Chapter 264 |
“So what are you going to do with……us?” Liu Jiayi shrank back into her seat, burying her head in her knees,”…… throw us out of the game and then what?”
“I’m not throwing you out of the game, you still have things to do for me.” Bai Liu looked at Liu Jiayi.
Liu Jiayi raised her head slightly, her eyes red as she looked at him: “……What is it?”
“Because no one has cleared Ice Age yet, that is, no [end] line has appeared, then the game’s counterpart to reality is stagnant. The subplot hasn’t been loaded into reality, so there’s still room for reality to turn around.”
Bai Liu said, “I need you to leave the game, to stop that plane from crashing in the Antarctic.”
Liu Jiayi stretched her body before realising that there was room for manoeuvre, and asked with a frown, “But the way this game loads into reality, the plane is probably already over the Antarctic. As soon as we log out, time will start to flow in reality and it won’t be long before it crashes.”
“We can’t stop a plane that’s about to crash in the Antarctic.”
Bai Liu smiled: “No, someone can.”
Liu Jiayi tilted her head in confusion, “Who?”
Tang Erda knocked on the helicopter’s hatch: “I can already vaguely see an outline of the metal box.”
He exhaled a white breath, frost hanging from his brow and hair, but Tang Erda’s expression was more condensed than this frost: “- it’s a box from the Bureau of Heresy.”
——–
In Reality, over the Antarctic.
The five escorts on board had sensed that something was wrong when the plane that was about to land sent out a communication signal for a long time but it was not received.
They looked at each other and a sense of foreboding washed over them.
“Aircraft – zzzz – calling ground comms – zzzz – encountering heavy clouds and turbulence, come in…”
The radio remained silent and the air currents that were coming straight at both wings grew stronger and bumpier, the escorts took a deep breath as they prepared for the worst.
“What’s up ahead?”
“The Ross Sea.”
“Prepare to make a forced landing.”
……
Antarctica, open area in front of the observatory near Ice Dome A.
A group of observers in conspicuous red rash suits rubbed their hands and stomped their feet as they looked up at the sky. They whispered slightly uneasily to each other:
“I thought we were told to check for ice fissures to help the landing of the plane today, why aren’t they here yet ……”
“I don’t know, I just came out of the observatory and the liaison officer inside said he hadn’t contacted the pilot for a long time. The satellite phone has been used by all means, but there is no signal feedback ……”
“Nothing’s going to happen, is it?”
……
Bureau of Heresy Handling, Region I.
Su Yang, looking tired and tense, draped in a captain’s uniform that was a little too big for him, walked through the long, illuminated corridors of the night and rounded the corner into a mechanical room.
The mechanical room was a mess, coffee cups were lying on the table, and several ground communicators who were manning the instrument tables stared intensely at the big screen with unshaven beards.
These men had dark faces and felt that at any moment their heads would tilt and they would die suddenly.
Captain Su’s high priority on the matter of transporting the body parts naturally made those below him nervous.
From the time the escort left the port until now over the Antarctic, the ground communicators have maintained uninterrupted communication throughout, working overtime for days without closing their eyes.
But even with such care, just as the plane was about to reach the South Pole and everyone was about to breathe a sigh of relief, something suddenly went wrong.
No matter what means they used, they could no longer contact the five escorts on the plane.
The ground communicator turned back with a pale face, “Captain Su, what should we do?”
Su Yang hadn’t closed his eyes since he saw the escort off either. He looked at the pure white surface of the Antarctic snow detected by the satellites on the big screen, and his mind went blank for a while, illuminated by the dazzling colour.
A sense of powerlessness that no matter what, there is nothing that can prevent something set in motion from happening rose to the surface.
“So this is why [The Prophet] has supreme authority in the Heresy Bureau.” Cen Buming appeared at some point beside the delirious Su Yang.
Su Yang turned his head in a daze to look over, “Captain Cen ……”
Cen Buming folded his arms, looked at the snow for a moment with his hawk-like yellow eyes, and turned sideways to Su Yang: “Because [seeing] is so much more important than [doing].”
“- Fate has its own arrangements and we, the characters on the cards, can only obey.”
Cen Buming brushed past the disoriented Su Yang without looking back: “Prepare to collect the bodies of these five escorts.”
“Captain Su, what should I do?”
“Captain Su, do we continue to contact them?”
