Chapter 261: Ice Age River Century (Day +142)

The helicopter stumbled and flew over the long white snowy field, and had to make an emergency landing twice due to strong winds.
By the time Tang Erda's group arrived at Edmund Observation Station, it was already close to the early morning of the third day.
The helicopter landed a few kilometers away from Edmund Observation Station.
Now the wind and snow has stopped. Looking from a distance, Edmund Observation Station is covered by thick snow, but strangely, the snow on the ground at the door has been cleared, revealing a clearing below, the door It was also half-concealed.
Tang Er hit the situation and knew it was wrong, "Someone is inside."
"Grass" Mu Sicheng rubbed his arms, his face became heavy, "It's not that group of copies of us still inside, right?"
Bai Liu crouched in front of the trap door in the basement opening next to the helicopter hangar.
A pungent smell of icy ashes and strong acid corroded from the trap door in the basement.
The snow on the trap door was also cleared and opened wide. The two barrels of gasoline that Bai Liu had placed beside the door before he left were gone. Instead, the inside of the basement was dark and there was a little hot air gurgling out.
From the perspective of Bailiu, the walls are full of soot left over after the incomplete combustion of fuel oil. Liquid and snow are dripping down the steps on the steps. At first glance, it hasn’t been a long time since the burning is finished. It's too late to freeze.
Liu Jiayi also noticed the anomaly here. She squatted beside Bai Liu. "It seems that after we left, those clones burned the monsters in the basement and poured strong acid to corrode them."
But while she was talking, her eyes swept across the layer of liquid on the basement floor, and she wrinkled her eyebrows inexplicably, "But before I left, I had cleared the materials at Edmund Observation Station with Mu Ke. I remember there was none. So many reserves of acid."
The chemical reagent of strong acid is a scarce resource even in the scientific research station. Before leaving, Liu Jiayi emptied the acid solution at Edmund Observatory in order to basically empty it.
Even so, she had to use it carefully, and she could only manage to deal with the monsters and escape smoothly.
Liu Jiayi lay down and took out a piece of metal to catch two drops of acid dripping from the steps.
The metal surface was quickly corroded, and gas was spitting out, and she frowned, "This man is just pour the acid into the basement in a bucket, where is he so much acid"
The person who cleaned the basement used strong acid quite casually. The walls and steps were sprinkled everywhere, and there was a lot of extravagance and waste. It seemed that strong acid, a hard-won and very scarce resource in the copy, had no sense of cherishing.
"There is only one possibility." Bai Liu's eyes fell on the slowly freezing acid.
Liu Jiayi reacted violently, "Someone who played this game brought in the spades and came here with acid."
At this time, Mu Sicheng’s exclamation came from the second floor of the observation station, "What's the situation with the grass?"
Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi looked at each other, and they took out their weapons and walked to the door.
After they entered the observation station and went up to the second floor, Liu Jiayi dragged his gun and walked in front of Bai Liu "What's wrong?"
Mu Sicheng turned his head, his face was blue and white, his hands were shaking and pointing in the direction of the restaurant, his voice was trembling, and he seemed to be frightened, "You, see for yourself"
Bai Liu crossed Mu Sicheng, looked at the restaurant behind him, and raised his eyebrows slightly.
He understood why Mu Sicheng had such an expression.
The seats in the dining room were roughly kicked apart, and the broken tables, chairs and benches were scattered and stacked in the four corners of the room, freeing up a large area in the middle of the dining room.
And this open space was smashed into a hole with an outline similar to a square by something unknown.
The entrance directly penetrates the floor of the second floor, and the scene on the first floor can be seen through the opening on the ground of the restaurant on the second floor.
On the edge of the hole, there is a circle of handprints left by people struggling. Densely covered on the floor, it can be seen that there was a group of people picking up on the edge of the hole and trying to climb up.
On the first floor, directly below the cave entrance is a huge glass water tank, which seems to have been moved from the roof. Now it is full of thick acid that is so thick that it can hardly flow. At this moment, these thick acids are rumbling with the reaction. With bubbles.
And this glass tank, like throwing garbage, is full of all kinds of "corpses" that have been carbonized, coked, and fragmented.
Most of these corpses have not fully reacted yet, they are squirming in the thick acid, and the skin and flesh are constantly making strange and corroded bubbles. The palms of "their" are constantly beating on the strong acid pool, shaking them off from time to time. Dissolve half of the eyeball by yourself.
