Lu Yuan walked at the front, using his torch to illuminate the way and prevent ice holes from forming on the ground.
After walking for a long time, Lu Yuan felt that he could not go any further. The situation inside was still unknown to everyone. Besides, they had only come to get ice. The ice cave, which was more than 200 meters deep, seemed to have no end. Every word they spoke could be heard echoing for a very long time.
"Let's dig the ice here for now. We can't go any further. It would be terrible if we encountered any danger!"
Lu Yuan squatted down and touched the ice on the ground: "The ice here looks much purer than the ice outside. Let's take a measurement first. If it's safe here, let's start digging!"
Everyone unloaded their equipment again, and Xiwen and his group placed a piece of ice they had chiseled from the ground into the instrument for testing.
The test results went very smoothly. Although it was all ice formed over countless millions of years, the purity here was extremely high, even purer than purified water that could be purchased elsewhere.
Everyone started digging into the ice, using both hands and feet. Since they were only short of three blocks of ice, they didn't need too many people. Most of them just admired the beautiful scenery around them until the previous person got tired and then they took over to continue working.
After working for a while, Xiao Shan's forehead was covered in a fine layer of sweat. Lu Yuan quickly told her to stop and gently wiped the sweat from her forehead with a cotton cloth.
"You take a break, I'll do it. Otherwise, you'll be in big trouble if your clothes freeze over!"
Xiao Shan nodded, then put down her tools and found her water cup to rehydrate.
With nothing else to do, Xiao Shan took a torch and shone it into a cave on another side road, as if she had discovered something dark and gloomy inside.
She glanced back at Lu Yuan and the others who were busy at work, then boldly walked inside.
Because the torches weren't very bright, the raised ice on the ground made it very difficult for her to walk, and the cave became lower and lower as she went deeper into it.
After walking less than fifty meters, Xiao Shan could only continue forward with her body bent over. She didn't know why she was so bold as to walk alone into the cave in this location, but she felt that something inside was attracting her.
Suddenly, Xiaoshan felt something trip her up. When she lifted her foot to step over it, she realized that her steps were not big enough and she accidentally fell.
"Ah, someone's there!"
Xiao Shan shouted desperately, then her face filled with panic. She didn't even bother to pick up her torch and hurriedly ran outside.
Upon hearing Xiao Shan's cries, Lu Yuan immediately dropped his tools and ran towards the direction of the sound. There, he saw Xiao Shan running out of a cave on a side road, pointing at the cave entrance with a hint of panic: "There...there's someone!"
Lu Yuan quickly pulled the other person into his arms and shone a flashlight inside.
Sure enough, because there was a torch inside, he could see a sliver of light, and there were several dark things on the ground.
"Wait here, I'll go in and take a look!"
After saying that, Lu Yuan quickly took the torch and went inside. When he saw several more corpses on the ground, Lu Yuan's heart sank. These corpses were all wearing the same protective suits as the one he had found before.
However, these people were not frozen in the ice, but were frozen directly here.
Lu Yuan turned the people over and checked them. There were five people in total. Each of them looked very peaceful before they died. There were no wounds on their bodies and no damage to their clothes. They were just frozen stiff because of the time that had passed.
"Could it be that he suffocated due to lack of oxygen?" Lu Yuan guessed.
The others also rushed in, and their faces showed some surprise when they saw the corpse on the ground.
"Several more bodies have been found, and they all belong to the research team. How many of them have died here?"
"Judging from these people, they don't seem to have been attacked. I reckon they died from lack of oxygen in the cave!"
"Could it be that they were searching for something here? What could it be that would make them go to such lengths to find it?"
Lu Yuan squatted down and gently pulled open the other person's clothes, then took out the backpack and searched through the person's belongings. He then discovered that the backpack contained several pieces of what looked like they had been dug out of a hole. However, it was impossible to tell what these pieces were; they just looked like pieces of dried, long-aged cured meat.
Then, the other people nearby also found some personal information about the deceased.
“Third Team of the Post-Disaster Food Emergency Research Institute!” Xiwen read aloud the words on an ordinary card.
"A post-disaster food research institute?" Lu Yuan was not only secretly shocked.
These people probably came here in search of food. At that time, the catalyst ore had not yet been discovered, so they may have wanted to extract some genes or other things to develop some new species for people to use.
Han Wen squatted down, picked up the piece of dried meat, smelled it, and frowned: "This meat smells different from ordinary meat. I think it must have been frozen in a glacier for at least hundreds of thousands of years and preserved until now!"
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