55: Empty Nest and Chishui

As that heavy, explosion-proof alloy door fully opened,

a gust of stale air, accumulated for decades and mixed with the smell of engine oil, rushed out.

Jiang Ran was in no hurry to enter; he first threw in a glow stick.

The faint blue light traced an arc in the darkness and rolled onto the floor, illuminating the mess everywhere.

There was no neatly arranged spare parts warehouse as expected.

Nor was there a defense system standing ready; there was only a ruin that looked like it had been hit by a typhoon.

"Clear."

Jiang Ran stepped over the threshold.

His military boots stepped on the shattered glass of a dashboard, making a crisp cracking sound.

This place had clearly undergone a brutal invasion.

The walls were riddled with bullet holes.

Judging by the distribution of the impact points, the attackers had completely disregarded equipment damage, using large-caliber kinetic weapons for suppressive fire.

The casings of several expensive CNC machines had been violently pried open.

The core chips and servo motors inside had been crudely ripped out, leaving only empty iron frames.

"It wasn't the Dragon King's people."

Su Qingyu squatted beside a long-shriveled corpse, inspected it, and shook her head:

"This corpse has been dead for at least three months. Looking at the equipment, it seems like a base security robot that was torn apart by something."

Jiang Ran walked to the command console.

That was where the submarine chief designer, codenamed 'The Stubborn Old Man', should have been sitting.

But now,

there was only an overturned swivel chair and a pool of blood that had long since oxidized and turned black.

There were obvious drag marks on the floor, extending all the way to the base's freight elevator.

The elevator doors had been forced open with explosives, revealing a shaft leading to the surface buildings above.

"This doesn't look like scavenging; it looks more like a kidnapping."

Jiang Ran reached out and wiped the dust from the desk, picking up a deformed shell casing with his fingertips.

It was a homemade reloaded bullet, crudely made with an unstable gunpowder ratio, reeking of the savage aura of wasteland thugs.

If it were for killing and looting, the body would have been left nearby.

For these thugs to go through the trouble of dragging a living person—especially a lame old man who probably couldn't even walk—

all that way up, it means 'The Stubborn Old Man' isn't dead yet and holds some special value to them.

"It seems someone has beaten us to the person we're looking for."

Jiang Ran tossed the shell casing aside and looked up at the pitch-black shaft leading to the surface, his gaze cold:

"Let's go. We'll go up and see who has the nerve to intercept my prize."

"Blow the ballast tanks. Surface at full speed."

At Jiang Ran's command, the hiss of high-pressure gas displacing seawater echoed between the bulkheads.

The massive hull of the black iron jolted violently, like a giant whale breaking free from its chains.

Lifting its bow, covered in silt and seaweed, it crashed through the heavy surface tension of the water.

However, when the footage from the periscope and main cameras was transmitted to the large screen, the cockpit fell into a brief silence.

This was not the Yangtze River they knew.

As far as the eye could see,

the entire river surface was a nauseating dark red, like old blood oozing from a wound.

Or like countless bits of rust forcibly ground up and mixed into a soup.

It was murky and viscous; even the marks left by waves splashing against the lens were dark red oily films.

Sunlight filtered down through the heavy, lead-gray clouds.

Reflected by the red river water, even the air seemed to be stained with an ominous blood-colored filter.

"Is this... the Wan River?"

The First Mate subconsciously swallowed hard.

Jiang Ran walked to the porthole, his gaze sweeping across both banks.

This was once the most glorious industrial corridor of the old era.

Now, countless chimneys over a hundred meters high pierced the sky like a scorched black forest.

The massive gantry cranes were covered in rust.

Their arms were stiffly twisted, like dead steel giants still futilely trying to grasp cargo from the void.

The factories, stretching for kilometers, had long since half-collapsed.

The exposed rebar skeletons, soaking in the red river water, looked like the bleached bones of dead behemoths.

There were no water birds, no greenery; even the reed beds along the banks had withered into grayish-black powder.

This was a dead wasteland thoroughly marinated in heavy metals and chemical waste.

"This is the corpse of an industrial zone."

Jiang Ran stared indifferently at this red purgatory, but he felt increasingly certain in his heart.

In a hellhole like this, only the most insane factions and the most stubborn technical maniacs could survive.

The person who took Old Chen must be hiding somewhere in this steel graveyard.

"Sizzle—"

A corrosive sound reached the cabin through the heavy armor plating, sounding as if countless venomous snakes were flicking their tongues against the hull.

Immediately after, a cloud of pungent white smoke rose from near the waterline around the hull.

Instantly, the lower half of the black iron was shrouded in mist.

This wasn't mist, but an acid fog created by the violent chemical reaction between metal and strong acid.

"Warning: Sustained chemical corrosion detected on external armor."

"Current water PH level: 2.8.

Extremely acidic, accompanied by high concentrations of heavy metal ions."

zero's cold mechanical voice sounded in the cockpit, accompanied by yellow warning boxes flickering on the screen.

On the originally deep black hull model, the section below the waterline was slowly turning from green to yellow.

"This level of acidity..."

Su Qingyu looked at the fluctuating data on the screen, her brow furrowing slightly:

"If it were an ordinary civilian vessel, the bottom would be eaten through after soaking in this water for a week."

