90: Radiation levels off the charts! Entering the deadly green sea, even the seawater is highly toxic!

The violent winds and waves were left behind.

As the black iron ghost crossed that invisible continental shelf break line,

and continued to push toward the core area of the Yangtze River Estuary in the northwest, the surrounding world suddenly fell silent.

That silence was not peaceful, but a hair-raising, deathly stillness.

"What's going on? Is it dawn?"

Old Chen rubbed his aching eyes and looked out the porthole in confusion.

It was clearly the middle of the night, but in front of the warship, the sea surface glowed with an eerie light.

It wasn't the first light of dawn, nor was it the reflection of moonlight.

It was a heart-palpitating, sickly fluorescent green.

As the black iron broke through the water and entered this sea area, the sight before him made even the well-traveled Old Chen gasp.

The entire ocean was glowing.

The seawater was no longer deep blue or oppressive black; it had become turbid and viscous, appearing as a yellowish-green similar to spoiled nutrient solution.

Waves slapped against the black hull, but instead of splashing white foam, they exploded into clusters of eerie green "will-o'-the-wisps."

This glowing seawater seemed to possess some kind of life force, clinging to the armor plates and refusing to slide off.

It emitted a faint "sizzling" sound and a nauseating, sickly-sweet chemical stench.

"How is this even a sea..."

Old Chen leaned against the glass, watching the sea surface that looked like a giant chemical plant's sewage pool, his facial muscles twitching.

"This is practically a boiling pot of toxic soup."

"This is the 'Red Bay' radiation zone."

Jiang Ran stood on the command platform, his expression cold as he watched the external environment analysis data on the screen begin to jump wildly.

"A few months ago, the Hongwan Nuclear Power Plant upstream suffered a core meltdown due to crustal movements, and high concentrations of radioactive cooling water were discharged directly into the Yangtze River.

Add to that the chain explosions of chemical plants along the coast during the Cataclysm..."

He pointed a finger at the endless fluorescent green outside the window.

"Those lethal radioactive isotopes and toxic chemical reagents mixed, settled, and fermented here.

Ultimately, they pickled what was once the busiest estuary into the largest open-air toxic pool on Earth."

The massive hull of the black iron moved slowly through the viscous green liquid.

The searchlight beams couldn't penetrate very far before being swallowed by the green mist drifting over the sea.

Extremely fine dust floated in that mist, shimmering with eerie points of light under the beams—that was high-radiation dust.

There were no seagulls here, no salty scent of the sea breeze.

Only a deathly silence and that despairing green filling the eyes.

"This is the first line of defense we have to cross."

Jiang Ran looked at the waterway that resembled the River Styx and said in a low voice,

"The reason the Ark can settle here safely isn't because their walls are high.

It's because this sea itself is a moat that only the dead can cross."

As if in response to Jiang Ran's words,

the radiation monitor in the command cabin, which had previously only emitted occasional faint "ticks," suddenly began to shriek wildly as if having a seizure.

"Sizzle—Sizzle-sizzle!!!"

It was no longer an intermittent warning, but a continuous, sharp, and ear-piercing electrical noise.

The radiation reading bar in the bottom right corner of the main control screen had been a safe green.

Now, it instantly turned red at a terrifying speed.

The zeros following the digits jumped frantically, hitting the upper limit of the gauge's range.

"50 Sieverts per hour... 100... it's still rising?!"

Old Chen felt his scalp go numb as he watched the jumping red numbers.

He subconsciously pulled his collar higher, though he knew this thin fabric couldn't block anything.

"If a person were directly exposed out there, wouldn't their entire DNA chain snap like a zipper in less than a minute, turning them into a pool of bloody water?"

"This is a forbidden zone for life."

Su Qingyu sat at the sonar station, her slender fingers sliding across the screen.

The once-busy biological radar map was now completely clean.

The light dots representing schools of fish, whales, or other marine life had all vanished.

The entire sea area was as silent as a blank sheet of paper.

"No, something is still alive."

Su Qingyu's movements suddenly paused as she pointed to several extremely weak but massive floating signals on the edge of the radar.

"Some things have adapted to this hell."

Just as she finished speaking, a massive object slowly drifted into the searchlight beam on the port side of the black iron.

It was a giant jellyfish over five meters in diameter.

Its entire body was an eerie translucent shape, emitting a faint, icy blue cold light in that turbid green seawater.

Through that thick, jelly-like umbrella,

one could clearly see the clusters of violently pulsating purple-red internal organs inside its body,

as well as countless nerve bundles tangled together like blood vessels.

It looked like a ghost lantern from the underworld, trailing tentacles over ten meters long as it drifted silently toward the black iron.

"Watch out for a collision!"

Old Chen was about to take evasive action, but the thing's speed, seemingly slow, was actually very fast as it followed the undercurrent to press against them.

"Pshhh—"

There was no dull thud of impact.

The moment the giant jellyfish touched the black iron's hard armor, it actually burst like a punctured balloon.

But it didn't end there.

What sprayed out wasn't seawater, but a corrosive body fluid as thick as strong acid.

"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—"

The tooth-grinding sound of corrosion instantly transmitted through the ship's hull.

Through the porthole, everyone watched in horror as the burst blue slime clung tightly to the black iron's armor plates, sending up billows of white smoke.

In this toxic sea, even the living creatures themselves had evolved into swimming biochemical bombs.

"Warning—Warning."

"Large-scale rejection reaction detected in the outer Biological Armor."

"Cell necrosis rate rising rapidly: 5%... 12%... 20%."

zero's usually perfectly calm electronic voice now sounded like it was reading a terminal illness notice.

Accompanying the alarm, the main screen in the command cabin popped up real-time monitoring footage of the hull's exterior.

That scene caused everyone present to feel a wave of physical discomfort.

The blue slime from the burst jellyfish had not been washed away by the seawater.

Instead, like a maggot in the bone, it clung stubbornly to the black iron's dark silver Biological Armor and continued to spread in all directions.

And in the area covered by the slime,

that once-indestructible "skin" that could even deflect heavy machine gun bullets

was now actually starting to blister and curl frantically, like raw meat fried in a pot of hot oil.

"Sizzle..."

Countless grayish-white pustules bulged on the hull surface, then burst, leaking turbid tissue fluid.

Large chunks of necrotic armor plates peeled off like dead skin, falling into the turbid green water.

And beneath the peeled-off wounds, bright red muscle fibers still twitching violently and silver-white nerve bundles were actually exposed!

This was no longer a damaged warship.

This was clearly a living creature that had been doused with strong acid and was struggling in agony.

"Ugh..."

Jiang Ran, who had been standing motionless before the command platform, suddenly trembled violently.

His face turned deathly pale in an instant.

Veins bulged on his forehead, and his left hand gripped the metal railing in front of him so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Commander?!" Su Qingyu noticed his abnormality immediately.

"I'm fine..."

Jiang Ran gritted his teeth, squeezing out the words, but his deep blue pupils were contracting violently.

The nerve interface was bidirectional.

As the "brain" of this ship, he could clearly sense every bit of damage the hull sustained.

At this moment, the sensation of thousands of fire ants biting his skin and the intense pain of flesh being corroded by strong acid

was being fed back unreservedly to his pain center through the nerve connection.

This pain was a hundred times more intense than being hacked directly.

"It's not just that jellyfish."

Jiang Ran took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the burning agony in his mind, his voice raspy.

"This entire sea... is eating it."