The ultimate blue sea

Chapter 87

To the very end, General Xiong hadn't mentioned what was actually in this abandoned, never opened basement, nor why, after so many years, there had never been an order to thoroughly destroy it or force it open. Su Qing figured that he himself likely hadn't known.

When he walked into the basement, the very first thing he saw was a hall. In the center of the hall was a woman. She seemed very young, wearing only a wide white nightgown that revealed half of a grey seal stamped on her collarbone.

This was Zheng Wan.

Su Qing frowned, but he didn't immediately go over. He cautiously took out the pocket watch Chang Dou had made for them. Before he could bring out the energy detector inside it, Su Qing went blank—he had found that in this place, the watch's hands ran backwards.

In that instant, Su Qing suspected that he had picked up the pocket watch the wrong way around. Considering that the pocket watch Chang Dou had given him was truly too round, he carefully checked the markings and rubbed his eyes. There was no mistake. The watch hands were running backwards.

Had Chang Dou messed something up? Su Qing quickly got out his phone. The phone had a digital clock on it. When he opened it up, he found that the phone's screen had gone black. It didn't show anything.

Suddenly, Su Qing couldn't keep his composure. A horrifying feeling climbed up his spine. This fear was hard to describe. He abruptly had the impression that he was no longer in the world but alone in some bizarre crevice. Time and space seemed to have abandoned him. All people and all time had gone away from him.

Standing outside the time pool, everything was moving forward, while the place he was in was lying in waste... That kind of feeling.

This hall was too tranquil. There was only a monotonous tick-tock sound. Su Qing suddenly raised his head and saw an enormous clock suspended from the ceiling. Even the most slender second hand was a foot wide. Each of its movements seemed extremely heavy, with an aged odor of decay—the strangest thing was that this big clock was also running backwards.

Su Qing took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He gently bit the tip of his tongue and pulled out the energy detector from the pocket watch. But an even stranger thing happened. As he looked on, the needle on the indicator slowly began to move—in the negative direction.

Negative energy—what was that?

Next to the platform was a thick stack of research materials. Su Qing flipped through them, then stared. He found that they were full of equations he didn't understand, densely packed. There were also occasional annotations in a mixture of some language he didn't know and Chinese, as well as numbers and letters. The things in this hall had already completely surpassed the scope of his personal knowledge.

There's no time to sigh about not having applied myself more. I can't stay here long—this was the only thought that came up in his brain. In reality, his instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm was already urging him outwards. Zheng Wan's body was laid out flat on a platform. The body was unbelievably well-preserved. Not even the flush in her face had receded. Looking at her, Su Qing practically had the impression that she was about to sit up.

There were four indicator lights near the platform, lighting up in turn. The antiquated little signs under them were numbered one through four. Su Qing cautiously went around the bed, holding the energy detector. The energy detector still gave him no reaction. The indicator needle frustratingly and cheerfully turned backwards at a uniform speed, circle after circle.

In complete exasperation, Su Qing closed the pocket watch. He stood there for a moment and thought. Then he clenched his teeth and extended a hand. Through his gloves, he extremely cautiously touched Zheng Wan. Nothing happened. Then he got up his nerve and pushed her by the shoulder, turning her over. Only then did Su Qing see that Zheng Wan's back was entirely bare. There was an enormous grey tattoo on it, an incomprehensible design that made all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. This grey tattoo was like a living person's grey seal—it was moving!