Chapter 20: "Preliminary Investigation Report on the Other World" (I)

…… In the foregoing, based on the information obtained so far, there is no doubt that this other world that appears behind the "Water Gate" in Hong Kong's Victoria Bay can be said to be a great treasure -- both for China and for all mankind. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

According to the on-site investigation of scientific and technological personnel, in general, the environment of the other world is very similar to the earth, the Arnus Hills area behind the "door", the gravity value is 9.802, the oxygen content of the air is 21%, and the difference between the proportion of the rest of the components and the earth's atmosphere is also very small, and the earthlings can breathe normally here. The measured air pressure is a standard atmosphere, which is basically the same as the earth's sea level pressure. Considering that this place is an inland mountainous area above sea level in the Otherworld, it can be seen that the average air pressure in the Otherworld should be slightly higher than that of the Earth, but it is still completely within the tolerance range of ordinary people.

The radios, vehicles, mechanical, and electronic equipment carried by the advance team were all functioning normally in the Atlas without any special problems.

At present, according to the local natives, it is now the late autumn season of the Otherworld. The temperature in the Otherworldly Arnous Mountains is 15 to 20 degrees Celsius, and the illumination intensity of the Otherworldly Sun (a temporary name for an unknown star in the sky) is roughly equivalent to that of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China in spring and autumn.

According to the standards of the earth, the expert team of the advance team preliminarily speculated that the Arnous Hills region was roughly in a subtropical climate, although it was mountainous, but the altitude was not very high, and the entire area within a radius of 50 kilometers had not found a mountain with snow all the year round, nor had there been an alpine meadow where woody plants had disappeared, and dense forests had grown from the foot of the mountain to the top of the mountain. However, since it is not known whether the growth adaptation of the otherworldly plants is very different from that of the plants of the earth, and the indigenous people of the region know little about the professional geographic data, the above speculation cannot be confirmed for the time being.

Before the completion of the Kowloon Wai Hai Dam, the area around the Arnous Hills had been soaked and washed by the seawater gushing out of the "gate" for a long time, so the surface water source was polluted and temporarily undrinkable. However, relying on the guidance of the local natives, our scouts have found a stream that can be used as a water source on the hillside two kilometers away from the "gate", and according to field tests, after simple filtration and sterilization, it can be directly drunk.

Since it had not been 24 hours since the advance team arrived in the Atlas at the time of writing, it is not possible to determine whether the rotation period and the length of day and night in the Atlas are basically the same as those of the Earth, but judging from the current observed situation, even if there is a deviation, it should be quite small and can be ignored. However, there seems to be a certain time difference between the two sides of the "gate", and the evidence is that it is around eight o'clock in Beijing that the otherworldly Arnus Hills enter dusk.

Despite these minor differences, according to the panel of experts, the probability of two planets in the universe being so similar is so small that it seems to have been designed for humans by nature. Ordinary human beings on the earth can easily adapt to the natural environment of the other world in an unprotected state. The state can send various personnel to the Atlas on a large scale at any time, conduct trade and development work, and conduct military operations.

In addition, most of the animals and plants that the advance team has found in the Atlas are very similar to the biosphere of modern Earth, and most of the plants and trees in the field of vision look familiar, although there may be some rather minor differences. Most of the wildlife in the Atlas also looks similar to terrestrial creatures, at least they can be divided into birds, mammals, reptiles, etc., at most there are some genera and species that do not exist on Earth. In addition, whether these animals and plants are edible or not is still subject to further investigation and research.

It is worth noting that the various domesticated animals in the Atlas, such as donkeys, horses, dogs, etc., are almost identical to the Earth - from the hands of a group of natives from the Atlas who fled to the Arnus Mountains to seek refuge from our army, we have obtained two donkeys (males), a dog (male) and a horse (female) from the Atlas, which are no different from the same creatures on Earth in appearance, and there is no peculiarity in blood analysis. They are currently being analyzed by a team of experts and are asking for mating experiments using their planetary counterparts. For this reason, an official document had to be urgently issued, requisitioning a stallion (male) at the Hong Kong Racecourse and four police dogs (females) from the police station, and it was also necessary to collect female donkeys as soon as possible for backup. In addition, although they are not physically available, according to indigenous descriptions, there are also cats, cows, sheep, chickens, ducks and other poultry and domestic animals and pets in this world.