Jiang Ran walked to the porthole and watched the churning red waves outside.

This was hardly water; it was clearly industrial waste fluid flowing from countless chemical plants and pickling tanks.

After decades of fermentation and concentration, it had converged into this flowing 'Aqua Regia River'.

Although the hull of the black iron was made of reinforced special alloy,

it couldn't withstand this endless gnawing.

"Activate the corrosion-resistant coating neutralization system. It won't last long, but at least don't let it dissolve our propeller blades."

Jiang Ran calmly issued the command.

Nozzles on both sides of the hull immediately sprayed a layer of blue oily film, temporarily suppressing the irritating sizzling sound.

But this was only a temporary measure.

If the problem wasn't solved quickly, or if they didn't leave these waters,

the armor that the black iron took pride in would eventually be stripped bare by this stagnant red water.

This industrial wasteland

had used this most direct and vicious method to give the newcomers an unfriendly 'baptism'.

Before everyone could pull their gaze away from the suffocating red river surface,

a sharp, ear-piercing buzzing alarm blared without warning, instantly drowning out the sound of corrosion outside.

This time, it wasn't a yellow alarm representing an external threat.

But rather, one symbolizing a fatal failure in the core system—

a blood-red light.

The lights in the entire cockpit instantly switched to emergency dark red, casting a pale glow over everyone's faces.

"Where's the problem? The engine room? Or the armory?" The First Mate scrambled toward the console, his fingers flying across the keyboard.

"It's not the weapons... it's the heart."

Jiang Ran's voice was terrifyingly low as he stared intently at the flashing nuclear symbol in the center of the main screen.

The holographic projection quickly zoomed in, showing the innermost structure of the black iron—

the nuclear reactor.

Within the intricate piping system, an inconspicuous secondary cooling return pipe was highlighted.

Under ultra-high-resolution scanning, a hair-thin crack appeared on the wall of that special alloy pipe.

"Warning: Micron-level metal fatigue fracture detected in Area B4 of the secondary cooling loop."

"Crack length: 3.2 centimeters.

Depth: Has penetrated the inner wall protective layer."

"Current pressure is fluctuating at the critical threshold.

Estimated remaining safe operating time: 72 hours."

Jiang Ran looked at the glaring data, his fists involuntarily clenching.

This was a hidden injury from long-term deep-sea high-pressure operations.

And the violent jolt from forcing their way past the shipwreck defense line underwater just now had become the straw that broke the camel's back.

Though the crack was small, it was like a gash in the heart's main artery.

Once it completely burst under high pressure, highly radioactive coolant would gush out instantly,

leading directly to a core meltdown.

In this dead zone full of strong acid red water,

if the nuclear engine was lost, the black iron would be a heavy iron coffin; without an enemy lifting a finger, they would suffocate inside the can.

"zero, initiate Level 3 maintenance procedures. Dispatch engineering robots for repair welding."

Jiang Ran quickly issued the command, trying to suppress the crisis with the most conventional means.

"Command rejected."

zero's voice was as cold as a bucket of ice water poured over everyone's heads:

"Warning: The crack is located at a high-pressure bend in the secondary loop; the alloy in this area has become brittle due to long-term neutron irradiation.

The high temperatures produced by conventional arc welding would instantly cause thermal stress concentration, leading to a pipe rupture rate as high as 98.7%."

A simulation animation played on the screen:

The maintenance robot had just extended its welding torch.

The small pipe exploded directly, and red radioactive steam instantly engulfed the entire engine room.

"Then can we shut down the reactor for repairs?" the First Mate asked urgently.

"Shutting down requires twelve hours for cooling. Losing power in these strong acid waters would result in the hull being completely corroded away during the shutdown period."

zero presented a dead end: "We need to perform a 'vascular suture surgery' with micron-level precision without shutting down the reactor.

This exceeds the computational scope of current AI fuzzy logic; it must be manually micro-operated by a top-tier nuclear physics engineer."

The cockpit fell into a deathly silence.

Jiang Ran looked at the crack on the screen, which resembled the Grim Reaper's scythe, and suddenly laughed—a laugh filled with a hint of absurdity and ruthlessness.

This ship was the sharpest blade in his hand.

But now, the hilt of this blade was crumbling.

In this world, people who know how to fix diesel engines are everywhere, but those who know how to fix nuclear reactors are rarer than giant pandas.

And coincidentally, just now,

he had just missed a 'doctor' who might be the only one on this wasteland capable of performing this surgery.

Jiang Ran turned abruptly, his gaze piercing through the porthole.

He stared intently at the ruins on the distant shore, which looked like a forest of steel.

Originally, searching for 'The Stubborn Old Man' was just to add a layer of insurance for the black iron's voyage to sea, a bonus.

But now, the nature of the matter had changed.

This wasn't recruitment; this was survival.

"Turn on all detection radars. Search."

Jiang Ran's voice was terrifyingly low, like an injured beast on the verge of going mad. "No matter who took that old man, they have to spit him back out for me.

He is my shipwright. If anyone dares to lay a finger on him, I'll stuff them into the reactor and burn them."