93: A rain of skulls behind the glass curtain wall! A living sentinel spotted me? Grind me to pieces!

The tilting wreckage of skyscrapers on both sides resembled two giant gods about to collapse, squeezing inward with the weight of hundreds of millions of tons of seawater.

Looking out from the porthole, all that could be seen was the rough, barnacle-covered concrete wall just inches away.

And the raw steel rebar jutting out menacingly like broken ribs.

Too close.

So close that it felt like one could reach out and touch the traces of death.

"Port side distance to wall... two point five meters! Starboard side... two point two meters!"

Old Chen stared fixedly at the distance warning, his voice trembling as he shrank into his chair, utterly refusing to look out the window:

"This is insane... truly insane!

This isn't piloting a ship; this is threading a needle with an Aircraft Carrier!"

"Rumble!"

A sudden lateral vortex slammed into the Stern.

The massive body of the black iron violently tilted to the right, looking certain to crash into the sharp, broken edge of the World Financial Center on the starboard side.

"Hold tight!"

Jiang Ran's expression remained completely unmoved; his gaze was as cold as a knife.

Just a second before impact, his hands executed a series of dazzlingly fast operations on the helm.

The port Vector Thruster instantly erupted with a short, powerful reverse thrust.

Simultaneously, the starboard Main Thruster micro-adjusted its angle, forcibly twisting the Bow's direction.

This was a performance of micro-control, precise down to the centimeter, taking place in the deep sea.

"Screeeech—!!!"

A grating metallic friction sound exploded in the deep sea.

The Biological Armor plate on the starboard side of the black iron scraped past the exposed I-beam of that building, almost touching it.

The violent friction instantly generated temperatures reaching thousands of degrees.

A string of dazzling orange-yellow sparks flashed and vanished in the dim, turbid seawater, illuminating the breathtaking distance for that moment—

Less than fifty centimeters.

"Clear."

Jiang Ran stabilized the helm, pulling the hull back to the center of the Channel.

The Biological Armor, which possessed self-repair capabilities, only bore a shallow scratch.

It quickly healed as if new under the moistening effect of the seawater.

In this Ruinous Canyon, so narrow it caused suffocation,

The forty-five-meter-long steel behemoth had executed a knife-tip dance that could be called perfect.

That harsh metallic scraping sound finally disappeared.

The black iron, like a sleek Deep-sea Black Fish, squeezed through the narrowest Pass without incident.

It continued to glide closely alongside the massive glass curtain wall of the World Financial Center.

The distance was too close.

Through the observation window on the starboard side of the black iron, the interior scene of the abandoned building outside

was now like a silent play unfolding right before their eyes, clearly to a chilling degree.

"That... that is..."

Old Chen was just about to breathe a sigh of relief, but the moment he clearly saw outside the window,

he froze completely, letting out a choked "gurgle" sound as if his throat had been squeezed.

The faint running lights on the hull of the black iron shone through the double-layered tempered glass, which, although covered in cracks, remained stubbornly unbroken,

illuminating the interior of this office building that once represented the highest financial power of the old era.

It was a dead zone frozen by time.

The turbid seawater had long since flooded every corner, but in that extremely sealed space, the water seemed still.

Rows of neat, high-end Desks and Chairs floated in the water, as if holding a zero-gravity meeting.

Those expensive computer Monitors, Filing Cabinets, and even the half-finished Coffee Cups

retained the appearance of that day decades ago, silently drifting.

And among these miscellaneous objects, floated the "people."

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ghastly white skeletons.

They were still wearing expensive Suits and Professional Skirts that had long since rotted away but were still recognizable in style,

with tattered Work Badges hanging around their necks.

Some skeletons maintained the posture of sitting in their chairs,

their bony fingers resting on the keyboard, as if still processing fund transfers worth hundreds of millions or even billions.

Others were gathered near the doors and Elevator Shafts, their bones twisted and entangled together—the desperate trampling from when escape was impossible.

"They... didn't have time to run."

Su Qingyu walked to the porthole, meeting the gaze of those empty eye sockets through two layers of thick glass.

Her voice was light, carrying a chill as if she were in a massive morgue:

"The moment that great flood arrived, this city sank.

These people were instantly sealed in these Crystal Coffins, without even the chance to struggle while drowning."

Where the faint light swept over, Su Qingyu saw a skeleton clinging to the glass curtain wall.

Its ten Finger Bones were digging fiercely into the glass seams, its Skull pressed tightly against the window,

those two black eye sockets staring straight out, as if silently screaming for help to every living person passing by.

At that moment, this magnificent skyscraper was no longer a landmark building.

