Pillars of Ita

Fang He was originally wondering why the armed merchant ships of the Shuyan Oath Court would go south through the bay area and appear in this place, but he did not expect that the data extracted from the crystal would surprise him.

He compiled the data on ether concentration in a table. The information was valid for about one month. It can be seen that the ship first crossed the entire bay area from north to south, and the ether concentration statistics reached the highest on January 14th.

That means it reached the edge of a certain ether node on that day, and there is only one ether node in the southwest of the entire Giant Tree Hill, which is the Island of Sandestadel.

"So it was here a month ago?" Daryl was a little incredulous. "But judging from the erosion on the ship, it must not have been stranded for that long."

"No," Fang He shook his head, "It didn't stop here at that time. There are records at the back."

However, the records at the end became extremely strange, with extremely strong fluctuations and even a blank space in the middle. Fang He read the second half of the table three times before a glimmer of light finally flashed in his eyes.

He realized something and reached out to cover the data: "January 17, Rusty Bay, January 26, Drakirim northern island chain, January 29, Yumki Strait."

He loosened his hand and finally realized what those fluctuating data meant - this ship of the Pivot of Flame did not arrive at this place from north to south as they had imagined.

On the contrary, it returned from the turbulent belt at least half a month ago and arrived here heading north. During this process, it experienced at least three battles.

Those abnormal fluctuations in data were caused by the hull being hit during the battle, the infiltration of wind elements, or the overload of the magic engine causing the element concentration to increase.

The last battle took place in Rusty Bay, where it was fatally injured. Its statistics have been rising abnormally since then until it ran aground here.

“Is the data accurate?” Daryl asked.

Fang He nodded. There were indeed many places on the sky and sea where the average concentration of wind elements was almost the same, but the voyage of a sailboat was not to jump from one place to another. It must have an intermediate process.

If the records of element concentrations in the process also match, it can almost point out a single route. He has checked it repeatedly and it is almost impossible to be wrong.

"So the people of the Primus were attacked?" Daryl asked again, "but who attacked them?"

Alice's thoughts went a step further: "Perhaps there is some secret on this ship. The people of the Pivotal Flame Oath Court brought something back from the turbulent layer. Generally speaking, armed merchant ships would not take this route, but the route shown in the records is already close to the Red Whirlpool."

"Could it be pirates?"

But Fang He looked at the form without saying a word.

He asked himself, could this really be the case?

The ship of the Court of the Oath of the Flame brought back something from the turbulent layer, which attracted the pirates' covetousness. They were besieged more than once during their return journey until they lost power and drifted here.

The data in the table seemed to support this statement, but could they have missed something? If pirates were really following them, how could they let go of this stranded ship? Could an armed merchant ship that had lost power escape pursuit?

The priceless planetary furnaces on the ship also seem to illustrate this point. If the pirates really visited, they would be unlikely to leave them behind.

He suddenly noticed another set of data in the table. On February 3, the ship crossed horizontally from the north of Yumki Strait. Detailed data records showed that it turned southeast after the afternoon and then turned west.

There was nothing wrong with this unremarkable set of route records, but during this period, the recorded data showed that this ship of the Pivot of Flame had experienced a battle.

Fang He immediately realized the meaning of these turns - it was trying to gain the upper hand. His heart skipped a beat:

A ship under attack would not behave like this!

That proves that it is at least fighting against the attacker, and may even be the one taking the initiative to attack.

He immediately checked several other sets of data and found that in every battle, the ship of the Pivot Flame Oath Court had a similar track.

And some strange records indicate that this ship of the Primus may not be alone.

The others noticed that he was repeatedly looking through the forms and realized that he had discovered something. "What's wrong?" Catherine, who had been silent in the captain's room, asked.

"This ship of the Pivotal Flame Oath Court may have once followed a fleet and fought a naval battle with a fleet of the same size."

"How did you come to this conclusion?"

Fang He immediately analyzed those sets of abnormal data and showed them to her. Catherine might not understand any ether knowledge, but she was well versed in the principles of naval warfare.

