Over eighty percent of Greenland, the world's largest island, is covered by ice sheets.
In the areas where the ice is thickest, it reaches depths of 3000 meters. In winter, the lowest temperatures here are even colder than in the Arctic Ocean region, especially in the northernmost parts of the island.
According to Yang Ma's description, she and Yang Ba accidentally fell into an ice crevasse about five meters deep while passing through the northern ice field.
Yang Ba's leg was also scratched by a sharp piece of ice.
Therefore, if they could find that spot, they would be able to find the original samples of the ancient virus.
Looking at the vast expanse of white ice field before him, after a sweep of his gaze, Yang Lin said to Gou Dan, who was beside him:
"Sniff around and see which area it is."
As soon as this command was given, the two brothers dashed onto the ice field to search.
In just five minutes, they had narrowed down a general area for Yang Lin.
Considering that there might be many similar ice crevasses beneath this ice field, Yang Lin did not approach rashly. Instead, he took out a long branch from the sled.
As he tapped on a section of the ice, what appeared to be a solid ice surface instantly cracked, and a dark, deep cave appeared before him.
Looking at this ice crevasse, which showed signs of refreezing, Yang Lin guessed that this might be the very crevasse his father had accidentally fallen into.
When he turned on his flashlight and shone the beam inside, he became even more convinced of his guess.
Because less than two meters down from the opening, a pool of completely solidified blood was clearly visible.
"Found it!" Yang Lin's eyes lit up as he looked at the bloodstain, and he quickly took out his ice axe and climbing rope.
After tying the climbing rope around his waist, he slowly began to descend into the ice crevasse.
In a short while, he had descended to the bottom of the crevasse.
To his surprise, there was an extremely vast space at the bottom of this ice crevasse.
The ice layer, which should have been extremely thick, had begun to show signs of thawing, so much so that one could see structures resembling ant burrows as far as the eye could see.
However, Yang Lin had no mind to deal with these at the moment.
After finding the piece of sharp ice that Yang Ba had mentioned had injured him, Yang Lin took out a test tube he carried and carefully collected some ice shards from its surface.
Considering that the virus on the surface might have died due to prolonged exposure to the air, he chipped off a portion with his ice axe, attempting to collect some samples from the center of the ice.
But as he struck layer after layer of ice with his ice axe, a hard object suddenly collided with it.
The moment he hit this hard object, Yang Lin instinctively thought it was a stone frozen beneath the ice.
But as soon as this thought arose, he felt something was not right.
By all accounts, the area he was currently in was still an ice sheet, and he would have to dig at least tens of meters down to reach the frozen soil layer.
Where would normal ice layers have stones?
Realizing this, he quickly pointed the beam of his flashlight at the hard object.
When he cleared away the ice shards from the surface of the hard object with his leather gloves, what appeared before him immediately made his eyes widen.
Following his gaze, he saw that what was firmly frozen in the ice was not a stone at all, but a tusk with sharp points.
"This..." Looking at the long tusk in the ice, Yang Lin was speechless for a moment.
Once he recovered, he immediately began searching around the tusk.
As expected, about a meter away from this tusk, a second complete tusk appeared.
Looking at these two tusks, which were symmetrically distributed, a bold guess formed in his mind.
"Could this frozen thing be an entire mammoth carcass?"
When he saw the appearance of the first tusk, Yang Lin knew it was definitely not an ordinary elephant tusk.
After all, ordinary elephants could not live in these high-latitude regions. Only cold-resistant mammoths would live here.
Once this guess was made, Yang Lin could no longer suppress his excitement and began to dig with the ice axe in his hand.
Perhaps because the ice surface had begun to thaw, the ice layer was not too hard.
After digging for half an hour, a massive head appeared before him.
As Yang Lin had guessed, the owner of this massive head was none other than the prehistoric creature that lived tens of thousands of years ago – a mammoth.
It was frozen in the ice, indistinguishable from when it was alive, its eyes even wide open.
From its eyes, Yang Lin could feel its fear of death.
Perhaps tens of thousands of years ago, it had also fallen into the water by accident, and then due to the sudden drop in temperature, it had been forever frozen in this ice field, becoming a lifelike ice sculpture.
Yang Lin even had the illusion that it was still alive, though this was just an illusion.
The moment it froze, it had lost its life forever, leaving behind only a perfectly preserved shell.
As Yang Lin was admiring the mammoth carcass before him with a sense of witnessing history, the system prompt suddenly sounded.
"Ding! Detected that this creature is an unrecorded species. System is automatically recording."
"Recording complete. Current species is Imperial Mammoth. Reward: 100,000 Achievement Points."
"Imperial Mammoth - Phylum Chordata, Subphylum Vertebrata, Class Mammalia, Infraclass Eutheria, Order Proboscidea, Suborder Elephantiforma, Family Elephantidae."
Yang Lin was not too surprised by this prompt, as even a dead mammoth was still a mammoth.
Moreover, the one before him could only be considered brain-dead, and its body should still possess high activity, not much different from when it had just died.
It's just that current human technology is not advanced enough. If it were, perhaps they could even attempt to revive it.
But as he was thinking this, the next system prompt made him a little restless.
"Detected that this animal is about to die. Does the host wish to spend 200,000 Achievement Points to exchange for a special talent, Rebirth, to allow it to revive in another way?"
This system prompt struck Yang Lin like a bolt from the blue, completely catching him off guard.
"About to die, what does that mean? Does it mean it's not dead?"
After carefully contemplating, Yang Lin's eyes were filled with shock.
He immediately thought of a technique that had once been popular in the scientific community: human cryopreservation.
It was roughly the process of rapidly freezing a terminally ill person who was about to die, and then unfreezing them when technology advanced enough to cure their illness.
There were even real-life cases of this technique, though no one had yet attempted to unfreeze them.
If this mammoth had also been frozen in an instant, it might indeed have retained a trace of vitality.
However, this trace of vitality was not enough for it to revive again.
With this thought, Yang Lin's eyes flickered, and he immediately chose "Yes."
And in the next second after he made his choice, a light cluster, invisible to ordinary people, flew out from the mammoth's body and instantly flew towards the east, which was the direction of Dragon Country.