Chapter 258: Ice Age

Bai Liu and the others leave Taishan Station and arrive at their previous location, where they find that Fang Xiaoxiao, whom they had dug out of the ice crevice, has disappeared.

"Fang Xiaoxiao also took the rest of the team." Tang Er fought with a cold expression.

Mu Sicheng looked to Bai Liu : "So are we going to find them next? Where will they go?"

"I probably know why Edmund left and where they're going." Bai Liu exhaled a breath of white air as he gazed out over the sparse snow at the shimmering edge of the gray day, the Antarctic continent.

Bai Liu reveals a relaxed, slightly teasing smile, "--It seems that the other player has put quite a bit of pressure on the bottom boss, Professor Edmund, causing him to temporarily abandon his experiments on us and leave to target this player. "

Liu Jiayi, always the quickest to react, turned to Bai Liu: "Is it Spades? What did he do?"

"Go on the main mission of the game." Bai Liu looked back at her flatly, "--Make global warming."

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Pure white by the Ross Ice Shelf.

The waters near Victoria Land contain a large amount of salt that can bring the freezing point of the water down to below freezing.

Before the polar night, when the Antarctic waters are at their coldest, it takes only fifteen minutes for a man to fall in and die of hypothermia.

And in such waters, seeing a human being who is sinking and undulating like a whale is obviously an eye-catching thing.

Stacked haphazardly on the bank was a snow-block tent-like storage unit containing canned food, a rash guard, a pair of neatly arranged socks and a sled cart.

A drying rack was propped on top of the sleigh, on which hung a pair of oversized boxer shorts, drying on top of two burning solid alcohol lamps.

It looks like they didn't want to wear someone else's underwear they found in the observatory and chose to dry the ones they had on them for reuse.

On top of the snow "tent" was a small red flag, which swayed and vibrated violently in the sea breeze, and the material on top of it emitted a peculiar fluorescent glow that was quite conspicuous in the coming night.

The man in the sea floated and sank twice, swimming unnaturally fast, even faster than the seals and orcas that had begun to eat heavily and reserve fat for the coming winter.

At least as the two creatures tentatively hunted the man, he just made a slight stroke, turned easily in the water, and in the blink of an eye passed under the mouths of these two top Antarctic predators.

Bubbles of air spilled from the seams of his lips - the only way to detect that this guy was a strange human being, not an icy humanoid monster born into the cold sea of an ice field.

Even the seals attempting to hunt him probably wondered inwardly - why this prey, not a single bit of heat radiation could be felt.

Like ice, even colder than ice.

Before they could think of an answer, the wily "prey" once again swept past their grimy fangs in a fluid motion, and, with swinging legs and slightly open eyes, dived into the deeper, more unseen light of the sea.

Ten minutes later, Spades surfaces, dragging a several hundred kilogram tide gauge to the surface.

He stepped forward on the ice with his bare feet, his left hand dragging the huge orange frame encircling the instrument in a long trail across the snow, the water on his eyelashes and hair freezing before it dripped and being rubbed together with a handful of his outstretched right hand.

This is dangerous and can easily hurt your eyes and skin, as well as lead to severe frostbite and contusions.

But this injury doesn't seem to show harm in Spades.

The kind of damage and temperature that would be fatal to a normal human being seemed, in his case, so worthless that it wasn't even worth reaching out a second time to take care of the shards of ice caught between his eyelashes and forehead hair.

The ice hangs loose and fragmented on Spades' tight, fluid body like small grains of diamonds that haven't been simply polished, refracting, at certain angles, the amazing light that shimmers and glitters on his hypothermic skin.

He wasn't overly fit, looking lean in turn when he strained hard at the shoulder blades, but the proportions of his skeleton from shoulders to waist and stomach to ankles were just too good, the muscles thin and tough covering the back of his neck to the backs of his feet, and it seemed as if the amount of muscle mass attached to every bone and joint had been carefully calculated and honed in order to result in a shell of such a combination of strength and proportionality.

Instead of bluing after the skin had been soaked in seawater, it exuded a glazed glow of marble after it had been polished, a kindred translucent white color.

It was like a product of art that had been carved and refined seven billion times and was still unsatisfactory, and it would have taken a sculptor from all over the world to engrave such a half-naked sculpture.

The only unfortunate thing about this sculpture was that the small half of its face was covered by hair, leaving only a jaw that fit the artifact-like body perfectly.

Spades acted as if he couldn't feel the cold, glistening gravel, dragging the heavy loads forward at an even pace, eventually melting them with his eyeballs and body heat.

And so this bit of radiance also passed away in the great blizzard that whirled in, and no one could ever again perceive that this cold monster, which had dived into the deep sea, had ever been so bright a sight.

