As the sun rose, Jiang Ye lifted the hatch and stepped onto the beach.
A week had passed since the turtle battle, and the corpses on the beach were all decaying.
The air smelled worse than a toilet.
"Machine Dog," Jiang Ye said.
"Here, Master," Machine Dog stood up from beside the spaceship.
"Do you feel... the weather is getting colder?" Jiang Ye asked.
"The temperatures at this time for the past five days were 22 degrees Celsius, 21 degrees Celsius, 21 degrees Celsius, 19 degrees Celsius, and 18 degrees Celsius," Machine Dog replied. "Today it's 17 degrees Celsius."
"Is winter coming soon?"
"Winter should arrive in about a month."
"How cold does winter get on this planet?"
"In our current location, it gets down to minus ten degrees Celsius at its coldest."
Jiang Ye nodded.
It was time to prepare for winter!
"Machine Dog, I have a task for you. Push all these decaying corpses on the beach two hundred meters away," Jiang Ye ordered.
Machine Dog stood up, saluted, and turned to get to work.
Although it was small, it was a garbage disposal dog, strong enough to crush all kinds of metal waste. Cleaning up corpses was no problem.
Jiang Ye picked up a shovel and a pickaxe and headed towards the garbage mountain.
The ground under his feet gradually changed, from fine sand to coarse sand, from coarse sand to a mixture of sand and soil, and finally to black soil.
He found an empty spot behind the vegetable patch and began to dig with the shovel.
The first thing to dig was the fuel depots.
Although the spaceship had an air conditioning system, its power was insufficient, and the air conditioning could only be used for a maximum of three hours a day.
This winter, they would have to rely on fires for warmth, and the more fuel, the better. He needed to build a few depots to store fuel.
The shovel continuously turned up soil, and Jiang Ye panted.
He dug for a whole morning without rest, completing 5 fuel depots, all of the same specification: two-meter cubic boxes.
The second task was to collect fuel.
Plastic bags were the best. As long as they were non-toxic, he would collect as many as he could.
Once he had a sackful of plastic bags, Jiang Ye would drag it back to a fuel depot and dump all the plastic bags inside.
The garbage mountain had no shortage of plastic bags, so collecting them was quite fast.
In just one hour, the first fuel depot was full.
Cen Yemeng did not come to collect plastic bags. Ever since the red-eyed snake had appeared once, Jiang Ye had forbidden her from going near the garbage mountain.
However, she had her own work to do.
The vegetable patch had been planted with a second batch of crops, including star anise, ginger, pepper, and garlic. She needed to constantly collect water from the water collector to irrigate the vegetable patch.
Machine Dog finished clearing the corpses from the beach and came to help Jiang Ye process the plastic bags.
It finally put its garbage disposal dog functions to use.
Opening its mouth, it swallowed over a dozen plastic bags at once, then opened its abdomen, and a square plastic brick fell out!
The originally scattered plastic bags, compressed into bricks, significantly reduced in volume.
Each fuel depot could now hold at least three times more.
For the next half a month, Jiang Ye continuously collected plastic, having Machine Dog make plastic bricks.
All five fuel depots were filled.
The morning temperature was already close to zero degrees, and it would freeze if it got any colder.
Jiang Ye began to build an underfloor heating system.
He dug a circular water channel underground for circulation and then dug a pit for boiling water.
The principle was the same as the bath he had dug on Jiang Ye Planet, just on a larger scale, and it was not difficult to build.
He just needed to add some water every day and use fuel to heat it.
The temperature would then be transferred through the ground, warming the surroundings.
Originally, the two of them lived in the crashed spaceship.
To prepare for winter, Jiang Ye decided to move into the repaired small spaceship, parking it above the underfloor heating system.
Fortunately, there wasn't much furniture, and moving to the new home only took an hour.
To improve insulation, Jiang Ye also built a ring of earthen walls around the spaceship to provide some shelter from the cold wind.
Thus, the survival preparations on the garbage planet were complete.
Food and water reserves were quite sufficient.
They even had a car and a house.
The next step was to find a way to go home!
...
Early in the morning, Cen Yemeng, with her pregnant belly, got up to start a fire and cook.
The fish soup was no longer a raw, unseasoned version; it now had various seasonings, all grown from their own crops.
Fried turtle eggs, she could make them sunny-side up with a runny yolk or fully cooked.
Cabbage soup, with a tiny bit of seaweed mixed in.
And tangerines as a dessert.
The young couple slowly finished their meal, returned to the spaceship, and took off.
They flew deep into the garbage mountain, speeding for over half an hour, and found a flat garbage plain.
"Most of it is plastic. This should be fine," Machine Dog said, looking down at the plain.
Jiang Ye clicked the screen, and the spaceship slowly descended.
He put on his spacesuit and went out, carrying a metal box.
The box contained steel wool, batteries, and cloth scraps and plastic, all for starting fires.
With a few simple operations, a flame ignited on the pile of garbage.
Soon, the flame leaped and grew into a large fire, spreading outwards!
Jiang Ye returned to the spaceship, ascended, flew forward a few dozen meters, and stopped, continuing to set fires.
His plan was simple: keep setting fires, using the fires to spell out a giant "SOS" on the entire landmass. If any spaceship passed by this planet, or if a space telescope could see it, they would surely discover the anomaly!
He lit fires more than ten times in a row.
The ground was covered in flammable materials, and the fire on the entire plain raged, with flames several meters high sweeping everywhere. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky like a volcanic eruption!
The air was already a bit acrid. Jiang Ye returned to the spaceship, ascended, and flew forward with all his might.
"I think the fire is getting messy," Cen Yemeng said, leaning against the window. "It's very difficult to burn an SOS!"
"That's right, it's very difficult," Jiang Ye nodded. "Burning an SOS visible on a cosmic scale is almost impossible."
"Then..." Cen Yemeng looked at him worriedly.
"It's okay. The shape is secondary; the main thing is the burning. If the entire plain, the entire continent, is burning, making this planet shine in the universe, I believe someone will see it," Jiang Ye said. "Our spaceship can fly for more than ten years, enough to ignite the entire planet."
"Ignite the entire planet..." Cen Yemeng was shocked.
This plan was too bold!
But, thinking about it, it could actually be done!
"The first obstacle is here," Machine Dog suddenly said. "There are rain clouds to the south."
Jiang Ye turned and looked south. Indeed, the horizon was gray and black, and cumulonimbus clouds were rapidly approaching.
"Damn, bad luck!" Jiang Ye frowned.
"Something is flying to the south," Cen Yemeng suddenly said.
Jiang Ye leaned against the window and looked hard, but he couldn't see anything flying.
But Cen Yemeng's eyesight was indeed good. If she could see it, it must be real.
He changed direction and flew due south.
A few minutes later, Jiang Ye finally saw it clearly.
Kites?
That's right, quite a lot of kites, gray and black rhombuses, soaring high in the sky. There were at least hundreds of them, like motionless large birds.
The rain clouds had already covered the kite area. Heavy rain fell on the kites, and each kite trembled.
Jiang Ye's expression changed, "Not good!"
He immediately clicked the screen, turned, and made a U-turn!