The Encounter Underwater

At the fishman leader's command, many fishmen dove into the water.

The land Liu Zhi had built from plants was less than twenty miles from the whirlpool. If they increased its force any further, it would swallow that "land" as well.

To strengthen the whirlpool, they had to go to its source.

Once underwater, the fishmen put down their spears and gathered some ore from nearby.

Unobtanium ore wasn't just found on the island; it covered the seabed too.

The place where the fishmen lived was practically a crystal palace made of ore.

So collecting some was quite convenient for them.

However, the fishmen had no way to extract the energy from the ore. After all, most machines couldn't keep working underwater for long. If they built a machine underwater to refine the ore, it might consume more energy than simply using the ore as it was.

In that case, building a machine would be the real waste, so the fishmen simply didn't consider that option.

Now they did the same as before: they gathered some ore nearby, hugged it to their chests, and headed for the whirlpool's source.

Beneath the enormous whirlpool was a roughly cuboid machine, about seven or eight meters tall and nearly ten meters long and wide.

The machine's casing was made of a transparent material. It was obviously nothing like glass, but looked more like the material used on spaceships to see what was outside.

Looking in from the outside, they could see gears glowing faintly within. They could even see the gears turning nonstop, apparently driving something.

The whirlpool on the surface was caused by this machine. At that moment, its core was directly above the machine, spinning away.

The fishmen didn't notice that a group of little green-skinned fellows had gathered around the