But what made Mu Sicheng scream was the appearance of these corpses.
The people who dealt with these corpses were a bit rough and didn't care much. Quite a few of the corpses' faces were still not completely burnt by the fuel, and the appearance of "they" could be clearly seen.
These corpses had the faces of Bai Liu, Mu Sicheng, Tang Erda, Liu Jiayi, and Mu Ke.
Such a group of scorched corpses with their own faces struggled so painfully in the thick, thick acid, and the skin, muscles, and bones were eroded pervasively by the acid.
Even knowing that this group of things are not humans, but monsters, it is inevitable to feel the creeps with empathy.
Mu Sicheng backed up two steps, pulled away from the blood-stained hole, swallowed nervously, and his voice was hoarse, "Someone killed all the monsters that Edmund stood by and turned into us."
"And it's very fast." Tang Erda squatted halfway on the edge of the hole. He touched the remaining blood stains with his two fingers, raised his head and added solemnly, "The blood hasn't fully condensed yet."
Bai Liu's gaze shifted from the blood stains to Mu Ke's face, "I remember you said that these monsters are capable of becoming ours."
"Yes." Mu Ke was also shocked, his pupils were in a state of slight contraction, as if unable to think, he was stunned for a second or two before he began to answer Bai Liu's question, "We talked to these monsters before leaving. There had been conflicts, and they were almost held hostage by them."
"But they are not as strong as ours. I think it may be because they are immature and their ability is only about half of ours." Liu Jiayi took the words, she looked towards the first floor with a cold expression, and slowly exhaled.
"But Edmund is not the only one standing here, but there is a group of us in a melee."
"He quickly controlled such a group of monsters with similar abilities to ours in a short period of time, and smashed the floor with a whip to make this acid pool, and threw the corpses in for disposal."
Liu Jiayi's face was so ugly for the first time, "The ability of spades is too strong, he is stronger than last year."
"Even in a team fight, we can't win him, what do we do next?" She raised her head and looked at Bai Liu for instructions.
Bai Liu squatted down on the edge of the cave with his knees bent and one foot. He stared at the Bai Lius in the acid pool below that were gradually submerged and dissipated for a while.
After these scorched corpses with their own faces turned into bones, bubbles particles and some debris with no specific shape, Bai Liu stood up, retracted his gaze, and turned to look at others.
"Search the entire observation station and find out why the spades are here."
After half an hour, a group of people gathered on the first floor again.
Mu Ke, who is good at memorizing and searching maps, first reports his findings
"A lot of places have been searched, it should be looking for something, but the search is very brief, not like looking for text information and small objects."
"I haven't found any Spades taking anything so far, so he probably hasn't found what he was looking for."
"He hasn't moved the rifles and bullets scattered on the fourth floor." Tang Erda added, "The situation is the same as when we left."
Bai Liu sat at the table. He pulled out a piece of paper, summarized the information on the paper, and summed up calmly. "First of all, we can be sure that the spades repeatedly enter the game to find something, and this thing is very useful. It may be related to the main line of the game."
"Spades and I first logged in at Edmund's Observatory, but he didn't search here at that time, instead he left here and went outside. We can tell from this that at that time Spades felt that Edmund observed There is nothing he was looking for at the station."
Bai Liu paused on the paper with the pen tip, "But now he is back."
Liu Jiayi quickly realized why "Spades were not found outside, so I decided to go back to Edmund Observation Station to try my luck, but I happened to encounter the remaining copies of us here, so he killed them and found them again. Again, but still did not find it, and left."
Bai Liu's eyes were half-closed, and he drew little by little like thinking with the tip of the pen, "The key to the current problem is, what exactly are the spades looking for after repeatedly entering the game"
"The main mission of this game is global warming. What the spades are looking for may be something related to global warming." Mu Ke asked after meditation, "Is it possible to close the boss? Edmund's general design is based on the game. As long as you hit the bottom boss, you can pass the level and reach the noraend."
"I don't think that with the ability of spades, he would not even reach the noraend after entering the game so many times." Bai Liu denied.
His pen nib paused twice on the paper, and then he wrote the words corpse.
Bai Liu raised his eyes, "I think what Spades is looking for may be a particle weather device transformed from a corpse. He should be walking on the trueend line to prevent the possibility of the world getting cold again from the root."
