Chapter 1576 Woman
Anna flipped through her notebook, and a story flashed through her mind, but it jumped out of a certain pair of eyes.
[The following is a "true story" narrated by a crew member:
Yes, I will never forget that night. I was drinking and playing cards with the second mate in his room. Then someone came in and knocked on the door to inform us that someone we didn't know was on the deck. We hurried out to check. When we shone the flashlight, we saw a woman with disheveled hair sitting on the deck motionless!
The second mate was so scared that he wet his pants at the time. I was brave enough to go up and test her. I found that she was really alive, but no one knew how she got up. The sea level was almost several meters above the deck!
At that time, I could only think that she was a person who had encountered a shipwreck. After calming down, I quickly took her to the infirmary. The second mate and I asked her anything, but she didn't say anything. She just sat there, holding her hands and shaking, and kept muttering some incomprehensible words in her mouth, probably some dialect from Southeast Asia. The most eye-catching thing is that she was wearing some gold-like jewelry, which looked extremely luxurious, but it was completely inconsistent with her image.
Soon the second mate found a local ship doctor, and after handing the woman over to professionals, I went back with the second mate to continue drinking and playing cards, but before midnight, our door was knocked again, and at the same time we learned a bad news, that is, the ship doctor was dead.
When we rushed to the infirmary, we found that the woman was gone. The ship doctor was lying on the ground in a rather twisted posture, holding his heart with his hand, his mouth open, and his eyes almost popped out. The captain took the only pistol on the ship and ordered everyone to find the woman.
At that time, the second mate and I looked at each other, and began to follow the order to act separately to find the mysterious woman. I didn’t know whether my luck was good or bad. At that time, I was led by some ghost back to the deck where I had just found the woman before, and I saw her trying to flip the guardrail of the side of the ship at a glance, and behind the guardrail was the sea!
I shouted at her loudly, telling her not to be stupid, and to actively confess what she had done. Apologizing with death can’t solve anything!
And that woman. She looked back at me, said a very brief sentence in the strange dialect she had spoken before, and then jumped into the sea without a single splash!
Before I could react, the whole ship suddenly started to shake. The captain informed everyone that the ship had encountered an unprecedented storm. I could only evacuate the deck and return to my post for shelter. In the cabin, the whole ship heard the storm outside. There was a monster roar on the sea. It didn't sound like a whale or a wind roar, but a slightly sharp, somewhat synthetic roar that didn't belong to the natural world.
No one on the ship could sleep that night. It wasn't until the sunrise the next day that the storm stopped and everyone was reborn. But then they found something even more terrible. The body of the ship's doctor in the infirmary was gone, and the entire infirmary was filled with water. Everyone said that the body was washed into the sea along with the water. But everyone knew that the infirmary was in the cabin, and the cabin was not flooded last night.
Many years after I got off the ship, by chance, I met an old man on a Maldivian island. We talked about many things. When he talked about the history of the Maldives, his accent evoked my long-forgotten memories. I suddenly realized that this was the language I had heard from the mysterious woman before.
I tried to repeat the words that the woman had said that had troubled me for many years, trying to understand what it meant. After hearing my story, the old man was silent for a full half hour, sitting there smoking, until the end he looked at me and said: Young man, you seem to have saved your life!
After the old man explained, I finally knew that the language the woman spoke was the Dhivehi language of the Maldives, but it was the original version of the Sun Dynasty thousands of years ago. The earliest writing style was found on several copper plates in the 12th and 13th centuries. Some inscriptions were also found on coral stones. The oldest inscriptions are believed to have appeared in the 7th and 8th centuries. That language has long become a dead language. Since the words the woman spoke were not uncommon, and the meaning of the sentence could be barely guessed based on the current version of Dhivehi after evolution, the old man could barely translate the meaning of the sentence.
After the old man repeated the sentence in English. I finally understood the meaning of the sentence that the woman said to me before jumping into the sea:
"Hell, it found me again."
I was a little horrified.
Thinking of the horrible sounds I heard when I was in the cabin that day to survive the storm, could that be the movement in hell? And maybe our ship was just passing by hell because of luck? Or is it that Hell is looking for that mysterious woman, and it was because she finally jumped off our ship that I had the chance to leave the storm alive?
I don’t know the answer, but I am lucky to have survived, so I won’t be obsessed with the answer to this question. 】
The notebook flipped quickly, and similar supernatural stories emerged in an endless stream. As the number accumulated, the owner of the notebook gradually began to notice some commonalities.
[This is Flora. This is also the second year that I have collected folklore legends about Atlantis. I feel that I am closer to the truth. It seems that some people call "Atlantis" "Paradise Lost" or simply "Hell"?
I gradually discovered that although those who claimed to have seen and encountered Atlantis had different impressions of Atlantis due to their different experiences, most of the stories seemed to have some commonalities for reference.
Storms, mysterious roars, and islands that suddenly appeared. So, Atlantis is indeed an island hidden in the storm? But according to the places where those legends took place, all the route data I collected before were overturned, so where is Atlantis? 】
The notebook flipped quickly, and more stories were recorded in it, accompanied by more thinking and reasoning, step by step to get closer to the truth.
