Volume 5: The Deep-Sea Trench Sovereigns
Chapter 57: The Descent into the Abyssal Trenches
The gray dawn breaking over Jiangnan's Sector 07 harbor was entirely devoid of light, completely choked out by a massive wall of dark purple mist that rose from the crashing ocean surface. The sub-zero spray left a slick, glittering crust of salt-frost along the ruined metal shards of Commander Vance’s
Leviathan-Sovereign Exoskeleton
, which sat half-submerged in the low-tide mud below the concrete observation deck.
Lin Feng walked slowly past the wreckage, his sneakers moving with absolute, weightless balance across the ice-slicked iron slats of the main transit ramp. Beneath his plain gray utility jacket, his dual-loop circuit ran with an immensely condensed, terrifying density. The geocentric fuel scoured through his
Ren
and
Du
channels was now perfectly integrated, vibrating in an ironclad, absolute synchronization that completely masked his vital signature from the surrounding military tracking arrays.
Behind him, Han Xue and Bai Qingxi maintained a disciplined, three-pace separation. The corporate heiress kept her fingers locked onto the manual override panel of a high-tier federal submarine pod, while the successor of the Northern Frost Sanctuary ran a diagnostic cycle through her uncorrupted marrow pathways, her clear glacial gaze fixed onto the absolute tranquility of the youth's profile.
"Director-General Sun’s coastal artillery trucks have completed their deployment along the southern cliff coordinates, Lin Feng," Bai Qingxi reported, her crisp, polished baritone carrying a precise electronic rhythm as the submarine's primary terminal monitors flickered to life. "The state's heavy railgun batteries have officially locked onto the maritime leyline intersections. But our deep-sea acoustic sensors just registered a terminal pressure drop three thousand meters below the baseline. The
Deep-Sea Trench Sovereigns
have initiated their awakening cycle."
"The sovereigns are merely responding to the alignment of the continental plate, Director Bai," Lin Feng said softly, his smooth voice easily cutting through the howling maritime wind as he stepped into the pressurized titanium command module of the sub-vessel. He didn't alter his flat, flat sixty-beats-per-minute respiratory loop. "The Western Sanctum's directors think that by anchoring high-frequency metal cruisers over the trenches, they could siphon the primary ocean cache before the winter solstice reaches its peak. They failed to realize that when a true dual-loop cultivator claims the bedrock, the sea doesn't count their steel tonnage."
He slung his worn utility backpack neatly into a steel reinforcement rack, looking out through the thick, multi-layered ballistic glass viewports toward the churning black water.
Far down below the freezing waves, hidden within the bottomless geographical trenches of the East China Sea, long ribbons of pure, uncorrupted sapphire light loop were violently pulsing against the current. This was the absolute neural center of the maritime fault lines—a prehistoric sanctuary known in his past life as
The Abyssal Vaults
.
"The sub-vessel’s hull is forged from reinforced void-grade titanium alloy," Han Xue noted as she took her position on the opposite equipment bench, her midnight-black silk trench coat rustling softly. Her hands remained tensely wrapped around her ancestral jade talisman. "But the acoustic telemetry shows that the ambient energetic density within the deep trenches is currently forty times higher than the capital's standard fault lines. If your Stage 2 core foundation experiences a structural variance drop of even half a hertz while we are crossing the sub-surface trenches... the pressure will instantly turn this module into flat iron clay."
"The pressure only exists for containers built on assumptions, Student Han," Lin Feng murmured smoothly, a cold, undefeated smile curling the absolute corners of his lips under the dim blue cockpit lights as the submarine pod detached from the iron pier and plunged straight down into the freezing black depths.
The playground of the coastal fortress was thoroughly finalized. The corporate giants were blind, the hidden ancestral sanctuaries were thoroughly scoured within his palm, and the country's institutional chessboard was operating under his explicit commands. The global vanguards had drawn their battle lines across the open water, but the undefeated regressor of modern Huaxia was already descending into the absolute heart of the deep-sea arena.