seawater, and muttered to herself.
The cloak on her shoulders fluttered slightly in the salty sea breeze.
Beside her, Shakky held a waterproof leather nautical chart, on which complex routes and depth data were marked with the intricate lines unique to the Kingdom of Jaya.
"Based on the scroll Lingling brought and the Kingdom's monitoring data over the years, this is the area. Those big guys should be just ahead."
The "big guy" she was talking about soon appeared at the edge of her field of vision.
Those were dozens of enormous ocean whirlpools scattered across the vast sea.
They are like deep blue funnels that appear out of nowhere on the sea, slowly and steadily rotating, swallowing up huge amounts of seawater, emitting a deep breath like that of an ancient behemoth.
Between the whirlpools, the water flowed turbulently, forming deadly zones.
Wow!
Lingling walked over from the other end of the deck, holding a piece of Amazonian lily nectar pie, a specialty of the plant family. Her eyes lit up when she saw the view in the distance: "Every time I see it, I think it's amazing! It looks like several giant bathtubs filling with water!"
"A giant bathtub that can tear a ship to pieces in an instant?"
Xia Qi glanced at her helplessly, then her gaze swept across the sea with some tension, searching for a specific marker.
Guided by the scroll personally taught to it by Oro in Lingling's hands, the Yoda Perfume navigated the edges of several giant whirlpools with unparalleled precision, finally arriving at the only safe spot in this deadly sea—a solitary artificial island standing in the raging ocean.
The island was built entirely by the engineering department of the Kingdom of Gaya. It was small in size but sturdy in structure. Its surface was a gray-white alloy platform with a buffer zone around the edge to prevent sea waves from crashing in and several small docks.
There are only a few functional buildings on the island, mainly monitoring stations, supply warehouses, and personnel rest areas set up for support purposes.
The Yoda Perfume slowly approached the main dock, and the Yoda Sea Serpent on the bow quieted down.
Looking up into the distance, apart from the solid, man-made island beneath their feet and their own boat, the whole world seemed to consist only of the boundless sea and the enormous, eternally spinning whirlpools in the distance.
A sense of isolation and loneliness washes over you.
As the captain, Gloria O'Shah was the first to step off the gangway and hand over the ship to the island's manager, who was already waiting at the dock.
The person in charge was a middle-aged woman dressed in the uniform of the United States. She had a serious expression, bowed silently to Osa, and then handed her the list of supplies. The two then spoke in hushed tones.
Xiaqi and Tom followed Lingling off the ship and stood on the hard platform of the artificial island.
Xia Qi crossed her arms and gazed at the giant vortex in the distance that almost filled her entire field of vision, her brows furrowing slightly.
The center of that vortex was deep and dark, as if it led straight to hell.
"Lingling————"
Xia Qi turned her head and looked at Lingling, who was taking out another pastry from her small bag. She asked the question that had been lingering in her mind for a long time: "Logically speaking, when encountering a whirlpool of this size at sea, a normal navigator would think about how to avoid it and be lucky to survive."
"How did you come up with the idea of investigating what's beneath this vortex?"
Hearing Xiaqi's question, Thomas next to her immediately raised his hand, his face full of curiosity: "Yeah, yeah, Lingling, and after you discovered there was an underwater cave, you kept sending people in to explore it."
"That sounds like a huge price to pay. What was it all for in the first place?"
"Did you know from the beginning that this underwater cavity would lead to a ruin located inside the Red Line?"
At this moment, Ou Sha finished handing over with the person in charge and came over.
She held a thick document in her hand, a summary of logs from previous expeditions and a compilation of survivor reports.
She flipped through a few pages, looked up at Lingling, her expression even more serious than Xia Qi's: "Besides their questions, there's something I'm most curious about—"
"I have read through the catalog and summary of these exploration records, and I have also carefully read the descriptions of the few survivors. However, none of the records clearly mention what exactly is inside the ruins."