It had become a giant, transparent Specimen Display Case.

Inside were displayed the most exquisite, yet most fragile remains of the old era's civilization, showing later generations the cruelty and ruthlessness of that disaster.

"Is this the 'glory' the Ark wants to restore?"

Jiang Ran looked at the white bones drifting in the ruins like water weeds, his eyes holding no pity, only a coldness that saw through the essence of things:

"A group of dead men wearing Suits, guarding a pile of paper-like data."

"Stop looking."

Jiang Ran turned around, no longer gazing at that giant tomb called 'Civilization':

"That is the past tense.

And we are the present tense, striving to survive."

However, just as everyone's attention was drawn to those terrifying specimens.

No one noticed that in the dark corner of the building's exterior wall, among those dense, mutated barnacles.

A pair of eyes, neither human nor fish, slowly opened.

Just as everyone was still sighing over those victims sealed in time,

zero's cold warning sounded again, this time carrying an extremely rare sense of urgency.

"Alert. Abnormal bio-electric signal detected on the starboard outer wall."

"Distance: 12 meters. Extremely close."

"Biological characteristics... cannot match known marine life database, similar to human, but metallic implant reaction detected."

"What the hell is that?"

Old Chen suddenly snapped back to reality, subconsciously pressing his face against the observation window on the right.

His eyes bulged like brass bells, trying to search the dark, murky waters for the so-called 'abnormality'.

Outside the window was still the exterior wall of the skyscraper covered in mutated barnacles and seaweed.

Under the faint scattered light, it appeared mottled and rough.

Other than the seaweed swaying gently with the current, there seemed to be no living thing.

"Did zero make a mistake? Isn't this just a rotten wall?" Old Chen muttered, just about to turn his head.

"Don't move."

Jiang Ran suddenly spoke, his voice terrifyingly low. He stared intently at a certain spot in the shadow of the wall, his pupils contracting slightly:

"Look there. That piece of 'concrete'... it moved."

Following Jiang Ran's line of sight.

In a recess on the building's exterior wall, something that originally looked like a piece of broken cement suddenly wriggled extremely slowly.

Immediately following, the thing unfolded.

That was not a piece of cement.

It was a person.

Or rather, a monster that was once human.

It was completely naked, its skin exhibiting the pale white color of prolonged water immersion.

Its limbs were elongated and twisted through some cruel genetic modification, and its hands and feet were covered in gecko-like suction cups.

It was firmly attached to the barnacle-covered wall.

But the most horrifying part was its back.

That section of pale spinal bone was completely exposed, inlaid with a row of metal nodes flashing with faint red light.

Black cables were directly inserted into its back of the head and muscles.

"This is... the Ark's 'Water Ghost' Sentry."

Su Qingyu covered her mouth; as a former Ark doctor, she had heard of this inhumane modification program—

Transforming death row inmates guilty of serious crimes into tireless, living surveillance units, nailed forever to the deep-sea defense line like barnacles.

As if sensing the faint turbulence caused by the black iron's propeller.

The 'Water Ghost' clinging to the wall suddenly twisted its neck 180 degrees at an angle utterly impossible for a human.

A face without a nose, its mouth sewn shut, leaving only a pair of huge black compound eyes, slammed into the viewport's field of vision without warning.

Those dead-fish eyes, lacking any whites, stared directly at the three people inside the window.

Across the thick bulletproof glass.

Their gazes met.

A malice from the abyss instantly exploded.

"Zzzzz!!!"

Although the monster's throat could not produce sound, the metal spine on its back suddenly erupted with a blinding high-frequency red light.

Immediately following, a visible strong electromagnetic ripple spread out from the emitter on its back, instantly piercing the surrounding seawater.

"It saw us!"

"Damn it! It's a living sonar! It's calling the fleet!"

Before Old Chen's horrified roar could fade.

The previously quiet passive radar alarm in the Command cabin instantly turned into a sharp, piercing beep.

"Warning! Fire control radar lock signal detected!"

"Warning! Multiple smart mines are activating!"

"Warning! Two kilometers directly above, the 'Zhenhai' frigate's sonar has engaged active search mode!"

Jiang Ran looked at the 'Water Ghost' still staring intently at them outside the window, killing intent surging in his eyes.

The stealth phase was over.

"Since you don't want us to Pass quietly..."

Jiang Ran violently pushed the throttle lever, and the black iron's engine roared instantly.

The wake immediately swept the monster clinging to the wall into the propeller's grinding storm, instantly shredding it into a mist of blood.

"Then I'll turn this dead sea... upside down for you!"