53: Chapter 53: The North Sea

Chen Mo walked into the downtown area of Ulan-Ude.

There were not many people from Russia on the streets; they stood in twos and threes in front of shops, chatting.

Chen Mo caught scattered words: "road," "forest," "changing every day."

A middle-aged man wearing work clothes gestured with his hands, saying that the highway north of the city leading to Irkutsk had been overturned by tree roots in three sections, and the municipal workers kept repairing it only for it to break again, over and over.

He walked to the entrance of a grocery store on the street corner and, using simple words and gestures, asked for the location of a car rental agency.

The car rental agency was in the west of the city, in a yard built with tin sheds, where seven or eight cars were parked.

The owner was a Russian man in his fifties, bald, with a belly that stretched his jacket tight.

Chen Mo looked around and picked out a gray pickup truck; the cargo bed was large enough to hold the supplies he needed.

The owner asked for identification.

Chen Mo said he didn't have any.

The owner narrowed his eyes slightly, then quoted a price: a rental fee of 20,000 rubles, a deposit of 100,000, with a minimum rental period of one week.

Converted to Xia currency, the rental fee alone was 1,800 per day.

Chen Mo didn't say much: "160,000, I'll take it for a week. I'll just be driving around nearby, not going far. You don't need to worry about me running off."

The owner stared at him for a long while, then looked at the bulging backpack behind him.

"170,000."

The final price was 170,000 rubles.

Chen Mo took a stack of rubles out of his pocket, counted out 170,000, and placed it on the table.

After counting the money, the owner threw the keys to him.

Once he had the car, Chen Mo drove to the wholesale market in the north of the city.

He chose the largest grain and oil shop and ordered a ton and a half of cooking oil, fifteen iron drums, each weighing 100 kilograms, neatly stacked in the cargo bed.

A ton and a half of oil was about 13.5 million calories of energy.

Based on his current daily consumption of 40,000 to 50,000 calories, this would be enough to support nearly 300 days of training.

The energy density of white sugar was too low, so this time he simply bought all oil.

After loading the cargo, he drove the car to an abandoned factory area on the outskirts of the city.

There was no one around.

He turned off the engine and parked.

On the way here, his Mental Perception had already captured those tiny electronic components in the car: one next to the interface inside the car door, one stuck behind the dashboard, and one wrapped in waterproof tape on the inside of the chassis girder.

None of these trackers could hide from Chen Mo's eyes.

It took him less than ten minutes to take them all apart.

Then, he drove to the side of the road, found a random parked old sedan, and casually placed the removed trackers on that car's fender.

The owner probably never imagined that someone could use Mental Energy to directly find the tracker he had hidden inside the chassis girder.

In the evening, Chen Mo rested for a few hours at a small hotel on the outskirts of the city.

At eight o'clock in the evening, the sky turned completely dark.

Chen Mo started the pickup truck and drove out of Ulan-Ude.

The headlights cut through the Siberian night.

The road wound northward along the edge of the forest; the road conditions were better than the grassland roads in Mongolia, but every ten kilometers or so, one could see asphalt roads cracked by tree roots.

New grass had already grown in the cracks, flashing by in the beam of the headlights.

The Taiga Forest on both sides of the road was like two black high walls, and the tree crowns emitted a low sound like ocean waves in the night wind.

On the way, Chen Mo stopped to refuel once.

The gas station stood lonely by the side of the road; there was no sound other than the humming of the fuel pump.

After refueling, he continued on his way.

The 900-kilometer journey took a full ten hours.

The sky turned from black to gray, and from gray to pale blue.

The outline of the forest emerged layer by layer in the morning light. Then, after driving around a bend, the forest suddenly broke off.

Chen Mo stepped on the brake.

The pickup truck stopped on the side of the road.

He pushed open the car door and stood at the edge of the road.

The Northern Sea.

When he first saw Beier Lake, what flashed through Chen Mo's mind was "ocean." Not a lake.

The lake water was a deep blue; that kind of blue was not reflected from the sky, but the color the water itself presented after reaching a certain depth.

