BXBX NOVEL Chapter 243 - Treasure in the Shipwreck
Chapter 243: Treasure in the Shipwreck
“It’s over a hundred and fifty meters deep here, be careful.” Fa Daiyue reminded him.
Chu Xian nodded. At this point, the he was as comfortable in the sea as he was on land, and if he did not care about the opinion of others, he could completely dive to the seabed without any diving equipment at all.
After jumping off the boat, Chu Xian quickly dived down to the bottom of the sea.
In the nearby distance, the professional divers proceeded far more slowly, and they watched in shock as Chu Xian dived downward like a fish and quickly neared the seabed.
At the sea floor, Chu Xian used his god’s eye view, and very quickly an ancient mercantile ship appeared in his view.
But this mercantile ship hadn’t sank to the seabed, but was stuck under two tilted mountains.
How exactly it happened was unclear, but the ship was stuck underneath the mountains with only a few meters of the ship head visible.
Chu Xian looked at the ship and frowned a little, and swam over to examine it more closely.
The ship was not completely stuck, but was just in a hard to get position underneath the two slanted mountains. The space between the mountains and the ship was also extremely small, and was too thin for a person to swim into.
At the front of the ship were the obvious signs of damage from previous attempts to salvage the ship, but it seemed that although the ship was ancient, it was very hardy and had not been damaged and the divers could not enter through a side hole and bring out the items.
“How strange. This commercial ship has been stuck here in such a strange position.” Chu Xian was extremely confused by this shipwreck, and was not at all surprised that the navy had not been able to salvage it. The only way they could do this was to wrap rope around the ship and have the dunkleosteus drag it forward horizontally to get the ship out from under the boats.
Chu Xian looked around, and very quickly the group of divers arrived with their measuring equipment.
“Did you see it? What do you think, isn’t it very strange?”
When Chu Xian surfaced, Fa Daiyue called over with a smile.
“I saw. It is very weird, I can’t even imagine how that ship got stuck there.
Chu Xian nodded and pulled the mask away from his face before calling back.
“Our people guess that a weather event caused huge whirlpools in this area and dragged the whole ship under. You probably also saw that if we want to salvage the thing, we need the dunkleosteus to drag it forward.”
Fa Daiyue looked over at the ten dunkleosteus in the distance, excitement in his eyes.
“Can’t you use submarines to pull it?” Chu Xian asked with some confusion.
“No, it’s impossible. The topography of the area makes it impossible for our submarines to get into position on the seabed, and the only solution we’ve come up with was to bomb the mountains, but there might be China from the Song Dynasty inside the ship and we couldn’t risk it, so we’ve just let it sit here.” Fa Daiyue explained.
“I see.” Chu Xian nodded and climbed on board. “When your men are ready, I’ll lead the dunkleosteus under water.”
“No problem.” Fa Daiyue nodded.
About half an hour later, the divers were prepared below, and Old Shi nodded to Chu Xian.
A dunkleosteus swam below the ship, and Chu Xian directly jumped onto its back. As the dunkleosteus dived below, Chu Xian pulled on his oxygen mask and hugged its body.
“They are very intelligent fish. It’s like a scene out of a fantasy world.” Old Shi exclaimed in amazement.
“Yes, the world is a mysterious place. Humans are not the only ones who possess intelligence, but humans are the only ones who have been able to pass down their knowledge.” Dr. Gu nodded.
Although they were surprised, they never imagined that Chu Xian might have supernatural powers. After all, with the status of these military officers, there was very little below their pay grade. There was no documented cases of supernatural humans, and so they relegated that kind of thing to fiction. The intelligence the dunkleosteus had shown was about on par with dolphins, and while it was a surprise, it was not unbelievable.
Chu Xian arrived at the sea bed with the ten dunkleosteus. The dozen or so divers waved at him.
Chu Xian immediately asked the dunkleosteus to swim over.
The divers watched the gigantic and fierce dunkleosteus with some trepidation, but Chu Xian stood by calmly and helped the dunkleosteus into a jacket.
This so called jacket was just leather and ropes that were attached to the stuck ship.
Very quickly, the ten jackets were attached. Chu Xian knew what came next, and he rode a dunkleosteus and had the others form a line.
The divers signed an “ok” and Chu Xian immediately had the dunkleosteus swim forward.
