True Apocalypse Game

Figures stood on the streets of the seabed, arrayed between dilapidated high-rises as if going about their daily activities.

As the searchlights swept over them, the scene resembled a Ghost Realm, set against the backdrop of crumbling buildings whose windows and doors were like black holes.

It was impossible to tell how long this place had existed. The ground was covered in a thick layer of seabed sediment, and there was even a massive whale skeleton.

But judging from the layout and structure of the entire building complex, it seemed as if it had fallen silent only yesterday.

"My God..." Kong Yan muttered. "If I didn’t know this was the bottom of the Amundsen Basin, I’d think it was the ruins of some town... It looks a bit like an abandoned industrial city from the Former Soviet Union..."

A dazed look flickered across the face of the Bear Country research team member, Ivan, who was standing beside him. He remarked in Russian:

"Yes... it’s a bit like Chernobyl... a place where ghosts live..."

The Eagle Country research team member, Joe, looked equally astonished. He said in broken Mandarin:

"Last time, we just sent an unmanned submersible to secretly retrieve some things. We didn’t get to see it in person. Looking at it from here, it’s all so strange and beautiful..."

Kong Yan couldn’t help but roll his eyes. ’You’ve got some nerve. How is that any different from scrambling to eat shit...’

Jiang Bing assessed the surroundings, activated the communicator, and spoke to the base above:

"Hidden Dragon has reached the designated location. Do you have a clear signal? Please respond. Over."

A few seconds later, a voice came from the command room of the ruins exploration base via the communicator:

"Signal is clear, picture is sharp. You may proceed with the exploration mission. Over."

The footage from the submersible was being transmitted via cable to the exploration base on the ice sheet above. From there, it was sent by satellite to the joint expedition command headquarters in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The video wall played the scene from the deep sea. Watching the black buildings and the silent crowds, the entire headquarters hall fell quiet.

The scene was simply too staggering. Many had heard of the undersea ruins before, but they had imagined mere fragments and rubble, not an entire, intact complex of buildings!

Moreover, the number of stone statues below... within the range of the lights, there were hundreds, thousands of them. More were faintly visible in the darkness beyond, stretching out across the seabed like a silent army.

Li Tongchen and Lu Ran were also in the command headquarters hall at this time; they were the medical advisors for this mission.

After all, even with the vaccine and near-total quarantine measures, no one knew if some unforeseen situation might arise.

The image on the screen suddenly shook. The submersible began to detach from the main cable, trailing a secondary cable as it descended into the underwater city.

Several bright searchlights tore through a darkness that had existed for tens, or perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years, illuminating the underwater complex.

"Based on visual inspection, the construction material here seems to be... con... concrete!?"

Kong Yan’s voice, filled with utter disbelief, came through the comms.

If this complex were on the surface, he would have suspected it was a modern city.

"My God..." Joe said, equally dumbfounded. "Could this be the legendary Atlantis? The sunken Great Western Continent?"

Jiang Bing and Ivan, however, remained relatively calm and began calibrating their instruments to record hydrological data.

A command came through the communication channel from headquarters:

"Extract a sample of the building material, and also try to retrieve one of the stone statues. Over."

"Hidden Dragon, copy," Jiang Bing replied. He then gave an order to Ivan. "Ivan, prepare to use the robotic arm to extract a sample of the building material."

Although they hadn’t planned for such an activity on this maiden voyage, plans change, and new orders had to be followed.

Just then, the camera feed rippled for a moment before returning to normal.

Shen Feng’s Consciousness Antennae had already passed through the expedition team’s communication link, silently infiltrating the submersible’s control system.

He watched everything on the seabed through the camera, remaining silent.

The expedition team, of course, noticed nothing. After all, even with a wired connection in the deep sea, signal interference was considered normal.

A typical deep-sea submersible is just a large metal sphere with no propulsion system; under the immense pressure of the deep sea, ordinary propellers would be twisted and deformed.

