Chapter 187: An Amazing Discovery

As they were fooling around, Lin Chuyin suddenly pointed her searchlight towards the other side of the stream and looked carefully. Then, she squatted down and felt the ground. After that, she insipidly said, “Oh, there’s a small cave opposite, but we are unable to enter.”

“Where, where is it?” Hong Dali moved near Lin Chuyin and his gaze followed the light. “Oh, it really is a small cave… isn’t this a bit too small? I reckon only a spider could crawl in, right?”

It was no wonder that Hong Dali was so surprised, the cave was only as big as a person’s head. By itself, it wasn’t actually significant. But a light breeze was coming from there, so it was obviously a place where the wind could pass through. As for what was actually in there, that was uncertain. As Hong Dali said that, he lightly inhaled from around him. He felt that the air here was even more fresh, like the air in a forest after a rain. It even caused one to feel invigorated. The environment didn’t seem to be too bad.

Lin Chuyin touched around her and suddenly said, “Snakes frequently pass here. Let’s see what’s in there.”

She took out her laptop and the recording device from her backpack as she said that. After she started it, a soft humming sound could be heard as she controlled the device to fly into the small cave.

As the device went in, the image recorded by the device could be seen on Lin Chuyin’s laptop.

Everything was black, and there wasn’t any source of light. The lighting device in the center of the recording device could only shine up to three meters in front of it. Nothing could be seen beyond that.

Everyone held their breath and quietly looked at the image displayed on the monitor.

At first, it was just a very tiny tunnel. The entrance was only a head’s size, but it got wider as the device flew deeper in. Just 10 meters in, space suddenly widened up. Space now was enough for a grown man to stand up and walk. Even further in, after going past a turn, everyone was astonished.

When the light shone in a small part of the space there, even though Hong Dali and the rest were already mentally prepared, they were still shocked by what they saw.

Under the slight shaky light from the recording device, Hong saw that the device was in a place of an enormous amount of space. His family’s Hongwu Villa was already quite large with a length of 200 meters and width of 100 meters, but compared to this enormous underground cave, just from what they could see from the dim light, space there seemed to be almost the same as the villa, and maybe even larger!

Lin Chuyin controlled the device to fly upwards and illuminated all of its surroundings. This cave was sliced into two parts, the left was that enormous piece of land while at the right was a pond which bottom couldn’t be seen. Further ahead where the light could hardly reach, although they couldn’t see clearly, it seemed to be an enormous cave hole.

After scanning around, Lin Chuyin controlled the device to point directly at the center of this enormous cave.

At first, they could faintly see a circular shape with a radius of three to four meters. The top half was large and the bottom half small, causing everyone to be puzzled. Currently, they couldn’t think of anything that fit this shape. Also, this didn’t seem to be something made by humans, but rather something that lay there naturally.

To be precise, this object was just like a gigantic bowl that was placed there.

The device slowly flew forward. When it got closer, everyone exclaimed in shock!

Tang Muxin said, “What a huge turtle!”

Ling Yi said, “What the heck!”

Du Xinzhen: “God, this thing must be from our great-grandfather’s generation, right?”

As for Hong Dali, he said, “What a huge tortoise!”

It was such a gigantic turtle that it was almost unbelievable.

A real gigantic turtle.

Its large shell was at least three meters long, same as that of a medium-sized limousine. The most strange thing was the turtle’s looks. Its head seemed to be that of a crocodile’s, and its hands and legs were unable to shrink into its shell. Its upper jaw was like an eagle’s, and there were three rows of protrusions from its shell. At the sides, there were dentations, just like a saw. Every piece of the shell had a protrusion on it. Its eyes grew at the side of its mouth. At the side of its head, forehead, and neck, there was stuff that protruded out, just like the swelling on a toad. It also looked a bit like scales. At the head, neck, and stomach area were numerous arm-long tentacles.

“Oh, so it’s this.” Lin Chuyin controlled the device to illuminate the turtle all over. Then, she gradually said, “This is an alligator snapping turtle. Hm, this one looks like it has lived for a long time.”

“Alligator snapping turtle?” Seeing that Lin Chuyin knew this creature, Hong Dali immediately asked, “Chuyin, this alligator snapping turtle, what kind of species is this?”

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Lin Chuyin was indeed worthy of being a technological geek. It seemed that she had read about such stuff before and remembered them very clearly. “The alligator snapping turtle species is native to freshwater habitats. They don’t have a high requirement for their living environment. They will go into a deep hibernation when the water temperature is below 10-degree Celsius and a light hibernation below 15-degree Celsius. They start to eat normally when the water temperature is above 18-degree Celsius, but 20~33-degree Celsius is the optimal temperature level where they move and eat. They only move a little when the temperature is 34-degree Celsius and above and most stay at the bottom of the water or in the seabed to avoid the heat.

