Dragon 3: Tide of the Black Moon (1)

"Fortunately the rescue helicopter arrived a few minutes later and I woke up to doctors saying I had suffered an extreme cold. I did a face-to-face dance with death and inhaled the cold air it exhaled, 200 degrees below zero, so cold it almost liquefied. Instantly half of my face was necrotic, my brain temperature dropped to below zero, my blood froze, and the chances of survival were one in a thousand. The doctors did their best to save my tongue, and during the operation my airway was as brittle as a mummy's skin, completely shattered at the touch. I had to wear an oxygen mask at all times and replace my plastic airway every two or three years, or I would have died of respiratory failure.

"I used to love hand-rolled cigarettes, but this box of shredded tobacco was left over from 11 years ago and I still haven't smoked it all. I only roll one occasionally to smoke when I remember the past, and the pain of the smoke entering my airway makes me remember the past more clearly. I assure you that every detail of what I say is true because I dare not forget, these memories are etched in my mind with pain.

"We did not succeed in capturing or killing the dragon, and to this day it is still alive, hiding in the deep waters of the world, looking for a chance to surface. A few hours after the incident we explored again with diving robots, the icy sea was silent even the fish had disappeared, not a trace could be found, we explored the sea bed and did not find embryos or copper pillars, as if all that we had experienced was a nightmare, the dream woke up and it all dissipated. A few years later a marine mining company found rich manganese nodules on that seabed and built an offshore mining platform where thousands of marine miners are working today. Nothing supernatural happened again until not long ago when we observed the same heartbeat signal deep in the Japanese Trench.

"With that story out of the way, here's another document I thought you'd be interested in." Schneider pulled out the dusty document bag from under the table and pushed it towards Manstein, "In fact, I already guessed that the Council would send someone to call off the Dragon Abyss project, so I took this document out of the archives in advance, I just didn't expect them to send you in a hurry. Read it, you can ignore the 'ss' red stamp on its seal, I'll forge a stamp on it after you read it."

"How did you get this thing?" Manstein's face turned pale, "Even if you were the head of the executive department, you would be removed from the school board for doing this!"

The "ss" level files were only accessible to members of the school board, they were paper files, and there was no backup in Norma. These files are sealed in a top-secret database in Vat Alheim, but the key is in the hands of the principal and school board members. The equipment department's gang of psychopaths guarded the files but could not see them, and it was not easy even for the principal and trustees to access them, because Vat Alheim was rarely open to outsiders, and even the trustees could be turned away.

"Of course, I can't get it, and the guys in the equipment department don't see eye to eye with me." Schneider said, "But someone else can get it, and since that person doesn't care about the school board's removal, why should I?"

Schneider implied the obvious. It was true that Ange didn't care about the school board's impeachment; the school board would love to impeach Ange, but the problem was that they would have a hard time finding someone to replace him.

On the cover of the file was printed "kalaallitnunaat", which is Greenlandic for "Greenland". 11 years ago, the Greenland incident caused a huge shock in the Academy's hierarchy, but those who knew the truth never spoke about it, and Mannstein did not speak about it until after that. It was only after that that Manstein joined the Kassel Institute. The temptation to open the file and unlock a deep mystery was strong enough for Manstein.

"This may be your only chance to discover the truth about what happened back then, and it's not too late to give up." Schneider's tone was slightly sarcastic, "After reading this document you may not even have a chance to be a wallflower. If the Gattusos knew you had read these documents, they would see you as another lackey of the rector, the same lackey as me."

Manstein sighed and picked open the seal with his thumb. He read the documents page by page, the signatures of the people involved vividly in his mind. The more he read, the more horrified he became, the corners of his eyes twitched uncontrollably, and his hands began to tremble.

"What the hell have these bastards done!" He roared in a low voice.

"Yes, that's why the school board won't go back and investigate the Greenland incident." Schneider said, "As you can see, the school board was well aware of the risks of getting close to the ancient dragon embryos. The secret party has always known that dragons are aggressive even in the embryonic stage and that those hybrid species with violent bloodlines can tear their mothers alive to come into the world, let alone a true ancient dragon. But they wanted to get that embryo so badly that they didn't mind risking human lives, and as a result, there was an accident. Desperate to cover things up, they replaced most of the school administrators, and the original ones were sent to branches around the world. They also compromised with the principal and gave greater management authority to the principal, who until then was not as carefree as he is now."

"The school board had no business sending an official letter asking me to end the Dragon Abyss Juice program, and what I'm doing now is a replica of what they did 11 years ago. It's just that the Gattuso family panicked because the heir of the Gattuso family was also on the dive team. They can spare other people's lives but value their own so much that even the psychopaths in Equipment aren't as disgusting as they are." Schneider said.

"That embryo from 11 years ago suddenly hatched, could this one suddenly hatch too?"

"It's certainly possible, we know very little about the hatching process of dragons, how do we know when it will hatch."

"None of this is known to the Caesar team?"

"There's no need to know, knowing that would only increase unnecessary fear. We're just borrowing their bloodline, and only the best of the bloodline can resist the interference of the embryonic realm."