“And then—tell me how to kill that old bastard.”
Tony’s voice was thick with suppressed rage.
Leon Hall looked at him calmly.
“That day will come.
But before that, we need to get out of here alive.”
His words pulled Tony back from his vengeful fury to reality.
“Damn it!” the pilot’s panicked voice rang out.
“The backup navigation is shot too!
We’ve completely lost contact with the mothership!”
The other engineer was deathly pale.
“The sonar system is overloaded!
All scientific instruments are offline!”
Despair, like the deep-sea water pressure, silently squeezed everyone’s throat.
Everyone turned their pleading eyes to Tony Stark.
“Don’t you know how to do your jobs without electronics?
Switch everything to manual control.”
Tony looked at the blacked-out screens with annoyance.
His science, everything he took pride in, had completely failed him at this moment.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
Then, he turned his head and looked at the only calm person inside the submersible.
Leon Hall.
“Alright…”
Tony exhaled slowly.
“For this round in the deep sea, my science admits defeat.”
He walked up to Leon, his trademark smirk returning to the corner of his lips.
“But don’t get it twisted, Leon.
One day, I will analyze your ‘magic’ down to the atom.”
“But for now…”
Tony spread his hands, issuing his command with a mixture of helplessness and anticipation.
“…it’s time for your expensive ‘fish finder’ to get to work.”
Under everyone’s watchful eyes, Leon calmly walked over to the instrument encased in the high-tech console.
He reached out, placing his hand over the cold crystal, and closed his eyes.
The next second.
The static and noise on the holographic sea chart, which had just been displaying a mess of garbled data, vanished instantly.
Countless golden data points began to surface and gather…
Finally, a stable, clear golden arrow materialized in the center of the pitch-black sea chart.
The arrow pointed toward a dark direction that did not exist on any map.
“Sir,” the pilot objected instinctively, his voice trembling.
“That direction…
records show it’s an uncharted underwater cliff and reef zone!
Heading there is suicide!”
Tony ignored him.
His gaze was pinned to the golden arrow, a thrilling light erupting in his eyes.
It wasn’t scientific.
fascinating!
“Forget your records!”
Tony’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried absolute, unquestionable authority.
“From now on, this rock is our only GPS!”
“Follow it!”
The *Explorer* resumed its journey.
An unprecedented “blind voyage.”
A multi-billion-dollar masterpiece of cutting-edge technology was now entirely dependent on the guidance of a single crystal, stealthily navigating through absolute darkness and deathly silence.
The hours that followed became an unforgettable experience for the crew.
They watched with their own eyes as the golden arrow repeatedly guided the submersible with pinpoint accuracy, avoiding underwater mountain walls that could have torn them to shreds without warning.
From their initial fear and suspicion to eventual numbness, the crew’s emotions ultimately transformed into pure awe toward the young Eastern man resting with his eyes closed.
No one knew how much time passed.
Just as the silent voyage was on the verge of breaking everyone’s spirits—
The golden arrow, which had been moving steadily on the sea chart for hours, stopped without warning.
Immediately after, it began to flash with golden light in a slow, rhythmic pattern.
Leon Hall, who had been resting his eyes all this time, slowly opened them.
He looked up at Tony Stark, who had also noticed the anomaly, and calmly stated a fact.
“We’re here.”
A heavy silence filled the cabin.
The crew members looked at one another, their faces a mix of post-crisis relief and utter bewilderment.
Here?
Outside the portholes lay the same boundless darkness, paired with the horrifying, steel-crushing water pressure displayed on the gauges.
There was absolutely nothing out there.
“We’re here?” Tony raised an eyebrow and walked over to Leon.
“Your compass says the fish is right beneath our feet?”
“No,” Leon shook his head.
“It shows that the fish’s ‘home’ is right beneath our feet.”
He raised his eyes to meet Tony’s.
“Now, it is time to use the bait.”
Tony understood immediately, a mad-scientist smirk spreading across his face.
He turned to the console and commanded the sonar engineer, “Activate the backup sonar array.
Load the ‘ancient song’ audio file and broadcast it directly downward!”
“Executing command!”
With trembling hands, the engineer input a series of commands.
A bizarre, chaotic sonar sequence, completely inaudible to the human ear, rippled outward like a stone thrown into a deep pool, spreading down into the uncharted dark trench below.
Inside the submersible, it was dead silent.
Everyone held their breath, waiting for some unknown verdict.
One minute…
Two minutes…
Nothing happened.
“Cough, *cough*…”
Suddenly, the pilot began to cough violently, as if he were choking on something.
His face turned bright red.
An invisible force seemed to seize his throat.
He felt as though his chest were being flooded with freezing seawater, with immense pressure squeezing his lungs from the inside out!
“Ugh…
ah…”
He opened his mouth wide but could only make meaningless rasping noises.
He clawed the air, desperately trying to breathe, but inhaled only a freezing, soul-numbing void.
Then, it hit the next person!
The three crew members inside the submersible were now all like fish thrown onto dry land, clawing at their throats in agony, their eyes bloodshot from oxygen deprivation!
“Damn it!”
Tony felt it too!
A sudden sensation of drowning and suffocation hit him.
His brain screamed at him that this was an illusion, but his body was experiencing the most visceral reality of death!
“Gas leak?!” he growled through gritted teeth, struggling to force the words out.
“Warning…
systems…
normal…” Jarvis’s voice came through in broken fragments, as if his signal was being heavily disrupted.
It wasn’t a physical attack!
It was a far more bizarre, incomprehensible Erosion!
Amidst the chaos, only Leon Hall remained standing quietly, as if the invisible “water currents” were naturally avoiding him.
His gaze pierced through the porthole, looking out into the bottomless abyss.
“Turn on the lights!” he commanded in a deep voice.
Enduring the severe pain and dizziness of oxygen deprivation, Tony roared his command, “Turn on…
all the searchlights!”
*Boom—!*
Several brilliant beams of light pierced through the eternal darkness of the deep ocean like swords of divine judgment!
The light illuminated the area in front of the submersible.
There was nothing there.
No giant beast, no mountains—only a hollow, endless void.
The feeling of suffocation intensified, and the crew members began to twitch and convulse.
Tony’s vision began to fade to black.
Just as he was about to lose consciousness.
At the edge of the searchlight’s beam, something…
moved.
It was an octopus.
Its body was only slightly larger than a normal octopus, looking somewhat tiny in the vast, empty depths.
It drifted up slowly from the darkness below, devoid of any aggressive movements, appearing almost curious.
Yet under the powerful glare of the searchlights, its striking anomalies were fully exposed!
Its skin was covered with countless bioluminescent blue spots that glowed like scattered stars!
These points of light were connected by fainter lines, forming massive, distorted, and utterly incomprehensible patterns that defied human cognition!
The patterns seemed alive, slowly flowing and shifting across its skin.
Just staring at those patterns sent a sharp, needle-like pain shooting through Tony’s brain!
At that exact moment, the sensation of drowning reached its absolute peak!
Everyone inside the submersible finally understood.
The suffocation, the shadow of death—it all originated from this “tiny,” incredibly bizarre, and beautiful creature before them!