Even though Chen Fan was moving more than 20 nautical miles per hour, it would still take him at least six or seven hours to reach his destination.
Chen Fan had lunch on the way, finally reaching the specific search area after more than seven hours of swimming.
At a depth of more than 200 meters, Chen Fan was able to feel the water pressure even as an electric eel. The feeling pressed on his whole body, making the muscles and organs in the abdomen feel like a hand was clenching them.
After taking a deep breath, Chen Fan controlled his body and swam slowly around the area. Since he could still see, he did not have to worry that his electric inductance only had a range of 10 meters. Withstanding the great pressure, Chen Fan swam along the seabed. The water pressure at a depth of 200 meters may have been a little difficult for Chen Fan to swim about, but it was considered an easy task for the creatures that had lived here since his ancestors’ era.
Along the journey, many fish stared at Chen Fan "curiously." Once those creatures that harbored questionable intentions towards him experienced a bit of a shock, they did not have the guts to take a bite of him anymore.
The ocean was indeed boundless. After searching on the seabed for about two hours, Chen Fan felt like his body was pressed by a steamroller, but not even an aluminum can could be found. He even nearly got eaten by a giant grouper!
"So damn unlucky! I thought it was only a rock since it lay motionless in the sand." Looking at the greenish-gray colored grouper, which was nearly three meters long and had thorny long fins on its back, Chen Fan felt his anger building up in his stomach. If his reaction had been a bit slower, the ugly monster might have bitten him in two.
"When I become stronger, I’ll definitely eat you as my lunch every day!" Swimming up past the grouper into shallower water, Chen Fan prepared himself to bully some weak fish to release his anger.
His electric eel avatar was starving as he had stimulated its pituitary gland greatly yesterday. Now, it was as though there was a big grinder in his stomach that digested everything he ate. His stomach began to growl again, although he had taken his lunch not that long ago.
There was nothing to eat in the ocean but fish, so Chen Fan ate a new type of fish for every meal.
Thinking about the cheapest little fish that he used to buy for the eel’s meal, Chen Fan now thought that was not how the life of an eel should be.
After a short post-meal rest, Chen Fan dove back to the bottom of the sea.
If asked for a phrase that could describe swimming in the ocean, Chen Fan would not hesitate to say, "What a colorful and dazzling view!"
Fish with fins of yellow, green, blue, and purple, and coral reefs of every color caught Chen Fan’s eye. He even thought that he might go color blind if he kept looking at them for a long period of time.
However, if he were to be guaranteed with a sufficient supply of treasures, Chen Fan was willing to exchange those for the eyesight of the electric eel. He still had electromagnetic induction after all.
However, things did not turn out to be as great as Chen Fan imagined them to be.
After swimming three days in the sea, Chen Fan had difficulty finding anything man-made, not to mention an ancient sunken ship.
"Oh God, there has to be a limit to your jokes!"
Chen Fan sat on a coral reef and felt like crying from boredom, but not even a drop of tears trickled down. Three days had passed, and all he got after working so hard was pain all over his body. Nothing else. He began to think about catching some abalones, lobsters, sea cucumbers or other valuable seafood to sell.
"This will be my last time trying! If I still can’t find anything, then I will just catch and sell some abalones," Chen Fan stated clearly to himself. After a good rest he started his work.
While swimming along the seabed, Chen Fan's eyes automatically filtered out the long coral reefs that looked like sunken ships.
When you have studied something for a long period of time, you’ll be an expert in it eventually. Chen Fan was not as excited to look for sunken ships than he had been at the beginning of his search, even when he spotted a weird looking coral.
Chen Fan was about to swim across a dense line coral reefs when he caught a glimpse of a small piece of log protruding from the back of a coral. A feeling struck him like lightning.
"Ah…"
Although that piece of log was seriously corroded, its perfect cylindrical shape made him certain that it was definitely something left behind by humans. Judging by its rotten look, this log was surely more than a hundred years old.
"Amitabha, God bless me, God bless!" Chen Fan was filled with emotion. Excitement, doubt, nervousness... Mixed feelings overwhelmed him.
Swimming over the coral reef, Chen Fan got a good look at the log and was filled with happiness.
The log was a dozen meters long and there were four upright cylindrical poles at the front and back of it. Beneath the poles was the ancient ship that Chen Fan had dreamed of.
"C-calm down! Remember, y-you are someone who has been in big situations before! "
Extreme happiness took over all his other feelings.
After quite some time, Chen Fan calmed down and exhaled deeply, "Huh. Damn, I almost lost control!" After steadying himself, Chen Fan immediately controlled his electric eel avatar and swam forward.
When he was close to the ship, Chen Fan controlled the body of the electric eel and released a low-frequency voltage. He used the electromagnetic induction to examine whether the ship was filled with valuable goods.
The part of the ship that was exposed looked complete. When he saw the bottom of the ship, though, Chen Fan discovered that some tragedy had befallen the ship. The bottom of the ship had a crack about a dozen meters wide in the middle.
"Was it because of a hurricane?" Chen Fan wondered, but that seemed wrong. A hurricane couldn’t break the ship in two.
"Whatever!" As long he could make money out of it, Chen Fan decided that there was no point in wondering.
Positioning himself on the shells and corals that covered the deck and using his induction ability, Chen Fan felt that the ship had quite a large amount of valuable items.
The ship was more than forty meters long and divided into two decks. The upper deck was mostly small rooms that were separated from each other and a few warehouses that stored daily goods.
Chen Fan located his target on the lower deck.
There were twelve storage rooms of different sizes. Five of the rooms stored silks and tea-leaves, but the others all stored porcelains.
Chen Fan was chagrined though. The vertical crack at the bottom of the ship destroyed most of the porcelains completely. That being said, there were still at least 1,000-2,000 well-preserved pieces.
The most valuable treasure in the sea is neither the gold and silver taken from European wrecks nor the tusks of elephants and horns of rhinoceros that are stolen from Africa. For somebody who has knowledge of this area, they will only set their eyes on China’s globally renowned ancient jade porcelains. China's porcelain had always been the favorite of the world's antique traffickers.
Although ancient cargo ships didn't have the thousands of tons of loading capacity that modern ships had, loading 10,000 pieces of porcelain was still a piece of cake for a medium-sized cargo ship with a hundred tons of loading capacity.
The ancient Chinese sunken ships were like a huge magnet that were constantly attracting the eyes of treasure hunters from all around the world.
It was also a big green light for foreign scavengers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries that were unable to scavenge from their own sea floor. Some claimed fishing as a cover in order to divide the treasures in the Chinese sea.
Their only payment was a portion of those treasures, shared equally among them.
Feeling the porcelain that was stored in those rooms, Chen Fan's heart filled with mixed emotions again.
To be clear, his mixed emotions had nothing to do with him stealing the treasure. It was the thought of the shameless treasure hunters who stole from in his country’s territory that troubled his heart.
While swimming along the gap near the deck of the ship, Chen Fan increased the output power of the voltage so that his electromagnetic induction could be transmitted further.
Suddenly, Chen Fan sensed a commotion from the cabin of the ship that was about ten meters in front of him.
Immediately after that, he noticed a six meter long fish swimming in a rush towards him.
"Ah! What the heck is that? "
Without thinking twice, Chen Fan immediately controlled the electric eel to swim back out of the wreck. As he swam out of the cabin at top speed, he heard a burst of sounds from behind.
All Chen Fan saw was the body of a shark with large pupils, short but wide caudal fins and a row of finely serrated teeth following closely behind him.