Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“Master, you are going out to sea to watch the whales again?”
Early the next morning, Wang Qian saw Zhang Zian carrying a heavy battery and walking towards the Wuling Hong Guang MPV. He guessed what he was going to do.
“En, you’re right.” Zhang Zian nodded and pulled open the trunk of the car. He connected the battery to the motor to confirm that the battery was fully charged.
“Uh…” Wang Qian was puzzled. While whale watching was elegant, watching them every once in a while was enough. Why did he have to go every day? Was whale watching really that meaningful? It was not like he was looking at beautiful women…
“What’s that?” He picked up a long, stick-shaped, grey object from the trunk of the car and started fiddling with it. He had never seen it in the car before; it had to be something that was just put in.
The long stick-like object was rough, and from touching it, it seemed like the KTV microphone had a component that picked up sound. A long grey wire was coiled behind it, and the surface of the grey wire was covered in plastic.
“It’s used for recording sounds underwater.” Zhang Zian was scared that he would be careless and drop the precision instrument and ruin it, so he snatched it back from Wang Qian’s hands and put it back into the trunk. “All of you can watch the shop. I’m going to go, but I’ll be back soon. If I don’t come back, remember to call the police!”
Wang Qian watched as Zhang Zian drove the car off into the distance. As he sent him off, a look of constipation crossed his face.
Li Kun came back from next door. He walked closer to Wang Qian and said, “Older brother, Master has been driving his car a lot. We haven’t touched the steering wheel in so long, and my hands have become quite itchy… Right, what is Master going out to do again?”
“He claims that he is going to record some underwater sounds, but I saw that Master’s manner was a bit suspicious. I suspect that he just said that to pacify me… I think he is hiding some kind of secret that he doesn’t want to tell us…” Wang Qian frowned and was deep in thought, his expression serious.
“Oh? What secret?” Li Kun suddenly perked up. “Is it the correct way to read and understand that Advanced Veterinary Control book?” he asked nervously.
“That’s not it… I saw that the trunk of Master’s had an object that was both thick and long, and seemed very high tech. It could be… the uranium rod from legends.”
“Uranium rod?” Li Kun was so shocked that he became dumbstruck. “What does Master want to do with a uranium rod? Could it be that he wants to cause trouble?”
Wang Qian looked to the left and right and saw that there was no one, so he lowered his voice and said, “Perhaps Master is secretly keeping a Godzilla in the sea…”
“Godzilla? Are you sure it’s not that he’s secretly keeping a Kraken?”
“Ga ga! What kind of rod were you both talking about just now?” Richard flapped his wings and flew over to them. It was especially excited for some unknown reason, only because it had heard R instead of Y…
Zhang Zian was driving very carefully, especially after he reached the beach. He had lowered his speed in order to prevent battering around the expensive instrument in his car.
The component that picked up sound that Professor Wei Kang had lent him was not an ordinary quality good; rather, it was a legitimate, high-quality instrument for actual scientific research that was used by the Binhai University Underwater Acoustics Engineering Faculty.
The instrument to pick up sound underwater was not only able to record underwater sounds. If it were that simple, then he could buy it from Taobao which had everything. Instead, it also had a complete set of functions that included a signal processing system. It could change the underwater sound signals to light signals, and through optical fiber conduction, enter the system. After modulation and strengthening, it could come up with a sound chart, changing sounds that could originally not be heard by the human ear to something that they could hear and that researchers could analyze. The whole system was very expensive, but even if the ordinary person wanted to buy it, they could not.
Like yesterday, Zhang Zian pumped air into the assault boat. He checked to see if there was any air leakage––one could not afford to be careless on the sea. Any mistake could cause eternal regret.
After checking that there were no problems, he carefully carried the equipment into the boat, then pushed the boat into the sea.
With the heavy equipment pressing down on the boat, the waterline of the assault boat was even deeper than the day before. The steadiness of the boat was also higher. He was glad that he did not buy an assault boat that was too small, otherwise it would be too cramped.
He used his naked eye to gauge the distance, and stopped the boat closer to the shoreline than he did the day before. He picked up the grey, rod-shaped sound device. He did not instantly throw it into the water. Instead, he wet the surface and ensured that there were no bubbles stuck on the surface, which would cause the distortion of the sound waves. He slowly released the optical fiber line.
There were scale markings on the optical fiber line, but Zhang Zian did not know how deep the sea was below him. He temporarily released 50 meters, estimating that it could reach the bottom of the sea. If it was too shallow, all it would detect was the noise from the water’s surface.
After he finished preparing the device, he hastily put on the headphones that came with the equipment.
As expected of high-quality, professional earphones, the thick foam layer pressed tightly against the ear contour, and after a slight adjustment, they practically kept out every sound from the outside world.
He switched it on, and the small monitor showed the real time waveform.
The underwater sounds strengthened. The instant they sounded through the headphones and into his ear, he was so frightened that his hair stood on end. As if he was suddenly surrounded by cold currents, he tightly shrunk into himself and shivered excitedly!
It was very hard to describe the sound he heard; it was just like standing in front of an incomparably thick, stone door that was also very wide, and as the stone door opened there were numerous angelic choirs singing a magnificent hymn.
His two legs shook. If it was not for the fact that he was sitting in the unsteady boat, he might have knelt down on the spot.
The professional sound device and the monitoring headphones sent all the sounds from underwater in a circle spanning several kilometers, then they traveled finely into his eardrums. There were sounds from animals and sounds from the currents; there was the sound of the propeller and the motor; and the sound of harsh winds and thunder and lightning from a distance. The sounds coming from the high energy storms could travel thousands of kilometers in the sea and be detected and picked up by the device… Besides that, there could be the sounds of hidden submarines, it just depended on how well the human’s brain could handle it. All the sounds were mixed together––it was like morning bells and evening drums repeatedly sounding in his brain.
The developed hymn would occasionally have some strange noises, as sharp as a loud howl, or as low as someone weeping and complaining. No one knew who made the strange sounds, it could just be that two currents of different warmths and densities met each other, or it could be crustal movements at the bottom of the sea; however, they were all mere guesses. No one could confirm what exactly what happening.
On the other hand, it was the sounds of the animals that were not worth mentioning. Often, one could only differentiate the animal sounds when they were very close to the animal. Most of the underwater animals did not make much noise. In terms of the sounds by animals, the sounds of whales and dolphins were the ones that dominated.
Zhang Zian adjusted the lever on the instrument towards the low-frequency direction to strengthen the sensitivity of the device towards low-frequency sounds. He did so in order to remove the high-frequency sounds from the dolphins, toothed whales, and storms, and instead focus on sounds of a lower frequency.
Following his movements, the sounds in the headphones changed. In general, everything quieted down and changed from a magnificent hymn to long, drawn out breathing sounds.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump…
A series of anxious knocking sounds kept ringing two or three times every second; it sounded like the sonic boom from an inferior horn. The sound was occasionally loud and occasionally soft, which showed that there was one––or a few––minke whales that were traveling back and forth in the nearby waters.
