Chapter 264: Ice Age

"So what are you going to do ...... with us?" Liu Jiayi shrank back into his seat, burying his head in his knees, "...... throw us out of the game and then what?"

"Not throwing you out of the game, you have things to do for me." Bai Liu looks at Liu Jiayi.

Liu Jiayi raised her head slightly, looking at him with red eyes, "...... What's the matter?"

"Because Ice Age hasn't been cleared by anyone yet, that is, there hasn't been any [END] line, then the game's time corresponding to reality is stagnant, the sidequests haven't been loaded into reality yet, and there's still room for reality to turn around."

Bai Liu said, "I need you guys to get out of the game, go stop that plane from crashing in Antarctica."

Liu Jiayi stretched her body, she also realized that there is room for manipulation in this, frowned and asked rhetorically, "But according to the usual routine of this game loading into reality, this plane is most likely already over Antarctica, as soon as we log out, the time of reality will start to flow, and it won't take long for it to crash."

"We can't stop a plane that's about to crash, still in the Antarctic."

Bai Liu smiles, "No, someone else can."

Liu Jiayi tilted his head in confusion, "Who?"

Bai Liu: "Du Sanying."

Tang Er hit knocked on the helicopter's hatch, "A bit of the outline of the metal box is already faintly visible."

He exhaled a breath of white air, frost hanging from his eyebrows and hair, but Tang Er struck a look more condensed than the frost, "-it's a box from the Heresy Treatment Bureau."

--------

Reality, over the South Pole.

The biplane that was about to land had dialed out a long communication signal that had not been picked up, and the five escorts on board the plane had sensed that something was wrong.

They glanced at each other, and a sense of foreboding surged through them.

"Aircraft - zip - calling ground comms - zip - zip. We're getting a lot of clouds and turbulence. Do you copy--"

The radio remained silent, and as the air currents rushing straight at both wings grew stronger and more turbulent, the escorts took a deep breath, they had to be prepared for the worst.

"What's up ahead?"

"Ross Sea."

"Prepare for forced landing."

......

Antarctica, open space in front of the observatory near Ice Dome A.

A group of men in conspicuous red punchy observer crews rubbed their hands and stomped their feet and tilted their heads to the sky as they whispered slightly uneasily to each other:

"I thought we were told to line up ice crevasses to facilitate airplane landings today, why haven't we arrived yet ......"

"I don't know, I just got out of the observatory and the liaison inside said the pilot hadn't been contacted in a long time, satellite phones and all means were used, no signal feedback ......"

"Nothing's going to happen, is it?"

......

Heresy Handling Bureau, Region I.

Su Yang, looking tired and tense, draped in a captain's uniform that was a little too big for him, walked through a long corridor that was brightly lit in the night and rounded the corner into a mechanical room.

The mechanical room was in disarray, coffee cups lay unkempt on the table, and a couple of ground communicators who were manning the instrument benches stared beardedly at the big screen.

These people were so black and blue that it felt like they were going to die suddenly at any moment when their heads were tilted.

Captain Su attached great importance to the matter of escorting the body parts, and the people below naturally followed suit.

From the time the escort left the harbor until now over Antarctica, the ground communicator has maintained unbroken communication throughout the entire process, working overtime without closing his eyes for several days.

But even with all this care, as the plane was about to arrive at the South Pole and everyone was about to breathe a sigh of relief, something suddenly went wrong.

By whatever means, they could no longer contact the five airplane escorts.

The ground communicator turned back with a pale face, "Captain Su, what should we do?"

Su Yang hadn't closed his eyes since he'd sent the escort away, and he'd looked at the pure white surface of Antarctica, as detected by the satellite on the big screen, his brain blanking out for a while at the overly bright color.

A feeling of powerlessness that no matter what, there was nothing that could stop something established from happening came over me.

"So this is the significance of the [Prophet] having supreme authority in the Heresy Handling Bureau." Cen Buming appeared beside the delirious Su Yang at an unknown time.

Su Yang turned her head to look over in a daze, "Captain Sham ......"

Cen Buming hugged his arms, looked at the snow surface for a while with those eagle-like yellow eyes, and turned sideways to look at Su Yang: "Because [seeing] is so much more important than [doing]."

"-Fate has its own plans, and we, the men of the cards, have no choice but to obey."

Cen Buming brushed his head over the side of the disoriented Su Yang without looking back, "Prepare to collect the bodies of these five escorts."

"Captain Su, what should we do?"

"Captain Su, are we still in contact?"

"Captain Sue ......"

"Captain Sue ......"