From the shore to the center of the lake, the blue deepened layer by layer: near the shore it was transparent light blue, further out it was gemstone blue, then ink blue, and finally, at the end of his vision, it turned into an ink color that blended with the skyline.

It was boundless; a real ocean would be no different.

He stood on the side of the road and watched for a long time.

There was wind on the lake, and the air blowing over carried the unique crispness and slight sweetness of fresh water.

A few freshwater seals in the distance poked their heads above the water, looked at the shore with round eyes, and then silently submerged again.

The unique freshwater seals of Beier Lake could only be seen here in the world.

Chen Mo restarted the pickup truck and drove for another hour until he reached Cape Khoboy.

The cape at the northernmost tip of Olkhon Island was a huge rock extending out from the forest, surrounded by water on three sides.

The cliff face was nearly vertical, hundreds of meters high from the water surface to the top of the cliff, and the rock surface was eroded by wind and rain into layers of patterns.

Below the cliff was the deep-water zone; not even a few hundred meters from the shore, the water depth plummeted to hundreds of meters, and further out was the deepest basin of Beier Lake, with a depth exceeding 1,600 meters.

Standing at the top of the cape and looking down, the lake water transitioned rapidly from the light blue at his feet to the ink black in the distance.

That black was the color of depth; the deeper the water, the less light could penetrate, until finally all light was swallowed, leaving only a silent abyss.

Chen Mo moved his things down along the cliff face.

On the hundreds-of-meters-high vertical cliff, an ordinary person would need professional rock climbing equipment to go up and down.

He carried a 100-kilogram oil drum in each hand, leaping and moving along the cliff face.

After 8 trips, all the oil drums, supplies, and tents were stacked in a natural karst cave on the cliff face.

The cave was not large, just enough to store supplies and pitch a tent; the entrance faced the lake, allowing him to see the changes in light over the entire Beier Lake at dawn and dusk.

Chen Mo stood at the cave entrance, looking out at the lake surface.

The sun had already risen, and the light on the lake surface shattered into countless golden scales.

The surface of Beier Lake was calm at this time; not even a trace of a wave could be seen.

But he knew that beneath the water surface was another world. At a vertical depth of 1,600 meters, the temperature remained at about four degrees Celsius year-round, and the water pressure accumulated layer by layer from the surface.

For every ten meters of descent, one atmosphere of pressure was added; at a depth of 100 meters, the pressure per square centimeter exceeded ten kilograms; at 1,600 meters, the pressure was great enough to crush the hull of an ordinary submarine.

This was the place he needed.

Chen Mo walked to the edge of the lake and looked down at the water at his feet. The water was so clear that he could see tens of meters deep.

He crouched down and reached his right hand into the water.

The icy cold sensation spread up his fingers; the lake water temperature was very low.

The underwater cliff face also went straight down, covered with sponges and algae unique to Beier Lake, which shimmered with a deep green luster in the light.

This was the place.

Chen Mo withdrew his hand and wiped the water stains on his pants.

Subsequently, Chen Mo absorbed spirit energy particles by the lake.

After traveling long distances for nearly three days, he hadn't performed a complete extreme load training session for three days.

His muscles were in a state of readiness; once he started, every fiber of his body would be reground under high pressure.

But before that, he needed to return his state to the optimal level.

He accelerated the operation of the Human Breathing Method, slowly drawing the scattered Spiritual Qi from the surroundings into his body; at the same time, he mobilized his ability to directly incorporate the spirit energy particles by the lake.

The scattered Spiritual Qi and spirit energy particles seeped into every cell along with the breathing Rhythm, smoothing out the tiny fatigue accumulated over the past three days inch by inch.

There was no wind on the lake surface, and there was no sound around—no car noises, no human voices, no animal calls.

There was only the Rhythm of the lake water gently lapping against the cliff, like some kind of slow and eternal breathing.

After recovering, Chen Mo walked to the edge of the lake and jumped in.

His body traced a short arc in the air; the sound of him entering the water was very faint, and the splashed water was swallowed by the lake surface before it could disperse.

The icy lake water instantly engulfed his whole body.

The deep-water zone of Beier Lake was right beneath his feet.