82: Brute force cracking! The Ark's top-secret black box? No secrets remain before me!

The hustle and bustle of the outside world was completely cut off by the thick volume of water.

The black iron ghost suspended itself eighty meters deep underwater, like a giant whale napping in the deep sea, swaying slightly with the ocean currents.

There were no violent storms here, no screams of mutual slaughter; even the light was completely swallowed by the pitch-black river water.

Only the monotonous "beep—beep—" of the sonar echoed in the dead-silent command cabin, carrying a reassuringly hypnotic rhythm.

"So stable... it's truly so stable."

Old Chen lay prone on the brand-new engineering monitoring console, his face nearly pressed against the screen.

In his hand, he held that stainless steel rice bowl he had lost and regained—Jiang Ran had specifically sent someone to retrieve it from the ruins before they left.

The surface of the hot tea in the bowl was as calm as a mirror, without even a single ripple.

"If this were that old broken diesel engine, my dentures would have been shaken loose by now."

Old Chen sighed, his eyes glazed as he looked at the holographic projection of the nuclear heart steadily outputting power:

"This is what a ship should be... what we used to drive were just bathtubs.

Look at this circulation efficiency; the sound of the coolant flowing through the pipes is lighter than a virgin's breath."

At this depth, the immense water pressure was trying to crush this steel creation.

However, the layer of dark silver 'Bio-active Armor' on the surface of the black iron seemed to have a life of its own, automatically fine-tuning the molecular gaps according to external pressure.

Without needing any additional keel support, it easily withstood the heavy pressure of the deep sea with just this layer of 'skin'.

Su Qingyu walked out of the medical room.

She had already washed the coal dust and blood from her face and changed into a clean, deep blue crew training uniform.

Her wet long hair was casually tied back, and she held a tablet computer in her hand.

"The external hydrological environment has changed."

She walked to the command seat and projected a set of data in front of Jiang Ran:

"Salinity has risen by 300%, and water temperature has dropped by 4 degrees.

We have already left the Yangtze River Estuary and officially entered the edge of the East China Sea Continental Shelf."

Su Qingyu pointed to the microbial readings on the edge of the screen that had become more active:

"The radiation levels here are lower than inland, but the density of 'Abominable' signals is terrifyingly high.

The things in the sea are even more vicious than those in the river."

Jiang Ran sat in the wide captain's chair, his entire body sunken into the shadows.

He didn't look at the sea chart; instead, he closed his eyes, his fingers gently stroking the cold metal patterns on the armrest.

This rare tranquility was an extremely extravagant enjoyment for them, who had been fighting on the wasteland for months.

It was like that final, suffocating vacuum period before a storm arrives.

"Vicious is good."

Jiang Ran slowly opened his eyes, which reflected the eerie blue light of the instrument panel, as calm as a bottomless pool of stagnant water:

"The more vicious the place, the better the things usually hidden there."

He sat up straight, his gaze falling on the center of the tactical table in front of him.

There lay the trophy he had snatched from Golden Tooth, even shattering a city for it—

The [deep sea black box].

It was only the size of a palm, with a matte black body that seemed to absorb light.

There were no seams or ports on the surface, only a few extremely thin blue light patterns slowly wandering across it like living blood vessels.

Sitting there, it exuded a sense of precision and technology that was completely out of place with its surroundings.

It was a top-tier military creation of the old era, a coffin used to seal top-secret information.

"Is this that sea chart?"

Old Chen leaned in, set down his tea bowl, and reached out to touch it, but Jiang Ran raised his hand to stop him.

"Don't touch it carelessly."

Jiang Ran's voice was low:

"This thing has a bio-electric induction lock and a self-destruct charge.

That idiot Golden Tooth only treated it as a storage device.

But he didn't know that if it's brute-forced or if the wrong input is entered three times, the thermite inside will ignite instantly, burning through the chip along with your hand."

Old Chen jerked his hand back in fear: "That ruthless? How afraid were those Ark people of this thing leaking?"

"The more afraid they are, the more important the contents are."

Jiang Ran's fingers hovered over the black box without making direct contact.

"zero, get ready to work."

"Since Ark locked the door so tightly, we won't use a key."

"We'll just tear down the wall."

"Access request sent."

"Physical port connection... denied.

Active defense protocol detected: [Self-destruct Countdown] pre-initiated."

With zero's cold announcement, the black cube lying quietly on the tactical table suddenly underwent a transformation.

The originally dark surface was instantly flooded with a heart-palpitating red light, as if blood vessels were engorging.

That red ripple representing a 'warning' raced frantically across the black box's surface, its frequency increasing.

Even the surrounding air became hot due to the high-frequency overload of the internal chip.

"It's heating up!"

Old Chen stared at the readings on the infrared thermal imager, cold sweat instantly breaking out on his forehead; the hand holding the tea bowl even trembled:

"The core temperature has soared to eighty degrees!

The thermite inside will ignite at just a hundred degrees!

