The True Sea Monster (Two Updates, Ten Thousand Words; Please Vote!)

While the Beautiful Country's team of experts was still arguing endlessly over the naming rights to the deep-sea island.

The Challenger had already reached the center of the island, in front of that several-hundred-meter-high stone stele—though it was still several hundred meters away from it.

It wasn't that they didn't want to go farther. They simply didn't dare.

Because around the stele, the seawater had completely entered a bizarre, solidified, motionless state, as if it had been suppressed by some strange force. The two were deeply afraid that if the Challenger entered that area, it would be frozen in place as well.

Although they couldn't approach it, merely viewing it from afar was still incomparably shocking.

In front of the stele, the Challenger looked exceptionally tiny. A feeling of looking up at an impossibly high mountain arose simultaneously in Barnes and Kailana.

Barnes craned his neck to stare at the towering stele and exclaimed in amazement, "This stele is way too tall. I can't see a single seam or trace of cement. What kind of method was used to build it so that it could stand firm in the deep sea?"

"It's practically alien technology. Maybe it was built by Martians."

Kailana chimed in as well. The stele before them looked more like a single, complete crystal. One half was white, the other half black, and countless runes were branded across its surface.

Those runes flowed with light, radiating five-colored halos. They understood none of them, but that didn't stop them from recording every one through the cameras. As for how to study them, that was a matter for the experts in ancient writing.

"Go take a look at the other side of the island."

Ovila's voice came through the communications channel in their earpieces, passing along their latest orders.