Su Yang closed his eyes, he held the edge of the table, his voice hard to say, "Live to see people, die to see the body, let the Antarctic side to prepare search and rescue crews and ...... shroud bags."

"Bring me back someone no matter what."

In-Game.

Bai Liu and Mu Sicheng rotated Tang Er to continue the work, with the wind not as strong as before, replaced by the sun with its strong UV light.

Mu Sicheng is sweating as the temperature on the ice climbs ever closer to his heart.

"Tsk, what's going on?" Mu Sicheng shook his collar, sweat rising along with the heat, "What's gotten hot all of a sudden? Could the weather here be any more doggy?"

Bai Liu crouched down as he looked at the ice that showed clear signs of melting, "It's not that the weather has suddenly gotten warmer."

"It's because we're digging out hearts and completing the main quest, so global warming is starting."

Tang Er hit poked his head out of the helicopter and yelled, "-- Bai Liu, the temperature is rising abnormally, it's above zero now!"

He jumped out of the helicopter and took a few steps in front of Bai Liu, "At this rate of temperature rise, the ice will melt quickly."

Bai Liu shook his head, "I don't think it's just a quick melt, this heart is most likely Edmund's core device locus for constructing global cooling, and the last prop of the [TRUE END] line."

"-If taken out, I doubt this global warming will cause the entire Antarctic ice cap to melt all together."

Tang Er hit wrinkled his eyebrows, "Then wouldn't that turn the South Pole into an ocean?"

Bai Liu looked up at him, "There's more trouble than that."

"If the ice caps were to melt completely, the Antarctic would be drastically reduced in size, and the massive loss of ice and snowfields would lead to a drastic change in climate, and a massive reduction in weather such as blizzards that impede vision and movement extremes, making us much easier to scout in such a map."

Bai Liu paused, "It's going to exacerbate the speed at which Spades finds out about us."

Bai Liu's implication was clear: there had to be a way to hide the heart, or it was only a matter of time before Spades found it.

Tang Er hit with a frown, "But where to hide it, Spades' attack and movement speeds are too high, all of Antarctica can be scoped out by him at any time, anywhere, it's not safe to put your heart anywhere."

He had to sigh tersely, "Aside from not being good at decryption, this guy is a perfect lead attacker."

Bai Liu smiles, "That's the one, let's make a puzzle for him."

Tang Er struck a chord, "What puzzle?"

Bai Liu said, "Hide the wood in the forest."

Scott Lodge.

In the rapidly rising temperatures, the snow surface melted around this cabin, nestled in the middle of a soggy mound, the boards splattered with mud spots and dirty.

When Bai Liu comes to visit again, Edmund is surprised, "You dug up the heart?"

"Yes." Bai Liu looked at Edmund as he handed the metal box to the other man, "There's something I need to trouble the professor about."

Edmund took the box, growing more and more alarmed, "Is this the box for the heart? Why are you giving it to me?"

Bai Liu smiles, "Please, Professor, do me a favor and hide this heart from Spades."

Edmund smiled helplessly and bitterly, "Son, Spades, he's the player who comes here most often, and he's probably more familiar with every blade of grass and tree here than I am, and I'm not sure that I can find a place to hide my heart in Antarctica without Spades finding it."

Bai Liu said, "Maybe I have a nice place Fang Ke for hiding, of course this place is not perfect and there is a possibility of being discovered, but for now in the game Ice Age, this place should be the most unfamiliar place for Spades."

Edmund asked in surprise, "What is the place?"

Bai Liu stares at him, "In my body."

"How do you have a place for another heart when you already have one in your body?" Edmund teased him in a jocular tone, "Boy, you can't use two hearts here and there when it comes to love."

And Bai Liu calmly replied to him, "Yes, there is, just cut out my heart."

Edmund was stunned for a long time, he realized Bai Liu was not joking with him.

He looked incredulously back and forth between Bai Liu and the box in his hand several times, and then looked up at Bai Liu shakily:

"Are you crazy? You want me to take your heart and put this one in?!"

"You'll turn into a monster!!!" Edmund looked at Bai Liu incredulously as he held up the box containing his heart in his hand and emphasized in a loud voice, "You're a real person, you've had a real life, you're nothing like a product of a game like me."

"Do you realize what this means when you do this?!" Edmund hissed shakily.

"If I put a heart into your body, after this heart and you are fully grown together you will become a, a ......"

Edmund huffed and puffed, "-a total monster!"

Bai Liu raised his eyes slightly as he looked at the box being held aloft by Edmund, then dropped his eyes to his face.

"I've always been a monster."

Edmund took two steps back, he looked straight at Bai Liu for a long, long time, and finally, as if exhausted, he commiserated and sat down in his chair.