Jiang Ran, stop! This thing is a bomb!"

The instantaneous temperature of burning thermite can reach over two thousand degrees, which would not only destroy the chip but could even burn a hole through the deck.

In the high-pressure environment eighty meters deep in the sea, a hole in the hull meant everyone being crushed into meat paste together.

"Don't panic."

Jiang Ran's fingers hovered over the virtual keyboard. He didn't withdraw the command; instead, a flash of excitement, like a hunter seeing a prey struggle, crossed his eyes:

"It's afraid."

"Afraid?" Su Qingyu was puzzled.

"Ark's encryption logic is very domineering; it commits suicide once it detects an external brute-force attempt."

Jiang Ran looked at the firewall on the screen, composed of countless lines of red code, like an impregnable wall of bronze and iron:

"But every lock has a key.

If there is no key, then forge one."

"zero, invoke the underlying radar protocols of the 'judgment-class' gunboat."

"Yes, Commander."

The data stream on the holographic screen changed instantly.

The blue code, which was originally based on the black iron's own algorithms, was suddenly mixed with a gray data stream carrying a specific frequency.

That was the Ark military identification code extracted from the phased array radar wreckage when the black iron had previously consumed that crashed gunboat.

Although that gunboat had been destroyed, its 'electronic soul'—the underlying friend-or-foe identification logic—had been perfectly inherited and parsed by zero.

"Simulating Ark High Command handshake signal..."

"Performing frequency masking..."

It was like a highly skilled thief who had not only picked the lock but also put on the owner's fingerprint gloves and even imitated the owner's heart rate.

The frantic flashing red light on the surface of the black box suddenly showed a hesitant pause.

It was confused.

In its logical judgment, this force attempting to invade it carried a familiar scent belonging to 'one of its own'.

That high-level permission code, possessed only by the core layers of Ark, sent its self-destruct program into a logical infinite loop.

"The temperature has stopped rising... 82 degrees... it's falling!"

Old Chen stared intently at the readings, not daring to even breathe.

"Now."

Jiang Ran's eyes sharpened, and his finger pressed down hard: "zero, rewrite the logic! Implant a backdoor!"

"Boom—"

Though there was no sound, in that virtual data battlefield, it was as if a dam had been instantly breached.

The red firewall on the holographic screen instantly collapsed and disintegrated under the impact of zero's massive computing power, which had been enhanced by biological crystal cores.

Countless red warning codes were forcibly swallowed and rewritten by blue override commands.

Just as the black iron consumed metal in reality, in the digital world, zero displayed the same predatory ferocity.

"Click."

A crisp and pleasant mechanical popping sound rang out in the dead-silent command cabin.

It was the sound of the physical lock releasing.

On the table, the originally seamless black cube slowly split open with a gap in the middle.

The heart-palpitating red light was completely extinguished, replaced by a soft, stable, yet eerie blue glow.

"It's open..."

Su Qingyu subconsciously held her breath.

Jiang Ran reached out, but instead of touching the core, he gently flicked his finger.

"Play."

"Let me see what secret that Golden Tooth was willing to die to protect."

The holographic projection device emitted a slight hum.

A beam of ghostly blue light shot out from the gap in the black box, spreading out in the dim air of the command cabin.

There was no sophisticated and complex channel map as everyone had expected, nor were there flashing points marking gold and silver treasures.

Floating in the air was only a sound wave spectrum line, jumping violently and disorganized like an electrocardiogram.

"This is... audio?"

Old Chen was stunned for a moment and leaned his head in with some disappointment: "That grandson Golden Tooth hid this thing as a treasure for so many years, and it's just a recording? Or is this some kind of voiceprint password?"

"No, this is the final record of the black box."

Jiang Ran looked at the noisy waveform graph, his expression becoming even more solemn:

"Play."

"Zzz... Boom—!"

The moment the sound began, the entire command cabin seemed to be pulled back to some war-torn Asura field.

It was not a calm narration.

It was extremely chaotic background noise:

Piercing alarms sounded like the screams of vengeful ghosts, the dull thuds of heavy explosion-proof doors being violently struck, and the dense, continuous chatter of automatic rifle fire.

Even across decades of time, that despair and panic still seeped coldly into everyone's marrow through the speakers.

"Huff... huff... Damn it! Damn it! Gate four can't be held! That thing... that thing is out!"

A man's voice sounded amidst heavy breathing.

The voice was hoarse and trembling, carrying a hysteria on the edge of mental collapse.

The sound of glass shattering came from the background, followed by a burst of non-human roaring that sounded like thousands of fingernails scratching against steel plates.

"I am the Chief Researcher of Ark's 'Deep Sea Project', ID A-007... If you are hearing this recording, it means I am dead."

The man in the recording seemed to be shouting into the recorder while running wildly, his footsteps echoing in the metal corridor, sounding exceptionally hollow and mournful:

"Listen! That idiot Golden Tooth... he has no idea what he's holding in his hands!"