Fang He depicted the abnormal route of the armed merchant ship of the Shuyan Oath Court at those time points, and she immediately caught the abnormality.

"It caught up with the formation here."

She pointed to one set of data and said, "This change of direction is not simply about seizing the upper hand. We assume that the upper hand is in this direction, so if we want to seize the wind, it can be much simpler."

"It took such a strange route, which can only mean that there were other ships in front of it or on its left or right. In order to avoid or keep up with the track, it made such a change of direction."

That's no problem.

He and Catherine, two experienced people, came to the same conclusion. The people of the Pivotal Flame Oath Court once formed a fleet in the turbulent layer and exchanged fire with another fleet.

Why are they fleets of the same size? Because judging from the situation, the people of the Pivot Flame Oath Court may not have fought before. If only this ship was damaged, then other ships could still rescue it.

But the fact that it had to drift and run aground here only meant that the entire fleet of the Central Flame Oath Court had suffered a fatal blow, leaving other ships no time to spare.

"The question now is," Alice was silent for a long time before finally speaking, "who has the ability to defeat the fleet of the Pivotal Flame Oath Court?"

The Rotao people are the masters of the New Sea and the recognized overlords of this empty sea. Their armed merchant fleet is not something that ordinary people dare to challenge.

The first impression that jumped into everyone's mind was the Osu people. In this sea area, only the Osu people's fleet could easily defeat the fleet of the Primus.

Then there was the Gulf People's Salt-Bone Fleet.

The Gulf people are naturally no match for Rotao, but the Saltbone Fleet should have no problem defeating a fleet of the Pivotal Flame Oath Court.

It's just that the Saltbone Fleet that set out from Thousand Pillars Harbor is said to be confronting the northern pirates. The people of the Gulf should not deceive them about this because the lie is too easy to be exposed.

He could contact the fleets cruising nearby at Stargate Port, and the other party should be aware of the current whereabouts of the Salt Bone Fleet.

But according to the pirates' confessions, it was the people of the Pivotal Flame Oath Chamber who provided the Oshu people with information about them. If these people were allies of the Oshu people, how could they have fought in the turbulent layer?

The two imperial warships appeared in Fang He's mind.

What exactly are they searching for?

Why are the Imperials also searching for their own fleet? Could it be that the combined fleet of the Oshurs and the Triumvirate suffered a devastating blow in the turbulent layer?

But this idea was too terrifying. If the Oshurs and the Pivotal Flame Oath joined forces, who in this sea could defeat them? Could they just rely on these pirates on Volaticus Island?

Even if we add a blood shark pirate to them, they still won't be enough to fight.

"What do these blank data mean?" Daryl asked, pointing to the omitted data on the table.

Fang Yu shook his head.

Not every piece of data has a clear answer. They are just speculations based on the current situation, and there may be omissions in the speculated information.

The blank data may have been deleted manually, or there may be a problem with the record. The situation in the air and sea is changeable and anything is possible.

There was too little information available at the moment, and the existing routes could only provide limited answers. He had not expected that simply extracting a piece of data would make things so suspicious.

Catherine was also frowning. She didn't expect that the people of Rotao would intervene in this matter - including the opponent who had never appeared.

If the other party can even defeat the Pivotal Flame Oath Court, it only means that their strength is still above that of the Rotao people. Could the other party's goal be the same as theirs?

After all, she was no longer the female pirate who roamed the sky and the sea. All her subordinates were lost in the betrayal and battle with the Blood Shark Pirates, and only the Seven Seas Storm was left, an old armed merchant ship.

With this ship, not to mention fighting against opponents of the same level as the Pirate Flame Oath Court, even if facing the Blood Shark Pirates, the outcome is unpredictable. Catherine is naturally well aware of this. Right now, the only person she can rely on is the young man in front of her.

She couldn't help but look at Fang He.