"But even if you hid the heart in your body, that's not enough." Edmund looked up, "There's a chance Spades might find it too, and keep in mind this guy is good at everything but decryption ......"

"I know." Bai Liu said, "That's why I have a puzzle for him."

"Professor, is there any way you can prepare a large number of [Bai Liu] and perform a similar heart surgery on everyone inside, input [my] memories from before the surgery, and then have me hide inside."

Edmund looked at Bai Liu in consternation, "You're trying to ...... prepare Spades for a multiple choice question about hiding wood in the woods?"

"Exactly." Bai Liu drops her eyes, "And it's a multiple choice question with no answer."

"-because every [Bai Liu] in here thinks that they are the real Bai Liu, that the hidden heart is the real heart, and even I don't know if I'm real or not, and I don't know who the mystery is."

Bai Liu looked down at Edmund, "- just keep producing [Bai Liu], you can fill in Spades' hit rate, it's a puzzle that no one can solve."

"Just grind until he quits the game and I win."

Edmund sat down on the wooden bench and fell silent for a long time.

"Do you know what I see in your face?" Edmund whispered to himself, "I see the me on the eve of the experiment, the maniacal madness that would stop at nothing to save what I love."

Edmund looked up with tears in his eyes, "I will help you, child, even though it is wrong."

Bai Liu thanked him seriously, "Thank you, Professor Edmund."

The coastline rises higher and higher, and the ice melts smoother and smoother in the sun's rays until the last glimmer of sunlight passes over the horizon.

But the temperature is still rising.

"It's almost ten degrees." Tang Er hit took off his punching bag, he looked around and frowned, "Why hasn't Bai Liu come back yet? Didn't he say that he would take the heart and go to Edmund's place to unlock the final plot, and then just destroy the heart to pass the game and leave?"

Tang Er fought and did not go to the cabin with Bai Liu, and he did not know what Edmund said to Bai Liu.

Nor do they know the results of destroying the heart.

Liu Jiayi pursed her lips and said nothing, and Mu Ke glanced at her.

Mu Sicheng voiced the same question Tang Er had typed, "Yeah, how long has this been going on?"

"If he doesn't come back, the waterline is about to rise up to us." Tang Er hit glanced at the tile-like ice floes that were already in pieces, "Get to the helicopter first-!!!"

Before Tang Er Ta could say anything, a pure black whip swept across from afar with unstoppable strength, wrapping around the helicopter's landing gear and pulling it back, shaking Tang Er Ta, who was about to climb into the helicopter, down.

"Grrr! It's Spades!!!"

Mu Sicheng subconsciously made use of his skill, spreading his hands in a monkey's paw in an attempt to catch the black whip that continued to sweep towards them.

The seemingly light whip smashed into Mu Sicheng's palms, and he developed a sensation of pain that shattered every metacarpal bone in both his hands in an instant, and barely had time to warn the others before he was thrown directly under the thick ice.

Mu Sicheng choked out a mouthful of blood as he was hit by the residual force of the whip and dented his chest cavity.

Without hesitation, Tang Er fought and pulled out his gun and started firing rapidly at Spades, and it was only at this time that they saw Spades, who was shaking his whip and heading out of the cloud, through the mist.

He looked coldly holding the whip in one hand, flipping his wrist to shake quickly, the whip danced in front of him into an almost impenetrable stump, bullets fired on the whip made a crisp crackling sound.

Spades was hit in the shoulder and the right hand of the whip in a series of shots - Tang Er's aim was clear, he wanted to disarm Spades.

This is the reflex of the professional main attacker when he meets his opponent - to take control of his opponent's organs used for attack.

Tang Er's hit does hit Spades, and blood keeps pouring out of Spades, which should have stopped attacking after being hit.

But Spades, as if he hadn't sensed it, didn't stop approaching.

Tang Er fought and retreated, his scalp tightened by an unprecedentedly powerful sense of oppression, and he had to turn on his monster form - [Rose Hunter] - and switched to a lengthened revolver to shoot even more quickly.

Spades was constantly being shot at, and the blood seeping from the surface of his clothes trailed a long trail across the ice.

But he was still approaching, and attacking more and more rapidly - but it wasn't the man he was attacking, it was the helicopter on the ice.

Spades smashes the helicopter to pieces several times and pushes the "wreckage" of the helicopter across the ice with his whip, as if looking for something.

But he didn't seem to find what he was looking for, and turned his head, dropping the whip, to look at Tang Er hit, "Don't you have the heart?"