Very soon, he could feel the dunkleosteus beneath him pulling against a strong force. Chu Xian looked back, and silently encouraged the fish to pull harder.
“Pong pong.”
The sound of the friction and ship hull against mountain filled the water, and Chu Xian could see the ship slowly exiting the crevice.
“Good job.” Chu Xian could feel that the dunkleosteus were completely fine and patted their body before having them slowly move forward.
“If i had hundreds of dunkleosteuses and thousands of mermen, I could mine and salvage at the sea bottom, and even build underwater? At that time, would I be able to harness all of the sea’s resources?” Chu Xian suddenly thought.
And even though this matter seemed like a dream, he thought it might actually be possible.
The ship was slowly dragged forward, and very soon a twenty meter ship was in open sea view.
The divers waved excitedly and Chu Xian nodded, untying the dunkleosteuses before swimming back over to the ship.
As he came to the ship, Chu Xian saw a damaged chest and pulled away the wood covering it. When he opened the chest, he found a broken piece of porcelain inside.
The divers around him saw his actions but did not stop him. They knew that this young man was the general’s friend, and was also the only one who could control the giant creatures. They would not try anything even if he took the porcelain away, let alone try to stop him from examining it.
“Why are they broken?” Chu Xian furrowed his brows and opened another chest. This time he found a complete piece, a very delicate looking bowl. He examined it with some curiosity and picked it up before heading back to the surface.
“We’ve troubled you with this matter, Xiao Xian.” As soon as Chu Xian surfaced, Old Shi smiled and called over. He had already heard that the ship had been successfully salvaged.
“Heihei, Grandpa Shi, I’m being paid for this, you don’t need to be so polite. In the ship there are many broken pieces of China, but I’ve found a complete bowl.” As Chu Xian board the ship, he called back and raised the little bowl.
“Come, come, let me see, let me see.” Grandpa Shi walked over and took the bowl to examine.
“An official ware. It’s unmistakable, it’s a certified porcelain from the Song Dynasty.” Old Shi said excitedly, holding the little bowl with careful adoration.
“Is it expensive?” Chu Xian asked curiously. Fa Daiyue also looked over – neither of them knew much about ancient porcelain.
“Of course, an official Song Dynasty piece of porcelain is worth at least five million rmb. Although this bowl is not too big, it should be worth at least five million.”
“So expensive? I saw that a lot of the porcelain on the boat is broken, does that mean we’ve lost billions?” Chu Xian looked at the little bowl with surprise, not truly understanding why this thing was worth so much money.
“Ai, it’s unavoidable. Some of them will be repaired, but their price will fall by a lot.” Old Shi shook his head .
After it was confirmed that the ship contained China, the salvage staff did not dare drag the ship up and out, and instead sent in the group of divers to carefully extract the porcelain pieces.
Very quickly, the porcelain artifacts were retrieved and on the military ship. Old Shi walked here and there in heart broken silence as he examined the many broken pieces.
Other than the porcelain pieces, there were some jade artifacts and rotted silk.
“It’s pretty good. Although a lot of these things have been destroyed, there are still quite a few preserved pieces. The whole haul should at least eight to nine hundred million rmb.” Old Shi estimated. There were over a hundred unbroken porcelain pieces, and all the jade artifacts were pretty much intact. On the side, there were also numerous broken pieces that could be repaired.
“Eight to nine hundred million!” Chu Xian’s heart pounded. If he had found these things himself, he would have hit the jackpot.
“Looks like in the future I’ll need to pay more attention to shipwrecks. If I can find ten, I’ll make ten billion. This is basically a matter of printing money!”
Chu Xian imagined the possibilities and fire shone from his eyes.
Across the globe, there are millions of shipwrecks rotting away on the seabed. Although many of the fishing ships were not worth anything, there would be the odd ship here or there that would be worth over hundreds of million and even billions of rmb.
“Have them haul the Lisa up. Let’s see what’s left.” Old Shi called over to Fa Daiyue.
The salvage ship slowly lifted the Lisa out of the water, and as it slowly broke the water, Chu Xian watched and exclaimed silently in his heart.
“The sunken treasure is finally seeing the light of day after centuries.”
“Hehe.” Old Shi smiled. “Yes, the silent treasure has lain below for hundreds of years. Just think about all the treasures that are buried underwater that we have no discovered yet.” *
“Oh? Are there a lot of shipwrecks in the South Sea?” Chu Xian asked.
