Chapter 232 The Blessing Spreading Spirits
Seamlessly perfect?
This should not be difficult, since there were way more unexpected situations than the stars in the sky. It was somehow common to have some accidents, too!
The time was 2 p.m., and the electric eel was expected to take a little more than a day to arrive. At that time, Libya"s Garaf Economic Sea area would surely be the center of focus worldwide.
As for the environmental problems caused by this incident, Chen Fan"s philosophy was "Having a dead friend is better than being dead yourself." Since the ones who would get into trouble were somehow Libya and the Zhongchuan family, not himself.
Besides that, with the help of modern technology and huge sums of money invested to stop the oil pollution from flowing into the sea, some little trickle that got away would not cause any major environmental harm. Time had pa.s.sed in the blink of an eye and it was already the second day.
The route for the electric eel"s operation was still the northern-end of Russia route, which would pa.s.s through the residential site of the Eskimos at the beginning, then cross the Strait of Gibraltar and head straight up to the Mediterranean sea. In order to carry out their plan, the electric eel took a native species from the waters around Greenland in preparation for a "trick".
The No.1 oil rig located 83 miles away from the coast was first targeted by the electric eel. The last time, the electric eel drilled to the bottom of the oil control valve and twisted the pipeline with its brutal force in order to prevent the crude oil from flowing through. Today, the electrical eel was preparing to break the bottom of the oil controlling valve directly in order to trap the Zhongchuan family in an inescapable debt!
Crude oil is a viscous and dark-brown liquid. Even though it is lighter than water and can be dissolved in various types of organic solvents, it"s somehow insoluble in water and would even form a type of emulsion that"s difficult to get clean.
Thus, when crude oil leaks, it would float and spread on the surface of the sea rapidly, then chemically react with the sea water to form a type of sticky and viscous grease. The only way to get rid of this would then be using an absorbent mat or powder, made by wool and polypropylene.
Had it spread onto the land, it would seep into the soil slowly. The only way to eliminate it at that point would be natural decomposition. However, that would take at least five years!
When the electric eel reached the No.1 oil rig, it found that the subsea oil extraction tree was demolished and only the oil controlling cap on top of it was left. Yet, there was an oil drill with a diameter of one meter that was working noisily at the site five meters away. Presumably, they must have decided to abandon this oil rig and re-extract the same site.
"Hirano Yuta, do you think that the newly exploited oil rig would incur the same trouble as last time?" The two young men in orange-yellow working attire chatted while laying against the balcony fence on top of the living cabin.
That was due to the operation of oil rig only requiring a few people to keep an eye on it. As such, there was nothing much to be done by them.
"How would I know about this?" Hirano Yuta took a last puff of smoke and threw the cigarette b.u.t.t into the sea, like how Galileo threw an iron ball out from the leaning tower of Pisa when experimenting with gravity.
He continued to speak. "Perghhh, I am p.i.s.sed that you mentioned this matter. I was inside surveying the s.h.i.+p, which was sent by the headquarters last week, and asked the geologist from University of Tokyo if there was someone intentionally destroying the oil rig, since there were so many facing the same issues at the same time. And, do you know how he answered me?"
"How?" The man sitting next on him suddenly threw his cigarette away and paid full attention.
In fact, many people had suspected that it was a hostile act done intentionally by the compet.i.tors. Otherwise, how would the incident be as coincidental, like all the planets lined up with the sun?
"The professor looked at me like I was a fool instead!" Hirano Yuta slammed the railing angrily and said. "Then, the doctor was being sarcastic and suggested I go back to elementary school. He said this because I knew when I was in middle school that, according to the calculation from the standard atmospheric pressure formula of five 1.013 x 10 square pascal, and the μ= p0gh/RT frictional resistance formula, and also the multiplication of level of damage having been done to the surface of earth with the mohs hardness of 5.6, I could come to a conclusion that only G.o.d could complete such a work. Especially in light of it being completed so precisely in only one day. Of course, I don"t believe in G.o.d. In fact, I don"t think G.o.d exists. I only believe in science. Nonetheless, science told us that the human technology had not been that advanced, at least to the extent where even underwater robots couldn"t capture any trace of the machines exploited in the videos yet."
"This person is mentally ill!"
"Who would say otherwise? "Hirano Yuta complained. "I understand that with the current human technology, no one could drill into the hard formations of a sea bed yet. But he didn"t have to tease me with numerous annoying formulas, right? I really wanted to smack..."
Without finis.h.i.+ng his words, Hirano Yuta lifted his tired eyes quickly, staring at the sea with an unconcealed shock on his face.
"Oh, my G.o.d, have a look, quick, it"s a narwhal!"
