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 the strange thing is that the snow on the ground at the door has been cleared, revealing a clearing below, the door It was also half-hidden and left open.
Tang Er hit the situation and knew it was wrong: "Someone is inside."
"Grass!" Mu Sicheng rubbed his arms, his expression darkened, "Isn't it the group of copies of us still inside, right?"
Bai Liu crouched in front of the trapdoor in the basement opening next to the helicopter hangar.
A pungent smell of icy ashes and strong acid corrosion came out of the trap door in the basement.
The snow on the trapdoor was also cleared, and it was wide open. The two barrels of gasoline placed by the door before Bai Liu left were gone. Instead, the inside of the basement was dark and there was a little hot air gurgling out.
From Bailiu's perspective, the walls are full of soot left over after the incomplete combustion of the fuel oil. Liquid and snow are dripping down the steps on the steps. It doesn’t take a long time to burn out. 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 settled the materials at Edmund Observation Station with Mu Ke. I remember this. There is not so much acid in reserve."
Strong acid, a chemical reagent, is a scarce resource even in scientific research stations. Before leaving, Liu Jiayi emptied the acid solution at Edmund Observatory in order to basically empty out the acid.
Even so, she had to use it carefully, and she could only manage to deal with those 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 corroded quickly, and gas swelled out of her brows. She frowned: "This person is just pour the acid into the basement in a bucket. Where can he get so much acid?"
The person who cleaned the basement used strong acid quite casually. The walls and steps were spread everywhere, and there was a lot of extravagance and waste. It seemed that strong acid, a hard-won and very scarce resource in the dungeon, had no sense of cherishing.
"There is only one possibility." Bai Liu's eyes fell on the slowly freezing acid.
Liu Jiayi reacted abruptly: "Someone who has played this game brought in the acid-spades have been here?!"
At this time, Mu Sicheng's exclamation came from the second floor of the observation station: "Grass!!! What's the situation?!"
Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi looked at each other, and the two 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 the gun and walked in front of Bai Liu vigilantly: "What's the matter?"
Mu Sicheng turned his head, his face was blue and white, shaking his hands pointing to 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 away, 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 vacant lot 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 this opening on the ground of the restaurant on the second floor.
On the edge of the hole, there is a circle of bloody handprints left by people struggling, and they are 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 down 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 rising with the reaction. Blister.
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 with blood and flesh, and the skin and flesh constantly emit 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.
It was the appearance of these corpses that made Mu Sicheng scream.
The people who dealt with these corpses were a bit rough and didn't care too much. A considerable part of the corpses' faces were still not completely burnt by the fuel, and the appearance of "them" could be clearly seen.
—These corpses have the faces of White Willow, 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 and 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 cave entrance, swallowed nervously, and his voice was hoarse: "... Someone killed all the monsters that Edmund stood 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 that become ours have skills?"
"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, "Let's talk to these monsters before we leave. 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 at the first floor with a cold expression, and slowly exhaled.
"But Edmund is not the only one [us] standing here, but a group of [us] who are fighting each other."
"—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 should 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 Liu] who were gradually submerged and dissipated in the acid pool below with an unclear expression for a while.
After these scorched corpses with their own faces turned into bones, and then into bubble particles and some debris with no specific shape, Bai Liu stood up, retracted his gaze, and turned to look at the others:
"Search the entire observatory and find the reason why the spades are here."
Half an hour later, a group of people gathered on the first floor again.
Mu Ke, who is good at memorizing and searching maps, first reported his findings:
"A lot of places have been searched, it should be looking for something, but the search is very simple, not like looking for text-based materials 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/guns 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 calmly summarized the tone: "First of all, we can be sure that the spades repeatedly enter the game to find something, and this thing is very It may be related to the main line of the game."
"Spades and I first logged in at Edmund Observatory, but he didn't search here at that time, instead he left here and went outside. We can tell from this-at that time Spades thought Edmund The observation station did not have what he was looking for."
Bai Liu paused on the paper with the pen tip: "But now he is back."
Liu Jiayi quickly realized why: "The spades were not found outside, so I decided to go back to Edmund Observation Station to try my luck. As a result, I happened to encounter the replicas we had left here, so I killed them and looked for them again. I did it again, but I still didn't find it, so I left."
Bai Liu's eyes were half-closed, and he drew little by little thoughtfully with the tip of his pen: "The crux of the problem now 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 that the boss is Edmund? According to the general design of the game. , As long as you hit the boss at the end of the level, you can pass the level and reach [normalend]."
"I don't think that with the ability of spades, he would not even reach [normalend] after entering the game so many times." Bai Liu denied.
His pen nib paused twice on the paper, and then wrote the words "corpse block".
Bai Liu raised his eyes: "I think what Spades is looking for may be a particle weather device transformed from [corpse block]. 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 working, he is very likely to put particle meteorological devices on those 600 locations where he thinks Antarctica affects the world's climate."
Mu Ke was 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 to search-Edmond Observation Station. No particle weather device is placed."
Bai Liu wrote [600] and [Experimental Sample Preservation] on the paper, and then put a question mark next to it.
He lifted his eyelids 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: "These six hundred corpses outside of the particle device..."
He seemed to realize something, opened his eyes slightly, and looked at Bai Liu: "It is Edmund who hasn't done an experiment yet and turned it into a corpse of the particle device, right!"