“Captain Su……”
“Captain Su……”
Su Yang closed his eyes as he propped himself on the edge of the table and said in a hard voice, “We want to see them if they are alive, and we want to see the bodies if they are dead. Tell the Antarctic side to prepare search and rescue crews and …… body bags.”
“Bring me back those men no matter what.”
In-game.
Bai Liu and Mu Sicheng replaced Tang Erda to continue the work. The wind was not as strong as before, replaced by the sun with strong UV light.
As they got closer to the heart, Mu Sicheng was sweating as the temperature on the ice continued to rise.
“Tch, what’s going on?” Mu Sicheng shook his collar, sweat and heat rising together, “Why is it suddenly getting hot? Could the weather get any worse here?”
Bai Liu crouched down and he looked at the ice that was showing visible signs of melting, “It’s not that the weather has suddenly gotten warmer.”
“It’s because we have to dig out the heart to complete the main quest, so the globe is starting to warm up.”
Tang Erda 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, the rising temperature will melt the ice quickly.”
Bai Liu shook his head, “I don’t think it’s just melting quickly, the heart is likely to be the core bit of Edmond’s device for building global cooling and the final prop in the [true end] line.”
“- If taken out, I suspect this global warming will cause the entire Antarctic ice cap to melt.”
Tang Erda wrinkled his brow: “Wouldn’t that turn the Antarctic into a vast ocean?”
Bai Liu looked up at him, “There’s more trouble than that.”
“If the ice cap were to melt completely, the size of the Antarctic would be greatly reduced and the massive loss of ice and snowfields would lead to dramatic climate changes. Plus, movement and sight obstructing extremes like blizzards will also be reduced. We would be much more easily detected in such a map.”
Bai Liu paused: “It will increase the speed at which Spades finds us.”
Bai Liu’s implication was clear: we had to find a way to hide the heart or it was only a matter of time before Spades came looking for it.
Tang Erda frowned: “But where could you hide it? Spades has so much attack speed and movement that he can scout all over Antarctica at any time and anywhere. You can’t put the heart anywhere safely.”
He sighed tersely, “Apart from not being good at decryption, this guy is the perfect lead attacker.”
Bai Liu smiled: “That’s it, let’s make a puzzle for him.”
Tang Erda was stunned: “What’s the puzzle?”
Bai Liu said: “Hide the wood in the forest.”
Scott Cottage.
In the rapidly rising temperatures, the snow surface melted around this hut, nestled in the middle of a wet mound with muddy spots splattered on the boards, looking dirty and stained.
When Bai Liu visited again, Edmond was amazed: “You’ve dug up the heart?”
“Yes.” Bai Liu looked at Edmond as he handed the metal box to the other man, “There’s something I need to trouble the professor with.”
Edmond took the box and grew more and more suspicious: “Is this the box for the heart? Why do you want to give it to me?”
Bai Liu smiled: “Please, Professor, do me a favour and hide this heart from Spades.”
Edmond laughed bitterly, “Son, Spades is the most frequent player here, and he probably knows the landscape better than I. I’m not sure I can find a place to hide the heart in Antarctica without Spades finding it.”
Bai Liu said, “I might have a good place to hide, but of course it’s not perfect and there’s a chance of being found. But for now in the Ice Age game, this place should be a good place for Spades. The most unfamiliar place for him.”
Edmond asked in surprise, “What is the place?”
Bai Liu gazed at him, “In my body.”
“How is it that you have a place for another heart when you already have one in your body?” Edmond teased him in a joking tone, “Son, you can’t use two hearts here when it comes to love.”
And Bai Liu calmly replied to him, “Yes, just cut out my heart and there it is.”
Edmond was stunned for a moment as he realised that Bai Liu was not joking with him.
His eyes went back and forth incredulously between Bai Liu and the box he was holding several times before he looked up at Bai Liu with a shudder.
“Are you crazy? You want me to take your heart out and put this one in it?!”
“You’ll turn into a monster!!!” Edmond looked at Bai Liu incredulously as he held up the box with the heart in his hand and shouted emphatically, “You are a real person, you have a real life, you are nothing like a product of a game like me.”
“Do you know what that means?!” Edmond hissed tremulously.
“If I put the heart inside you, after this heart and you are fully grown together you will become a, a……”
Edmond huffed and puffed, “-a complete monster!”
Bai Liu raised his eyes slightly as he looked at the box held aloft by Edmond and then dropped his eyes to his face.
“I’ve always been a monster.”
Edmond took two steps back and looked straight at Bai Liu for a long, long time before finally settling back in his chair as if exhausted.