Following the direction of his pointing with his index finger, he could only see a spiral-shaped brown horn, about 3.5 meters long, reaving on the surface of the crystal-blue sea. It belonged to an approximately 5 meter long whale.
"Splas.h.!.+"
Once the narwhal with black-and-white dots emerged from the surface of the seawater, it spit a puff of off-white gas, causing the crowd on the oil rig to scream. It was a narwhal, the legendary sea elf! In ancient times, its straight and tough horn was always sold as being the horn from a unicorn. Usually, it was only sold to the European royal family by dishonest traders.
At the peak of the Roman Empire, on the throne of Emperor Trajan, two horns were erected as a symbol of power. To get these two horns, he even ordered his men to lead troops and s.h.i.+ps that were full of spices, jewels, and weapons, all for the purpose of exchanging with the aborigines in Greenland.
What was even more ridiculous, was that when the Roman Empire collapsed and the two unicorns were robbed by Byzantium, where they were treasured until the demise of the Byzantium Dynasty, only to then be later lost in the war.
However, living in the modern days with advanced technology had now revealed the mystery of narwhal. Specifically, that its horn was actually its teeth. There were a lot of pictures regarding it online.
Why then, would the workers on the oil rig shout? That was because narwhals were like pandas. They are a species exclusive to the Arctic Ocean. Just like how the panda is exclusive to China, people would definitely be shocked if the panda from our country went all the way to Myanmar.
"Click, click. Snap, snap." Many people on the rig took their camera out and took several pictures of the narwhal.
"Oh, it must be the miracle from the sun G.o.ddess, and I promise you that the presence of this sea spirit will bring us good luck." An oilfield worker who believed in s.h.i.+ntoism began to pray sincerely. (The G.o.ddess of the sun, also known as Amaterasu, who would"ve thought that Amaterasu was a she?)
More than half of the workers here were s.h.i.+nto believers. The belief of the biggest religion in j.a.pan, s.h.i.+ntoism, is precisely that the spirits in nature are G.o.ds and deities. As such, when they saw a narwhal, they immediately prayed sincerely.
"This is the glory of the sun G.o.ddess, so I want to tell everyone about this!"
The chief commander of the rig, Kinos.h.i.+ta Nanami, delightedly shared the photos of the narwhal, which were just copied into computer from those who were on duty at the oil well in the groupchat. He had also edited the photos and posted them on their public website for the purpose of publicity.
"It"s done, Kinos.h.i.+ta-kun! "Uchida Ryota, who had just finished editing the photos, said in a credit-seeking tone. In order to make the picture look better, he added a sentence which read: The spirits from the distant sea, spreading the glory of the blessing!
"Good!" Kinos.h.i.+ta Nanami returned him with a complimenting gaze in a frank manner.
At the same time, the workers on other oil rigs who received the picture pa.s.sed on their congratulations. Two of them had even replied enviously: "Why didn"t the ocean spirit come to us?"
"Hehe, I was the first one who saw it!" On the side of the railings, Hirano Yuta beamed with pride.
"Then, you must be the luckiest person here!"
"Huh? Look, something"s wrong with the color of the sea!"
"Yeah, how could it darken for no reason? "
"Well...well...it seems like the crude oil is leaking..."
"Wee-woo-wee-woo!" At this moment, a high-pitched siren rang out on the oil rig, like a shriek, causing people who were daydreaming to possibly have thought that the 2012 apocalypse event had arrived.
"What is actually going on?" Kinos.h.i.+ta Nanami dashed into the commanding room in a fast pace. Then, two pale-looking face came into his sight, making his spine s.h.i.+ver as if it was frozen.
"We...Our underwater detectors had found that there was lots of crude… crude oil gus.h.i.+ng out from the seabed..."
"Pull up the oil belt immediately, and let the helicopter spray the oil-absorbing powder. Then dispatch the oil-clearing s.h.i.+ps to clean the crude oil!" The sound of Kinos.h.i.+ta Nanami growling was so loud that even pilots of helicopters could hear him.
Their effort was nonetheless futile, the orange-yellow oil isolating belt couldn"t stop the crude oil from gus.h.i.+ng out. Even the oil-absorbent powder was ineffective. The oil-absorbing power expanded and bubbled like a school of dead fish, floating among the oily patch on the sea. (Oil-absorbing powder, which is similar to desiccant, is packed in a cylindrical mesh bag and capable of absorbing crude oil of ten times its own volume.)
Within half an hour, the overflowing crude oil had overcome all the obstacles and spread its black trace through the ocean like a virus.
"Immediately notify the headquarters and ask for help from the other six wells!" After shouting that sentence, the legs of Kinos.h.i.+ta Nanami could no longer support his body weight of 200 pounds and "Bam!" he collapsed onto the floor.