However, the Hidden Dragon 9 was a state-of-the-art deep-sea vessel, and it had been specially modified for this mission with a compressed gas propulsion system, giving it a decent range of movement.

The submersible locked onto a nearby high-rise and continued its descent.

Unsure if the high-rise could still bear any weight, it simply hovered in front of the building, suspended by the secondary cable.

Ivan held his breath as he operated the robotic arm. It grasped a corner of the building and gently broke off several fist-sized pieces of material, placing them in the collection net. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Although the building’s surface was covered in the remains of various marine organisms and silt, its silhouette and architectural structure were still visible.

The searchlight beams shone through the broken windows, revealing several corridors and rows of rooms.

Only then did everyone realize that there were also numerous stone statues standing inside these buildings!

These statues were similar to the ones on the seabed outside, their faces frozen in panic, as if they had been turned to stone in an instant.

"What... what in the world is this place?" Back in the command center, Li Tongchen and Lu Ran exchanged a look, both seeing the shock in the other’s eyes.

The other medical advisors were equally stunned.

The architectural structure of this place... it looked very much like... a hospital!

Meanwhile, as Shen Feng saw the building clearly through his Consciousness Antennae, a storm of shock raged within him.

This building... he was very familiar with it.

Back during the Stone Statue Apocalypse, he had seen the architectural blueprints for the disease control centers.

The building before him was one of those very disease control centers from the Stone Statue Apocalypse!

’What on earth is going on?’

’Was the Stone Statue Apocalypse really a part of Earth’s past?’

’But why is this the only ruin, here in the Arctic Amundsen Basin? Why is there no other information about such ruins in the geological strata?’

Meanwhile, the expedition team members were also lost in deep confusion.

Carbon-14 dating doesn’t lie; these ruins were indeed hundreds of thousands of years old.

But the geological strata didn’t lie either, and this was the first time ruins of such a highly advanced civilization had ever been discovered.

So where was the discrepancy?

"From a genetic anthropology perspective, our *Homo sapiens* population once dwindled to just over a thousand individuals tens of thousands of years ago. There are many gaps in our evolutionary history from that period because we haven’t found any remains like skeletons or fossils..."

Jiang Bing said slowly, his expression calm.

"Are you saying..." Kong Yan muttered, his entire understanding of history shaken, "that while *Homo sapiens* were still evolving in ignorance, another, highly advanced civilization existed on this world? But why didn’t they survive? Why didn’t they leave behind any large-scale ruins?"

Jiang Bing pulled the submersible back and said, "I didn’t say anything. I’m merely stating a known anthropological fact."

But when Shen Feng’s Consciousness Antennae captured this sentence, it struck him like a bolt of lightning.

’The *Homo sapiens* population once dwindled to just over a thousand...’

’The population of the Brain Apes is less than two thousand...’

’Could the Brain Apes be the ancestors of modern humans?’

But Shen Feng immediately rejected this hypothesis.

’No, the timeline doesn’t match. According to the carbon-14 dating here, these ruins are hundreds of thousands of years old. But the great decline of *Homo sapiens*, the near-extinction event, was seventy thousand years ago.’

’And there’s the most crucial piece of evidence: the geological strata.’

’The strata don’t lie.’

Jiang Bing’s words sent the expedition team into deep thought. The submersible fell silent, each person lost in their own contemplations.

The submersible had descended once more, arriving on the seabed among the thousands upon thousands of stone statues.

The robotic arm extended, preparing to retrieve a statue for research.

The arm extended steadily, wrapped around a statue, and prepared to lift it.

Just then, a burst of static, SHHHHH, came through the communication system, as if from some kind of signal interference.

The team members inside the submersible looked at each other in confusion. The people in the command center and the base were also perplexed. Even Shen Feng didn’t understand what was happening.

The next moment, a strange, distorted sound suddenly erupted from the communicator, like tens of thousands of people chanting in a low voice:

"...The myriad are one, and the one is myriad. All are for me, and I am for all... The future is one, the past is one, the present is one..."