122: Chapter 121 Ambergris and the Sunken Ship's Treasure

Looking at the bewitchingly beautiful female captain before him, Cao Xiao felt a sense of dissonance, though he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong. He stepped forward and gave Ren Keke a flick on the forehead before saying to Daphne, "It's an honor to meet you, Ms. Daphne!"

"Boss, everything you ordered is ready. The propulsion system is active, and we can depart immediately." Daphne shook hands with Cao Xiao, tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear, and spoke in a perfect London accent.

"Give us a tour of the ship. If everything is fine, we'll set sail and head west along the coastline toward the Western Cape waters." Cao Xiao had spoken to Daphne on the phone yesterday, instructing her to purchase some fishing equipment as a cover. Although the yacht didn't have specialized fishing facilities, some small tools could be operated manually. They didn't need a massive haul; it was just for entertainment.

"Everyone, please follow me!"

Daphne led the way, with the group following close behind.

"Hello, Boss!"

Just as they reached the boarding ramp, the crew members lined up on both sides and greeted him in unison in international-standard Mandarin.

"Uh! Hello!"

Cao Xiao was caught off guard. He didn't need to guess to know this was Daphne's doing. He didn't feel happy or delighted; instead, it felt a bit bizarre. It seemed Daphne's understanding of Chinese culture was slightly skewed; he would need to correct her later.

"Daphne, please take them on a tour, let them pick their rooms, and tell the first mate to weigh anchor. Also, have some fruit and drinks sent up to the deck." Cao Xiao wasn't in a hurry to tour the ship. He stood by the railing, looking at the distant scenery as he gave Daphne her orders.

"Of course. Everyone, please follow me."

Daphne led Ren Keyong's family and Duan Hong's group into the cabin. Cao Xiao walked under a parasol and lay down on a beach chair. He asked a steward for binoculars and watched the various ships in the harbor with great interest. There were passenger liners, cargo ships, fishing boats, speedboats, and sailboats—thousands in total. There were even destroyers, patrol ships, cruisers, and missile boats flying various national flags docked at specialized piers.

Cao Xiao conducted a comprehensive scan of these vessels. Although his yacht was luxurious and could be considered one of the best in the world, there was one thing he was very dissatisfied with: its speed. At 27 knots, it was technically faster than similar yachts, but he still felt it was too slow. Currently, small surface vessels can reach about 60 knots, while large and medium surface combatants can reach around 35 knots—speeds achieved by military vessels. But these speeds weren't what he was after. Compared to other forms of transport, ships were the slowest. A simple trip to sea took days, and ocean voyages were measured in months. This was intolerable to him. He wanted to make some propulsion improvements to his yacht to increase the speed as much as possible, ideally making it the fastest sailing vessel in the world.

At the same time, he wanted to install some weapons, like missiles. One had to realize that anything could happen on the vast, open sea. Pirates were rampant on certain routes. He wasn't afraid when he was present, but it would be hard to say if he wasn't. Without long-range weapons, this luxury yacht would be seen as a fat prize by pirates. It would be best to manufacture an identical-looking replacement with comprehensive upgrades, turning it into a maritime fortress with formidable combat and defensive capabilities.

Therefore, the various ships docked in the harbor served as excellent reference points. He didn't need to worry about the specific design and manufacturing; the Brain would complete it according to his requirements. He just had to wait. Once built, there was no rush to replace it immediately; he could wait for an opportunity to send it for 'repairs' and swap it out then.

While he was thinking, the hull began to move slowly. In a short while, it left the pier. The yacht slowly exited the harbor and gradually accelerated to cruising speed.

Once the yacht was far from the harbor, Ren Keyong's family also came up to the deck. Duan Hong and the other five bodyguards were fully armed and stationed around the deck, while Daphne and several stewards provided service. Cao Xiao bantered with the two young girls and chatted with Ren Keyong and his wife about domestic matters. He listened to Ren Keyong talk about the customs and strange tales from around the world, and the afternoon passed by just like that. One couldn't fish while the yacht was traveling at high speed. By nightfall, everyone was a bit tired and retired to their rooms. Cao Xiao didn't feel anything from being on a boat, and since he was bored alone, he simply turned on the Detection Function to see if there were any minerals nearby.

