Thursday, March 21, 2019

Hunter of the Forbidden Region ch 4.1 - New Members


The fleet of SUVs drove on the rugged, mountainous paths on the border of southwest China for over seven hours.
At around 1 PM, they finally arrived at the suburb of a small city.
Nobody stopped, they merely turned onto the highway and roared on.
Another three more hours on the road and one could finally see the high rises in Sang Shing through the car windows.
By now, the sun was about to rise.
Anne was the one who drove the SUV that Lin Shuo was riding in. Normally, a girl driving for 12 hours straight could be fairly dangerous.
But this girl chatted with the starling the entire trip and showed no signs of being tired.
It was Lin Shuo who found the woman and the bird being too noisy through the entire trip.
The SUV fleet finally arrived at their destination -- the five-star Four Season hotel in Chun Ning, Seng Shing. They stopped for food.
Chun Ning was known to be spring like year round. The city did a great job in turning itself into a green city.
Lin Shuo let the starling went to seek his own food in the forest nearby and placed the ebony box neatly into the guest room before heading to the buffet restaurant inside the Four Season with Anne, Wei Xingshan and the rest of the crew.
The 200-something square meter fine dining restaurant barely have anyone inside at this hour of the day. It seemed quite empty.
Their group of a dozen or so individuals, especially Wei Xingshan and his team of soldiers marched into the restaurant. The ten or so of them were in sync whether they were walking, looking for seats, or sitting down. The few patrons in the restaurant all turned their heads to look at them.
Lin Shou picked a table that was slightly secluded and Anne waived for Liu Qing and the two women sat down with Lin Shuo. Lin Shuo invited Wei Xingshan to join them as well, but he gave Lin Shuo a look and declined his invitation.

After they have gathered their food and in the middle of dining and eating, two more walked inside the buffet restaurant.

Both of them were bespectacled. The older one of them looked to be about 60 years or so year old, cladded in traditional Chinese silk garment (tangzhuang). His hair was all silver but he was still quick on his feet. One could feel the wind brought up when he walked.

Following behind him was a man in his thirties looking very refined in his white buttoned down shirt.
The two of them picked up a plate and picked their own food before they looked around and finally headed toward Lin Shou’s table.

Anne and Liu Qing stood up when they saw the two men.

“Let me introduce them,” said Anne. “This is professor He Zihong, the top researcher of Global Lifeform Research Organization. And this one is his student, a young biologist from our country, Dr. Yang Ta.

“Professor He, Dr. Yang, this is Mr. Lin Shou, the team lead of our project.”

“I’ve have long heard about you, Mr. Lin!” Old man He Zihong passionately stretched out his hand, “I never imagined Mr. Lin to be so young!”

Lin Shuo paused for a second then stood up and shook hands with He Zihong.

After some pleasantries, everybody finally settled down in their seats. Lin Shuo looked at Anne inquisitively.

Anne immediately explained with a smile, “I’m just a half-assed research student and don’t measure up to the knowledge of these two experts. So they will be the subject matter expert for the trip to Heilongjiang. They have been waiting to join up with you here.”

“You mean Professor He and Dr. Yang will be coming with us to Heilongjian?” Lin Shuo frowned and looked at the two scholars.

“Well, of course!” Professor He Zihong beamed and said loudly. Then looked around at their surrounding and lowered his voice, “From the specimen we have obtained from the scale, we have just completed our preliminary research on the creature at Heilongjiang. Oh my God! This is truly a miracle in biology! Xiao Yang, why don’t you explain!”

The refined Yang Ta pushed up his spectacles and beaming with excitement, started with a low voice, “From the size of the scale, we gathered that it’s size is unmatched on earth.

It weight is around the currently largest creature on earth, around 100 ton. But it lives in the ocean, the buoyancy of the water can protect and support it’s weight.

On the other hand, the creature we are talking about now is terrestrial.

This was almost impossible in the biological sense. With this kind of weight, what kind of biological structure and strength of the body does it have to handle gravity?

This is our first question.

Second, the hardness of it reached 9.5 on the Moh’s scale, almost that of diamonds. We are talking about hardness of ore and have never been observed on any living organisms.

Third, from our analysis, we were able to find out that it’s shares 97% of its genome with the Titanoboa, a giant snake that lived during the Middle to Late Paleocene epoch. Yet even the Titanoboa did not reach this size.

On top of that, we have also discovered that this creature has been alive for over 1,000 years.”

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