“But even if you hide the heart in your body, that’s not enough.” Edmond looked up, “Spades might find it too, mind you this guy is good at everything, just not at decryption ……”
“I know.” Bai Liu said, “So I have a puzzle for him.”
“Professor, is there any way you could prepare a large number of [Bai Liu] and do a similar heart surgery on each person in there, inputting [my] memories from before the surgery and then having me hide among them.”
Edmond looked at Bai Liu in dismay: “Are you trying to …… prepare a multiple choice question for Spades by hiding wood in a forest?”
“Exactly.” Bai Liu lowered his eyes, “And it’s a multiple choice question with no answer.”
“- because every [Bai Liu] in this will think that they are the real Bai Liu and that the hidden heart is the real heart. Even I don’t know if I am real or not, and I don’t know who the answer is.”
Bai Liu looked down at Edmond: “- just keep producing [Bai Liu], you can fill in Spades’ hit rate, it’s a puzzle that no one can solve.”
“Just grind it out until he quits the game and I win.”
Edmond sat on the wooden bench and fell into a long silence.
“Do you know what I see in your face?” Edmond whispered to himself, “I see me on the eve of the experiment, the frenzied madness of doing whatever it takes to save what I love.”
Edmond looked up with tears in his eyes: “I’ll help you, son, even if it’s wrong.”
Bai Liu thanked him seriously, “Thank you, Professor Edmond.”
The coastline rises higher and higher, the ice melting 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 Erda took off his rash guard, he looked around and frowned, “Why isn’t Bai Liu back yet? Didn’t he say he’d take the heart to Edmond’s to unlock the final plot and then destroy it to clear the game and leave?”
Tang Erda did not go with Bai Liu to the hut and he did not know what Edmond had said to Bai Liu.
Nor did they know the outcome of destroying the heart.
Liu Jiayi pursed her lips and said nothing, and Mu Ke glanced at her.
Mu Sicheng asked the same question as Tang Erda: “Yes, how long has it been?”
“If he doesn’t come back, the water line is about to rise to us.” Tang Erda glanced at the tile-like ice floe that was already in tatters, “Get on the helicopter first-!!!”
Before Tang Erda could say anything else, a pure black whip swept across from a distance with unstoppable force, wrapping around the helicopter’s landing gear and pulling it back, shaking Tang Erda off his feet as he climbed aboard.
“Shit!!! It’s Spades!!!”
Mu Sicheng subconsciously used his skills and opened his hands with monkey claws in an attempt to catch the black whip that continued to sweep towards them.
The seemingly light whip struck Mu Sicheng’s palm and he felt the pain of having every bone in his hand shattered in an instant, barely able to warn the others before he was thrown directly under a thick layer of ice.
Mu Sicheng was hit by the residual force of the whip and choked out a mouthful of blood as his chest cavity sank in.
Without hesitation Tang Erda pulled out his gun and started firing rapidly at Spades, only then did they see him through the cloud of mist, shaking his whip and walking out.
He held the whip in one hand with a cold expression, flipping his wrist and flicking it rapidly, the whip dancing in front of him in an almost impermeable streak, the bullets firing on the whip making a crisp crackling sound.
In a succession of shots, Spades was hit in the shoulder and in the right hand with the whip – Tang Erda’s aim was clear, he wanted to disarm Spades.
This is the conditioned reflex of a professional main attacker meeting an opponent – to take control of the organ used by the opponent to attack.
Tang Erda did hit Spades, and blood was pouring out of him. Logically, Spades should have stopped attacking when he was hit.
But Spades, as if imperceptive, did not stop moving closer.
Tang Erda fought and retreated, his scalp tightened by an unprecedented sense of oppression, and he had to turn on his monster form, [Rose Hunter], and switch to his extended revolver to shoot even faster.
Spades was shot repeatedly, the blood seeping from the surface of his clothes trailing in long trails across the ice.
But he was still approaching and attacking more and more rapidly – but he was not targeting people, but the helicopter on the ice.
Spades smashed the helicopter to pieces several times and used his whip to push the ‘wreckage’ of the helicopter across the ice, seemingly looking for something.
But he didn’t seem to find what he was looking for and turned his head, put the whip down, and looked at Tang Erda: “Don’t you have the heart?”
Tang Erda also seemed to realise that this guy had no intention of attacking them, and he fired two more shots at Spades to test the waters, pretending that the gun in his hand had no way of going off instantly.
