Chapter 35 Chapter 34

"In the depths of that burning iceberg," said the village chief. The warden said: "Ice, how can it burn?" The village chief said: "I have seen a piece of burning ice with my own eyes." Dr. Sloppy asked, "What's in the depths of the burning iceberg?" The village head said: "It is said that it has the power to summon ice and snow." Hawthorne said, "We'll find it." A few days later, Hawthorne and the others set out on the road again, and the Eskimo village chief felt overwhelmed. They walked a long way, and saw the village chief standing there watching them.

Nanook shouted to the Eskimo village chief: "I will come back, and I will take you to the south." Hawthorne used a GPS latitude locator to locate, and their goal was 90 degrees north latitude, which is the North Pole. An ice storm came, and the wind blew pieces of broken ice up, hitting their faces like knives.These ice flakes even tore the clothes into cracks.The wind howled like a beast, but the barking of the sled dogs seemed to come from far away.Even the lips are frozen together, and rubbing with snow can thaw out, but when it starts to warm up, it will be painful and scorching.

After a day of arduous trek, they got closer and closer to 90 degrees north latitude. Everyone was very excited. Along the way, Hawthorne kept locating the latitude, and marched for several hours in the wind and snow. After going through hardships, they finally arrived The end of the world - the North Pole.Hawthorne, Linfeng, Dora, Warden, Dr. Sloppy, General Rogge, Iga, King of Pain, Geese, Luligao, Barr Jr., Nanook, a group of twelve people stood at the North Pole. In the middle of the night, a few cold stars hang on the horizon, and the white ice field is under the feet. Dora pursed her mouth and shouted, "Hello..."

General Rogue said: "Many people will plant the flag here." Huosan took out the Iridium satellite phone and said to Captain Gut: "We have reached the North Pole." Captain Gut said on the phone: "You have to find the entrance of the crystal cave, which is said to be on top of an iceberg." The warden took out a mineral detector, and Dr. Sloppy measured the lowest temperature at the pole as -90°C. This is the lowest temperature ever observed by humans on the ground around the world. The absolute lowest air temperature recorded was 89.2°C.At such a low temperature, a human voice can be transmitted 4 miles away, that is to say, Dora shouted, and people 6 kilometers away can completely hear it.

At such extreme temperatures, a frozen spectacle can also be produced, which is almost as magical as magic. Dr. Sloppy took off his mask, let out a breath, and the hot air he exhaled immediately froze. An irregular ice ball condensed in the air, suspended for a few minutes, and slowly disappeared.Seeing this, Dora thought it was very amusing, and she also blew a circle of cold air into the air. Hawthorne made a cross shape in the air and held it gently in his hand. The mineral detector in the hands of the warden made a sound. Everyone followed the sound and walked forward. A huge iceberg towering into the sky appeared in front of it. The exposed tip of the iceberg was only one-tenth of the whole iceberg. how big.Hawthorne deduced that there should be an island under the iceberg, the island is below sea level, and the perennial freezing makes the island and the ice shelf connected together.This iceberg is blue in color and is estimated to have existed for tens of thousands of years and is a permanent sea ice.

The King of Pain was curious about the blue iceberg. He took off his cold gloves and touched it with his fingers. Dr. Sloppy reminded him loudly, but it was too late, and one of the King of Pain's fingers was already frozen together.Dr. Sloppy yanked hard, and with a snap, his finger snapped off like a fragile popsicle. The King of Pain looked terrified, looking at the half of his finger on the ice wall. Hawthorne asked Linfeng and Yihe to prepare to climb the iceberg to find the hole. They put on non-slip shoes, held ice axes, hung a bundle of strong ropes around their waists, fastened the cross buckle, and they climbed up the iceberg like a competition. Waiting at the same place, Dora looked up worriedly. After a while, Linfeng and Yihe climbed to the top of the mountain. Linfeng said to Hawthorne through the satellite phone: "We didn't find the entrance of the cave, but we found it..."

Hawthorne hurriedly asked, "What?" Linfeng said: "We saw a flower on the top of the iceberg." Hawthorne asked, "What kind of flowers?" Linfeng replied: "A flower in the shape of a cross." Linfeng and Yihe came down from the iceberg along the same path, and they dug up a flowering plant with a folding shovel. After seeing it, Hawthorne said that this plant is called crossflower, which belongs to lichen hydroponic plants and can be obtained from ice and snow. Moisture, this green star-shaped plant is also found on Mount Everest at altitudes as high as 6,350 meters.

