Everyone, I am very sorry for the extensive changes to this piece, almost rewriting it entirely.
The previous setup felt off throughout the writing process, and coupled with some personal matters, I had starts and stops. But now, I have organized this new concept. Suddenly, everything became clear to me. So, I decided to write it this way. The main characters remain Wen Lan and Xie Yuan, but the setup has changed significantly. The previous story even wrote them getting married, so it could be considered to have reached a conclusion. This story will be regarded as their past lives and present in a different time and space. I hope everyone can understand.
The previous version was already around thirty thousand words and had been released on V. Now, with such big changes, when it reaches the V part, if readers who have purchased V feel dissatisfied and do not want to buy it, you can send the V purchase information for the first ten chapters to my email, and I will fully refund the coins on Jinjiang. 314397942@
Thank you. A clear day by the sea. The wind force on the sea surface is at level two, and the vast and boundless sea seems like a piece of crystal clear emerald shimmering with light.
Weather conditions are favorable.
A large ship bearing the emblem of an international extreme diving club is anchored on the surface of the sea. All the preparations are ready. At this moment, everyone on the ship has their eyes focused on a custom-made small platform installed on one side of the ship's body. Above the platform stands a young woman in a standard diving suit, wearing flippers. She is about to undergo training for deep-sea free diving.
The so-called free diving is an extreme sport in which diving is conducted solely relying on the body's natural conditions, without depending on any breathing or decompression equipment.
An hour ago, Wen Lan did stretching and breathing exercises to slow down her heartbeat. Forty minutes ago, she performed shallow diving exercises, staying at the bottom of the water at a depth of twenty meters for a hundred seconds to allow her body to adapt to the water pressure. Then, five minutes ago, she took her position on this small platform.
"Hey, Wen, how are you feeling?" Coach Jason greeted her loudly.
Jason used to hold the world record for male free diving. In his younger days, he had dived down to a depth of 103 meters without equipment, staying underwater for as long as three minutes. Although this record had long been surpassed, watching his prideful disciple that he had discovered and trained, he felt the same excitement and anticipation as when he himself was about to dive.
Wen Lan turned around, smiled, and gestured victory to him.
Wen Lan's parents were both seasoned divers. When she was ten, her parents tragically passed away in an accident during an underwater operation. However, this did not stop her from loving the ocean. With her extraordinary talent and scientific training, she had already risen to the ranks of the world's top divers. In a state of rest without energy consumption, she could hold her breath underwater for as long as fifteen minutes. This wouldn't be her first time successfully diving to a depth of one hundred meters in the deep sea. This time, she was about to be sent down to the deep sea with this small platform for her final practice before challenging the world record of free diving to one hundred and twenty meters next month. If everything went well, at this time next month, she would officially launch a challenge to the world record.
Her composure infected everyone present. Jason and the teammates thumbs-upped to her.
~~
Two minutes before diving, everything around her fell silent.
Wen Lan put on a nose clip, which helped balance the pressure on her eardrums during the descent. But she didn't wear a diving mask. At the depth she was about to reach, wearing goggles would result in eye damage, as her lungs wouldn't have extra air to balance the pressure inside the mask.
One minute to go, she breathed rapidly in and out with the oxygen, reducing the carbon dioxide content in her body to delay the sensation of needing to breathe. At thirty seconds, she took the final breath of oxygen before diving.
Six liters of oxygen filled her lungs, and her heartbeat slightly quickened.
At 0 seconds, the platform's brake was released on time, and she followed the platform, silently sinking underwater.
~~
Underwater and above it are completely different worlds. For Wen Lan, at the depth of the ocean floor, she felt everything gradually getting farther away, as if she existed independently on this planet. This feeling was indescribable. However, this wasn't the best time to savor the wonderful feeling that diving brought. At this moment, she had no other thoughts. At the moment she entered the water, all her focus and strength were concentrated on controlling the blood flow to her brain. At such times, any distracting thoughts would have fatal consequences.
Wen Lan kept her eyes closed as she descended. Throughout the process, to prevent unexpected situations like nitrogen narcosis, a teammate fully equipped for diving had already dived to a depth of every twenty meters, guarding, and tapping an iron bar to remind her of the depth of her dive.
