The destroyed frog mother burned fiercely, its shattered parts scattered across the snow.
The intact frog mothers seemed to have fired their frog bombs as well, their surroundings pockmarked with hundreds, even thousands, of craters.
Jiang Ye pulled his ornithopter up to a safe altitude, deliberately flying over the heads of the frog mothers.
The cannons on the frog mothers rotated, aiming at the ornithopter from a distance, emitting a grating sound of mechanical collision. However, they never fired. Their range was insufficient, and they wouldn't waste ammunition.
Jiang Ye wasn't inclined to engage them and continued forward with his wide-area scan.
After a vast plain, rolling hills appeared. Black rocks and cream-colored snow intertwined, the ground resembling a Go board covered in stones.
Multiple red dots appeared on the screen, extremely large in diameter. Each red dot was a heat source, with a surface temperature around forty degrees Celsius.
Animals!
And astonishingly large, at least over ten meters tall!
Jiang Ye reconsidered; heat sources weren't necessarily animals. They could be hot springs, or perhaps operational, "living" machinery.
The number of red dots scanned on the screen grew, scattered throughout the hills. There were already twenty-eight, and more were appearing as the ornithopter moved forward. Each red dot was at least half a kilometer apart, stealthily hidden in the lower terrain of the hills.
Jiang Ye maintained a safe altitude and maneuvered the ornithopter closer to the nearest red dot.
A frog mother!
In the low-lying area indicated by the red dot, a frog mother lay quietly in the snow. Its dark metallic shell emitted heat, melting a large patch of the surrounding white snow and revealing the black ground.
Jiang Ye's ornithopter flew over it, but the frog mother remained still, as if asleep. It was likely in some form of standby mode, its activation time unknown.
If the enemy doesn't move, I won't move. Jiang Ye didn't disturb the sleeping giant. He flew along the entire hill region, conducting a wide-area scan and marking the locations of all the frog mothers.
30, 35, 40...
50, 70, 100...
Jiang Ye was stunned. The entire hill region seemed to be a frog mother nest, teeming with warm frog mothers, all motionless and dormant. The sheer number was unbelievable!
The Mil people had indeed air-dropped many frog mothers, and the situation was more troublesome than anticipated.
Scanning the entire hill region, the total number of frog mothers was 218.
With enough fuel, Jiang Ye continued forward, wanting to know how many frog mothers this continent held.
Across the vast snowfield, small black dots appeared only at long intervals. The scanner didn't detect them; those dots were likely rocks.
After flying for over an hour without encountering any more frog mothers, Jiang Ye breathed a slight sigh of relief. At least the enemy wasn't so numerous as to be everywhere.
A peculiar scent suddenly wafted into the cockpit.
The smell of blood, the smell of fish, and a faint, indescribable fragrance.
Jiang Ye frowned. The ornithopter was at an altitude of two hundred meters, with strong winds blowing head-on. How could such a strange smell be present?
Moreover, the ground was entirely covered in snow, and they were far from the sea. Where was the fishy smell coming from?
His eyes suddenly lit up; he thought of something.
He shoved the control stick forward. The ornithopter's wings instantly retracted, and its body descended in a graceful arc, accelerating so rapidly that the entire cockpit vibrated.
Just before landing, the wings abruptly deployed again, flapping vigorously to stabilize the aircraft's altitude.
Indeed, the closer he got to the ground, the stronger the scent became.
Jiang Ye reduced speed, and the ornithopter descended inch by inch, landing with a thud on the snow. White snow billowed up, like waves stirred by a speedboat. After gliding through the snow for a while, the ornithopter, leaving a long trail, finally came to a halt.
He flipped open the cockpit door and jumped out.
The air was bitingly cold. Upon exiting the aircraft, he was buried up to his thighs in snow.
But the scent was even clearer now: a mixture of blood, fish, and that peculiar fragrance.
