176 The God of Luck Came

At seven o'clock in the evening, Chen Fan drove to the seaside dock. The shipyard staff had sent the converted waterproof recording equipment there. The oval-shaped recording device was 1.3 meters long, 50 centimeters around, and looked like a giant silkworm pupa.

When Chen Fan arrived, he opened the gate to allow the electric eel to enter. He then dove into the capsule, preparing to return to the deep sea cave to get dozens of liters of Taisui soaking liquid before controlling the electric eel to head to Djibouti.

If the third layer was filled with this liquid, Chen Fan calculated that it would weigh about 11 tons, enough for his own consumption. Chen Fan was not in a hurry to get the Taisui out, and was prepared to wait until the electric eel came back from its mission. After all, the project was too big to be completed without several days of work.

Two hours later, Chen Fan returned home with five water bags and officially launched "Operation Shark Fishing."

The French naval base in Djibouti was more than 30 nautical miles to the bottom right of the mine blockade. The base had two frigates, three destroyers, five multipurpose transport vessels, a gem-class attack nuclear submarine, and two squid-class conventional-power submarines.

Chen Fan's target was the three submarines, and if possible, Chen Fan was also prepared to allow the electric eel to swim through Africa and go to France before continuing on to steal their sonar.

As soon as the electric eel left the harbor with its pupa-like recording equipment, the electric eel's speed increased to 170 knots as it sailed through the wind and waves toward the Bay of Djibouti.

Forty-eight hours later...

Five hundred miles west of the Gulf of Aden, near the Djibouti Sea, 3 a.m. local time.

The electric eel had slept for a while on a coral reef on the ocean floor. It woke up and ate a few sharks.

Its hiding place was 50 miles from the French naval base. Chen Fan was going to investigate the base first.

On the way, the electric eel did not carry the spear and the sound recording equipment. Magnetic detection devices must have been installed near the naval base, so large metal spears would be detected. If it weren't for the fact that the wristband map could not be taken off, the electric eel would have taken it off, too.

It didn't take long for the electric eel to arrive at the coordinates in his mind, which were 2,000 meters in front of the base's location.

The base was a full of modern port, built on five kilometers of concrete. Numerous large cranes, machinery, and equipment could be seen, and in the sea near the port was a 500-meter-long gray warship.

However, after looking for a long time, the electric eel did not find any submarines. Instead, it found a large black hole, 30 meters high and 20 meters wide, on a cliff 500 meters to the left.

A dozen French soldiers with guns stood by the hole, and at the end of the tunnel, a large, black, steel beast could be seen. Needless to say, it must have been the French naval submarine base.

The eel laid dormant patiently for an hour, and there was no unusual movement throughout the base, so it was unlikely that any trace of the electric eel had been found.

Swimming back to the coral, the electric eel scratched its belly and wondered, what if the submarine kept hiding inside?

"Let's wait and see. Big submarines with lots of mechanical parts built together have to move every once in a while. If not, the internal mechanism becomes damaged."

Early the next morning, the electric eel came again to the position 2,000 meters from the cave and crouched to see if it could find the submarine the way a blind cat would find a dead rat. Groveling in the mud at the bottom of the seabed, the eel detected no movement from the entire underground submarine base until noon.

Shaking its head, the electric eel crept out of the area to find food. After eating a few sharks it came dashing back in a hurry and continued to stare at the cave.

What excited Chen Fan was that after about two hours, the water inside the cave suddenly stirred up, and then a 60-meter-long, 7.2-meter-wide, big black submarine about slowly sailed out from inside. Once that submarine submerged, a similar black submarine came out.

"F**k, they finally came out—two squid-class conventional-power submarines!" The electric eel's adrenal glands began to rapidly secrete. Its mouth felt dry, and its heartbeat became rapid.

The two submarines, one behind the other in a line, were heading east toward the Gulf of Aden. Then another submarine came out of the cave.

This one was 72 meter long, 7.6 meters wide, and 6.4 meters high. It had a unique shape. Its front part was shaped like an egg and looked like the French ruby-class attack submarines seen on the internet.

"Cool, cool, cool." Chen Fan felt as if he had been kissed by a lucky goddess. He had just been mumbling to himself about how to get the three submarines out. Now they all came out of the base without Chen Fan needing to do anything.

More than anything, Chen Fan couldn't resist praising the goddess of luck because the three submarines were going in the direction of the coral reef, where the spear and the recording equipment were.

Without a doubt, he had to track it!

When the submarine was about 30 miles away, the electric eel immediately accelerated to its highest speed, darted into the coral, grabbed the recording device, and dashed out.

The three submarines were unaware of the fact that there was a terrifying beast with a recorder behind them. They were strung together in a line, slowly heading towards the Indian Ocean at 20 knots.

When a submarine was sailing, it usually set its course and then used the inertial navigation system to navigate. This was done manually by drawing out the position of the submarine in the sea. The modern way was fully automated. The monitor was labeled with submarines in a 3D map along with their speed, headings, angles, and so on. They themselves could not receive information from the outside world at all times. They could only judge whether there were other submarines nearby based on the monitoring of the passive sonar.

Fishing… Of course, he would cast for the biggest fish first. The electric eel reduced its speed to around 20 knots, quietly getting near the tail of the ruby-class attack submarine in the center. With a cheeky smile, he pressed the recorder's switch.

Buzz… Buzz… Buzz...The seven-blade propeller at the back of the submarine emitted a steady stream of sound, and that expensive professional recording device was dutifully recording everything.

Chen Fan didn't know how long the recording would take, but it probably wouldn't take long, as long as he caught the unique frequency of the sound waves.

