"It's just a fleet from another kingdom or civilization. There's no need to make such a fuss."
The other shipyard owners just took a glance and then turned their attention to the nearby area. Obviously, they had already started thinking about how to sell their ships.
The captain of the ship who saw it in the distance nodded, and then continued their previous "marketing tactics" that sounded like a quarrel.
But he couldn't concentrate and always had to look further away from time to time.
His brows furrowed more and more, because he found that the size and design of those ships seemed to be somewhat different from all the ships he had seen.
He blinked hard a few more times, and now he could hardly hear a word the shipyard owners beside him were saying.
His eyes were fixed on the ships approaching Delos.
Finally, after swallowing hard, he spoke.
"Forgive my ignorance...but what is that in the distance?"
"The size and design of those ships seem to be something I've never seen before."
Everyone's eyes looked in the direction of his finger.
However, most people only saw the blurry horizon and a few white clouds in the distance, because no one took his words seriously.
The distance here is very far, and it is easy to make mistakes and errors in observation.
"What's there? There's nothing at all?"
A shipyard owner spoke with dissatisfaction, his eyes almost narrowed into a line.
Another captain with better eyesight shouted, "Shut up, you blind man. With such poor eyesight, who would dare to buy a boat made by you?"
"Hiss... But it seems something has indeed appeared. Look at the horizon over there, it's a fleet."
"Hey? Fleet? Why are those ships... hey?"
Gradually, more people began to notice the abnormality in the distance.
A series of black spots appeared on the horizon, the number of which was staggering.
Not only that, the ship at the front also looks slightly larger from a distance.
After all, the people here are people who often come into contact with ships. They can basically guess the type and size of those ships just by looking at them from a distance.
So, in their view, those ships were almost capable of crossing the ocean.
But only kingdoms and civilizations engaged in maritime trade had such ships, and most of them would not sail such ships to Delos.
After all, these ships require considerable expenses for both consumables and maintenance, so these ships spend almost their entire lives transporting things.
Therefore, it is impossible for them to be sailed to the waters where Delos is located.
"What the hell is that?"
"There haven't been so many boats in previous years, have there?"
"Even at the previous World Conference, no kingdom or civilization would dare to approach with so many ships, right?"
A grumpy Athenian shipyard owner spat, his eyes showing a hint of suspicion and surprise.
"Wait! Are they pirates?"
"It's hard to say whether some foolish fellows didn't realize we were holding a world conference and followed in on some leader's beautiful ship."
An experienced old captain immediately shook his head: "No, it can't be pirates."
"Pirates wouldn't operate on such a large scale, and if they were pirates, there's no way the Greek patrol boats would let them in."
"You know, for this World Conference, Pericles mobilized almost the entire Athenian navy to monitor and guard the surrounding waters..."
However, when he said this, his tone suddenly became much more urgent.
"No! That's not right!"
"That scale, at least, there are more than a hundred ships!"
As soon as these words were spoken, everyone present gasped.
A fleet of over a hundred ships was almost unheard of in the Mediterranean world.
Even the most powerful Athenian navy rarely deployed more than fifty warships at a time.
The number of participants who came to the conference was relatively large, and they brought with them more than a dozen frigates, which was already a very large scale.
How could someone possibly send over a hundred ships for a conference? Furthermore, none of the ships had any intention of docking at any of the nearby islands; all were heading straight for Delos.
"It must be the Persian fleet!"
"Could it be that they succeeded in breaking through the Athenian warship defenses?"
Then, some people even shouted in panic: "They must be here to seek revenge on us!"
"I heard that three hundred Spartans killed thousands of Persian warriors. The Persian King of Kings must be planning to avenge his humiliation here!"
"But how dare they do this?! This is the venue for the World Conference!"
"Aren't they afraid of bringing about a catastrophic disaster by doing this?"
The large number of ships caused the panic to spread further, and people's speculations became more and more exaggerated.
Some even said that it might be a "ghost fleet", while others said that it might not be a real fleet, because it was impossible for anyone to dare to drive so many ships close to Delos, close to the venue of this world conference.
Anyone who dares to do this is essentially an enemy of the world.
At this moment, a shipyard owner who had been observing without saying anything and frowned raised his voice.
"Ouch! Calm down!"
"What Persians? What ghost ship?"
"Isn't that a fleet? Besides, we are all familiar with Persian warships. The warship at the other end is definitely not a Persian ship!"
Having said that, he paused, then squinted his eyes and stared for a few seconds.
"Yes, you can use the island over there as a reference."
"The silhouettes of those ships are so tall."
"We just need to identify which civilization or kingdom's fleet they belong to."
As the ships approached the islands, more details of the ships became clearer.
They found that every ship there was far larger than any ship commonly seen in the Mediterranean, even exceeding the size of the largest ships that Athens could build.
What's more, some of the ships were even larger than Portugal's ocean-going ships.
These behemoths were arranged in neat formation and sailed towards Delos with amazing consistency.
"Oh, gods! That size, that number... Which kingdom or civilization could possibly have accomplished this?"
"Why have I never heard of a kingdom or civilization capable of building such a massive ship before?"
People were all confused, but they couldn't see the flags on the fleet clearly, so they still couldn't tell which civilization the ships belonged to.
"I've never seen this before! Could it be a new civilization joining the World Conference?"
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