Spades was indeed struck, but instead of returning fire, he gazed at Tang Erda with little emotion on his face, as if waiting for his answer.
Tang Erda said, “The heart is not with us.”
“Oh.” Spades gave Tang Erda two lashes without hesitation and raised his eyes, “I know you could have stopped just now, here’s your two shots back.”
Tang Erda: “……”
Spades walked away again after getting his answer.
Mu Sicheng was helped to his feet 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 – he felt that he should beat up Mu Sicheng first, otherwise he would come back later and be annoying.
But Spades wasn’t there, so Mu Sicheng didn’t know the answer to that question, which was probably just as well for him.
Mu Ke looked worriedly at Spades’ departing back: “He’s probably gone to find Bai Liu.”
“Bai Liu will be fine, all he has to do is destroy the heart and he’ll be through.” Liu Jiayi looked up, “We need to exit the game before he passes the level so that time is frozen in reality for us and we can go and fix things.”
Tang Erda snapped his head around to Liu Jiayi: “Bai Liu told you how to fix things in reality?”
“He told me.” Liu Jiayi said.
Tang Erda breathed a long sigh of relief and had a rare smile on his face, “He always has a way, so let’s log out of the game.”
Mu Sicheng also loosened up and scolded with a smile, “When you didn’t tell me earlier, you scared me to death, I thought something had happened to him.”
“But think what could happen to Bai Liu, the dog, in the game, something could happen to me.”
Liu Jiayi clenched his fist.
No one questioned Bai Liu’s decisions and no one thought Bai Liu was clueless.
He has always been omnipotent, can do no wrong and has no weaknesses.
That’s what she believed, so she always …… wanted to wait a little longer.
Maybe Bai Liu will pop back in, smile, say everything is taken care of and we’ll all log out of the game.
But now that Spades has appeared, the whitewashed peace in her heart was shattered and arrangements must be made immediately.
She needs to be prepared for Bai Liu’s defeat and send the team out of the game before Spades turns back.
Bai Liu’s fake smile appeared in front of Liu Jiayi’s face, and he stroked Liu Jiayi’s hair with a smile that was both false and warm.
[Jiayi, you’re a smart little girl, you know what to do, I’ll leave the team to you for now while I’m away].
[You were originally trained by Hearts for the second tactician position and now I think you totally feel you have what it takes to fill that role].
He smiled and complimented her: [Because there is no one better suited to this position than you, Jiayi.]
Liu Jiayi gritted his teeth and looked up and ordered, “Log out of the game immediately!
Coastside.
Scott’s hut was completely submerged and Spades, who had arrived on an ice floe, looked down at the abandoned hut bobbing beneath the water.
Spades unzipped his heavy jacket and spike shoes, and jumped into the water. He swam through the water into the small wooden house and passed by. A strange feeling caught Spades, and he quickly tilted his head to the side then a pure white bone whip stabbed out from behind his ear.
Bai Liu, in his white shirt and trousers, looked at him from underwater with a smile as he delivered a second jab without a pause.
Spades flung his hand open and noticed blood oozing from Bai Liu’s chest, so Spades simply reached up and pulled at the collar, pulling Bai Liu’s shirt open in the process.
The buttons of his shirt burst in the water, suspended in all directions, and Bai Liu’s thin, white chest bears a long scar that spans the entire right side of his chest.
The scar seemed to have only just been created and had not yet healed, and the thick streaks of blood were pulling out of it like uncoiled threads.
Spades looked at the scar for a moment, then looked up at Bai Liu. The moment Bai Liu came at him, he grabbed him by the neck and closed his grip, choking him to death.
[The corpse] fell downwards.
Spades opened his mouth in the water, bubbles spilling out of the corners of his lips as he commented, “Poor quality.”
He emerged from the water and tumbled onto the shore.
Spades looked into the dark water and frowned in a rare moment, “What a pain in the ass……”
This Bai Liu had a bunch of replicas of himself hidden under the water.
And these imitations are hard to kill in a map like this where the Antarctic was in full meltdown and there was water everywhere – hitting the weaknesses of these monsters, whether they be burning or strong acid, is a difficult condition to achieve.
Then this Bai Liu also hid his heart inside [his] body. Tut these [Bai Liu] were endless and could not be killed; after beating one, another would soon come back to life and emerge.
…… Even if the real Bai Liu were to be captured from the pile of monsters, with all of them having the same memories, Bai Liu himself would probably not know which [Bai Liu] had the real heart hidden in his body.
It’s a game that was designed to be insurmountable.