Tang Er also seemed to realize that the guy had no intention of attacking them, and he fired two more test shots at Spades under the pretense that the gun in his hand had no way of going off instantly.

Spades was indeed hit, but instead of returning fire, he watched Tang Er fight with little emotion on his face, as if waiting for a reply.

Tang Er typed, "The heart is not with us."

"Oh." Without hesitation, Spades gave Tang Er two lashes and looked up, "I know you could have just stopped, and this is for your two shots."

Tang Er typed: "......"

Spades, having gotten his answer, is gone again.

Mu Sicheng was helped up while spitting blood, his head full of questions, "He just came to ask questions? So why did he hit me?!"

If Spades had been there, he probably would have answered him, intuitively - feeling that he should punch Mu Sicheng first, or else he'd come charging up later and be annoying.

But Spades isn't there, so Mu Sicheng doesn't know the answer to that question, which is probably just as well for him.

Mu Ke looked worriedly at Spades' departing back, "He should have gone to look for Bai Liu."

"Bai Liu will be fine, all he has to do is destroy his heart to pass the game." Liu Jiayi looked up, "We need to exit the game before he passes the game, so that for us, reality is frozen in time, and we can go and fix things in reality."

Tang Er hit turned his head violently to Liu Jiayi: "Bai Liu told you how to fix things in reality?"

"He told." Liu Jiayi said.

Tang Er hit a long sigh of relief, a rare smile on his face, "He's always had a way, so let's log out of the game."

Mu Sicheng also loosened up and scolded with a smile, "Then you didn't say so earlier, scared me to death, I thought something had happened to him."

"But think of what could happen to Bai Liu the dog in the game, something happening to me is more like it."

Liu Jiayi clenched his fists.

No one questions Bai Liu's decisions, no one thinks Bai Liu is clueless.

He's always been a jack of all trades, makes no mistakes, has no weaknesses.

She believed the same thing, so she always ...... wanted to wait a little longer.

Maybe Bai Liu will pop back in, smile, say everything's taken care of, and everyone logs out of the game together.

But now that Spades has appeared, the whitewashed peace in her heart is shattered, and arrangements must be made at once.

She needs to be prepared for Bai Liu's defeat and get her team out of the game before Spades folds.

Bai Liu's mask-like smile surfaced in front of Liu Jiayi's face, he touched Liu Jiayi's hair, his smile was hypocritical and warm.

[Jiayi, you're a smart little girl, you know what to do, and I'm leaving the team in your hands for now while I'm away].

[You were originally groomed for the second tactician position that Heart used as, and now I think you fully feel that you have what it takes to serve in that capacity.]

He smiled and complimented her, [Because there's no one better suited for this position than you, Jiayi].

Liu Jiayi clenched his teeth and raised his head to order, "Log out of the game immediately!!!"

Shoreline.

The Scott Cabin was completely submerged, and Spades, who had arrived on an ice floe, looked down at the abandoned cabin bobbing just below the surface.

Spades unzipped his heavy punching bag and spiked shoes and jumped into the water, he waded into the cabin through the water, weaving through it, something strange took Spades in, he deftly tilted his head to the side and a whip of pure white bone stabbed out from behind his ear.

Bai Liu, in his white shirt and suit pants, smiled at him from underwater, and without a pause, his hands stabbed out a second time.

Spades shook his hand to open it, and he noticed blood oozing from Bai Liu's chest, so Spades simply reached down and tugged on the collar, pulling Bai Liu's shirt open in the process.

The buttons of his shirt were bursting in the water, suspended in all directions, and Bai Liu's thin white chest had a long scar spanning the entire right side of his chest.

The scar seemed to have only just been created and had not yet healed, and the dense strands of blood looked like uncoiled threads pulling out from the scar.

Spades stares at the scar for a moment, then raises his eyes to Bai Liu, and the moment the latter rushes towards him, he grips his neck, then closes his grip and chokes him.

[Corpse] Falling downward.

Spades opens his mouth in the water, bubbles spilling from the corners of his lips, and he comments, "Inferior."

He emerged from the water and tumbled onto the shore.

Spades looked under the dark water and frowned in a rare moment, "What a pain in the ass ......"

This Bai Liu has prepared a bunch of replicas exactly like himself and hid them under the water.

And these imitations are hard to kill in a map like this one, where Antarctica is in full melt-down and there's water everywhere - killing the weaknesses of these monsters, whether it's combustion or strong acid, is a difficult condition to achieve.

Then this Bai Liu also hid the heart in [his] body, but these [Bai Liu] can't be killed and can't be killed, and after hitting one, the other one will soon come back to life and make a comeback and pop up.