Fang He understood what the female pirate was worried about, but he shook his head, "The purpose of the Pivot Flame Oath Court may not necessarily be Vor-Salastir."

"Why?" In fact, he could tell from the attitude of the Sons of the Gulf that most people only regarded the Proof of Overlord as an illusory legend. Perahven once invested a lot of manpower and resources to find the legendary floating port, but after several centuries, he found nothing in the end.

Even the Salt Bone Fleet has given up on continuing to go deeper into the Turbulent Belt to search for this legend. How likely is it that the Pivot Flame Oath Court has sent people to search for its whereabouts from thousands of miles away?

Moreover, Wo-Salastir was constantly migrating between different seas, and it was not without its proximity to Rotao. If the people of Rotao were looking for this port, then the relevant news should have been known to everyone long ago.

What's more, the Oath Chamber of the Flame is active in the Gulf region. If their purpose conflicts with that of their group, the Sons of the Gulf will definitely remind them.

After all, the fountain of youth they are looking for may be closely related to the legendary port. This is related to the vital interests of the Sons of the Gulf, and they will not be insensitive to this.

However, Fang He was unable to draw a definite conclusion. Moreover, there was a fleet in the turbulent zone that could defeat the Shuyan Oath Court, and the other party might still be in this area. This was indeed a potential threat to them.

He first remotely commanded Alice and Daryl to remove the planetary furnace from the ship, then packed it with canvas and transported it to the island, where they found a safe place to hide it and waited for them to return before taking it away.

This took them most of the day, but the storm sweeping across the Gulf would cover the area of ​​Nimber-Certus for two days and two nights. The pirates would not be able to get through the storm, so they had plenty of time.

After noon, Alice and Daryl took Olivia back to the Seven Seas Storm in a small boat. They officially passed the inter-island route between Sandesitadel Island and Dafilmante Islands and began to enter the turbulent layer.

The turbulent layer, also known as the turbulent zone, is, as the name suggests, an area where air and sea conditions are extremely complex. The intricate spatial phenomena make it impossible to produce constant climate conditions here.

There are no fixed sea and land breezes here all year round. The prevailing wind belts and the direction of air and sea currents may change at any moment, and there are always dangerous wind shears at high and low altitudes.

A crosswind that comes without any warning and a dangerous gap in wind element concentration may cause a sailboat to suddenly lose altitude or even hit a floating reef hidden in the clouds.

But the most dangerous thing in this area is the vortex that appears without any reason. People still don’t understand what causes this vortex that appears without any warning above the turbulent layer. One hypothesis is that it is related to the sudden appearance of a space rift.

In short, almost no sailboat caught in such a whirlpool can survive.

The deeper this vortex goes into the continental bridge, the more frequent it becomes in the turbulence, which is why ships heading to the New World must be equipped with members of the Silver Rank or above.

This was because only those with strength above the Silver Rank could detect this kind of turbulence in the air and sea in advance. Even inside the Bridge of Heaven, the more dangerous invisible vortex could only be detected by the Dragon Knight.

The reason why the ship ticket to the New World is so expensive is largely due to the personnel cost. Looking at the entire Ataria, it is only a few thousand silvers, and is widely distributed among various major forces.

The value of these people can be imagined.

However, the good news is that the Drakirim Red Vortex is located at the edge of the turbulent layer, and the location of the Elegy Islands is not deep into the land bridge.

What's more, the red vortex itself is a constant vortex in the sky and sea. Legend has it that there is a huge space rift underneath it, which swallows up the sky and sea vortex like a black hole.

This ever-present "black hole" actually causes all the spatial rifts in the Elegy Islands to converge here, which in turn makes the space in other areas safer. Therefore, the nearby sea area is considered a relatively stable area in the turbulent zone.

Fang He had an experience of going deep into the continental bridge in the Silver Tower. Of course, the simulated air and sea environment could not compare to the real one. The actual turbulent layer was thousands of times more dangerous than the simulated environment.

But that experience at least gave him a lot of experience and gave him a general idea of ​​the dangers in the turbulent layer.