"Edmond is an experienced scientific research scholar." Bai Liu reminded faintly, "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, and finally froze 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 preserved from the arteries and veins."
Mu Ke slightly raised his head with excitement, and spoke 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 A 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 [trueend] of this game. Let's set off."
The wind and snow covered Bai Liu's dark and deep eyes, and engulfed his calm voice away in the evening night.
"—If we want to win the spades, we must find it before the spades destroy this heart."
The tide rises and falls on the snow-covered coast, and the ground is mottled with cinnamon soil and white snow, and on it sits an old wooden house.
This is a log cabin that looks quite old. Peeling paint on the door frame and floor rails left leprosy skin-like spots on the exterior of the cabin. The roof is piled on the rickety and decaying load-bearing wall, leaning against it. The horizontally arranged wooden boards are fixed.
In front of the entrance, there is a sign like a tourist location indicator, which says [Scott Lodge] on it and [Build in 1912] on the bottom.
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 blazing 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, his feet slapped with one of his feet, his hands, feet, and backs were all crippled and he seemed to have undergone a lot of torture.
The light of fire shone on his old, wrinkled face, and the shadows swayed on the wall.
The spades walked out of the dark shadow, standing stiffly 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 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 wrong question: "You shouldn't remember that I killed you."
Edmund took off his glasses, looked at the spades, and smiled softly: "Because I am just an evil npc in the game, every time this copy should be refreshed and started with your departure, and I have forgotten everything, yes ?"
The spades nodded.
Edmund smiled: "Maybe I lived too long and did too cruel, so God refused to forgive me and let me remember everything I did-I do remember that you killed me many times, You are 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 In terms of death, 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 been giving you a headache, right? The guy named [The Judge of the Inverse God] has been so distressed that he couldn't help but pour out his troubles with my npc, and said he didn't know what to do with you."
Edmund looked at the spades jokingly: "He looks so sad that he is about to cry. It is really interesting and troublesome to have friends like you."
Spades do not comment on the definition of others. He always speaks and does things straightforwardly: "You still don't want to tell me where my heart is this time?"
Edmund’s eyes are reflecting fire. Old people like him should have cloudy 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 with a light blue that is close to ice.
"No, my child." Edmund's expression became far away, and 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. He was obviously dissatisfied with the result, and a very shallow depression emerged from his small gesture of holding the whip with his nails.
Edmund looked at the spades, his face still had the kind of insightful, friendly smile on his face: "This time you also found my six hundred particle devices. I rarely see players able to find them without being frozen to death. Yes, you are amazing."
"But one device is ineffective." Spades looked at Edmund, "There are no corpse particles in the device under Dome A. I can't gather six hundred corpses."
"But you've won this game, haven't you?" Edmond shook his head pretentiously, raised his finger and emphasized, "Your friend, Nishen told me that you only care about winning or losing, you have already 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 of a bonfire flashed in his light blue eyes like crushed ice: "Why are you so obsessed with a heart that doesn't belong to you? It's not romantic."
The spades paused slightly-it seemed that 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, kid..."
"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 that belonged to 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 as if smoking a cigarette, 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."
"It's not a corpse, it's a broken body of a living creature. He has consciousness, feelings, and emotions. He knows how ugly things I'm doing to him."
Edmund opened his eyes, his clear eyes finally became muddy at this moment, and 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 dying 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 in all world lines because of uncontrolled desires. , This is our destiny given by God—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, It's just a link in his calculated fate."
"Everything I do is just... a game."
The spades looked at him without waves: "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. They had already passed three points marked on the map-one of the six hundred locations.
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 them. The wreckage of the instrument is directly placed 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—the situation was similar to that 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. inside."
"Then where would he hide his heart?" Mu Ke yelled in the gust of wind, so as to ensure that Bai Liu could hear what he said in the wind. "These six hundred locations have included everything that has special meaning to Edmund. The location of 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 desire to lose control of everyone, including himself, then global warming is an opportunity for him to change." Bai Liu's breath is full of 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 observatories, and there is no geographical name that belongs to it alone.
No matter how you look at it, it is a strange place without any characteristics.
This is the place Bai Liu chose to let Tang Erda land.
Mu Ke ran to follow Bai Liu, short of breath: "Bai Liu, do you think this is the location of Edmund's heart?"
He is almost about to ask why you think it is here, but because of Mu Ke's blind trust in Bai Liu, he feels digging first before talking.
But someone asked. Mu Sicheng turned around and looked around, and asked Bai Liu doubtfully: "Why does Edmund hide his heart here? I don't even know where it is, and I haven't received Edmund's fax or I saw this place in the experiment 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 it to Mu Sicheng: “I’m watching and explaining—I just said that the global cold is Edmund’s punishment for human beings under his anger, but In the past, global warming was also a punishment, and it was a punishment that human beings have suffered by themselves."
Mu Sicheng couldn't help sighing: "What did I do wrong? I'm being punished for how I became 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 knew that he was wrong and guilty to do so, and his own process of atonement—"Bai Liu had a deep gaze,"—is to hide the untouched heart and protect him in various environments. The first innocent person to be tortured under the suppression of "
"He preserved his heart on the one hand to preserve the experimental samples, on the other hand to preserve his [original sin]."
Bai Liu looked at 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 10th, 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 in Edmund’s 33 years of accumulation. On August 10th, the coldest place in the Antarctic was recorded in the temperature record."
"There is no better place to store a beating heart."