"It"s over... it"s over, it"s all over…"
Twenty minutes later, six UH-1 general-purpose helicopters carried a large amount of oil-absorbing powder and mats to the contaminated area. After letting down the things impatiently, it returned immediately. Several crude oil recovery vessels were also moving towards them at maximum speed.
At the same time, a blue colored deep-sea robot was deployed into the oil-polluted sea to live-stream the real-time situation of the leakage at the site with its cameras. Simultaneously, the seven technicians and managers of the oil rig were all gathered at the the commanding room, staring at the images sent from the deep-sea robots on a big screen without moving an inch.
The advancement of technology and the rapidly developing information technology had allowed them to receive the same footage, despite being at different places for the purpose of brainstorming and discussing solutions! It felt like a century had pa.s.sed before the deep-sea robot hoisted by steel cables reached a few hundred meters underneath the sea.
The scenes of smoke gus.h.i.+ng up black fog everywhere had shattered everyone"s hopeful fantasy. Especially under the searchlight, the controlling valve on the abandoned oil well was nowhere to be found, and only the leak with black liquid that was gus.h.i.+ng nonstop violently could be seen.
The operator of the robot insisted on circling the area once more. Finally they found the broken, white oil-controlling valve at the back of of the mist. And then there was silence, pin-drop silence, like the endless s.p.a.ce beyond the atmosphere, where no sound could be transmitted.
A long-dead narwhal lay beside the oil-controlling valve. Its 3.5 meter long horn on its lips was lying below the leak on the pipeline, the metal sheet that broke off still wrapped around the horn.
Looking at the twisted opening of the metal pipe, one could quickly understand that it was caused by the narwhal after struggling to remove its horn, which was stuck in the pipe.
But why did the two ton narwhal pierce through a pipe, as even bullets have difficulty in piercing such a metal? And why did the valve fall from the pipe? None of them could tell.
"Yes...yes...that nar...nar...nar...narwhal..." Kinos.h.i.+ta Nanami rolled his eyes upwards and fainted without another word.
"Who can tell me how did this d.a.m.n narwhal managed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar to here? Why didn"t you all kill him at that time?" There was a burst of roaring coming from the control room.
"The spirits from the distant sea, spreading the glory of the blessing..." The editor of that picture sat on the chair and uttered to himself.
"Ah, screw that spreading of blessings..." The Ota s.h.i.+ro who lived at the distant s.h.i.+njuku, Tokyo, yelled loudly.
The last time a yelling this mad happened in j.a.pan was probably during the Tokugawa Shogunate era by Tokugawa Keiji, when he was threatened into handing over his power by the two unorthodox samurais, who had held katanas on his neck.
The anger in Ota Soro"s heart was indescribable. When he had just received the photo of the narwhal from the Libra oil-rig base, he even opened a bottle of aged wine. Sadly, before he could finish it, the screen on his desk suddenly switched to the footage from the deep-sea robot.
That initially energetic narwhal had now became a ma.s.s of greasy black charcoal. Worse still, it broke the controlling valve into halves...
"G.o.d, is this the devil"s sea?" After yelling his anger out, Ota Soro pulled his hair and howled in pain. If it was ten years backm when he was still single, he would have opened the window and jumped off from the twenty-first floor of this building.
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"Hmm..." Andy Bissell spoke awkwardly after a long silence, "If all goes well, we… we will seal the rig in fifteen days."
...
"If you manage to get it done in fifteen days, I would then climb around the stone tower three times!" Jeered Chen Fan as he watched the re-aired online news.
A seabed is incomparable to land. Even when the oil rig in Mexico Bay leaked, the U.S., the U.K., and Mexico took about two months and ten days to close the oil rig. Although the oil rig in Libya wasn"t that deep, sealing it within fifteen days was impossible...
"Phew… Zhongchuan family, don"t you understand that money is even softer than toilet rolls in front of violence? Why did you mess me up?" Chen Fan, whose eyes were looking up to the sky, had closed the website. It had been three days since he visited Cloudracer, so it must be p.i.s.sed by now.
This time he had brought a Barrett anti-materiel sniper rifle to fend off the gorillas during his observation, just in case they wanted to attack him. The deadly weapon weighed 30 pounds and was equipped with 10 rounds of clips, It could hit through a helicopter"s bulletproof gla.s.s from two kilometers away, even tearing the pilot in half in the process.
If replaced with a high-powered, full-metal armor piercing round, it could smash through a bullet-proof Hummer from 3 km away or smash five gorillas in line, skewering them like a kebab.
(To be continued. For more, please log onto www.qidian.com.)