The scent wasn't emanating from any particular direction; it was ubiquitous, present from all sides. The entire area carried the same fragrance.
Jiang Ye opened the cockpit door and grabbed a rocket launcher, loaded it with an explosive rocket, and slung it over his shoulder.
He aimed at an open space not far away and pulled the trigger.
As soon as the rocket was fired, he suddenly ducked. The earth-shattering explosion sent snow and grit raining down, covering him. When he stood up again, a large crater had been blown open.
Jiang Ye struggled to reach it and then lay down at the bottom of the warm crater, sniffing.
A smile spread across his face. He hadn't expected that by chance, he would stumble upon another mining area. The scent filling the air was the result of the mineral sense at work!
The ornithopter had flown for a long time before landing, and the mineral scent had never ceased. This indicated that the underground mineral deposits were quite extensive, with astonishingly rich reserves.
The last time he encountered such rich minerals was in Shale Town, which also had a pervasive smell of ore. Shale Town had since developed into Shale City, with a population of twenty thousand.
Jiang Ye looked around. As far as the eye could see were plains. This was also a good place to build a city. When the interstellar refugees arrived, perhaps they could be allowed to establish a city here and develop the economy through mining.
But the prerequisite was that the minerals buried here had to be valuable enough.
If it were cheap, common ore, it couldn't support a large metropolis, nor would it be worth mining.
Jiang Ye took out his phone. Thank goodness, the phone still worked in this cold weather.
He sent a message to Xu Yan, reporting his current coordinates.
Xu Yan replied instantly: "What do these coordinates mean?"
Jiang Ye: "There are minerals at this location. I don't know what kind, but I need you to bring equipment to survey it. Come now; I'll wait here."
Xu Yan: "How do you know there are minerals there?"
Jiang Ye: "If there aren't any minerals, you can twist my head off and use it as a football. Hurry up and come. It's freezing, don't make me wait too long."
Xu Yan: "Such a good head would make a fine football, and I'd be reluctant to use it that way. Alright, I believe you. I'm bringing people over right away."
Jiang Ye left the crater and returned to the ornithopter, closing the cockpit door tightly, letting the warm air from the air conditioner heat up the cabin.
Of course, he had to sit in the warm air conditioning. If he waited outside, Xu Yan would be there to collect his corpse. A frozen, brittle mummy.
The surroundings were silent, with no sound. Only the boundless white snow, quite lonely.
He couldn't help but recall a passage he had memorized in middle school: "rime frost and mist spread, the sky, clouds, mountains, and water, all white from top to bottom."
He had memorized all his middle school texts thoroughly, originally to prepare for the college entrance examination. Unfortunately, he would never take it. When he learned that passage in class, Jiang Ye would never have imagined that he would recall it on a wild planet far from Earth.
A whistling sound came from overhead. Jiang Ye looked up as several fire-spewing conical spacecraft descended rapidly, crashing down ten meters away, kicking up a large cloud of snow powder.
The spacecraft bore the trademark "Termite Real Estate." He hadn't expected Xu Yan to arrive so quickly.
As the hatch opened, a group of strangely shaped individuals emerged in formation.
Each of them wore a loose, full-body white latex suit, with transparent masks over their faces like explosion-proof suits, resembling clothing from a biological laboratory, completely sealed.
The latex-suited individuals carried equipment and began working in the open space, setting up unknown machinery.
One of the latex-suited individuals walked directly towards Jiang Ye's ornithopter, carrying a folded set of large latex clothing. The person reached the ornithopter and waved clumsily, signaling for the person inside the aircraft to come out.
Jiang Ye flipped open the cockpit door and jumped out, finally realizing that the face behind the mask was Xu Yan's.
"Put this on," Xu Yan's voice came from inside the mask, muffled.
"What is this?" Jiang Ye took the latex suit blankly. When it landed in his hands, he realized how astonishingly heavy it was, weighing at least thirty pounds.