Endless Ocean: Escape Starting from a Canoe

Chapter 37 Bold guess

As for the allies the other party mentioned?

Ha ha.

Can someone you've never met, and whose identity you've never revealed, be called an ally?

Shi Ming began to speculate about the other party's identity and intentions.

First, we can rule out that it was someone from the Sakura's side.

After all, Naruno has ended up like that over the past thirty years, and she doesn't seem like someone with a background. If she really had power in the underworld, she wouldn't have fallen to such a state—the entire Sakura ship doesn't even have many supplies that Shi Ming would be interested in, the kind that even raiders wouldn't bother with.

Is he a political enemy of the Great Wilderness?

Risking exposure and reminding himself of the impending crisis, how much benefit could he possibly gain? Should he use this opportunity to stop the Great Wilderness from recovering the treasure, and then seize the chance to attack him?
Or perhaps this "well-intentioned reminder" understood the true value of the treasure and felt that having it in his own hands would give him a greater chance of intercepting it.
Shi Ming did not reply to that message.

He increasingly felt that the "nautical chart" was not simple.

He retrieved the map from his system repository, activated it again using his awakened power, placed it on the table, and examined it closely with a magnifying glass.

After searching for a long time, he only found two or three tiny black dots on the map. They were all within 3000 nautical miles of his current location.

No other discoveries were made.

"No, maybe my approach to the investigation was wrong."

"Perhaps I should change my mind."

"Suppose... I were Junichi, how would I use this map?"

He withdrew his power from the map, waited for it to return to its normal state, and then took out the bottle of "Black Shark Blood" that the former captain Junichi had treasured. He carefully took a drop of the Black Shark Blood and dripped it onto the edge of the map.

The black shark blood itself is the catalyst for human awakening, and naturally it also has the power to activate the nautical chart, which is equivalent to Chunben himself operating it.

wow——

The map has changed again!
The map, now restored to its original state, has turned azure blue again!

But this time it's different!
Shi Ming's eyes widened!
This time, on the blue map, within a circle with a radius of about 20 centimeters centered on Shi Ming's location, there were a large number of tiny black dots densely distributed!

Hundreds,

Do not,
Maybe more!

The closer the black dot is to Shi Ming's coordinates, the darker its color. The black dots at the edge of the circle are barely visible. Therefore, it can be inferred that this circle with a radius of 20 centimeters likely represents the detection range of the nautical chart.

While shocked, Shi Ming also keenly noticed a detail.

"I activated it using the power of Xuanwu. There were very few black spots within the circular area, only two or three. Among them was the location of Xuanwu."

"When it is activated with black shark blood, the black spots that appear in this circular area are densely packed. Although there are also black spots in the Xuanwu area, they are relatively blurry and are obviously not the same as the previous ones."

"The Black Tortoise is an S-class sea beast, while the Black Shark is only a D-class sea beast."

"Does the feedback from the map differ depending on the method of activation?"

Make bold assumptions, then verify them carefully!
Shi Ming made a guess about the principle behind this "secret treasure"! It was:

Be strong when you are strong!

If it encounters an S-rank, it will detect an S-rank! Based on the information already obtained, Shi Ming boldly speculates that if an S-rank Awakener catalyzes its ability, then the map will show the location of the S-rank sea beasts it can detect! If a D-rank Awakener catalyzes its ability, the map will show the location of the D-rank sea beasts it can detect.

The closer the sea monster is to the user, the darker the black dot becomes!
But this doesn't mean you can encounter them on the surface; most powerful sea creatures live in the deep sea, or even deeper.

In other words, the power of nautical charts likely depends on the user's skill level. It's a pity that this powerful treasure has remained untapped since it fell into the hands of the underworld, its true potential untapped!
No wonder, the underworld doesn't have any S-class Awakened!
Even if there are A-level or B-level awakened individuals, they may not have actually come into contact with this treasure due to their higher status or other reasons.

That's why Chunyi lent it out so easily! And now it's fallen into Shi Ming's hands!
……

Of course, all of this is just Shi Ming's speculation.

There is no empirical evidence yet.

Moreover, his speculations may contain many illogical aspects due to information asymmetry.

But that's alright. Verification isn't difficult; the difficulty lies in having no clue. He will gradually figure out the true purpose of this map.

"If the inference is true, then this map is definitely a treasure!"

Shi Ming stared at the map spread out on his desk, his eyes gleaming as he looked at the dense black dots covering the surrounding sea.

This is a small, A4-sized world map with a very small scale of 1:30,000,000. Every centimeter on the map represents 300 kilometers, or 162 nautical miles, in the real world. The map's detection circle has a radius of 20 centimeters. If this assumption is true, does it mean that the map can detect sea creatures up to 3200 nautical miles away?

At the same time, using the intensity of the black dot of Xuanwu drifting on the sea surface as a benchmark, could we infer the depth of the sea monster's location from the sea surface based on the depth of other black dots?
The feasibility is extremely high!
Information is often hidden in meticulous judgment of details.

It was thanks to Shi Ming's intelligence analysis skills, honed during his missions, that he was able to keenly realize this and guess a possibility.

……

Yinping Sea Area. 138 degrees east longitude, 35 degrees north latitude.

A thick fog blanketed the area.

The majestic, admiral-class drifting ship "Black Society" looms in and out of the thick fog like a mountain range. In an office somewhere on this giant drifting ship, Oohara is reporting to his direct superior, the illustrious "Admiral of the Sea," Itsukushima Rin.

"General Itsukushima, whose Xirang Research Institute is affiliated with [Da Yu], recently claimed to have deciphered part of the inscription on the mysterious stone tablet from Mount Everest. Should we contact them soon to purchase some information?"

"Intelligence from the Xirang Research Institute is always expensive. Have they revealed what kind of intelligence this is?"

Admiral Itsukushima Rin, who was in charge of the naval expedition, sat comfortably on a deerskin sofa.

At that moment, he was looking at the documents in his hand while communicating with his subordinate, Da Huangye, about government affairs.

"It's said to be a list, a list of special treasures in the endless ocean, but only the second half is available."

After the advent of the era of wandering, Mount Everest, as one of the few areas not submerged by seawater, was hailed as the last self-reserved land on Earth.

Human survivors made several explorations and unexpectedly discovered a mysterious stone tablet on the summit of Mount Everest.

The inscription contains 33,000 characters, yet it does not belong to the writing system of any civilization.

Behind the stone tablet, there is also a rock painting.

Inspired by the rock paintings and through the arduous explorations of some of humanity's pioneers, the survivors discovered a way to awaken.

Itsukushima Rin pondered for a long time.

"We buy."

(End of this chapter)