Live Streaming: Great Adventure in the Wilderness

I’m staking a claim, time to rest early.

I’ll change it back before two in the morning.

Enjoy new stories from NovelBin.Côm

The sun rose, and I was full of energy.

Feeling the temperature rise, Bi Fang felt all the cells in his body stretch out.

Far away was a series of white undulations, indicating he was going in the right direction, headed towards the interior of Greenland.

Because there could not be any undulating terrain on the ice field, they had to be mountain ranges.

"If you set a goal to direct your travel, after reaching it, you need to establish a new goal," he said.

"In polar conditions, it is extremely vast and there are nearly no distinguishable features, so remember to fixate on a feature you can see on the horizon, but this doesn’t mean you’ll reach that place quickly."

The old saying ’watching a mountain run won’t make it come any closer’ warns of this very thing.

You see the mountain, but even if the horse dies running, you still might not reach it.

"It could be as far as 100 kilometers away. The captain on the cruise ship shared his experience with me. Once, he was walking on the ice cap of Greenland when he spotted a black object on the horizon. During the weeks of travel through icebergs and coastlines without seeing anything else, it was the first time they saw a small black dot."

"The captain was extremely excited about this different object, setting up a camp eagerly discussing that they could reach the mountain by the next morning. Two days passed, and it was still there!" he laughed.

[Let’s not disclose such embarrassing stories, shall we?]

[Ah, the captain!]

[Is the captain watching the live stream too?]

[Aren’t you afraid of hitting an iceberg if you’re not watching the ship?]

[Darling, I have a first mate and a second mate. They are the real workers.]

[What a guy.]

[The polite first mate.]

Bi Fang finished his last sip of water and squatted down to start drilling ice.

"These past days I drank a total of four pots of water, roughly two pots a day, without drinking excessively. Drinking water is a part of metabolism, which does take away some of your body’s energy, so under non-extreme conditions, maintaining just the necessary amount of hydration is sufficient," he explained.

"One thing I’ve noticed distinctly is that the taste of salt in the water has become less and less apparent, and now here..."

Bi Fang chipped off a piece of ice, put it in his mouth, then spat it out, laughing, "There’s practically no saltiness left, indicating the ice here is quite ancient."

The audience was surprised. What was the reason for this?

[I always thought ice was fresh water, how come there’s salty ice?]

[Indeed, I remember learning that both polar ice caps are fresh water, and there’s a lot of it.]

The glaciers at the Arctic and Antarctic are the world’s largest reservoirs of fresh water, with 70% of the world’s fresh water stored within them.

This is probably everyone’s impression, but is fresh water salty?

"You haven’t understood the real reason why glaciers are freshwater. It’s true that the icebergs at both poles are freshwater, but the reasons for their formation are different, leading to some other differences,"

"The Antarctic region is a large continent, and the heat capacity of land is much lower than that of water, which makes its ability to store heat relatively weak. The heat gained in the summer is quickly radiated away."

Bi Fang poured the crushed ice into the kettle as he explained.

"The average annual temperature there is around -56℃. In such low temperatures, the water produced by the water cycle mainly exists in the form of rain or snow, and water freezes at 0℃, ensuring that the snow doesn’t melt throughout the year."

"Even during the summer, some of the snow that melts soon freezes into ice. Therefore, around the seas of the Antarctic Continent, there are large quantities of ice blocks floating, forming immense icebergs."

This was easy for the audience to understand.

The freshwater in Antarctica becomes snow after natural evaporation, and then melts into ice; the entire process doesn’t contact any salts and, as a result, naturally becomes freshwater icebergs.

"By contrast, the Arctic region has less land area, mostly consisting of the Arctic Ocean. Since sea water has a high heat capacity, it can absorb more heat, and the heat dissipates slowly, so the average annual temperature there is higher than in Antarctica, sitting at around 8℃, also influenced by warm currents,"

"The freezing point of sea water lowers due to the presence of various salts. Also, at low temperatures, the solubility of sea water decreases. Warmer seawater has a higher salt content, and as the water freezes, the salt is transferred to the relatively warm sea water.

This is why after the seawater freezes, it turns into ’freshwater’; the salts crystallize out, causing a decrease in salinity in the formed glaciers."

"Therefore, there are fewer glaciers in the Arctic than in Antarctica, and the vast majority are accumulated on Greenland."

"The former is direct transformation into freshwater by natural distillation, but the latter is due to the crystallization of salts caused by various factors, which is a change in quantity leading to a change in quality. Since it’s a matter of quantity, there naturally is a process. Walking here from the seashore is to experience this process of change in quantity,"

"The Eskimos living in the Arctic Ice Field rely on such methods to obtain a certain amount of freshwater resources. This also causes the sea areas where ice forms or the nearby sea ice to have a higher salinity."

"Under my feet now lies true freshwater, with all the salt completely crystallized out. The water I drank earlier could be considered saltwater with a pinch of salt. Although it is saltwater, the salinity is much lower than that of sea water and is completely suitable for hydration,"

[Strange knowledge has increased.]

[Feels like I’ve learned something amazing again]

[Geography is really fascinating]

"In fact, when sea water freezes, an interesting phenomenon occurs, which is the ’brinicle’ or ’ice stalactite’."

"The temperatures at both poles are very low, sometimes dropping to tens of degrees below zero℃ at sea level.

At this point, the surface of the sea begins to freeze, and as the surface temperature drops, the salt expelled increases the density of the water below, resulting in an ice stalactite extending downwards, while the surrounding seawater, upon reaching the freezing point, doesn’t freeze due to the change in density."

"Thus, the ’brinicle’ is born. If you observe from below, you can see an ice stalactite extending from the surface down below. Under the extreme low temperatures, freezing occurs in an extremely short amount of time. Marine life touched by the brinicle is instantly frozen, which is why this phenomenon is called a ’brinicle’ or ’ice stalactite’."

[What kind of sorcery is this?]

[Master Fang, I want to learn this!]

[Master Fang: If I could do this, I’d have gone exploring space ages ago]

"Right now, we’re walking on Greenland’s ice cap, where the thickness can even reach several kilometers. It’s impossible for human strength alone to drill through, with the known average thickness being more than two thousand meters, and in some places, it even exceeds three thousand four hundred meters."

Bi Fang dropped one astonishing fact after another, shocking the audience.

Who has ever seen ice layers thousands of meters thick?

Amidst such astonishment, Bi Fang had yet to reach the mountain range in front of him, and so, out of necessity, he dug another snow trench to spend the night.

It wasn’t until the evening of the third day that Bi Fang finally touched the first rock he had come upon since arriving on the island.

By that time, he hadn’t eaten anything for three days.