On the ground.

Hearing Lei Wenjun's report, a strange and surprised expression appeared on Lin Ziming's face:

"What? Director Lei, you discovered a turtle?"

"That's right, Colonel Lin, I've adjusted the angle of the recorder, and the control station should be able to see the image from my side."

Upon hearing this, Lin Ziming quickly went to the control station and called Feng Yuhua to extract the video.

Considering the need for process recording, Lei Wenjun carried two types of recorders when he went down the pit.

One was an infrared imaging night vision recorder, commonly seen in scientific investigations as black and white footage.

The other was a regular color high-speed camera.

Although there was no direct light under the deep pit, Lei Wenjun carried a spotlight, allowing the color camera to function under specific conditions.

For instance, at this very moment, what Lei Wenjun transmitted was such a color image.

Approximately half a body length below Lei Wenjun, a small turtle was crawling in a rock crevice!

The turtle looked about the size of an average person's palm, with a black shell and blue limbs and head.

Its head, tail, and four feet spread outwards like a snail sticking to the rock surface, yet its eyes were dull and lifeless, with no visible movement in its body.

It seemed as if it were frozen.

Then Lin Ziming asked:

"Director Lei, is this turtle still alive?"

"Colonel Lin, please wait a moment."

Lei Wenjun quickly replied, and then the video first showed a bit of shaking and rattling sounds, as if something was removed from a backpack.

After about half a minute, Lei Wenjun replied:

"Colonel Lin, I used the thermal imager to detect it; this turtle seems to show no signs of life.

Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that its shell has some effect that blocks thermal imaging detection.

After all, most of our equipment is more exploration-focused, and our life detection capabilities are somewhat lacking."

Lin Ziming nodded, as he was aware of what Lei Wenjun mentioned.

Given the width of the pit and the limited space in the helicopter, they brought only a small portion of life-detection instruments, mainly meant for organisms with obvious life signs.

In areas like feigned death or low activity, their detection capabilities indeed weren't precise enough.

Then Lin Ziming said to Lei Wenjun:

"Director Lei, how about this, you come back to the surface first and let Xiaoliu and the others go down to pick up this turtle?"

This time, Lei Wenjun didn't argue and agreed readily:

"No problem, I'll come up now."

Although Lei Wenjun was experienced in exploration, this turtle involved biological sampling, which was entirely different from geological surveys.

If Lei Wenjun attempted to collect it himself recklessly, there was a possibility of damaging the sample due to lack of expertise.

If the turtle was in some sort of feigned death state and was startled awake, causing it to escape or even attack, Lei Wenjun could be in danger.

In these times, even rabbits can be disastrous on the inside and outside, so a turtle being venomous would not be unusual.

Lei Wenjun, such an expert, is a national treasure, invaluable talent.

If he were lost at this stage, it would be a major loss.

Lei Wenjun clearly understood this, so from discovering the turtle till now, he had not attempted to touch it.

As for whether the turtle would flee during the personnel change...

That's a joke.

Lei Wenjun's descent had been far from subtle, and he had stayed in this position for a considerable time reporting on the situation with the cryptic rock, even manually breaking off a few samples.

In such a scenario, the turtle hadn't been disturbed; even if it were alive, the likelihood of it fleeing in fear wasn't great.

After both parties finished communicating, Lei Wenjun left a locator at the position and began to be pulled up.

About fifteen minutes later.

Lei Wenjun successfully returned to the surface and handed over the rock samples he collected.

Then, Lei Wenjun was not allowed to move freely, but instead, he put on a protective suit and was taken to a mobile single-person airborne isolation chamber.

No one knew if there was any 'contamination' under the pit—currently, it could be confirmed this pit was anything but ordinary, likely harboring some sort of civilization-level secret.

In a Cthulhu novel context, this kind of pit would undoubtedly have an 'indescribable' prefix, with a tentacled monster sort of boss attached.

Thus, theoretically, it poses a potential physical or mental infection risk.

Of course.

Another reason was that Lei Wenjun had been on the move for so long; Lin Ziming was initially looking for an excuse to let him rest for a bit.

So, using the single-person isolation chamber was just natural.

Lei Wenjun would be transported back to camp like cargo, and how long that would take depended on organizational arrangements. In any case, Lei Wenjun had no room for 'resistance'.

At least until the air and soil samples from the depths were confirmed safe, his observation status wouldn't be lifted.

Plan succeeded.JPG.

After Lei Wenjun returned to the surface.

Lin Ziming arranged for special forces warrior Liu Ming to go down the deep pit and sample the turtle into a high-strength container box.

In today's special forces training programs, covering major skill sets in various fields is standard, so Liu Ming sampling biological samples was nothing surprising.

Come to think of it, those elite Soldier Kings infiltrating key enemy points—without some chemistry or biology sampling skills, wouldn't it be a wasted trip?

Of course, those infiltration investigation movies don't count here.

In any case.

Special forces today are like eighth-level technical experts, capable of becoming chief engineers at an auto service center, sporting excellent skills.

Last year, a guy was on a self-driving tour to the west, and he broke down at the edge of a no-man's land, only to encounter a team of stationed special warriors.

At that time, two soldiers repaired the guy's car with their bare hands, and their skills were off the charts.

This situation was quite similar—Liu Ming managed to encase the turtle into the containment in no time flat.

Returning to the surface, Liu Ming handed the container to Lin Ziming.

This container was an FJ79-grade biological container, similar to what was used to house Hua Xiaomo.

It could withstand the shooting of a 79-style sniper bullet, with extremely robust internal and external defense.

Right now, Patriarch Wei further fortified this container with a reinforcement magic, likely tough for ordinary third-rank beast to breach quickly; therefore, Lin Ziming could safely observe the turtle.

At the moment, the turtle lay on its back in the container motionless, with its green bean-sized turtle eyes dull and lifeless, and its blue body extremely conspicuous.

The local turtles were mostly dark brown or black, with rare ones being golden yellow or dark red.

Currently known blue ones, excluding those painted flashy turtles on the internet, only two types of turtles have such an appearance:

A few ornate diamondback terrapins and Squirtle.

Ahem.....

The ornate diamondback terrapin is a kind of brackish water turtle with typically gray heads and limbs,

though the species has numerous subspecies, with many blue individuals found.

But those blue ornate diamondback terrapins have limbs resembling children's play dough, lacking elasticity and vitality.

In contrast, this blue turtle was different:

Its limbs and head were a remarkably clear blue, almost reflecting like crystal diamonds except they weren't transparent.

For a blue turtle to appear under a deep pit, its origin was bound to be unusual, and it might even be some kind of demon beast.

However, given Lin Ziming and the others lacked enough research facilities, they could only temporarily send it back to the camp for study.

Meanwhile, around the same time, the local L17 cultivation chamber was nearly completed.....

Note:

Immediately pointing out a big push, I chatted in-depth with the editor for over an hour, feeling greatly impacted.

I won't update three chapters today, as I've thought of an interesting plot that needs some outline adjustments, and the promised three-day consecutive updates start tomorrow.

Speaking of which, doesn't this tone sound like asking for leave...

Though I update nearly six thousand words daily, with a guaranteed baseline that beats many authors by half, it seems like something might be off 0.0.....

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.