120: The Last Southern Song Navy

That mummified corpse sat quietly in the shadows of the corner, as if it had been sitting there for over seven hundred years.

The iron armor on his body was already rusted through, much of it fused with his flesh. His helmet was tilted to one side, revealing a shriveled and withered face with deep-set eye sockets and a slightly open mouth, as if silently recounting something. One of his hands hung limply at his side, while the other pressed down on a brocade box resting flat on his knees.

Even through his diving mask, Lin Feng could feel a sense of deathly desolation that spanned across time and space.

"Brother Feng? What's going on over there? Why aren't you talking?" Wang Dalong's voice, filled with concern, came through the headset. "What did you see? Answer me!"

Lin Feng didn't answer immediately. His gaze was firmly fixed on the brocade box beside the mummified corpse.

In his vision, that seemingly ordinary wooden brocade box was emitting a faint golden halo.

This was a prompt from the system.

The clue was right there.

"I see a general," Lin Feng's voice was very low, carrying a hint of reverence he hadn't even noticed himself. "It's like... he's waiting for me."

He slowly swam toward the mummified corpse. With every step closer, the disturbance of the water stirred up fine dust that tumbled in the beam of his searchlight, like the fluttering remnants of the past.

Arriving before the corpse, Lin Feng stopped. He didn't immediately touch the brocade box but instead bowed solemnly to this unknown Southern Song general.

This was respect for a loyal soul.

"Brother Feng, only five minutes left! The vortex is about to form! If you don't come out now, it'll be too late!" Wang Dalong's voice was nearly a roar.

Lin Feng straightened up and took a deep breath. His movements became exceptionally gentle as he reached out, cautiously trying to take the brocade box from beneath the general's withered hand.

Just as his fingertips touched the box, the hand that had seemed long-stiffened actually moved slightly under the buoyancy of the water. The entire brocade box slid down and fell into the nearby silt. Meanwhile, the mummified corpse, having lost its support, leaned forward. Its helmet struck the stone table with a "clank" and toppled over completely.

Lin Feng's heart gave a sudden twitch.

Ignoring his grief, he immediately reached down to feel around in the silt. Soon, he touched the hard edge of the brocade box and dug it out from the thick mud.

The brocade box was made of ironwood. The silk wrapping on the outside had long since rotted away, but the box itself was quite well-preserved, its edges reinforced with copper. The lock was an ingenious mechanism, but it had long since lost its function under years of seawater erosion. With just a little pressure from Lin Feng, the lid popped open with a "click."

The interior of the box was lined with a layer of long-faded yellow silk. On top of the silk lay two items.

One was a scroll tightly wrapped in oilcloth.

The other was a bundle of letters tied with silk thread.

Time was pressing, and Lin Feng didn't have time for a close look. He quickly stuffed both items into the waterproof storage bag at his waist and then took one last look at the fallen general.

"General, please forgive the intrusion. Your story will not be forgotten."

Having said that, he turned and dashed out of the stone house at top speed, racing toward the "Tidal Lock" from which he had come.

"Fatty! I'm out! Get ready to pick me up!"

"Quick! Faster! My detector shows the flow at the water gate has already exceeded safe levels! You have less than a minute!"

In Lin Feng's vision, the light at the entrance of the distant passage had begun to distort. A powerful suction was coming from that direction, churning the water throughout the entire cave.

He kicked his legs with all his might, swimming forward with everything he had.

Just as he was about to burst into the passage, he looked back one last time at the silent underwater shipyard.

Dozens of ghostly warships, collapsed barracks, and the general resting there... they flashed by in the light of the searchlight before being completely swallowed by the surging darkness behind him.

Lin Feng knew that what he was carrying away were the final words of this isolated army... Two hours later, in an unremarkable hotel room on Nan'ao Island.

Lin Feng and Wang Dalong looked as if they had just been fished out of the water, drenched to the bone, yet neither cared to change their clothes.

The thick curtains in the room were drawn, and only a single desk lamp was on. Under the light, a carefully unrolled scroll covered the entire bed.

It was the nautical chart taken from the brocade box.

The scroll was made of some special parchment. Despite being soaked in seawater for over seven hundred years, it hadn't suffered the slightest damage, though its color had turned dark. The lines on it, drawn with cinnabar and ink, remained clearly discernible.

On the other side, Wang Dalong was using a hairdryer to carefully dry the bundle of letters. The letters were also made of animal hide, and perhaps because they had been inside the brocade box, they were fairly well-preserved.

"Brother Feng, this... this is practically a heavenly book!" Wang Dalong pointed at an unfamiliar sea area and place names on the nautical chart, his face full of shock. "The places drawn here aren't near Nan'ao Island at all! Look at this one, called 'Wanli Shitang,' and this 'Changsha.' Aren't these what we now call the Xisha and Nansha Islands? A Southern Song nautical chart was actually accurate to this degree?"

Lin Feng didn't speak; his gaze was fixed on the letters.

The letters had been dried. He untied the silk thread and slowly unrolled them. A desolate and ancient aura rushed toward him along with rows of tiny characters written in Clerical Script.

[Great Song's Vice Marshal for Repelling Invaders, your servant Zhang Shijie, submits this letter with tears of blood...]

The first few words made Lin Feng and Wang Dalong hold their breath simultaneously.

Zhang Shijie!

This was actually Zhang Shijie's final letter!

"...In the battle of Yamen, the Emperor's Star fell, and the national fortune was severed. Your servant followed the late Emperor's final decree to escort the treasury's gold and silver to this 'Hidden Dragon Bay' and build a naval shipyard to plan for a comeback. However, Heaven did not favor the Song; Chancellor Lu died for the country, Emperor Bing threw himself into the sea, and a hundred thousand soldiers and civilians all became food for the fish..."

The handwriting at this point showed obvious signs of trembling, as if the writer's immense internal grief could be seen.

"Your servant knows the tide has turned, yet the treasury entrusted by the late Emperor is the accumulation of three hundred years of the Great Song. It must not fall into the hands of the Mongol Yuan, nor can it be buried under the sea with us, the defeated remnants. If the Mandate of Heaven remains with the Han, then this wealth shall serve as the foundation for the future restoration of the country; if the Han national fortune has truly ended, it should still be kept far from the stench of the invaders to preserve a spark of our Han lineage..."

Reading this, Lin Feng's heart began to race. He sensed that the most critical content was coming.

"Therefore, in the fifth month of the second year of Xiangxing, your servant ordered his trusted general, Su Xian, to lead the 'Jinghai' fleet, carrying the entire national treasury's gold and silver—totaling over three million taels of gold, ten million taels of silver, over seventy crates of various treasures, and over a hundred crates of agarwood. They conscripted Hainan Island merchants as guides to follow a newly opened route across the vast ocean to the 'Anlan' Continent at the end of the Southern Seas, to find a pure land and build a New Song."

"Boom!"

This sentence caused Lin Feng and Wang Dalong to instantly lose their focus, their hearts filled with shock.

The treasure wasn't here at all!

Over seven hundred years ago, just after the fall of the Song Dynasty, it had already been transported to the other side of the vast ocean by a mysterious fleet!