After 20 minutes of recording, Chen Fan controlled the electric eel to cut off the power and then swim a couple of kilometers away. He then began recording the squid-class conventional-powered submarine.

Twenty minutes later, he stopped recording and swam to the last squid-class conventional-powered submarine.

Haha, let's see if you will be doomed this time. When the task was finished, Chen Fan screamed in his heart, turned off the recording button, and quickly fled away.

Back at the coral reef, Chen Fan considered how to carry out the next step of his plan. If he went to the south coast to make a detour at the continent of Europe, he would need two and a half days, but from the Suez Canal, he would need less than half a day!

Don't take the risk. The narrowest point of the Suez Canal is only a few dozen meters. There are several large and small locks. They would not necessarily open. I'll just go around Africa! Chen Fan said to himself, then controlled the electric eel to swim to the Indian Ocean.

...............

Twenty-four hours later, at the southern tip of the continent near the country of Namibia, the electric eel had been traveling for an entire day. It was tired and ready to rest.

It was still 5,000 miles from France. As usual, the eel found a coral reef and hid in it, so that active sonar could not detect him, and any fish nets would be caught on the reef.

A night passed, and then the electric eel swam more than 1,000 miles the next day. It stopped again 200 miles east of St. Helena.

After swimming for most of the day, the electric eel's stomach was already growling with hunger. It had to find something to eat.

Fish were plentiful in the Pacific Ocean, and the electric eel simply looked around and saw a large school of fish not far ahead.

As he swam closer, Chen Fan discovered that it was six large blue whales over 20 meters long.

"Oh, that's great!" The electric eel let out an excited howl and flexed its claws. It had an excited expression on its face, as if it were a wolf in a flock of little sheep.

The six blue whales had just turned around and escaped, when the sudden intense voltage from the electric eel froze them in place.

Picking one of the smallest, the electric eel swooped over it, plunging four claws into its flesh. Then, as easily as tearing a sheet of paper, it tore open the muscle tissue of the blue whale.

...

By the time the other five lucky blue whales had recovered from their vertigo, the electric eel had burped and was staring at them with a playful look. How could the blue whales dare to say anything? They quickly fled.

It was not good for any species to exercise on a full tummy. Chen Fan was prepared to wait for half an hour.

Before the electric eel could find a place to rest, a large black shadow in the distance sailed slowly towards the electric eel.

"What's that?" The electric eel's eyes were immediately drawn to it.

"Ah!"

By the time the shadow was about 1,000 meters away, the electric eel's eyes grew huge and its mouth opened so wide, its jaw almost dislocated.

It was a monster larger than the electric eel, 138 meters long, 12.5 meters wide, and 12.5 meters high.

To encounter something so big in the ocean, there was only one possibility of what it was: a man-made submarine.

The creature was indeed a man-made submarine. Because the electric eel was supposed to be quite familiar with submarines, it should not have been so shocked. On the contrary, the electric eel's startled expression was more exaggerated than when it first encountered the two American nuclear attack submarines.

It wasn't because the submarine was amazing at first glance, nor because the missile at the back of the submarine was opened with the bomb whistling away. It was instead because of the submarine's model: a triumph-class strategic nuclear submarine!

Yes, this was actually the ultimate weapon that the French made, the strategic nuclear submarine.

What did that mean? What one had searched for far and wide was a fancy finding by sheer luck!

Chen Fan had originally wanted to control the electric eel to France to find one or two submarines' acoustic signatures to record. It would be great if it could record a nuclear attack submarine, but he didn't think he would encounter a strategic nuclear submarine on the way...

A strategic nuclear submarine!

It represented the most cutting-edge crystallization of human science and technology. The engineers had put every technology imaginable all into one submarine.

Sometimes referred to as an, "underwater moving nuclear missile base," or even a, "national sword," the strategic nuclear submarines could carry 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and could carry six nuclear warheads each for a total of 96 nuclear bombs. It could easily erase a population of 50,000,000 humans from the earth.

Even if the submarine's own country were destroyed by a nuclear attack, the submarine could still carry out nuclear bundling tactics and launch nuclear bombs at other capitals and major cities of the world's nuclear-armed countries. All the capitals of the world could be destroyed if conditions permitted. The end result was easy to predict. The world would be locked in a war of nuclear retaliation.

What was this concept?

As long as the country had an unallocated strategic nuclear submarine, no one would dare to invade it. That included Britain, America, Russia, and China—four countries with similar strategic nuclear submarines.

"Record, definitely record it!" Chen Fan's faith was as strong as a hammer.

This strategic nuclear submarine cruising alone in the Pacific Ocean was undoubtedly on standby duty. As long as its acoustic signature was recorded, it could be sold to other countries for an astronomical figure!

Two kilometers!

Fifteen hundred meters!

A kilometer!

Five hundred meters!

...

The electric eel was like a young bandit, being careful and cautious.

When the electric eel swam to the submarine's tail thruster, Chen Fan took a deep breath and calmed down, then pressed the record key!

The noise from the operation of the strategic nuclear submarine was being meticulously recorded on storage cards by the recording equipment.

For two full hours, Chen Fan kept the electric eel safely near the submarine's tail before carefully closing the recorder and leaving.

After swimming for dozens of miles, Chen Fan stopped the electric eel in its hiding place, and then both the electric eel and Chen Fan nervously took a gasp of air.

Now Chen Fan would not go to France for anything. Getting this strategic nuclear submarine's acoustic signature would absolutely surpass the value of all their conventional-power submarines and nuclear attack submarines.

After all, the weapons systems of the nuclear attack submarines were exactly like the conventional submarines, which could not produce a deadly threat to other countries.

"Retreat!" After half an hour of relaxation, the electric eel turned its tail and swam toward the city of Zhongyun.