The light on the coast guard radar screen flickered. Tang Ren lay on the side of the ship and vomited, holding half a piece of ginger candy in his mouth. "This wave is even more bizarre than the case of Lao Qin's father!" He wiped the corner of his mouth and suddenly pointed to the sea in the distance, "Look! The splash is not right!"
Su Chen's portable sound was thrown into the sea, and the wave pattern was distorted into the shape of a whale on the tablet. Qin Feng pulled open the sleeves of his shirt that were wet by the waves, revealing the peace knot that his mother had just made: "No... It's not a whale, it's the sound pattern of a submarine!"
A rusted anchor floated in the waves, with a faded children's swimming ring entangled on the anchor chain. When Lin Lu used a long hook to catch it, the fluorescent graffiti on the inside of the swimming ring suddenly lit up - it was the rainbow gate that Xiaoyu had painted.
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Divers found the wreckage of a shipwreck on the seabed more than 10 meters deep. When the searchlight swept over the hull, Tang Ren's respirator almost fell off. Hundreds of pottery figurines knelt in the mud and sand, each with a dark blue tile embedded in their bodies, holding maltose-shaped capsules in their hands.
"This... This is the seventh ship!" Qin Feng's flashlight was fixed on the bronze bell on the bow. "The bell... The bell tongue is a part of the Qin family's ancestral pocket watch!"
Su Chen scraped the glaze from the eyes of the figurine, and under the microscope, Lin Zhenye's handwritten number emerged. When he touched the number, the figurine suddenly cracked, and what gushed out was not seawater but sweet syrup.
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In the temporary deck laboratory, syrup crystallized on the condensation plate. Tang Ren licked the test tube and said, "It's sweeter than grandma's!" Suddenly his face turned green - the powder left on the tip of his tongue was detected to contain hallucinogens.
Qin Feng found micro-carved words in the crystallized candy: "To the little deer: When you tasted the bitterness, Grandpa had left the sweetness at the bottom of the sea." Lin Lu trembled and put the candy into his mouth. The salty tears diluted the sweetness: "It's sea salt... Grandpa knows that I am afraid of bitterness..."
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Late at night at the Longyao ruins, Su Chen lay on the blue brick floor and listened. The vibration every fifteen minutes matched perfectly with the ticking of his pocket watch. Tang Ren picked up the iron shovel and smashed the base of the altar. The bronze gear set bit Qin's father's pocket watch, and the longitude and latitude were engraved on the back of the dial.
"This... this is the route of the ship back then!" Qin Feng projected the coordinates onto the nautical chart, and the light dots formed the Big Dipper. "The... the first point is the direction of my mother's wheelchair!"
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In the garden of the nursing home, Qin's mother suddenly grabbed the armrest of the wheelchair. Her nails carved different deep and shallow marks on the armrest. After Su Chen covered it with rubbing paper, it turned out to be the incomplete part of the ancient navigation star map. Tang Ren opened the old man's tightly clenched left hand, and there was a blue glass bead stuck in his palm, and a microfilm was sealed inside.
The moment the projector lit up, everyone held their breath—Qin's father was covered in blood, holding a file bag, and behind him was a box full of children's crayons. He murmured to the camera: "The evidence is in the sugar..."
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Xiaoyu's hospital room became a makeshift command post, with three walls covered in crayon drawings. Lin Lu used an ultraviolet light to scan "My Home," and the rainbow on the window suddenly split into a spectrum. Su Chen fed the spectrum into the sonar system, and suddenly a regular knocking sound came from the bottom of the sea - Morse code spelling out "Save Me."
"It's a living person!" Tang Ren knocked over the paint bucket, and purple splashed on the nautical chart, just circling the location of the sanatorium, "Underground air raid shelter!"
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The iron door deep inside the air-raid shelter needed to be unlocked by pupils, and Qin Feng pushed his mother to the identification device. The moment the iris scan passed, the old woman suddenly hummed a strange lullaby. Behind the door was a huge circular aquarium, with thirty children suspended in blue liquid, with white porcelain wind chimes tied to their wrists.
"This... this is a human body cryonics experiment!" Su Chen smashed the control console, "They... they are using children as living culture media!"
As Tang Ren's fire axe chopped at the glass, Lin Lu discovered words engraved on the bottom of the aquarium: "When sugar becomes medicine, sin blossoms."
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In the emergency room, the children's eyelashes were frosted. Xiaoyu's electrocardiogram suddenly fluctuated, and he grabbed the corner of Lin Lu's clothes: "Uncle Lan said... we are the sugar that cures diseases..." Su Chen took a blood test and found that the cobalt element in the blood was devouring cancer cells: "This... This is a gene therapy modified by drugs!"
Qin Feng looked through the freezing chamber log and found a photo of his father on the last page: Under the steel stamp of "1988 Human Experiment Approval Form" was the signature of the current mayor.
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The live broadcast of the press conference was interrupted, the mayor tore up the speech script, and the dark blue cufflinks on his wrist suddenly exploded with blue mist. Tang Ren threw out an iron spoon to shatter the smoke bomb, and Qin Feng pulled off his wig in the melee - there was a complete Big Dipper tattooed on his scalp.
"You...you are the captain of the first ship!" Qin Feng smashed his father's pocket watch to the ground, and the dial cracked to reveal a micro film roll, "The missing child case thirty years ago..."
Su Chen protected the children and retreated to the safe passage. Lin Lu suddenly smashed the white porcelain wind chime. The high-frequency sound waves collapsed the secret door. At the moment when the moonlight poured in, Qin's mother's wheelchair suddenly rushed to the podium. Her skinny fingers pressed the remote control, and the screen played the video of the mayor's transaction with the drug lord.
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Three months later, at the sugar factory celebration, Xiaoyu stuffed the first non-toxic maltose into Qin's mother's mouth. The old woman's cloudy eyes shone with clarity, and she hummed the complete "Kiln Fire Song". Tang Ren danced the Yangko in front of the sugar painting stall, cutting the news of the mayor's arrest into sugar wrappers.
Green smoke came out of Lin Lu's new kiln, and white porcelain wind chimes rang softly on the eaves. Su Chen folded the test report into a paper boat and put it into the river, with Qin's father's police badge glowing on the bow. The sea breeze swept through the maltose in Qin Feng's mouth, sending that sweetness to the direction of the ebb and flow.
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