[Is it possible that the island of Atlantis can be moved? In every legend I have collected, it suddenly appears and then disappears without a trace afterwards, and its appearance must be accompanied by storms and strange noises.
So let's assume that Atlantis is a movable platform without foundations - just like the floating ice or icebergs in the Arctic Ocean, which can be blown by storms, and the trajectory of its blowing follows some kind of messy rules like ocean currents or monsoons? So the places where these legends take place seem to be irrelevant?
An island that is swept around the entire sea by a storm is really a strange guess. 】
The notebook goes on to the end of the part that seems to be similar to collecting folk tales, because an unexpected event forced the notebook owner to interrupt his plan.
[A representative who claimed to be a consortium found me and claimed that they were a consortium dedicated to archaeological research and had been paying attention to me, or more precisely, paying attention to my research on Atlantis. They are willing to subsidize all my expenses for going to sea to better find Atlantis. It just so happens that I don't have much money, so why not? 】
The notebook continued to turn over, and a large number of archaeological details appeared. It was obvious that for a period of time, the owner of the notebook appeared in a large number of ruins and was completely attracted by those lost ruins.
[Wittelsbach Consortium, what exactly do they do? Why is the energy so huge? Where did those ruins and archaeological permits come from? 】
Wittelsbach's name officially appeared in the notebook, and the notebook's mistress also responded with curiosity and awe to this force.
[The people of the Wittelsbach Consortium seem to be more obsessed with Atlantis than I thought. They seem to be sure of the existence of Atlantis and are willing to spend a lot of money. They always find some underwater ruins and notify me to assist in archaeology and collect more information about Atlantis. These underwater ruins seem to be related to the previous dynasty of the Maldives. They seem to think that Atlantis is related to the history of the Maldives? Is it related to the so-called legend of sacrificing gold to summon the island? ]
[The pre-dynastic period of the Maldives does seem to be related to Atlantis, and I have discovered many legends that seem to point Atlantis to the country of the Maldives. This is an exciting discovery. If I can find more ruins of the pre-dynastic period of the Maldives, maybe I can dig out some information about Atlantis? ]
The notebook was flipping, and the owner's previous awe and respect for Wittelsbach disappeared in an instant, and continued to deteriorate, just because she discovered some hidden secrets of this family.
[Damn it! After I left after the archaeological excavation, their attitude towards the ruins was so rude in private! They are simply robbers! Don't they know how to write the four words "protect cultural relics"? They actually used a crane to hang up the ruins of the underwater ruins, just to take them back to Europe for collection! Those things should be sunk under the sea forever! They are not doing archaeology! They are destructive looting! ]
[They destroyed the dolphin's home with high-frequency sonar, just for a damn shipwreck. ]
[Those cultural relics! They should have been returned to their countries and civilizations, but they secretly transported them overseas for sale! They thought I didn't know! But I saw it clearly! They were a group of robbers! They even used the excuse that the salvaged artifacts were too "dangerous" to justify doing such a despicable thing! 】
Then the notebook recorded Wittelsbach's atrocities in great detail. It was simply a collection of evidence. The owner of the notebook recorded all of Wittelsbach's crazy behaviors, including but not limited to the violent exploitation of the ruins, the wanton destruction of the marine environment for the sake of exploitation, and the secret dumping of the artifacts obtained from archaeology.
【I applied to terminate the contract with the Wittelsbach consortium, but they actually rejected me and claimed that the contract originally stated that I would work for them for twenty years. Twenty years? I have to support their atrocities for a full twenty years? It would be better to kill me! 】
Dissatisfaction has overflowed from the paper, and then the notebook records some details, probably the spies and bodyguards around the notebook owner during that time, as well as the route map on the ship. It is obvious that she began to be focused on and placed under house arrest after she protested. She was only taken to the place of work when she was needed, and she was completely used as a tool.
Naturally, the owner of the notebook wanted to escape, and the notebook was almost at the end of the page at this time.
Anna's hand gently turned, and the pages of the notebook came to the most wrinkled and fragile pages, which meant that these last few pages were the places she had flipped through countless times over the years.
Slightly scribbled and distorted words were written on the notebook:
[We found the remains of the Sun Dynasty! ]
[I understand the pictures and texts recorded on the stone tablet in the remains! I understand everything! So that's it, those storms, roars, and details in the legends that I have always ignored, it turns out that it is so easy to find Atlantis! I was wrong before, I don't need to find Atlantis, I just need Atlantis to find me! ]
After that, a page of the notebook was torn off, and Anna naturally turned to the last page.
[We can't let this group of people find Atlantis, otherwise Atlantis will be destroyed by them! ]
She read the messages in the notebook over and over again, as if she was missing and making up her mind. Finally, when she wanted to close the notebook, a hand grabbed her wrist.
A voice sounded from behind her: "Where is the missing page?"
A chill rose from Anna's tailbone and spread throughout her body. She turned her head in horror and saw a cold girl's face.
In the blind spot behind her where she couldn't see, there was a pair of eyes staring at her the whole time she was flipping through the notebook, using her vision to see all the information she saw!