What's more, there is Catherine, a Silver-level warrior, on the Seven Seas Storm. Even if they really encounter a sky and sea vortex, they can still avoid it in advance.

After they entered the turbulent layer, the compass on the ship was the first to lose its function - the huge magnetic field formed by the space rift below the Drakirim Red Vortex directly pulled the compass in that direction.

The compass needle swayed between the two scales of due west, occasionally shaking violently, or deviating from its original direction to point to the northwest. In short, it lost its reference function.

The first thing Fang He saw was the wind veil layer - a flowing color barrier suspended thousands of meters in the air, composed of wind element faults of different concentrations interwoven, showing translucent dark blue ripples.

Like a rainbow covering the sky.

Everyone looked up at the scene.

"How spectacular!"

Tianlan was sighing on the deck and using video to record this elemental fault that stretched for thousands of miles.

Most of the other people also gathered here to admire this magnificent scene that was like the aurora, but the aurora only appeared in the night sky of the polar regions, and the wind veil layer was a wonder above the entire elemental layer—

It covers almost the empty sea.

But behind that beautiful scene actually lies a huge danger. The element fault is essentially caused by the space fault. The dislocated space disconnects the originally evenly distributed element layers.

It is for this reason that such magnificent natural landscapes are created.

Since even the space is dislocated, the original limited means of observation are useless here.

The starlight was transmitted along the wrong trajectory, and the sextant was unable to determine their original position. Sometimes the misplaced starry sky would even lead the ship into some potential danger.

For example, the Broken Time Corridor.

However, this was expected, as there have been many ships that have traveled to this sea area over the centuries, and the Sons of the Gulf have left behind a large number of hydrological records.

Among them, the record of the Drakirim Red Vortex is of utmost importance. Fang He did not expect that simple orientation could help him in the turbulent layer.

A star tracker had already been prepared on the ship. The most important function of this device is to anchor the star anchor.

The Star Anchor is the only device in the turbulent belt that can record etheric pulse information. It was once drawn by the first group of adventurers who crossed the Sky Bridge, and later it was constantly modified and redrawn to record the changing island chain and "flow belt" information.

To this day, it has become the only 'chart' across the land bridge, so sailors also call it the Crystal Chart.

These things are now in the hands of adventurer associations belonging to different countries, as well as major guilds. They are also the "tickets" to the new world.

Fang He participated in the mainland league in the past just for such a ticket.

However, due to coincidence, they finally managed to grab such a "ticket" at an auction through Luo Hao and Hezi's group.

It turns out that the original owner of this ticket was Adeni, or the girl whose real name was Nia - but now, it has come into the hands of the Seven Seas Travel Group.

It was originally installed on the Seven Seas Traveler, but this time because they were going to the turbulent zone, Fang Heron took it down and carried it on the Seven Seas Storm.

The star anchor was installed on the crystal track of the Radiant Tracker. It would automatically align with the direction of the etheric pulse current, because in the ever-changing turbulent layer of space, the etheric pulse current was the only reliable reference.

Just as there are tides on the sea of ​​light, the etheric flow also has a return cycle, so the positioning of the star anchor also has a window period.

Once they missed it, they would have to wait for the next window, but luckily, the next window was just a few hours away.

Fang He saw a series of islands rising behind the separated wind veil, and the broken floating islands spanned the sky and sea like bridges.

They often extend for dozens or even hundreds of miles.

That is the land bridge.

But this is just the end of it. The Elegy Islands themselves are a broken continental bridge, pulled into a ring by the red vortex.

Similar broken continental bridges abound in this sea, but only one of them leads to the door to the world.

Fang He adjusted the positioning of the Radiant Tracker to point it in the direction of the Rusty Bay. After about a few hours, the etheric pulse flow would return.

A "flow belt" will appear on the empty sea, and that short flow belt will take them to that place.

They agreed on a meeting place with Luo Hao and the big cat man.

...(End of chapter)