Inside Qingqiu Space.
After assigning the tasks, the exploration team immediately began to take action.
The exploration team had two main objectives this time:
One is to collect as much information about the alternate dimension as possible.
Back there, although the Qingcheng Mountain Celestial Palace exists, the internal energy is really too violent:
To put it mildly, the annihilation of positrons and electrons is unbearable no matter who you are.
Besides, it is located within the tourist spot of Qingcheng Mountain.
There are certain difficulties in organizing operations and providing various technical supports.
Therefore, upon discovering this movable space entrance of the ice coffin, the command center is bound to explore it thoroughly.
For instance, what does its boundary look like?
Is it also connected to high-energy radiation from the outer space?
Or is it an actual boundary that can be touched with hands or sticks?
As for the second objective...
Naturally, it's to gather information about Qingqiu civilization and see if any clues can be found.
The location of the low peak is about a hundred meters above the ground, and the path is not very rugged.
Lin Ziming and his team walked along the mountain path and soon reached the ground of Qingqiu.
To be honest.
With Qingqiu, a mythical place from rumors, now truly discovered, opened, and entered, Lin Ziming and the others felt quite intricate.
The Nine-tailed Fox of Qingqiu...
When myth meets reality, everyone stepping inside carries a certain gravity.
In some sense.
They are witnessing and unearthing another ancient history buried in the sands of time.
Da da da—
After leaving the low peak.
Lu Chaoyang first prodded the ground with his toe, creating a small pit.
Then he bent down, pinched the dirt clump kicked out, and shook his head saying:
"Very ordinary sand and stone, no residual Spiritual Energy, no feedback on Spiritual Power.
If nothing unexpected happens...
This should be from the initial founder of Qingqiu Space... hmm, let's call it the Master of Qingqiu.
The Master of Qingqiu might have dug this sand and stone from the outside world."
Then he stood up, addressed a rugged young man carrying a bucket:
"Xiaosun, collect some soil samples and send them back to the lab now.
Have the experts identify the composition of the soil.
Check whether it's Earth soil, and if so, how many years ago it dates back to.
If we can make it on time, the footprint identification report inside the cave can be released simultaneously.
With a bit of luck.
We might be able to determine the initial construction time of Qingqiu."
Looking about forty but actually just turned 25, Xiaosun slung the total station single-handedly and thumped his chest firmly:
"Professor Lu, rest assured, leave it to me!"
Lu Chaoyang thanked him courteously and turned to Lin Ziming:
"Colonel Lin, let's proceed further."
Lin Ziming nodded:
"Okay."
Then the group walked straight ahead for about seven to eight hundred meters, arriving at the edge of some withered trees.
On the left side of the dead wood, there was a ravine approximately three meters wide, with varying depths from a few centimeters to a meter.
Within it, the barren sand bore no grass, cracked desolately, embedding a few solitary stones.
However, based on some vaguely visible stratification along the ravine's edge and its length, it was not hard to judge.
A long time ago, this had been a clear small river.
The source of the river probably was a distant mountain peak, with its ending unknown.
During the prime era of Qingqiu's glory.
Perhaps many young foxes liked to frolic here.
Yet now Qingqiu lies in silence,
those once joyful figures have vanished into the historical river.
Only a few shallow footprints remain beside the ravine, along with...
Three to five skeletons.
These skeletons vary in size, scattered around the trees, some joints already dissolved with time's passage.
Lin Ziming first cautiously surveyed the area around him, using his mind to scan a circle.
After detecting no anomalies, he looked at fox expert Yi'an:
"Professor Yi, please."
Yi'an gently nodded, put on gloves, and took out a magnifying glass.
Then he walked over to the fox skeletons, lowered his head and began to inspect.
Fox research.
This is a very, very niche subject locally.
Just how niche is it?
It's so niche that it takes an average of 3.4 years to publish one SCI paper, and there are only 8 professors with relevant titles in the country.
Even more so, there are only four labs specifically dedicated to the research of foxes in the country.
Of course.