The Detection Function could be set with alerts, so it would automatically notify him if it found a target that met his criteria, meaning he didn't have to watch it constantly. However, after waiting for a long time without any activity, he started to feel drowsy. It seemed minerals weren't that easy to find; they weren't everywhere. But besides minerals, the ocean held many treasures; even if they were few, there would be some. The Western Cape waters were rich in seafood. Although they hadn't reached their destination yet, the coastal shallows were full of seafood, with an abundance of shellfish, shrimp, crabs, and algae. Cao Xiao set the automatic Collection Function based on seafood information he found online and also set alerts for marine treasures like pearls, rare creatures, and shipwrecks. Once finished, he ignored it and went to bed.

When he woke up the next day, the yacht was no longer moving; they had reached their destination, the deep-sea area of the Western Cape.

Cao Xiao heard a knock on the door. He rubbed his temples to refresh himself before getting up to open it. He saw Daphne delivering breakfast.

"Boss, the yacht has reached the target waters. What should we do next?"

He took the breakfast and gulped down the hot milk in one go before saying, "Stop here for now. I didn't rest well last night. Take the guests to have some fun first—fishing, swimming, whatever. I'll talk about the rest after I get up."

"Alright." Daphne gave him a strange look before leaving.

Cao Xiao really wanted to slap himself right now. He had done something stupid last night. Not long after he fell asleep, the notification sounds in his mind had been intermittent and never stopped. Being half-asleep, he didn't have the energy to get up and turn them off, leaving his head throbbing and him feeling exhausted now.

For common seafood, he had only set automatic collection without alerts. For more precious items, he had set both automatic collection and alerts. He hadn't expected to find so many good things in one night. He had sensed the alerts but hadn't woken up, leading to this tragedy. Since he was awake anyway, he wasn't in a hurry to sleep; he wanted to see what kind of treasures he had acquired last night.

Using his consciousness to check the items in the collection space, the first things that caught his eye were five piles of various-sized ores. Together, they probably weighed tens of millions of tons. In the eight hours from last night until now, the yacht had only traveled about two hundred nautical miles, yet it had found five types of minerals, and two of them had reserves reaching ten million tons. This density was much higher than on land.

The two most abundant were hematite and copper ore. There were sixteen million tons of hematite with a grade of 64%. The copper ore was a composite of copper, iron, gold, silver, and cobalt, totaling twenty-three million tons with a grade of only 1.2%. Among the other three ores, there were 2.3 million tons of gold ore, 600,000 tons of magnesium ore, and 1.8 million tons of bauxite.

Cao Xiao didn't care much about minerals anymore; once you have too much of something, you lose interest. Besides the ore, the most prominent items were the seafood: lobsters, abalone, sea cucumbers, mussels, crabs, various fishes, and edible seaweed. They were all of the largest size, and the weight of each type was measured in tons. They had all been gutted, cleaned, and frozen.

Logically, the ores would have only triggered six alerts, but the alerts last night must have numbered in the hundreds. At first glance, there didn't seem to be anything else prominent. With a thought, he moved the ores and seafood aside to reveal the true culprits: a cluster of miscellaneous items floating in the air.

Seeing these things, Cao Xiao finally understood why there were so many alerts last night. From the Age of Discovery to the present, the Cape of Good Hope has been a mandatory passage for several major world maritime routes. The route the yacht took along the coast last night was the primary route used during the Age of Discovery. Over the centuries, countless ships had sunk there. What lay before him were the valuable items from those shipwrecks. They didn't come from a single wreck; it seemed he had scoured every shipwreck within his detection range last night.

