53: Ghosts of the Old Times

On another shore.

Jiang Ran kicked aside a half-broken concrete pillar that lay across the center of the corridor.

His military boots crunched on the shattered tempered glass covering the floor.

The air was thick with the lingering scent of gunpowder and a heavy smell of blood.

Along with the moldy, fishy stench of burst pipes caused by water pressure imbalance.

This base, which the "Dragon King" once boasted was an underwater fortress of the Yangtze River.

Now looked like a disemboweled giant beast, its shattered innards exposed without dignity.

"Move faster, the water level is rising."

Jiang Ran scanned the surroundings coldly.

His voice echoed through the empty ruins, devoid of any victor's excitement, possessing only the calmness of someone taking inventory.

Behind him, several coolies wearing collars kept their heads bowed.

Working alongside several tracked mechanical puppets, they dragged heavy metal crates.

The searchlight beams from the black iron cut through the darkness like scalpels, sweeping back and forth across the ruins.

Searching for any wreckage of value.

There were no prisoners of war here, nor were any needed.

To Jiang Ran, this was a pure resource recovery operation.

He walked to a collapsed command console and reached out to pull out a control motherboard that was still sizzling with sparks.

The data interface of his exoskeleton quickly scanned the circuit structure on it—

This was the core unit the Dragon King used to control the sluice gates.

Although old, the several military-grade FPGA chips on it were rare hard currency in the apocalypse.

"Energy core recovered."

"Heavy torpedo ammunition depot cleared." zero's emotionless report came over the radio.

Jiang Ran casually tossed the motherboard into the anti-magnetic bag behind him.

His gaze swept over the mess on the floor toward a semi-collapsed secret room deeper in the ruins.

It had once been the Dragon King's private collection room; now the door had been violently broken open, revealing a dark entrance.

This was the law of the apocalypse: the strong survive, while the weak not only die but even have the phosphorus in their bones squeezed out to be made into matches.

"Clear Section B, don't miss a single scrap of paper."

Jiang Ran gave the order and strode over the decapitated corpse of a water bandit, heading toward the secret room.

Su Qingyu's figure emerged from behind a collapsed bookshelf, her white protective suit stained with black mud.

She didn't speak, but walked straight to Jiang Ran and handed him a sealed transparent evidence bag.

Inside the bag was a thick engineering diary.

The cover was a waterproof hard plastic; though the corners were heavily worn, it hadn't rotted like the other junk.

Jiang Ran took the bag and slit the seal with his fingertip; the scent of old paper wafted out.

This was clearly the Dragon King's most private possession, deliberately sealed in a fireproof and waterproof safe.

He flipped through the pages quickly; the handwriting was wild and scrawled, filled with complex mechanical formulas, dam structural diagrams, and... hostile rants.

zero's character recognition mode automatically filtered out those insignificant construction trivialities.

Finally, his gaze fixed on a page of the diary where the paper had been torn by a red pen.

"...That Stubborn Old Man in the Wan River section is still as stubborn as a rock in a latrine."

"Even trapped in that deathly silent submarine bunker, guarding a pile of unpowered scrap metal, he won't reveal a single word of the unlock code."

"My fleet tried to force its way in three times, and each time we were turned into sieves by the autonomous defense machine guns he set up."

"He'd rather rot in that iron coffin than cooperate with me to repair the dam..."

Jiang Ran narrowed his eyes, his finger lightly tracing the words "submarine bunker."

A civil engineering madman like the Dragon King, who ruled his own territory and possessed countless pieces of heavy machinery, actually couldn't crack this hard nut.

He was even so helpless that he could only vent his anger in his diary.

The existence of this "Stubborn Old Man" was more interesting than the diary itself.

Jiang Ran's fingers gripped the diary; there was a strange bulge on the back cover. With a burst of strength from his fingertips, he tore open the glued lining paper.

A piece of oilpaper map, folded several times, drifted down.

Although it was only the size of a palm,

But once unfolded, the content drawn on it was extremely precise, with clear marks of professional surveying.

This was a hydrological map of the Wan River section of the lower Yangtze River.

On the originally standard printed lines, someone had densely marked countless symbols with red and blue engineering markers,

Even down to the flow velocity of every undercurrent.

"Ghost of the old era."

