The next morning, as the first rays of sunlight struggled to pierce the thick fog in the forest, the forest wind extinguished the campfire and carefully cleaned up the traces of their encampment.
He returned to the cave entrance, and after confirming that nothing unusual had happened overnight, he took out a tough vine soaked in oil from his bag, made it into a simple torch, and lit it.
"Wangcai, you stay at the cave entrance and call out if anything happens."
Lin Feng gave the order, and Wangcai growled in acknowledgment. He also tied White Moonlight and White Jade to a tree a little further away to ensure their safety.
Then, he took a deep breath, thrust the torch forward, bent down, and disappeared into the deep cave.
The cave was more spacious than he had imagined, at least enough for him to walk upright. The rock walls were uneven and damp, with water droplets constantly dripping from above.
A faint smell of sulfur permeated the air, along with a peculiar odor resembling a mixture of humus and mushrooms.
The torchlight was limited, illuminating only a few meters ahead, while beyond that lay an impenetrable darkness.
The cave sloped downwards at a considerable angle, forcing Lin Feng to carefully control his steps to avoid slipping.
He walked for about half an hour, feeling as if he had descended at least several tens of meters underground. The surrounding temperature was noticeably higher than at the surface, and a sense of warmth became increasingly apparent.
Just when he thought the cave would continue like this forever, a strange, soft light suddenly appeared in front of him.
Lin Feng's spirits lifted, and he quickened his pace. Turning a corner, the scene before him made him hold his breath instantly, his pupils dilating sharply.
An enormous underground cavity suddenly appeared before him!
This cavity is at least the size of several football fields, tens of meters high, with countless strangely shaped stalactites hanging from the dome, like a solidified waterfall.
What truly amazed and captivated him was the bottom of the cavity and the rock walls!
An underground river, emitting a faint glow, meanders through the entire cavity like a flowing jade ribbon.
The river was not deep and was crystal clear. The riverbed was covered with countless strange pebbles that shimmered with colorful light—red, blue, green, and purple—like scattered stars.
On both banks of the river, and on the hollow rock walls, grew large patches of ferns he had never seen before.
The edges of these ferns' leaves also emit a soft, firefly-like green or blue fluorescence, illuminating the entire underground space in a dreamlike, almost mystical way, resembling a divine realm.
“Fluorescent ferns…fluorescent river…” Lin Feng murmured to himself in a daze, completely captivated by the unimaginably magnificent scene before him.
He never imagined that beneath the cold, desolate surface of this alien planet, there lay such a vibrant, fairyland-like world.
He carefully walked to the riverbank and squatted down. The river water carried a faint warmth, completely different from the icy surface of the river.
He scooped up a handful of water, brought it to his nose, and sniffed it. There was no strange smell, only a faint, fresh scent similar to grass.
He took a small sip; the taste was sweet and refreshing, invigorating and delightful.
He walked slowly along the riverbank, as if strolling through a glowing maze.
The light of torches is superfluous here; the natural fluorescence emitted by the surrounding plants and minerals is enough to illuminate everything.
Soon, he made another new discovery.
In the clear, fluorescent river water, he saw schools of small fish swimming leisurely.
These little fish are very peculiar. Their bodies are almost completely transparent, as if they were carved from crystal. Only their heads have two eyes the size of black sesame seeds, which appear exceptionally clear under fluorescent light.
They feed on the roots of those glowing ferns, or on spores that occasionally fall from the rock face and also emit a faint fluorescence.
"Crystal-eyed fish".
Lin Feng gave these transparent little sprites names.
They are extremely numerous, and although they are not large, only about the length of a finger, if they can be caught in large numbers, they can serve as a decent emergency food source.
He tried to scoop them up with his hands, but these crystal-eyed fish were extremely agile and disappeared in the water in a flash.
Lin Feng stayed in this huge underground cavity for nearly two days.
He carefully explored the flow of the fluorescent river, drew a detailed map of this underground area, and collected samples of various luminescent plants and minerals.
He discovered that this fluorescent river had an even deeper source, leading to an unknown underground world.
However, he has no plans to go any further for the time being, as his current equipment and preparations are insufficient to cope with more complex underground environments.
When he emerged from that inconspicuous cave entrance, laden with his bounty, and returned to the sunlit, dark coniferous forest floor, it felt like a lifetime had passed.
As soon as Wangcai saw him, it excitedly pounced on him, licking his hand incessantly. Bai Yueguang and Bai Feicui also let out joyful hisses.
Lin Feng took a deep breath of the cold, pine-scented air from the ground, feeling a sense of satisfaction.
The discovery of the fluorescent river was the most important and surprising gain of his westward journey.
This underground world, like a dazzling pearl hidden deep within a wild planet, awaits his further exploration in the future.
On the animal skin map, the area representing the Fluorescent River was marked with a shimmering symbol using a special type of charcoal mixed with the juice of the Glowing Mushroom.
After a short rest and replenishing their fresh water and food supplies, Lin Feng decided to end their exploration of the western part of the Dark Coniferous Forest.
He turned his horse around and began his journey towards the even colder and more desolate northern ice plains.
Leaving the shelter of the dark coniferous forest, the vast and boundless northern ice plains unfolded before Lin Feng in an almost cruel manner.
The endless expanse of white was so pure it was oppressive.
The sky was higher and bluer than the forest area, as if it had been washed by ice crystals.
The biting wind, mixed with fine ice particles, howled in from all directions like countless invisible scrapers, leaving red marks on his cheeks.
White Moonlight and White Emerald trudged carefully through the thick, hard snow, making a "crunching" sound with each step.
Wangcai no longer ran around as nimbly as it did in the forest, but followed closely behind the horse, occasionally raising its head alertly and trying to distinguish any suspicious smells in the air with its nostrils covered by a thin layer of ice.
Loneliness, like the cold wind on this icy plain, is all-pervasive, trying to break a person's will bit by bit.
But Lin Feng had long been accustomed to this solitude of being with heaven and earth.
His gaze was firm and sharp as he scanned the unchanging snowfield, trying to find any signs of life in the monotonous white.
One afternoon, the sky was terribly overcast, with thick, leaden-gray clouds hanging low overhead.
The wind and snow intensified suddenly, with goose-feather-like snowflakes being swept up by the gale and pelting down, reducing visibility to less than ten meters in a short time.
Lin Feng found a slightly sunken ice mound as a temporary shelter from the wind, where he and Bai Yueguang and Bai Feicui huddled together, while he and Wangcai hid behind a wall of flesh formed by the horses.
Just as he was about to take out some compressed jerky from his bag to fill his stomach, a slight but clearly audible vibration suddenly came from the ice beneath his feet!
The tremor wasn't as violent as an earthquake, but it carried a heavy, rhythmic quality, as if some enormous object was moving step by step towards them through the distant snowstorm.
Lin Feng's pupils contracted instantly. He immediately signaled Wangcai to be quiet, while he carefully peeked out from between the horses, his gaze sharp as lightning, piercing through the raging wind and snow, looking in the direction from which the tremor came.
Then, he saw it.
A massive, unimaginable black shadow, like a moving blue mountain, slowly but with an irresistible force, emerged from the swirling snow.
Lin Feng's breathing almost completely stopped at that moment.
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