Bi Fang walked between the trees, took off his gloves, and touched one icy tree after another, with a hundred-ter-high cliff towering behind him—a natural city wall.
Nature was so vast, yet the terrain was exceedingly cruel, no hint of green could be seen on the ground, as it was all concealed under a thick layer of snow.
Standing in the forest located in the Arctic, Bi Fang, as a human, inevitably felt a hint of insignificance.
Looking back, the cliff bore a massive inland ice face forming ice tongues that could break away at any mont during a storm and plumt from the heights, smashing everything to dust.
In Greenland, as far as the eye could see, there lay endless wild lands.
"The Arctic region, in all aspects, is pretty extre; only those species that can successfully adapt to the harsh climate conditions here, and the huge differences from sumr to winter, can survive. There are no fallen leaves here; nearly all trees are green, striving to absorb sunlight and perform photosynthesis to the fullest extent possible."
Bi Fang caressed the tree trunks, where visible scrapes were left all over them. He squatted down, shoveled away the snow on the ground, and uncovered a patch of moss that had been nibbled. Discover stories with My Virtual Library Empire
The edges of this moss bore clear bite marks; it was obvious that so herbivorous animal had visited this place and left traces behind.
Clearing more snow away, soon enough, more tracks were revealed—not just bulky footprints, but also strands of long brown hairs.
Looking at the hoof prints on the ground, the viewers felt they looked sowhat familiar.
[What's this? A reindeer?]
[Looks like it, but seems to be quite bigger.]
Bi Fang dug up the remaining moss from the ground and shook his head, "It's not a reindeer; reindeer don't have such a large size. These are the footprints left by musk oxen."
[What kind of ox is a musk ox?]
[Blind guess, it's a really big ox]
[Can it be eaten?]
"Musk oxen are representative animals of the Arctic Tundra and are the northernmost hoofed mammals on Earth. Among hoofed mammals, none live further north than the musk ox, not even reindeer."
"It's said that the underfur shed by musk oxen during their molting period is eight tis warr than sheep's wool, and their protective outer hairs are among the longest in the animal kingdom, reaching up to 60 centiters, perfectly withstanding temperatures as low as minus forty degrees."
Bi Fang briefly introduced, then pointed at the footprints on the ground.
"The reason you find their footprints similar is that both musk oxen and reindeer belong to the order Artiodactyla, and they are both part of the suborder Ruminantia. It's not until you get to the family level that they differ, which is why their footprints might look similar at a glance. But the two are very different in size."
"Musk oxen typically weigh over three hundred kilograms. Reindeer weigh less than half of that. It is precisely because of the musk oxen's massive size, and their preference to move in herds, which leaves them with hardly any natural enemies and makes their walk rather domineering, that they often scrape against trees, whereas reindeer rarely do so."
[Ss, three hundred kilograms?]
[Dang, catching one should be enough, right?]
[Suddenly the twenty-kilogram goal Old Fang set doesn't seem so outrageous now, right? One of these should be enough.]
[Herds? My DNA is twitching.]
The soil here was permafrost; stepping on it would leave marks that were hard to erase, which made it difficult for Bi Fang to determine how long ago the prey had left.
Bi Fang closed his eyes, his nostrils flared slightly as he tried to catch the musk oxen's lingering scent in the air.
"Musk oxen are so nad because both males and females exude a scent similar to musk, particularly prominent in males during the mating season."
"However, this scent does not co from a specialized gland but from their urine, and it is from this 'body odor' that musk oxen get their na."
In the air, a faint peculiar fragrance quickly entered his nostrils with the airflow, but it was not pronounced. Bi Fang had to lie down on the ground and discern it once again.
[The taste just got stronger.]
[Damn, isn't that the sll of urine?]
[Musk-scented pee (dog's head)]
[What's that? Diluted a thousand tis, poop still slls like jasmine.]
[Ah, I know this one. A certain chemistry teacher never gifts his girlfriend jasmine perfu, and every ti he sees soone using jasmine perfu, he just smiles and says nothing (dog's head).]
"That's incorrect."
Bi Fang opened his eyes and shook his head after reading the barrage.
"Feces, when diluted, is still the sll of feces, just not as stinky. Jasmine, when concentrated, is still the sll of jasmine, just not as pleasant."
"This claim originates from 'indole', which indeed is a scent component found both in feces and jasmine. The forr Hermès head perfur, Jean-Claude Ellena, described the sll of concentrated indole as the stench of corpses, which I think is similar to the sll of sun-baked cow dung in the countryside."
"But when indole is diluted to 0.1% or lower, it's not exactly the complete aroma of jasmine, not even the main component of the jasmine scent."
"Take grandiflorum jasmine absolute as an example, its scent components from highest to lowest concentration are a sweet fruity fragrance, a gentle sweetness, a dry tea leaf sll, a mix of grass and floral scent, a refreshing floral aroma, a kind of hay sll, and then cos indole at about 0.16%, plus about twenty other scent components."
[???]
[Can humans really sll this?]
[Damn, that's seriously impressive.]
Bi Fang shrugged. These were scents identified by professional perfurs; he personally couldn't do it.
Distinguishing scents requires a lot of training, and it's not just about having a good sense of sll. Soone who has never slled jasmine wouldn't recognize its scent on the first encounter.
Having a strong sense of sll mainly helped Bi Fang in tracking and locating enemies.
"The sa goes for feces; it is not composed entirely of indole."
"If they really are chemistry teachers, they ought to know that the sll of natural substances is complex by nature. It is a common phenonon for vastly different things to share the sa or similar scent components. Cheese, beef, pork, shrimp, eggs, strawberries, cherries, peaches, they all contain traces of indole."
"Can you admit that you actually eat, uh..." Bi Fang scratched his cheek and smiled, "that stuff?"
[Holy crap, I've been confused for so long, and finally I see an authoritative explanation.]
[Aweso, the truth has to co from Old Fang.]
[So, did you sll it? Are the musk oxen still around?]
Bi Fang nodded and picked up a tree stick lying nearby.
"As I said before, the scent of musk oxen is stronger during the mating season, which is from mid-September to October. After a sumr of rest and recuperation, musk oxen have accumulated a great deal of energy. The females are primarily concerned with breeding, while the males also fight for the right to reproduce during the autumnal mating season."
"At this ti, the male musk oxen's facial musk glands secrete a strong slling secretion, which gets transferred onto plants on the ground via their legs, marking out their territory. The female musk oxen are then corralled within and strictly guarded and protected to prevent other males from encroaching."
"As a result, the scent on the ground is much stronger, which is also why we had to lie down on the ground earlier."
"However..."
Bi Fang looked up at the sky.
It was getting dark.
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