When she heard the first knocking sound in her ears, she knew that she had descended to a depth of twenty meters underwater with the platform at a constant speed. She began to feel the pressure on her eardrums, the oxygen in her lungs was being compressed, and her lungs were shrinking. When she reached a depth of forty meters, she felt as if her lungs had shrunk to the size of two fists, parts of her circulatory system closed off, and her heartbeat dropped to forty beats per minute. At eighty meters, the pressure on her eardrums was nearly at the limit of what the human body could bear. Fortunately, she had dealt with this situation before. She took a small breath, using the remaining air in her mouth and trachea to equalize the air pressure in her ear canal with the water pressure outside.
She did this quite successfully.
As she descended to nearly one hundred meters, she clearly felt that her diving suit was loosening, knowing that it was due to the compression of the water pressure on her chest. When she finally reached the target of this exercise, a depth of one hundred and ten meters on the seabed, her heart rate had dropped to once every 4 seconds, and the accumulated nitrogen in her blood due to lack of oxygen made her feel dizzy.
She kept her eyes closed but could hear the sound of her teammates waiting for her, knocking iron rods and singing. The knocking sound reminded her that she had successfully reached the goal depth of this exercise. The singing celebrated her victory as well as encouraged her.
In such a depth underwater, the singing from her teammates sounded strange and jarring. But it lifted her spirits. She opened her eyes, made a V-sign in their direction, sent a flying kiss to the ocean, thanking it for its embrace. Then she prepared to return.
In such a situation, any unnecessary movements would consume a part of the oxygen in her body.
She began to bite her tongue forcefully, using the sharp pain to stimulate herself to prevent drowning due to confusion. Then, she lightly tiptoed, using the fins on her feet to swim back.
The return journey is a process of freely ascending without external force, and it is no less dangerous than descending. At this point, the diver had already consumed most of the oxygen previously taken in, and the desire to breathe urgently arose. However, she had to control her body to slowly float up; otherwise, the large amount of nitrogen dissolved in the blood under water pressure would rapidly release, causing bubbles to enter the blood vessels and potentially result in blood clots. If the bubbles enter the lungs, they could cause the alveoli to burst, leading to instant death.
Wen Lan controlled her body, slowly floating towards the light above, and from a distance, she looked like a beautiful mermaid in the sea.
Gradually, she felt her ears naturally adapting to the water pressure, knowing that she should have ascended about halfway. She continued to step on the fins calmly, and at thirty meters, her mind was completely clear, and her heartbeat gradually recovered.
She broke through the emerald sea, creating a circle of silver waves and took a long breath of the desired air. Then she heard applause coming from the deck above her head.
"One hundred and ten meters depth, the entire underwater journey lasted three minutes and twenty seconds, and heart rate is now sixty. Seems fine, preparing for the challenge of a one hundred and twenty-two-meter depth world record next month!" Jason announced with a smile after one minute of observation on the water.
"Wen, how did you do it? Any secrets?" A photographer with them asked quietly.
"I should thank the entire team, the achievement does not solely belong to me. That's the first thing. Second, when I dived to the seafloor, I didn't even think about breathing. It was only when ascending that I began to have the desire to breathe. So at this time, never look up at the surface. The brighter the surface, the more you want to rise up and breathe easily, and your mind becomes restless, often leading to danger."
Wen Lan took off her diving cap, flicked her still dripping dark hair, and turned to smile at the photographer. Her face, moist with glistening sea water, was youthful and beautiful. In the gentle sea breeze, her pearly white teeth and dark eyes sparkled faintly in the brilliant sunlight, carrying the aura of the sun.
The photographer was somewhat dazed, and it took a while for him to come to his senses.
~~~
After a series of physical training, Wen Lan finally found time to visit her hometown and pay respects to her parents who were now resting in the ground.
In a few days, she would launch an assault on a new world record. At this moment, she suddenly felt the urge to talk to her parents.
"Mom, Dad, in fact, your encouragement before each dive is still indispensable to me, just like when I was a child."
She said quietly to her parents in her heart.
~~~
After visiting her parents, she drove away from the outskirts of the cemetery. When she turned a corner on a mountain road, an electric car suddenly swerved and twisted its way toward her. Momentarily distracted, Wen Lan hurriedly tried to veer away, but the steering went too far, and the car flipped into a deep ditch below.
"The best hunters, often end up dying at the claws of the wolf. The best divers, may also end up forever sinking in the embrace of the ocean."
This is a sentence she remembered her father saying when she was a child, and it left a deep impression on her.
She felt like she was the daughter of the sea and had already made preparations to return to the sea at any time, just like her parents. The underwater world is full of unexpected dangers, which could happen in the next second. But she felt very unwilling to end her life in this way.