"According to Edmund's style of doing things, he is likely to put particle meteorological devices on those 600 locations where he thinks Antarctica affects the world's climate."
Mu Ke is puzzled. "But the six hundred locations are marked on the map. If you want to find the spades, you can directly follow the map to find them. There is no need to go to Edmund Observation Station and look for Edmond Observation Station. Any particle weather device."
Bai Liu wrote 600 on the paper, saved the experimental sample, and put a question mark next to it.
He lifted his eyes and looked at Mu Ke, "That means that Spades are not looking for corpses in these six hundred particle devices, but corpses outside of these six hundred particle devices."
Mu Ke softly repeated Bai Liu's words "the corpses outside these six hundred particle devices"
He seemed to realize something, opened his eyes slightly, and looked at Bai Liu, "It's Edmund who hasn't done an experiment yet and turned it into a corpse of a particle device, right"
"Edmond is an experienced scientific research scholar." Bai Liu reminded lightly, "He will not consume all the experimental materials at once, and usually keep a part of it as a sample. This part of the sample should be what the spades are looking for. "
"You look for the experiment report. Among the corpses Edmund obtained earlier, which one has not been touched"
Mu Ke quickly looked down, and his fingertips slid down the lines of obscure report records, finally freezing on a certain word.
"found it"
"In the early three parts of Edmund's corpse, including the left hand, the back ankle, and a whole heart with preserved arteries and veins."
Mu Ke slightly raised his head with excitement, and said quickly, "I can only find the experimental records of the left hand and the back ankle, but there is no experimental record of this heart. Edmund probably kept this heart. As a sample reserve"
Bai Liu put on his gloves and hat, and opened the door. "This heart should be what the spades are looking for, and it is also the key to the trueend of this game. Let's go."
The wind and snow covered Bai Liu's dark and deep eyes, and engulfed his calm voice away in the dusk.
"If we want to win the spades, we have to find it before the spades destroy this heart."
The tide rises and falls on the icy and snowy coast, and the ground is mottled with cinnamon and snow, and on it sits an old wooden house.
This is a log cabin that looks quite old. The peeling paint on the door frame and floor rails left leper-like skin spots on the exterior of the cabin. The roof is piled on the rickety and decaying load-bearing wall. The horizontally arranged wooden boards are fixed.
In front of the door stood a sign like a tourist spot, with Scott’s Lodge written on it and 1912 built underneath.
This one hundred years ago is already a cultural relic. The old wooden house, which is regarded as a tourist attraction, is emitting a warm fire, as if someone is resting in it.
Follow the light on the snow and walk into the small wooden house. The fire is burning under the mantelpiece. On the wooden bench next to him sits an old man with squinting eyes.
He wore a pair of faded golden hanging glasses, humming a song that was out of tune softly, and slapped one of the feet with one of his feet, his hands, feet, and backs were all rickety and he seemed to have undergone a lot of torture.
The light of fire shone on his old, wrinkled face, reflecting the shadows shaking on the wall.
Spades walked out of the dark shadow, standing straight on the edge of the fire, with the long whip in his hand, the long eyelashes and the tips of his hair hanging from the snow that hadn't had time to melt.
Spades looked at the old man with a clear and gentle voice "Edmond."
The old man then opened one eye and looked over. He seemed helpless and amused. "You are here again young man. You seem to like to come to me very much."
Edmund smiled kindly, "You have killed me many times, just for the heart that you always can't find"
"That's important to you"
Spades spoke, but answered the question "You shouldn't remember that I killed you."
Edmund took off his glasses, looked at the spades, smiled softly, "Because I am just an evil nc in the game, every time this copy should be refreshed and started with your departure, and I forget everything, right? "
The spades nodded.
Edmund smiled. "It may be that I lived too long and the things I did were cruel, so God refused to forgive me and let me remember everything I did. I do remember that you killed me many times. The most frequent person in this game, I almost want to be friends with you."
His gaze stayed on the dripping whip of spades for a moment like a joke. "Of course, if you don’t enter the game, just use the whip to strangle me. The process of suffocation is always painful, if you are willing to let me choose the way to die. If I do, I prefer to be burned to death."
The spades agreed without hesitation "Yes."
Edmund laughed loudly, "My boy, I believe you really can't understand other people's jokes."