Spades casually slammed the several hundred pound instrument aside with one hand, knelt on top of it with one foot, bent close to find out the inner lining of this instrument, and then, without hesitation, drew out his whip, and as if he were making a dagger held it backhandedly by the handle, and stabbed it inward.

After the stabbing, he realized what he had done was out of place and slowly opened his mouth with an "ah".

[It's a whip, not a dagger! Not a long knife! Nor is it an awl or a crutch! Can only throw! No stabbing, stomping, slashing or chopping!

Spades reflexively recalled the way that new teammate who had just transferred over, what with the Inquisitor of the Counter God vocally breaking down and hissing next to his ear:

Use the whip properly! Don't try to use the whip in any strange way! Give me a little respect for the form of the weapon you're using! Do you know how many points the guild spent on maintaining your weapon last year?

The man accused him bitterly:

[Poking around with the handle of a whip without any care, doesn't your conscience hurt when you use it? Do you know how expensive the material on it is?

It's true that Spades doesn't know any of this, he's just in charge of winning and never cares about anything other than winning or losing games.

He recalled how he had answered the new team member who had just switched back to the Slayer sequence at that point:

-[It's okay to win.]

He seems to be very good at attacking with a variety of weapon forms, and I don't know why the last weapon form fixed for his personal skill is a whip.

Spades isn't a big fan of whips, he makes a shuriken or awl smoother, but can get by with a whip.

Because even though he was using a whip, he could also forcefully use it to make other weapon attacks that were quite powerful.

So it often ends up serving his core purpose as well - winning the game.

So he never cared much about this, but his league teammate this time, the Inquisitor of the Counter God cared a lot about this.

No matter how many times the Judge of the Adversary warned him in tears of despair, Spades did what he did and used the whip in his own way.

So this Inquisitor unleashed his skills, and he predicted Spades' future, evilly threatening him by saying, Spades, if you don't stop practicing how to use the whip properly, you're going to lose the league at the hands of a player who is even better at using it than you are!

Spades was interested in winning, so he listened a little bit this time.

From the time he entered the game until now, Spades has been a middling whip flinger, which isn't quite as smooth as it should be, but it's not impossible to use.

But just now a little bit smoother, and with the handle of the whip, I poked right through the lining of the tide gauge.

But the pesky new team member wasn't there to see the gruesome scene, so Spades paused only briefly before continuing as if nothing had happened as he whipped and pried open the steel skin of the instrument and dug out one of the thermometers inside, wrapped in layers of waterproof plastic sheeting.

Spades ripped off the tarp and wrapped a small metal box that was vibrating inside.

It's a peculiar little box that makes high-frequency irregular movements in all directions, and in Spades' hands it keeps making a very sharp, high-frequency vibration that would shatter a person's bones just by holding it.

Spades closes his five fingers, leaving a clearly visible fingerprint on top of the metal box.

He squeezed the box straight up and deflated it, then pressed his thumb against the side and flexed his fingers inward, poking a hole in the box.

Pressing his fingertips against the hole he'd poked, Spades turned and took the little box back to the snow block tent.

A lot of dusty stuff could be felt crashing around on his fingertips, and his fingernail caps were engorged with blood from the shock.

It should have hurt quite a bit, but unfortunately he couldn't really feel it.

Spades bent down and hooked off the oven-dried boxer briefs, then bent down and rummaged around the tent one-handed for a while, locating a bottle of strong acid in a glass jar, then holding the box directly over an alcohol lamp.

His eyes were fixed motionless on the flame of the alcohol lamp, his breathing was very light, and the leaping candle flame cast a warm beam of light in his eyes, the stiff, cold outer skin gradually warming under the baking of the alcohol lamp

Also warming is the metal box that Spades holds in the palm of his hand.

The metal box was heated to such an incredibly high temperature that the outer skin was reddening, and Spades's hand, which was gripping the box, made the sound of the ice shell evaporating as it burned, but he didn't seem to feel the heat himself, and he continued to grip it with an impassive grip.

The dust inside the box vibrated faster and faster under the heat, and Spades' whole arm shook like crazy.

After being baked for who knows how long, Spades' arm slowly stopped vibrating, as if all those particles inside had been baked lifeless by the constant heat, he finally felt it was okay, withdrew his hand and came back, opened up the hole in the box that his fingers had pressed down on, and without hesitation, poured the strong acid from the bottle into it.

The strong acid made a fierce reaction sound, and gas constantly overflowed from the hole of the box, even the surface of the box reacted with a dark oxidized film.

Spades looked down at the box as he heard his system announcing tone:

[System alert: Congratulations to player Spades for destroying the Particle Weather Reactor (521/600)]

[The game is nearing its end, so please keep up the good work!