“Of course. The South Sea was an important part of the famous silk road, and is called one of the three biggest graveyards for shipwrecks, alongside the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Some scholars think that since the Song Dynasty, over a hundred thousand ancient ships have been sunk in this area. These ships were quite big, and a medium sized mercantile ship could carry over ten thousand pieces of porcelain artifacts. This silk road on the sea was also known as the “Beautiful Porcelain Road.”
“Do you know how long it took us to salvage the South Sea One, the biggest and most well preserved ship our country has salvaged, and can you imagine how much we retrieved from it?”
“South Sea One?” Chu Xian’s imagination was filled with images of a treasure ship with enough loot to stun the world.
“That’s right. We spent a twenty year from 1987 to 2007 and over three hundred million in salvage cost, but the end result stunned everyone. We recovered over eighty thousand treasures from the South Sea One, with a total value of over three hundred billion US dollars, and that was only the monetary value. The historical importance of what was recovered is immeasurable, and can only be compared with the unearthing of the Terracotta Army.”
“Three hundred billion US dollars?” Chu Xian was shocked senseless. Three hundred billion dollars was the entire net worth of some top class corporations. As the saying went, the wealth involved rivaled that of nations. Even the richest man in the world did not have a hundred billion dollars.
Maybe if you added the ten richest men together, they would have a net worth of three hundred billion.
Shocking! This number left Chu Xian speechless.
“Hehe.” Old Shi chuckled at Chu Xian’s surprised expression. “There are countless treasures in the sea. Maybe in the future, your Dunkleosteus will find these treasures, and then Xiao Xian, you’ll be incredibly rich.”
Chu Xian nodded in deep thought. “It might happen.”
“Haha, are you moved?” Old Shi laughed heartily. “But it’s true, your Dunkleosteus might really find some. If you really do find something, you have to call this old man over and show me. Of course I won’t try to take your treasure.”
Chu Xian laughed, and did not pay much mind to Old Shi’s joking tone. He had really been moved by his words.
If he found a shipwreck and salvaged hundreds of millions or even billions of rmb of treasure, he would earn more than he could ever earn from selling fish and aquariums.
He was considering even reforming a group of mermen to hunt for treasure.
As long as he found the treasure, he could easily salvage it. If he had to, he could just send his mermen underwater and they could handle the whole matter as easily as if they were on land.
“Is there anything you like here, you can take it home.” Old Shi smiled at Chu Xian.
“I’m not too interested in these things.” Chu Xian chuckled.
“We’ll go over to the Shang Wen tomorrow. That ship should be worth far more than this one.” Fa Daiyue came over and put his hand on his shoulder.
Chu Xian nodded.
The night, Chu Xian did not return to shore. He stayed on the military ship with Old Shi and the others and looked over information about shipwrecks, and as he studied, his fire for treasure hunting grew and grew.
For example, in the UK,over 2.4 billion pounds worth of gold had sunk into the water. There were stories of a gold armada that had gotten lost at sea, or a Californian gold mine that had gone down miles from coast. Countless treasures and rumors of treasure existed around the globe.
Some people said that if you salvaged all the shipwreks and treasures in the sea, you would have enough money to buy all of Japan.
The next day, Chu Xian brought the Dunkleosteus with him to the Shangwen wreck. According to Fa Daiyue, this wreck had been found in the 90s, but the sea here was over three hundred meters deep, and even divers would only be able to stay around the sea floor for four to five minutes. It was extremely difficult to recover, but the haul was from the Han Dynasty, and far more precious that those they’d recovered from the Lisa.
Chu Xian was surprised again.
“Hehe, Xiao Xian, you shouldn’t assume that all shipwrecks are worth a lot of money. Some wrecks aren’t worth anything, and some are worth only ten million or even a bare million. These kind of wrecks often aren’t worth the cost of salvaging them.”
Old Shi saw Chu Xian’s excitement and gently reminded.
Chu Xian nodded and shook some of his wilder thoughts away.
“Brother Fa, lend me some diving equipment. I want to go down and take a look.” Chu Xian called to Fa Daiyue.
“Are you sure? You know the professional divers can only go down two hundred meters.”
“Haha, don’t worry. I can’t promise about other matters, but in this kind of thing, I’m far better than the professional divers.”