"Your group of teammates have always had a headache with you, right? That guy called the Insurgent Judge has been so distressed that he couldn't help but pour out his troubles with me, saying that he doesn't know what to do with you."
Edmund looked at the spades playfully. "He looks so sad that he is about to cry. It's really interesting and troublesome to have friends like you."
Spades do not comment on the definition of others given to him. He always speaks and does things straightforwardly, "Are you still unwilling to tell me where my heart is this time?"
Edmond’s eyes are reflecting fire. Old people like him should have muddy eyes, but Edmond’s eyes are still pure and flawless, as clean as the snow that fell on the Antarctic ice 30,000 years ago. , Glowing a kind of light blue almost like ice.
"No, my child." Edmund's expression became very distant, he shook his head, "You can kill me again, but I will never tell you where I hid my heart."
"That is my original sin, only God knows where it is hidden."
Spades pressed his lips into a straight line, and he was obviously dissatisfied with the result. A very shallow depression emerged from his small gesture of using his nails to buckle the whip.
Edmund looked at the spades, his face still has the kind of friendly smile that has insight into everything. "This time you also found my six hundred particle devices. I rarely see players who can find them without being frozen to death. ,you are great."
"But one device is invalid." Spades looked at Edmund, "There are no corpse particles in the device under Dome A. I can't gather six hundred corpses."
"But you have won this game, haven't you?" Edmond shook his head pretentiously, raised his fingers and emphasized, "Your friend, Nishen told me that you only care about winning or losing, you have got what you want. Yes, why not let my secret be just a secret forever"
Edmund looked at the spades with a smile at the corners of his mouth, and the light blue eyes of crushed ice sparkled with yellow campfire light. "Why are you so attached to a heart that doesn't belong to you? It's not romantic."
The spades paused for a moment, as if he didn't know the exact answer to this question.
"Intuition I must destroy this heart and all the corpses."
Spades raised their eyes "Everyone has their own destiny. I can see that the fate of this heart is connected to me and should be destroyed by me."
"Neither it nor me should exist in this world."
The smile on Edmund's face gradually faded, and he muttered to himself "You are destroying yourself, child"
"Yeah." Spades answered calmly, and then asked, "What is the original sin you want to hide?"
Edmund didn't even smile at all on his face, he finally showed a bit of oldness of his age.
He held his forehead and sighed for a long time, his expressions and movements couldn't hide his exhaustion and trance, "My original sin is something I didn't realize from beginning to end that I should repent for it."
"I hate the things that persecute me, hate the students who betray me, and pity the friends I yearn for." Edmund took a deep, deep breath, exhaling from his nose slowly as if smoking, looking through his feet Huo looked far away, "I haven't done one thing right, and I confessed for it, but one thing made me understand that my ugliness is far more than that."
Edmund's hands on the side of the chair trembled. He closed his eyes, tears falling into gully-like wrinkles, and his voice was harsh and hoarse, "That's the corpses."
"That's not a corpse, it's a broken body of a living creature. He has consciousness, feelings, and emotions. He knows how ugly I am doing to him."
Edmund opened his eyes, his clear eyes finally became muddy at this moment, choked up, "And I didn't know what I did until I saw the beating heart."
"I am killing a living person."
Edmund turned his head to look at the spades, he seemed to be old to the point of death in an instant
"The story of the game you mentioned may be my destiny. I was led by this destiny, by invisible gods, to the abyss of self-destruction, forming a paradise-like loop, providing entertainment for others to come and go. I thought I was You can escape this terrible game yourself."
"But after escaping, I found that I was only in a larger cycle of fate. I will always be a toy in the hands of the gods who set my destiny, and mankind will always be self-destructive because of out of control in all world lines. This is our destiny given by God and he wants to see this."
Tears swayed in Edmond’s eyes.
All of us should be punished for the cruelty that we have been given by fate, but I know that in the eyes of that invisible god, the improper punishment I have imposed due to anger is also It's just a link in his destiny calculated."
"Everything I do is just a game."
The spades looked at him without a wave. "But you can decide how you die this time."
"I will burn you to death as I wish, and this is not a game for you or me."
Edmund smiled tearfully, "I know."
"This is the victory you want, and the destiny I want."
The other end.
Bai Liu was patrolling the ground in a helicopter, and they had already passed one of the six hundred points marked on the three maps.
