Bai Liu and the others left Taishan Station and returned to the place where they had previously made camp, only to find that Fang Xiao Xiao, whom they had dug out of the ice crevasse earlier, had indeed disappeared.
“Fang Xiao Xiao took the other team members with him too.” Tang Erda’s expression was cold and grim.
Mu Shicheng looked at Bai Liu. “So are we going to look for them next? Where would they go?”
“I can probably guess why Edmund left, and where they’re headed.” Bai Liu exhaled a breath of white mist. Through the sparse snowfall, he gazed toward the shimmering edge of the Antarctic continent beneath the dim gray sky.
A relaxed, faintly mocking smile appeared on Bai Liu’s face.
“It seems the other player has put considerable pressure on this final boss, Professor Edmund, forcing him to temporarily abandon his experiments on us and deal with that player first.”
Liu Jiayi reacted the fastest, as always. She turned to look at Bai Liu. “Is it Spades? What did he do?”
“He went to carry out the game’s main storyline mission.” Bai Liu looked back at her calmly. “To make the world warm up.”
—
Beside the pure-white Ross Ice Shelf.
In the waters near Victoria Land, the high salinity of the seawater can lower its freezing point below zero.
Before the polar night descends, the Antarctic seawater reaches its coldest point under the convergence of cold and warm currents. If a person falls in, he will die of hypothermia within fifteen minutes.
And in seawater like that, the sight of a human moving with the fluid rise and fall of a whale, constantly diving deeper, was naturally conspicuous.
On the shore, a warehouse-like tent made from stacked blocks of snow stood there in a careless heap. Inside were canned food, assault jackets, a pair of socks placed neatly together, and a sled.
A drying rack had been propped up on the sled. Hanging from it in proper order was a pair of oversized boxers, being dried over two burning solid alcohol lamps.
It seemed he was unwilling to wear someone else’s underwear from the observation station, so he had chosen to dry his own and reuse it.
A small red flag had been planted on top of the snow “tent.” It swayed and shook violently in the sea wind. As night approached, its material gave off a peculiar fluorescence, making it stand out with exceptional clarity.
The person in the seawater bobbed up and down several times. His swimming speed was unnaturally fast, even faster than the nearby seals and killer whales that had begun feeding in great quantities to store fat for the winter.
At the very least, when these two kinds of creatures tentatively tried to hunt him, he merely made a slight stroke, turned easily in the water, and in the blink of an eye glided past the fangs of these two apex Antarctic predators.
Air bubbles slipped from between his lips. Only from this could one tell that this fellow was some strange kind of human, not a cold, humanoid monster naturally born from the ice fields and freezing seas.
Even the seals attempting to hunt him probably felt puzzled in their hearts.
Why did this “prey” give off no thermal radiation at all?
He was like ice.
Even colder than ice.
Before they could struggle their way to an answer, this cunning “prey” once again flowed past their hideous fangs like running water. He moved his feet, his eyes slightly open, and dove toward the deeper sea where no light could reach.
A dozen or so minutes later, Spades surfaced.
In his hands, he dragged a tide gauge weighing several hundred kilograms as he emerged from the water.
He stepped barefoot onto the ice and walked forward. His left hand dragged the enormous instrument encased in an orange-yellow frame, leaving a long trail across the snow. The water on his eyelashes and hair froze before it could drip, and he raised his right hand to crush it all away.
This was an extremely dangerous thing to do. It could easily injure the eyes and skin, leading to severe frostbite and contusions.
But injuries of that degree seemed incapable of showing any real harm on Spades’ body.
This kind of injury and temperature, fatal to an ordinary human, appeared so insignificant on him that it was not even worth reaching up a second time to clean away the ice shards caught in his eyelashes and hair.
The fine ice was like tiny, unpolished diamond grains, hanging loosely and sporadically across Spades’ taut, fluid body. From certain angles, they reflected a startling light, shining brightly against his low-temperature skin.
He was not excessively muscular. When his shoulder blades tightened, he even looked thin. Yet the skeletal proportions from his shoulders to his waist and abdomen, then down to his ankles, were truly too perfect. His muscles covered him from the nape of his neck to the arches of his feet in thin, tough layers. It was as though the amount of muscle attached to every bone and joint had been precisely calculated and refined, creating an outer shell that combined both power and symmetry.
His skin had not turned blue from being soaked in seawater. Instead, it gave off the glazed luster of polished marble, a translucent white that felt almost human-friendly.
He was like a work of art that would still remain unsatisfactory even after being meticulously carved seventy billion times. To carve such a half-naked sculpture would likely drive every sculptor in the world mad.
The only pity was that the lower half of this sculpture’s face was covered by his hair, leaving visible only a jawline perfectly suited to this masterpiece of a body.
Spades walked forward at an even pace, dragging the heavy load as though he could not feel the cold, nor the glittering fragments of ice that finally melted against his eyeballs and body temperature.
And so that bit of brilliant light vanished in an instant amid the howling wind and snow.
No one would ever realize again that this cold monster who had dived into the deep sea had once possessed such a bright moment.