There are plenty of places labeled as research and breeding bases.
But these bases mostly count as one, almost all of them are only breeding and not researching, purely commercial routes.
No other way around it.
The field of fox research is too small.
The vast majority of experts include it within another research topic rather than studying it independently—Cui Xiaofeng is one such case.
And because of this.
The importance of Yi'an in the Qingqiu project is self-evident.
After about ten minutes.
Yi'an lifted his head with a thoughtful expression, frowning as he said to Lin Ziming:
"Colonel Lin, there's something off with these skeletons."
Hearing this, Lin Ziming raised his eyebrows:
Being off is good; if everything were fine, how would we discover problems?
Of course.
These thoughts remained in his mind, and he wouldn't express them, so outwardly he was quite curious:
"Oh? Professor Yi, how are they off?"
Yi'an pushed his glasses up and explained:
"Foxes are a subject with many mysteries on Earth.
You might not believe it—there's no generally accepted timeline for when foxes first appeared on Earth.
Some say five million years, others say three million, and some say five hundred thousand years.
The current latest theory is that the ancestors of modern carnivores were ancient cat-like creatures, around 40 to 50 million years ago.
And then nothing—you believe that?"
Lin Ziming was stunned:
"Uh... nothing? What does that mean?"
Yi'an shook his head with a wry smile:
"Literally, we know nothing about the evolutionary gradient after ancient cat-like creatures, and even evidence of their existence is scant.
The most recent common ancestor of the Feliformia and Caniformia is as mysterious as the big boss in 'Conan'; nobody knows.
What we do know is that the earliest divergence of the Feliformia led to the Viverridae, and the Caniformia diverged into the Canidae.
Then further split into subfamilies like Borophaginae, Hesperocyoninae, and Caninae.
Within the Caninae, it split into the Fox Race—foxes and raccoon dogs.
We only understand the process; there's no substantial evidence for the timing of each divergence, it's all guesswork based on fossil examination." (I specifically checked an SCI article, the one with the highest impact factor concerning foxes, and it turned out to be in rare Spanish, which I manually translated word by word at night...)
By the ravine.
Hearing Yi'an's explanation, Lin Ziming widened his eyes:
"You mean there's no consensus on when foxes appeared on Earth?"
Yi'an nodded heavily, indicating he was correct.
He then picked up a fox skull from the ground and made a gesture towards Lin Ziming:
"And compared to foxes on Earth, the Qingqiu foxes are obviously more special.
Take this skull, for instance.
Colonel Lin, do you see this area?
This is its brain, the two protruding nerve endings.
From this, we can deduce that it has a brain capacity of about 130 grams."
Seeing Lin Ziming somewhat puzzled, Yi'an continued:
"Typically, the brain weight of a modern human is about 1,400 grams, a mouse's is about 2 grams, a cat's about 30 grams, a dog's about 70 grams.
As for a standard red fox, its brain capacity is around 60 grams.
A brain capacity of 130 grams, imagine what that implies?"
Lin Ziming blinked:
"Does it mean it's the notably intelligent among foxes?"
Yi'an lightly nodded and said:
"You could say that; it's a major step in evolution.
There is a native model for foxes called 'foxtilo'; according to this model, foxes in nature would need to evolve for another 700,000 years to reach this level.
Even with human intervention and breeding, it would conservatively take at least hundreds of thousands of years—biological evolution is far harder to accelerate than technological advancement, where a thousand-year leap is the basic unit."
Then Yi'an flipped the skull, pointing at the teeth:
"There's also this, its jaw.
The carnassial teeth have moved significantly forward, formed by the fourth upper premolar and the first lower molar, indicating a more efficient predation method.
To compare this level of evolution with technological standards...
It's like when we were still in the early research stages of AI, a company released a brainwave holography game online—ridiculous—and that company turned out to be a pig farm."
After saying this.
Yi'an carefully set the skull down and picked up a bone resembling a leg bone:
"Another crucial point is..."
"The cause of death for these foxes isn't natural aging but.... "
"Killed by other creatures!"
.........