Spades didn’t like the unresolved game of gopher, so he sat with his eyes empty on the ice for a while, water dripping off his chin and onto the ground.
He’s not good at this kind of situation, just like he’s not good at dealing with tacticians.
This Bai Liu would have been a pretty good tactician, as this was the first tactician to actually trap him with his own body.
Most of the time it’s the tactician who has a headache with Spades, both in and out of the game.
Spades sat on the shore for a long while before he stood up, his gaze lingering for a long, long time on the calm waters.
[There is no such thing as an unsolvable game in this world.]
A man chuckled and whispered in his ear, leaning over his shoulder and tilting his head to look at him, a player with dark eyes filled with a nasty yet innocent look.
But Spades doesn’t remember what he looked like or who he was.
He just remembered him saying that to him.
[A game is designed and then deliberately presented to someone in the hope that that person can solve it, so there is no such thing as an unsolvable game in this world].
[You’re bound to win my game, and no one in this place is playing my game anyway except you, you’re the only player I have.]
[That is to say, my game is designed to give you victory].
Spades plunged into the water, pulled by some instinct, and dived deeper and deeper into the unknown depths of the sea, where the bodies of [Bai Liu] are strewn and sunken.
Occasionally [Bai Liu] would come back to life and come up to the surface, but soon sank again due to suffocation.
These [Bai Liu] all seem to dislike the water, and there is a sense of repulsion in their movements, whether they are floating or diving.
Finding the right one in this vast sea of Bai Liu seems to be a semantic [needle in a haystack].
Spades hovered in the icy waters as Bai Liu attempted to approach and kill him, only to be swept away. Eventually his eyes rested on a Bai Liu buried in layers.
–This Bai Liu had not attacked him.
He slept peacefully at the bottom of the sea, his eyes closed and the wound on his front visible through his open shirt.
There is something very strange about this Bai Liu, a mixture of monster and human – like a transitional body in the process of transformation.
Spades has a gut feeling so strong that it didn’t make sense – this Bai Liu is hiding the heart.
He quickly snorkelled down and the moment he reached out and touched this Bai Liu, his eyes opened.
Bubbles appeared from Bai Liu’s lips and he moved his lower limbs and swam quickly through the water.
Like a school of waking fish, the other undersea [Bai Liu] swarmed around him and wrapped him up in the centre, a huge pile of Bai Liu bobbing and weaving, so dazzling that in a matter of moments the one Spades had just targeted was gone.
But Spades soon locked in on Bai Liu again.
It’s like Spades has a device to track Bai Liu, to find the one he knows from all the others that look so much like him that he can’t even tell them apart, and to chase him without hesitation.
Shifting waves of blue water glisten with the melting remains of the world’s largest ice world floating above them. Ice floes drifted in large chunks away from the land to the sea, the lower protrusions of icebergs looking like islands suspended in the sky from the water.
Spades and Bai Liu dodged and chased through the cold, white [island].
But no matter how Bai Liu escapes, how he takes cover, how he uses every trick in the book to interrupt the other, Spades is able to find him among the millions of identical Bai Liu’s in this cold, hellish underwater world.
Under the melting Ice Dome A, at the bottom of the darkest sea, Spades finally caught Bai Liu.
Spades slid his hand gently into Bai Liu’s unhealed wound.
The blood vessels were twitching to meet the heart, the warm touch of blood spilling over Spades’ fingers. He took hold of the cold heart beating out of place in the warmth of the body and looked down at Bai Liu, who was under his control.
For a moment, Spades felt a familiar look of déjà vu on the face of the tactician who had almost trapped him.
It seems that a long, long time ago, this same tactician, Bai Liu, had gazed at him from under the water with such resigned and calm eyes as if he hated him, bound his rotting ankles and buried his body under the water as if the man had just trapped himself.
Spades slowly closed his palm, and the moment his heart broke at Spades’ fingertips, he somehow bent his body around Bai Liu, resting his jaw on Bai Liu’s shoulder, and mouthed the word [sorry].
Bai Liu’s eyes closed in the water and a great mist of blood burst around him as his consciousness drifted away into nothingness.
Tawil, Xie Ta……
[Do not be afraid of the dead me, or the living me].
[I will always stay in the winter where I belong and wait for you].
[- No matter what choice I make, you’ll leave me, won’t you?]
[-Yes.]
EN1: °(°ˊДˋ°) ° (┬┬﹏┬┬)
EN2: another agonising chapter
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