Of course, the advance team also found many alien creatures that were completely different from the animals and plants of the earth, such as strange rats with a pair of small wings but could not fly, as well as a huge flame dragon that could breathe flames, orcs with animal ears and tails, and elves with pointed ears, etc. In order to confirm whether the earth's plants can adapt to the otherworldly soil, the expert team has sampled and analyzed many areas near the Arnous hills, and collected the soil that has not been polluted by seawater from a distance, and experimentally opened a small nursery to try to grow fast-growing flowers and vegetables from the earth.

Next, I will give a preliminary and brief description of the overview of the different world on the other side of the "door" from several aspects for the reader's reference.

1. Geography

According to the description of the local natives, there are also intelligence materials gathered during the wandering of the two female traversers rescued by us. The basic terrain of the other world that the "door" leads to is a complete continent, which the locals call "Falmat". Surrounded by the ocean, the continent of Farmatt is home to several large islands to the southeast, a broken archipelago to the southwest, and another continent opposite the archipelago, which is said to be extremely hot and humid, and basically in a state of savagery. Whether there are other continents further afield is unknown.

The entire continent of Falmatt is about 5,000 kilometers wide from north to south and more than 9,000 kilometers long from east to west, with a total area about two Chinas, but the terrain is relatively flatter and the climate is warmer and wetter. Deserts account for less than one-tenth of the total area of the entire continent, and the area of plateaus and mountains is also small, and the overall landscape is dominated by grasslands and forests, with vast plains and dense rivers, and the difficulty of development is relatively low. However, due to the backwardness of the civilization of the Otherworldly Realm, at least half of the land area of the Falmatt continent is still sleeping in the wilderness.

The location of the "gate" through which our army passed is the south-central part of the Falmatt continent, the core hinterland of the "civilization region" of the entire continent. Locals call it the Arnous Hill and revere it as a sacred mountain, and pilgrims come to pay homage to it from time to time. Within a thousand kilometers of the Arnous hills, more than half of the continent's prosperous cities and at least one-third of the population are concentrated, roughly equivalent to the "Central Plains" in ancient China.

However, within a radius of 100 miles near the Arnous hills, although the vegetation coverage is high, the land is barren and lacks surface water sources, which is not suitable for farming, but is very sparsely populated, forming a desolate area surrounded by civilized cities.

The Arnus hill itself, known as the holy mountain, is said to have been uninhabited, and the nearest village is located 30 kilometers away at the foot of the Romanian mountains, but these villages have been either washed away by floods or slaughtered by the dragons, and have become a no-man's land. The nearest otherworldly city to the Gate, more than 100 kilometers to the northwest, is called Itarica, a hereditary domain of a nobleman. About 200 kilometers northeast of the "Gate", on the other side of the Romanian mountains, is the political center of the entire continent of Falmat, the imperial capital of Ulabianca.

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ps: I ran around all day today, and I didn't go home until nine o'clock, so I hurried to catch up with only this point, and I had to send it out first in order to keep changing.

In addition, in response to a reader's question, in "Where Should We Go Through: Japan Chapter", why Kyoto was the only major city in Japan during the Heian period - the reader thinks that since before the capital was moved to Heiankyo (Kyoto), there were several old capitals in Japan, such as Heijo Kyo and Nara, then the Heian period should have several cities coexisting, and there would not be only one Heiankyo.

My answer is that the relocation of the capital of ancient China and the relocation of the capital of ancient Japan are not the same concept. In China, Ming Chengzu moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, only to take with him courtiers and the imperial family, and Nanjing remained a densely populated metropolis. However, in Japan during the Heian period, due to low productivity, a small population, and a lack of wealth, every time the capital was moved, it was necessary to dig three feet into the ground, not only to remove almost all the citizens of the city, but also to remove the pillars, tiles, and beams of the palace, and try to transport them to the new city to be rebuilt. As a result, in modern archaeology, Japanese people often find that the tiles, stone piers, and pillars used in a certain palace are hundreds of years older than the palace itself...... Heian-kyo used Nara-kyo pillars, and Narakyo used Namba-kyo tiles to move each other around, which was really a miser's temper.

Therefore, after Emperor Kanmu moved the capital to Heiankyo, the citizens of Nara were all moved to Kyoto, and even the palace and houses were demolished, leaving only a ruin, and it became a wasteland after a few years of wind and rain - this kind of relocation of the capital is more similar to the relocation of the Chinese Shang Dynasty, which belongs to the relocation of the whole country, not the relocation of the imperial family. Therefore, in the Heian period, there were basically a few Buddhist temples left in the old capital of Nara, and religious shrines similar to Mt. Godai, but if you want to say that it is a prosperous city, you can't talk about it, and even Dazaifu is not as good as the treaty port of Kyushu Island. (To be continued.) )