Spades casually slammed the several-hundred-jin instrument aside with one hand and knelt on top of it on one knee. He leaned down to find the instrument’s inner core, then pulled out his whip without the slightest hesitation. Holding the whip handle in a reverse grip as though it were a dagger, he stabbed inward.
After stabbing it in, he realized he had done something improper.
He slowly opened his mouth and made an “ah” sound.
“This is a whip, not a dagger! Not a longsword! Not a cone or a cane either! It can only be swung! It cannot be used to stab, stomp, slaughter, split, or hack!”
Spades reflexively recalled his new teammate who had just transferred over—that “Judge Who Rebels Against God,” or whatever his name was—screaming and collapsing in despair beside his ear.
“Use the whip properly! Don’t apply the methods of strange weapons to a whip! Show at least a little respect for the form of the weapon you’re using! Do you know how many points the guild spent last year maintaining your weapon?!”
That person had accused him with heartbreaking grief.
“Stabbing everywhere with the whip handle without a care... Doesn’t your conscience hurt when you use it like that? Do you have any idea how expensive the materials inlaid on it are?!”
Spades truly did not know these things.
He was only responsible for winning matches. He had never cared about anything outside the final result of a game.
He recalled how he had answered this new teammate, who had just returned to the Killer Sequence, at the time.
“As long as I can win, it’s fine.”
He seemed to be extremely proficient in the attack methods of all kinds of weapon forms. He did not know why the final fixed weapon form of his personal skill had turned out to be a whip.
Spades did not particularly like using a whip. He was more comfortable with short knives or cones, but a whip was still usable.
Because even while using a whip, he could forcibly make the whip perform the attack styles of other weapons and produce considerable offensive power.
Therefore, in the end, he usually achieved his core objective.
Winning the game.
So under ordinary circumstances, he did not care much about these things.
However, his teammate for this league, the Judge, cared very much.
No matter how many times the Judge warned him with tearful desperation, Spades still went his own way and used the whip according to his own methods.
As a result, this Judge activated a skill. He prophesied Spades’ future and threatened him viciously.
“Spades, if you still don’t practice the proper way to use a whip, you will lose in the league to a player who’s even better at using a whip than you!”
Spades cared about winning and losing, so this time, he actually listened a little.
From the start of the game until now, Spades had been swinging the whip in the standard manner. Although it was not especially convenient, it was not unusable.
But just now, acting out of habit, he had used the whip handle to directly pierce the inner core of the tide gauge.
However, that annoying new teammate was not here and had not seen this tragic scene.
Thus, Spades merely paused for a moment before continuing as though nothing had happened, using the whip to pry open the steel casing of the instrument and dig out a thermometer wrapped in layer after layer of waterproof plastic cloth.
Spades tore open the waterproof cloth.
Inside it was a small, vibrating metal box.
It was a very peculiar little box, making high-frequency, irregular movements in every direction. It continuously emitted an extremely sharp, high-frequency vibration in Spades’ hand. Merely holding it would have shattered a person’s bones.
Spades tightened his five fingers, leaving a clearly visible fingerprint on the metal box.
He directly squeezed the box flat, then pressed his thumb against the side and curled his finger inward, punching a hole through it.
Pressing the pad of his finger against the hole he had made, Spades turned and carried the little box back into the snow-block tent.
He could feel countless dust-like things constantly crashing against the pad of his finger. His fingernail vibrated until it became congested with blood.
It should have been quite painful.
Unfortunately, he could not feel much.
Spades leaned down and unhooked the dried boxers. Then he bent over and searched around the tent with one hand for a while, eventually finding a glass bottle filled with strong acid. After that, he directly held the box over the alcohol lamp and began roasting it.
His eyes stared fixedly at the light of the alcohol lamp. His breathing was very faint. The flickering flame cast a warm beam of light into his eyes. The frozen outer layer of his skin gradually grew warm under the alcohol lamp’s heat.
Warming at the same time was the small metal box held in Spades’ palm.
The metal box was heated to an astonishingly high temperature, its surface even turning faintly red. The hand Spades used to hold the box gave off a sizzling sound as the ice crust evaporated under the heat, but he himself seemed completely indifferent to the burning temperature, continuing to grip it tightly without any reaction.
The dust inside the box vibrated faster and faster under the intense heat. Spades’ entire arm began to tremble violently along with it.
After roasting it for an unknown length of time, Spades’ arm slowly stopped shaking.
It seemed the particles inside had lost their vitality under the continuous high-temperature roasting. Only then did he feel it was enough. He withdrew his hand, uncovered the hole in the box that he had been pressing with the pad of his finger, and without hesitation poured the strong acid from the bottle inside.
The strong acid produced the sound of a violent reaction. Gas continuously overflowed from the hole in the box, and even the box’s surface reacted, forming a layer of dark oxide film.
Spades lowered his eyes and looked at the box.
He heard his system notification.
[System Notification: Congratulations to player Spades for destroying a particle weather reaction device (521/600).]
[The game is approaching its end. Player, please keep up the good work!]