Jiang Ran murmured to himself, his gaze locking onto several striking red skull symbols at a narrow part of the channel.

That was a minefield.

Not just a few scattered floating homemade bombs, but a systematic, chain-distributed array of intelligent bottom-dwelling mines.

According to the markings on the map, these mines were anchored at depths of thirty to fifty meters on the riverbed.

Like an invisible noose, they completely locked down the throat leading to the estuary.

Jiang Ran's gaze followed the channel, finally converging on an area highlighted with a blue circle—

That was the approximate location of the "submarine bunker" mentioned in the diary.

He could even imagine how that "Stubborn Old Man" relied on these legacies to create his own prison in this broken world.

An amateur like the Dragon King, who started with modified civilian vessels and simple submersibles,

Truly could only sigh in despair when faced with such regular-army-level positional defense.

The value of this drawing was higher than all the supplies they had just scavenged combined.

Without it, driving the black iron downstream recklessly would only result in becoming a pile of scrap metal at the bottom of the river.

Jiang Ran refolded the oilpaper and solemnly tucked it into the inner pocket of his tactical vest.

This wasn't just a drawing; it was a pass to the sea.

Walking out of the ruins, Jiang Ran looked up at the black iron hovering in the deep water.

This steel giant had just gone through a fierce battle.

On the side armor plates, many scratches of varying depths remained—kiss marks left by shockwaves.

There were even a few shredded metal fragments hanging from the edges of the thrusters.

If it were to continue rampaging through the middle reaches of the Yangtze River,

This level of damage wouldn't even need repairing to keep fighting.

But if it had to face that dense field of "red skulls" on the map... Jiang Ran pulled up the ship's main computer self-test report, and a series of yellow "minor damage" alerts flickered on his retinal projection.

The water pressure at the estuary was several times that of here, and those intelligent minefields laid in the old era wouldn't tolerate even the slightest noise leakage.

The current black iron had plenty of wildness but lacked precision.

It was like a heavy hammer that was invincible in this place.

But to pass through that web of death, what he needed was a silent scalpel.

The self-taught mechanics in the team couldn't handle this job.

They could modify engine power to terrifying levels and stack armor as thick as city walls.

But they didn't know how to adjust the fine frequency bands of sonar, nor how to balance micron-level deformation during deep dives.

Jiang Ran withdrew his gaze and tapped twice on his tactical tablet.

Technical gap.

This was currently the biggest shortcoming.

The "Stubborn Old Man" mentioned in the diary was now not just an intelligence lead, but a key puzzle piece for whether the black iron could successfully enter the sea.

Jiang Ran strode into the black iron's control room, bringing in a gust of outside chill.

"All personnel to your stations, prepare to set sail."

The command was brief and powerful, without any explanation.

He walked to the tactical nautical chart table, his fingers sliding rapidly across the holographic projection of the Yangtze River channel.

Finally, he tapped heavily on a winding, wide stretch of water downstream—the Wan River Industrial Zone.

With his action, a new red beacon lit up on the chart, like a drop of blood falling into the deep blue river water.

"Boss, we're not going back to the base to rest?" the First Mate asked subconsciously, looking at that never-before-visited area.

"We're going to rest right now."

Jiang Ran slapped the hand-drawn defense map onto the table, his eyes sharp as knives:

"Everything we need is there: the best underground dock, the most complete industrial parts... and a brain we must get our hands on."

Since that "Stubborn Old Man" could guard a nuclear submarine base for so many years, the technology he possessed was definitely more than just simple maintenance.

In the apocalypse, talent was scarcer than gold, especially experts who could operate the most high-end war machines of the old era.

The Dragon King wanted the dam, but what Jiang Ran wanted was that head.

Jiang Ran turned and sat back in his command chair, gazing through the thick bulletproof porthole at the murky river water ahead.

The Dragon King's downfall was only the beginning; he would dig out the secrets buried beneath the Yangtze River one by one.

"Destination: Wan River. Full speed ahead."

As the command was given, the black iron's massive hull shuddered slightly, and the nuclear engine let out a low roar.

The thrusters at the stern churned up a massive vortex.

Pushing the steel giant to crush the waves, leaving the ruins of the Dragon King's base far behind as it sped toward the unknown downstream.