But the results were not satisfactory.
The buoys on the sea have been taken out and destroyed. There is no need for Bailiu and the others to sink to find. The wreckage of the instrument is placed directly on the edge of the coast. The metal box is also casually thrown into the instrument, and the particles inside have been destroyed. Clean and clean.
The particle devices on the ground were all strapped to the sky with weather balloons.
Bai Liu and the others had already seen several punctured balloons buried in the snow on the ground, similar to those on the coast, and the particles in the metal box were also destroyed.
The more you go to the locations marked on these maps, the worse the situation becomes.
When seeing the hollowed-out device next to Dome A, Bai Liu issued a termination order, "The six hundred devices should have been found by Spades. Edmund should not hide his heart in these six hundred points. ."
"Then where would he hide his heart?" Mu Ke yelled in the strong wind, so as to ensure that Bai Liu could hear what he said in the wind. "These six hundred locations have included all the special meanings to Edmund Location, Ice Dome a, South Pole, Taishan Station, Scott's Hut are all inside. Is it possible for him to hide his heart elsewhere"
"Yes." Bai Liu turned to look at Mu Ke, "Remember what the main mission of this dungeon is"
Mu Ke nodded, "Global warming."
"If global cooling is the punishment for Edmund's loss of control to everyone, including himself, then global warming is an opportunity for him to change." Bai Liu breathed hoarfrost.
During the conversation, Tang Erda controlled the helicopter and landed steadily on a new location.
Bai Liu stepped down from the helicopter that was steadily landed by Tang Er, and came to an empty snowfield.
This is a brand new place without any footprints or traces. No devices have been placed here, and there is no sign of anyone visiting. It is far away from all observation stations, and there is no geographical name that belongs to it.
It is a strange place without any characteristics.
This is the place Bai Liu chooses for Tang Erda to land.
Mu Ke trot to follow Bai Liu, short of breath "Bai Liu, do you think this is the location of Edmund's heart?"
He almost asked why you think it was here, but due to Mu Ke's blind trust in Bai Liu, he felt that he should dig first before talking.
But someone asked, Mu Sicheng turned around and looked around, and asked Bai Liu suspiciously, "Why did Edmund hide his heart here? I don’t even know where it is, and I didn’t fax or experiment with Edmond. I saw this place in the report."
Bai Liu put on anti-friction gloves and began to help Tang Erda carry equipment for digging and detecting ice.
Mu Sicheng stepped forward to take over, looking at Bai Liu with full insight.
Bai Liu leaned forward and took out a stack of experimental reports from the back seat of the helicopter, and handed them to Mu Sicheng. "While watching and explaining that I just said, the global cold is Edmund's punishment for human beings under his anger, but before , Global warming is also a punishment, and it is a punishment that human beings have suffered by themselves."
Mu Sicheng couldn't help but exclaimed, "What the did I do wrong, I'm being punished for how I get cold and hot."
Bai Liu smiled, "Yes, this is a Christian concept, that people are born with original sin, and living is the process of atonement. If you regard the whole process as Edmund asking mankind to atone, it will be much clearer."
"He felt that other people were guilty, so he punished others. He felt that Taishan Station was innocent, but this innocence is also a sin in a guilty environment, because it will invite bullying, so Edmund determined to sharpen Taishan Station. Let them survive as humans on "Noah's Ark."
"Edmond knows that this is wrong and sinful, and his own atonement process" Bai Liu has a deep gaze, "is to hide the untouched heart of himself, and protect him from the suppression of various environments. Down, the first innocent person to be tortured."
"He preserved the heart to preserve the experimental samples on the one hand, and to preserve his original sin on the other."
Bai Liu looked to Mu Sicheng, "Where do you think someone like Edmund would save his original sin?"
Mu Sicheng shook his head honestly.
Bai Liu smiled "Of course it was the day when he made up his mind to commit his crime and it took effect."
A question mark appeared in Mu Sicheng's eyes, "Which day is this day?"
"On August 10, the day he started pickling sauerkraut for the people at Taishan Station." Bai Liu looked at the open space in front of him, and smiled, "And this place is the 33 years accumulated in Edmund's. In the record of temperature, the coldest place in Antarctica on August 10."
"There is no better place to store a beating heart than this place.", please keep in mind: Free and fastest update, no anti-theft, no anti-theft