...... Even if the real Bai Liu is captured from the monsters, in the case that all the people have the same memories, Bai Liu himself probably doesn't know which one of them has the real heart hidden in his body.

This is a game that was designed to be unsolvable.

Spades didn't like this insurmountable game of whack-a-mole, so he sat on the ice for a while with his eyes free, water dripping from his chin to the ground.

He's not good at this kind of situation, like he's not good at dealing with tacticians.

This Bai Liu guy should be a pretty good tactician, as this is the first tactician to actually trap him with his own body.

Most of the time it's the playcaller who has the headaches with Spades, both in and out of the game.

Spades sat on the shore for a long moment as he stood up, his eyes lingering on the windswept water for a long, long time.

[There is no such thing as an unsolvable game in this world.]

A man chuckled and whispered in his ear, leaning over his shoulder to look up at him, his dark eyes holding a nasty and innocent gamer.

But Spades doesn't remember what he looks like or who he is.

He just remembered him saying that to him.

[A game that has been designed and then purposely presented to a certain person is one that that person is expected to be able to solve, so there is no such thing as an unsolvable game in this world.]

[You're sure to win my game, and anyway, no one else in this place plays my game except you, and you're the only player I have.]

[That is to say my game is designed for you to win.]

Spades plunged into the water, drawn deeper and deeper by some kind of intuition, and dived into the unknown depths of the seabed, which was crisscrossed with piles of [Bai Liu's] corpses.

Occasionally [Bai Liu] would come back to life and float, but soon sank again due to suffocation.

These [Bai Liu] all seem to dislike water, whether they are surfacing or diving, their movements are repulsive.

To find the right one in this vast sea of Bai Liu seems to be a semantic [needle in a haystack].

Spades is suspended in the icy waters, a constant stream of Bai Liu attempting to get close enough to kill him, only to be swept away by him, and eventually his eyes come to rest on a Bai Liu buried in layers of water.

--This Bai Liu didn't attack him.

He slept peacefully at the bottom of the ocean, his eyes closed and the wound on the front of his body visible through his open shirt.

This Bai Liu has a very peculiar, monster-human mix to him - like a transitional body in the process of transformation.

Spades had an unreasonably strong hunch that this Bai Liu was hiding a heart.

He quickly snorkeled down and the moment he reached out and touched this Bai Liu, his eyes opened.

Bubbles floated from Bai Liu's lips, then swung his lower limbs into the water and swam quickly.

The other undersea [Bai Liu] are like fish that have been awakened, swarming around and wrapping him in the center, a large pile of Bai Liu swaying around, dazzling people, and in almost a moment the Bai Liu that Spades had just locked on to disappeared.

But Spades quickly locked on to that Bai Liu.

Spades is like an instrument installed in his body to track Bai Liu, able to find the Bai Liu he recognizes from amongst all the others that look exactly like him, even if he can't tell them apart, and then chases after them without hesitation.

Waves of shaking azure water shimmered with the melted remains of the world's largest ice world floating above it, ice floes in large chunks far from land, drifting in the waters, the lower protruding portions of the icebergs looking like islands suspended in the sky when viewed from the water.

Spades and Bai Liu are dodging and chasing in the middle of this cold, white [island].

But no matter how Bai Liu flees, no matter how he takes cover, no matter how he interrupts another man with his various tricks, Spades can find him among the millions of identical Bai Lius in this cold, hellish underwater world.

Under the melting ice dome A, in the darkest part of the ocean, Spades finally managed to catch Bai Liu.

Spades slides his hand gently into Bai Liu's still-healing wound.

The veins are twitching to coincide with the heart, the warm touch of blood overflowing Spades' fingers as he holds the cold heart that beats out of place in the warm body and looks down condescendingly on Bai Liu, who is under his control.

For a moment, Spades felt a déjà vu familiarity with the expression on the face of the tactician who had nearly trapped him.

It seemed like a long, long time ago, this same tactician named Bai Liu had watched him from under the water with such unwillingness, and as if he was hating him with such calm eyes, binding his rotting ankles and burying his body under the water as if the man had just trapped himself.

Spades slowly closed his palms, and the moment the heart ruptured at Spades' fingertips, he somehow bent his body and hugged Bai Liu, resting his jaw against Bai Liu's shoulder and mouthing the word [Sorry].

Bai Liu closes his eyes in the water, a large mist of blood bursting around him as his consciousness drifts away into nothingness.

Taville, Sheta ......

[Don't be afraid of the dead me, or the living me.]

[I will always stay and wait for you in the winter where I belong.]

[- No matter what choice I make, you're going to leave me, aren't you?

[ - Yes.