The lights were so dim they seemed frozen, but a thin sliver of light remained on the control panel screen. Nana stood still, the spotlight from her mechanical eye flickering slightly, scanning at three times the normal frequency.
Chen Hao lay on the mat, his hand on his stomach, his eyelids trembling.
"Aren't you going to turn it off?" His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper rubbing against sheet metal. "I'm practically an ice pop, and you're still staring at the night view?"
Nana didn't turn around: "Three hundred meters to the southeast, a mobile heat source, continuing to approach."
"animal?"
"The signal characteristics are inconsistent. It is not isothermal and has irregular pulses, so the possibility of a plant organism cannot be ruled out."
Chen Hao propped himself up to sit up, his bones cracking. "Fine, I'm just waiting to die lying here anyway, might as well go out and find something to do." He touched the frost on his lips. "Maybe I can pick some fruit for breakfast."
“You are not fit to go out,” Nana said calmly. “Your core body temperature has not yet returned to a safe range, and your muscle coordination has decreased by 41 percent.”
“Then you definitely can’t go alone.” He grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and find that you’ve been kidnapped by a walking cabbage.”
He stood up unsteadily and grabbed the ice axe leaning against the wall. The metal shaft was icy cold, but he didn't let go. Instead, he gripped it tightly with his arm. "Let's go, let's team up to fight monsters, and you can keep any loot that drops."
Nana paused for two seconds, then switched to lighting mode, and a beam of white light cut through the snow curtain.
The wind outside wasn't strong, but it was chillingly cold, like someone had stuffed a whole block of ice into his collar. Every step Chen Hao took felt like stepping on old springs; his legs didn't feel like his own. The snow reflected light weakly, and the distant landscape was blurred into a grayish-white expanse, with only Nana's radar projection flashing a red dot in the air.
“It’s just ahead,” she said.
A thick layer of ice covered the center of the depression, its surface crisscrossed with cracks, as if someone had made a few cuts with a knife and then regretted it. The red dot was positioned twenty centimeters below the ice.
Chen Hao, panting, squatted down and tapped the ice with his ice axe. "This ice is harder than the heating pipes from last night."
"It is recommended to use the circumferential cutting method to reduce vibration transmission."
“You make it sound so easy. You have ten fingers, but I only have two that can move.” He gritted his teeth and swung the pickaxe, the first swing only producing a shard the size of a fingernail. “Ouch, my body will eventually die in this lousy place.”
On the third strike, his arm went limp, the pickaxe veered off course, and he nearly sliced his instep. He cursed and shook his numb hand, "If this keeps up, I'll work myself to death before I even get poisoned."
Nana reached out and took the ice axe, adjusted the angle, and drew a shallow line along the edge. "Continue along this path."
Chen Hao followed her markings, chiseling away bit by bit, his movements clumsy but steady. Finally, the ice sheet loosened, and with a snap, half of it flipped up.
Below lay a fist-sized fruit, purplish-red, its skin glistening with moisture, as if just pulled from blood. Tiny veins pulsed slowly within the flesh, like something breathing.
"This thing looks pretty good," Chen Hao said, taking a closer look. "Could it be an alien ginseng fruit? Does eating it grant immortality?"
"Spectroscopic analysis in progress." Nana's voice was tense. "High concentration of organic acid detected, pH value below 2.3, suspected to be a highly corrosive component. Contact with oral mucosa is not recommended."
Before he finished speaking, Chen Hao had already broken off a small piece and put it in his mouth.
"Just one bite!" he mumbled. "What if it's edible? It's not like I haven't eaten more outrageous things before—you said that glowing mushroom was poisonous, didn't you? I ate it and I'm perfectly fine."
He chewed twice, and his expression froze instantly.
His tongue felt like it was being gripped and ripped with tongs, followed by a sour taste that shot straight to his head, like a jar of vinegar being poured into his nasal cavity. He tried to spit it out, but it was too late.
My lips swelled up rapidly, my tongue burned, and my throat tightened as if a rope was slowly tightening around it.
He opened his mouth to speak, but could only make a "hoarse" sound. His fingers were tightly gripping his neck, and his eyes were wide open.
Nana pulled him down, and an injection module popped out of her arm, the needle piercing the side of his neck with a "snap".
"Anti-allergy compound solution injected, expected to take effect in ninety seconds." She pressed down on his shoulder to prevent him from hitting the ice surface if he convulsed. "Hang in there."
Chen Hao's face turned from red to pale, and blood seeped from the corner of his mouth—the traces of corrosion and tearing of the mucous membrane inside his tongue. He raised his hand, trembling, pointing to the fruit, then to his pocket.
Nana immediately opened his pocket, took out half a fruit wrapped in oil paper, which was perfectly preserved.
"You found out a long time ago?" Her voice wavered for the first time. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Chen Hao made a gurgling sound in his throat and forced a smile.
“I wanted to… keep it… for you as a snack…” His voice was broken, as if it were emerging from underwater, “You said… you liked sweets… last time you ate candy… your eyes lit up…”
After he finished speaking, his head tilted to the side, and he fell into a semi-comatose state.
Nana stared at the half-fruit, her mechanical fingers tightening slightly, pressing wrinkles into the edges of the oil paper.
The injection continued, and the data stream scrolled frantically across her screen: [Increased tissue inflammation] [Increased risk of laryngeal edema] [Immediate return to base recommended for airway support]
But she didn't move.
On the snow, the whole purplish-red fruit lay quietly in the ice pit, its veins still pulsating faintly.
She looked down at Chen Hao; his lips were so swollen they were unrecognizable, his nostrils trembled slightly, and his breathing was weak but regular. A thermal blanket was wrapped around him, its edges stained with blood and ice crystals.
She reached out and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, her movements so gentle they were almost mechanical.
Then, she put the half-wrapped fruit into the sealed compartment of her chest chamber and closed the lid.
When she looked up, her gaze swept across the snow.
There were more than just the two of them among the footprints around the ice pit. A series of thin, claw-like tracks stretched from the east and then turned northeast. Strangely, the footprints disappeared midway, as if the creature had flown away or sunk into the ground.
She picked up Chen Hao and hoisted him onto her shoulder. His head drooped limply, pressed against her cold shoulder armor.
The wind suddenly stopped.
She stepped forward, her footsteps shattering the thin ice with a crisp cracking sound.
Just as she was about to emerge from the depression, she caught a glimpse of the depths of the ice out of the corner of her eye—
The fruit that was abandoned earlier is gone.
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