"You are—let me be frank, how did Oro know there was something inside? What exactly did he send us to retrieve?"
The three core members of the Kuja Pirates all focused their attention on Linlin.
The sea breeze ruffled their hair and clothes, with the low roar of the whirlpool in the background.
Lingling swallowed the last bite of her dessert, dusted off the crumbs on her hands, and faced with the barrage of questions from the three men, she showed no confusion or thoughtfulness. Instead, she answered without hesitation in a matter-of-fact tone, "I don't know."
"Huh?" Osa, Shaki, and Thomas all exclaimed in confusion at the same time.
Lingling continued, "Because it was Oro who said it. He said there's something in the ruins, so there definitely is."
He said the four of us could get that thing, so I believed we could.
Such simple, direct, and even somewhat domineering logic left the Osa sisters speechless for a moment.
They looked at each other, and in each other's eyes they saw a mixture of helplessness, amusement, and emotion.
This is the trust between Lingling and Auro, so pure that it needs no reason.
Osa finally shook her head, giving a "I really can't do anything with you guys" look, and gave up on pursuing the matter further.
She closed the file in her hand and asked the last and most crucial question: "Okay, so how should we solve the hallucination problem in that ruin?"
"According to the report, those hallucinations reflect a person's deepest desires. According to the survivors, all those who did not return died because of their own desires."
Speaking of this, a rare blush appeared on Lingling's face. She awkwardly took out a transparent glass bottle from the small bag that always seemed to contain snacks.
The bottle contained a strange pink liquid that shimmered subtly in the cool-toned light of the artificial island.
"We'll use this then."
Lingling handed the bottle to Xia Qi, who was closest to her: "But you can only use a little bit at a time, so use it slowly."
"Auro said that the thing we were going to take originally had a lust demon attached to it."
"Although the demon has now escaped, some of its abilities have been left behind."
"The mechanism of those illusions is to create illusions that fill our inner desires, and then, the moment we satisfy those desires, they trigger all the negative emotions, thus causing us to lose our way."
"So all you need to do is keep your desires from being satisfied."
Xia Qi took the glass bottle and gently shook it with some curiosity. The pink liquid inside rippled and its texture seemed to be slightly thicker than water.
"Let desires go unfulfilled? Now that you know the solution, why doesn't Oro do it himself?"
She subconsciously raised the question, then thought of the desires that might be reflected in her own heart—desires that were difficult to talk about—
Upon realizing this, Xia Qi's cheeks flushed slightly, and she instantly understood!
Xia Qi suddenly poked the glass bottle in her left hand with her right index finger, her tone hesitant: "What's in this bottle—could it be—that kind of—uh, you should know more about it than I do."
Lingling's face turned even redder, and she hurriedly shook her head vigorously, her long pink hair swaying as she said, "No, it's not that kind of thing! Quite the opposite!"
She struggled to organize her thoughts, trying to explain clearly: "This was specially formulated by Gails for this mission; it's to suppress that!"
"In the ruins, if desires are satisfied, one will become lost; if they are not satisfied, one will be burned alive—not literally on fire, but with a burning sensation in one's heart."
"Auro said that those who failed to escape, whether it was their desire for money, power or anything else, were ultimately consumed by their own desires."
Lingling bit her lip, forcing herself to continue: "Other desires are not easy to resolve, but if it's—it's that kind of desire—"
Lingling's voice trailed off, but she persisted, saying, "It can be forcibly suppressed through medication and—some actions—"
"Furthermore, Gale said that this method doesn't work well for men because—uh—in her words, there are only oxen that die from exhaustion, not fields that are ruined by plowing—"
This straightforward yet philosophically profound explanation caused the other three women present to fall into a brief silence.
Osa coughed lightly to cover her embarrassment; Shaki raised an eyebrow, looking at the bottle in her hand with a complicated expression; Tomma's face was already flushed, and she wished she could bury her face in the deck.
"Gails's insights are truly unique," Osa finally commented, her tone somewhat dry.