“Their body is quite large. A fully grown alligator snapping turtle’s body length can reach 75 CM and weight as much as 100 KG. Their shell is 60-80 CM long, enabling them to camouflage themselves in the water. Their tongue is like a worm. They will normally stay still in the water and just open their mouth and move their tongue to lure their prey.”

“However, this type of alligator snapping turtle should be normally found in the southeast part of the United States. How this one got here and grew so large is puzzling.”

Hong Dali was cleared of his doubt as to what it was and gave quite a reasonable explanation for its abnormal growth. “1,000-year-old tortoise and 10,000-year-old turtles ¹ , this fellow looks like it must have lived for at least a thousand years. It isn’t strange that it has grown this large. What I feel strange is, how did it get itself into this situation?”

It was no wonder that Hong Dali felt strange.

This gigantic fellow that exceeded the limits of the human imagination on how large it could grow was actually lying on its back in the center of the cave. They also couldn’t tell if it was actually dead or alive. That was why they thought of a gigantic bowl upon seeing its shape at first, those who raised turtles at home could try it out…

Therefore, this super gigantic alligator snapping turtle was amazing in this aspect.

Just lying there, it was already two meters tall. And judging from its size, it must weight at least a few thousand kilograms. It was really a puzzle what kind of incident could actually cause such a large body to be overturned.

As they looked at it, as if sensing something humming and flying around it, the alligator snapping turtle suddenly opened its football-sized eyes, shocking everyone.

Although they were far enough away from it, Tang Muxin still screamed in fright and hid behind Hong Dali. As for the rest, those not as brave fell and sat down on the floor, their whole body shaking in fright.

ROARRR!!!

The camera on the device made contact with the eye of the alligator snapping turtle for a moment, then suddenly, its originally closed mouth opened and let out a huge roar, causing the entire cave to seemingly shake and their ears to go numb.

The roaring lasted quite a while, but there seemed to be a sense of unwillingness in it.

Hearing the roaring sound from the laptop, the originally terrified Tang Muxin furiously shook Hong Dali’s elbow and pitifully begged him. “Dali, this turtle has been here for don’t know how many years, it’s so pitiful. Let’s rescue it, please?”

Actually, even if she didn’t ask, Hong Dali also planned to rescue this super rare gigantic alligator snapping turtle.

After all, this was definitely the first time Hong Dali saw such a special beast from the wild. What was rarer was that its gigantic turtle head seemed to have scales growing on it. From the looks of it, there was almost intelligence in it. It was definitely a divine beast. If this was in ancient times, people would most likely think that it was one of the four sacred beasts, the Black Tortoise ² .

However, even though Hong Dali, too, felt pity for the beast, he still shook his head after some thought. “We need time to rescue it. This fellow must weight at least a few thousand kilograms. Putting aside the fact of whether we can successfully rescue it or not, even if we really managed to do it, we have to prevent ourselves from being eaten by it. Or, end up causing it to be captured to some laboratory and cut into pieces for investigation. If that happens, we will really be sinners.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. Although it was unlikely that he would be eaten by this alligator snapping turtle, the other scenarios might happen.

If this gigantic turtle ended up in a laboratory or send to the zoo for an exhibition by the government because of them… That would definitely make them condemned by history—this turtle had lived for thousands of years, it was history by itself!

Hearing Hong Dali’s words, Tang Muxin could only nod.

After all, she was quite an intelligent lass, how could she not understand what Hong Dali was getting at? Just from its appearance, this alligator snapping turtle wasn’t something to be trifled with. What would happen if they turned it over but couldn’t control it? What if it bit anyone it saw?

At this moment, Tang Muxin was at a loss of what to do too, struggling between rescuing and not rescuing it in her heart. In the end, she could only look at the laptop’s screen and softly said, “Big turtle, if we rescue you, you will not cause trouble everywhere, right? You definitely will not eat us, right?”

As she said that, the device really broadcasted her words out.

Strange enough, when the gigantic turtle heard her words, it actually opened it’s mouth again and shouted in joy.

“Haha!” Tang Muxin was overjoyed and cheered. “Dali, it can understand what I am saying! I knew it. Such a cute gigantic fellow, it definitely isn’t some monster, hee hee.”

Looks like this thing really had intelligence in it after living for so many years! Although it might not have understood Tang Muxin’s words, it shouldn’t be a problem for it to understand her meaning!

This was probably the first time that someone said that it was cute in the thousand plus years that it lived, it actually got angry all of a sudden. It stretched its limbs and frantically waved them in the air. It looked like it wasn’t just a small fit that it got into.