Hawthorne said to the warden: "The entrance to the crystal cave is probably sealed by ice." The warden said, "Then what shall we do?" Hawthorne said, "Unless you split the iceberg." The warden said: "Impossible!" Dr. Sloppy looked at the cruciferous plant. Some white ice was still hanging on the root system of the cruciferous plant. He took off a piece of ice and showed it to Hawthorne. The two of them observed carefully and analyzed something in whispers.Dr. Sloppy checked the ground, and there was nothing but ice on the ground. Hawthorne lit a torch and held it up high. Everyone was puzzled and just looked at him.Dr. Sloppy nodded, and Hawthorne pointed the torch in his hand at the ground. After a while, the ice on the ground started to burn, and a line of fire slowly moved towards the iceberg. Suddenly, flames burst out, and the iceberg began to burn.

The huge iceberg is burning, and the flames are soaring into the sky, which is very spectacular in the night. There is a kind of ice that burns, called combustible ice.Dr. Sloppy found combustible ice on the root system of cruciferae, the ground and icebergs. The combustible ice is white and looks like ice and snow. It is similar to solid alcohol and can be ignited directly. Its scientific name is natural gas hydrate.Combustible ice has a high energy density and is mainly distributed in the seabed and tundra. It is estimated that the total amount of organic carbon contained in natural gas hydrates in the world is equivalent to twice that of known coal, oil and natural gas in the world, and the reserves are enough for human use. A thousand years.

The combustible ice on the iceberg gradually burned out, and due to thermal expansion and cold contraction, the huge iceberg cracked in two with a snap.Everyone walked into the crack of the iceberg, and there was still an unextinguished flame on the iceberg. With the help of the fire, we could see a sloping hole on the mountainside. Everyone took a short break, put on spiked shoes, took out ice ax and crampons, tied a figure-of-eight ring, hung a strong rope on the lock, climbed to the entrance of the cave, and looked down. This ice cave is very deep. Under the colorful light. "This ice cave is estimated to be tens of thousands of years old," Hawthorne said.

Dr. Sloppy said: "Mineral substances mostly exist in such caves." Keith said: "Besides crystals, there are probably diamonds under here." "Then we shall be rich," said the King of Pain. The warden said: "The most important thing is to find that piece of meteor ice." General Rogge said: "Meteor ice, unbelievable." Hawthorne said: "There's nothing strange about comets being huge icy bodies surrounded by dust." Dr. Sloppy said: "After the sun dies, it becomes a white dwarf. After 2 billion years, the sun will become a huge diamond and continue to shine brightly in the solar system." Everyone made a circle of safety wedges with steel drills around the ice cave, hung down a main rope, installed the lifting equipment, and everyone slid down the ice cave one after another. Every time they fell a certain distance, they nailed many safety wedges, and then pulled out the main rope to hang In the new safety wedge retaining ring.Some parts of the ice cave are vertically downward, and some are inclined, which makes everyone more cautious. Once one person falls off, the others will fall into the abyss together.Hawthorne initially estimated that this ice cave should be the deepest ice cave in the world. There are currently 61 caves on the earth that are more than 1,000 meters deep, and there are very few ice caves that are more than one thousand meters deep.They felt a strong sense of the vicissitudes of time and space in this ten-thousand-year ice cave, as if they had entered a time tunnel, and all they saw were blue ice that was tens of thousands of years old. These ices had never melted for thousands of years. But, moreover, the deeper the ice, the older it was formed. Animal corpses in the blue ice never rot. Dora shouted, and everyone followed the direction of her finger, and saw a dolphin in the ice wall below. The dolphin was wrapped in ice and showed a jumping posture.Continuing to go down, everyone can see that there are many fish in the surrounding ice, and the fish are as fresh as ever. There are many ice flowers growing on the wall of the cave, and some ice mushrooms grow in some places. Everyone feels tired and descends to a huge ice mushroom to rest for a while. This ice mushroom looks very solid, like a huge round table. The table top rests on a slanted icicle. Cave explorers must not only have superb technology, but also allocate their physical strength reasonably and make full use of various terrains for rest. As soon as everyone stood still, the ice mushroom shook slightly. Hawthorne yelled "Oops", the ice cover gradually tilted, and everyone was like a seesaw, using their body weight to control the balance of the ice cover. would slip, and they might all fall together into a pulp. Hawthorne said: "I called 123, everyone took a small step, everyone walked to the middle, 1... yes, that's it." Everyone held their breath, and walked to the middle of the ice mushroom under Hawthorne's command. Before they could catch their breath, the ice cap broke with a snap. Everyone shouted at the same time and fell together. Fortunately, there were strong ropes around their waists. They were all suspended in the air, each one still in shock, but what was even worse was that the safety wedges nailed in fell off the ice wall one by one due to the violent fall, and each time they fell off, there was a bang, and they also fell down violently. Dropped a little, and finally only one safety wedge on the top remained intact... At this critical moment, everyone looked down and saw many black lines slowly rising below the ice cave. What is frightening is that those black line-like objects are not attached to the ice wall—they are in the ice layer Drill up little by little. Dora said, "What are those things? They are terrible." The warden asked: "In this world, is there any life that can drill around in the solid ice?"