Porcelain, jewelry, gold and silver vessels and coins, weapons and armor that hadn't completely corroded, as well as some artworks and sealed cargo—the quantity was too large to count, and the specific value was hard to estimate. But the weight of the gold and silver vessels and coins alone was over five tons. Even if sold as scrap metal, it wouldn't be less than a hundred million us dollars. But these were antiques, and their price would be many times higher. The total value of these items would definitely not be less than a billion us dollars, comparable to the most famous sunken treasures. Furthermore, the chaotic nature of the items was an advantage; it would be difficult to find information about these wrecks in historical records, making it less likely to cause ownership disputes and easier to sell. He planned to pick out some precious ones for himself and give the rest to Dapu to sell.

He didn't have the energy to look through these things one by one right now; he would organize them after returning to Cape Town. He moved these items aside, leaving only one type of object. At a glance, these looked like irregular rocks in black, white, and gray. They varied in size, with the largest weighing over a hundred kilograms and the smallest only about one kilogram. Cao Xiao had never seen this stuff before, but he recognized it; otherwise, it wouldn't have appeared in the collection space. This was ambergris. While searching for seafood information online last night, he saw an introduction to sperm whales, which led him to think of the precious spice ambergris. The waters off Cape Town are where two oceans meet, and every year from April to September, a large number of sharks and whales gather here. On a whim, he had added ambergris to his detection and collection list. He hadn't expected to actually find quite a lot—over 1,500 pieces, totaling more than twenty tons. Most of it was the top-tier white ambergris, while the worst black variety was less than a hundred kilograms. Because this ambergris wasn't found on the beach but collected from beneath the seabed, it was the accumulation of centuries in this area, deeply buried by silt. Otherwise, he'd be lucky to find even a few pieces of the lowest quality along these two hundred nautical miles of coastline.

ambergris, also known as grey amber, is a solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull grey or blackish color produced in the digestive system of sperm whales. ambergris has a unique sweet, earthy scent similar to the aroma of isopropyl alcohol. Historically, it was mainly used as a fixative for perfumes and is one of the world's top rare spices, with a price roughly equivalent to gold. With the development of technology, most of its components can now be replaced by chemical synthetics. Additionally, ambergris is a precious traditional Chinese medicine, primarily used to promote the flow of qi and blood, resolve masses, relieve pain, and induce diuresis. It is very helpful for conditions such as asthma, cough, abdominal pain, and gonorrhea.

ambergris is the dried intestinal secretion of the sperm whale (Physeteroidea). Some sperm whales vomit the concretion, some expel it through the intestinal tract, and only a small portion keep the ambergris inside their bodies. ambergris discharged into the sea is initially pale black; under the action of seawater, it gradually turns grey, light grey, and finally white. At the peak of the global ambergris trade, 600kg were traded annually. With the large-scale hunting of sperm whales, ambergris resources have decreased year by year, and the annual trade volume has now dropped to 100 kilograms.

Although the origin of ambergris sounds a bit disgusting, the white pieces have been washed and scrubbed by seawater for centuries and no longer have any odor. Cao Xiao wouldn't be repulsed by it. Of course, he wouldn't touch the lowest quality ones; ghost knows if those black ones were just recently expelled by a sperm whale. ambergris is good stuff; he would need it for his martial arts practice. The boxing classic passed down to him by Hou Jingsheng included a recipe for making incense, where the main ingredient was ambergris. Grinding ambergris and mixing it with certain herbs to make incense can calm the mind and spirit, which is very beneficial for cultivation. It can also be used directly in medicinal formulas; several medicines in the boxing classic required ambergris.

Perfume companies use small amounts as a fixative. At that rate, these twenty-plus tons of ambergris would be enough for an international perfume company to use for many years. But making perfume isn't just about having a top-tier fixative; the processes and formulas for high-end perfumes are very complex. The raw materials used in quality perfumes are all scarce; otherwise, they couldn't be sold at such staggering prices. He couldn't use this much himself. If the price was right, he could consider selling some to perfume companies—or perhaps start a perfume company himself?