No wonder the exploration team members Qiao Zhenyuan hired didn't find those goods. Humans can dive to a maximum depth of 162 meters without equipment, which is a world record, but they can't stay down there for more than a minute and must return to the surface.
The record holder died ten years later, confirmed to have died from playing with free diving. It's been verified that for every ten meters you go down in seawater, the pressure increases by one atmosphere. Diving 162 meters without equipment means you're under 16 atmospheres of pressure, which is suicidal.
What do you mean you don't understand what 16 atmospheres of pressure means? Let me tell you, the pressure in a household water pipe is 4 atmospheres, in a bicycle tire it's 8 atmospheres, and in a fire department's high-pressure water gun, it's 10 atmospheres. Imagine putting your head in front of a burst water pipe or inside an inflated bicycle tire, or in front of a high-pressure water gun. How would you feel? Forget the high-pressure water gun; just thinking about putting your head inside an inflated bicycle tire makes you feel like you're about to die. That's not a place for humans.
Professional divers, wearing pressure-resistant diving suits, can dive to a maximum depth of about 200 meters. However, this is the Devil's Sea, where the visibility at the surface is less than two meters, and even at the strongest sunlight, it only penetrates to a depth of 80 meters. At 200 meters underwater, it's pitch black, and you can't see your hand in front of your face. Unlike on land, where there are streetlights at night, if you're 200 meters underwater and see any light other than your own, you'd be scared to death. The only things that emit light down there are electric fish and monsters.
Forget finding anything; just being down there is terrifying. The professional divers Qiao Zhenyuan hired probably started diving from the outer sea of the Devil's Sea, where the waves are smaller. However, their oxygen tanks only support 43 to 60 minutes of diving. Why? Although the diving oxygen tanks can hold 12 liters of compressed air, and most domestic oxygen tanks have a compression capacity of 170 bar, meaning they hold 170 times 12 liters of compressed air, divers consume 30 liters of compressed air per minute at normal pressure. For every 10 meters they descend, the pressure increases by one atmosphere, and they consume an additional 0.11 liters of compressed air. When a diver quickly descends to 150 meters, the diving time formula is:
Diving time = [Cylinder volume (liters) * (Charging pressure - Signal valve pressure)] / [Normal pressure air consumption per minute * (1 + 0.1 * Diving depth) * 0.098] = 43 minutes.
The divers' swimming speed is about 1 to 1.5 meters per second. The distance from the outer sea of the Devil's Sea to this location is about 1.8 kilometers. This means that the professional divers Qiao Zhenyuan hired could only reach the location where the Dragon King was and couldn't go any further. If they went any deeper, they wouldn't have enough compressed air to return. Therefore, they could only explore to a depth of 150 meters and couldn't go any deeper.
If they wanted to explore further, they would have to bring the ship into the Devil's Sea. But do you think every captain is as stupid as the one on the ship Qiao Yu was on? It's suicidal to bring a ship into the Devil's Sea.
So, Hai Long speculated that the professional divers Qiao Zhenyuan hired only reached the location where the Dragon King had explored and couldn't go any deeper. They claimed to have explored to a depth of 200 meters in the Devil's Sea, which is impossible.
If they had really been there, they would have known about the many underwater canyons.
The Dragon King used a weak electric field to scan the underwater canyon and found that the weak electric field couldn't reach the bottom, meaning each canyon was at least 200 meters deep.
This made Hai Long a bit doubtful because the Dragon King had never been to such a deep area and didn't know if its body could withstand the pressure.
Hai Long tried to enter one of the underwater canyons, descending along the slope. He controlled the Dragon King to release strong electricity to light up the surroundings and used a weak electric field to scan the environment.
The Dragon King slowly descended along the steep walls of the canyon. If the Dragon King felt any discomfort, Hai Long would immediately control it to return, determined not to let the Dragon King take any risks. However, when the Dragon King reached a depth of 300 meters, Hai Long still didn't feel any signs of discomfort. The Dragon King continued to the bottom of the canyon at 400 meters, and its body still showed no signs of discomfort. Hai Long was relieved, knowing that the Dragon King had deep-sea fish genes and could handle depths of 5,000 to 6,000 meters, so it shouldn't have any problems at 400 meters.
Since there were too many underwater canyons, Hai Long named the first one he entered "Canyon 1." He explored the bottom of Canyon 1 but found nothing, only some ordinary small fish.
Controlling the Dragon King to quickly swim out of Canyon 1, Hai Long continued searching nearby. Soon, he found Canyon 2. Using the weak electric field to scan, Hai Long found this canyon to be very interesting. He swam to the bottom of the canyon and, upon seeing the abundance of deep-sea shrimp, he shouted, "Damn!" and released a burst of electricity, then opened his mouth to devour them.
It turned out that Canyon 2 was full of legendary deep-sea shrimp, with the smallest being 30 centimeters long and the largest over half a meter. The canyon bottom was vast, and Hai Long roughly estimated that there were at least 30 tons of deep-sea shrimp in the canyon.
In 2002, deep-sea shrimp were extremely rare and expensive, costing 200 yuan per kilogram, almost as much as lobster. However, deep-sea shrimp were scarce, making them even more valuable. Unfortunately, the crack above the canyon was too small for fishing nets to enter and exit.
After the Dragon King ate the giant jellyfish's crystal core and grew two meters, Hai Long noticed that the Dragon King seemed to be lacking calcium, with its bones often making cracking sounds. Not only was it lacking calcium, but it was also deficient in various essential elements, leading to symptoms like drowsiness and weakness.
As a mammal living on Earth, the Dragon King's body needed seven major elements and eight trace elements, among others, totaling 20 essential elements. Growing two meters meant that the elements for that two meters had to come from the original three-meter body.
This led to a severe deficiency of the 20 essential elements in the Dragon King's body, resulting in various health issues, such as lethargy due to iron deficiency, numbness in the limbs due to potassium deficiency, and muscle spasms due to magnesium deficiency.
Fortunately, the Dragon King had previously eaten nutrient-rich food at the research institute, which had helped build up some reserves in its body. Otherwise, the sudden growth could have killed the Dragon King due to a lack of various vitamins and nutrients.
Feeling the Dragon King's issues, Hai Long bought a large amount of human vitamins and calcium supplements, but they had little effect. It would likely take time for the Dragon King to recover from the rapid growth.
However, if the Dragon King could eat high-calcium or vitamin-rich foods daily, it would recover faster. Unfortunately, there were no large shrimp in the Devil's Sea, which are rich in calcium. It turned out they were all hiding in the underwater canyons.
After a satisfying meal of steamed shrimp, Hai Long continued to control the Dragon King to search the seabed.
The shrimp, seeing the Dragon King releasing electricity and swimming around, tried to avoid it, making Hai Long feel quite uncomfortable. After searching for a while, he still couldn't find the goods. He had to swim out of Canyon 2 and head towards Canyon 3.