Mu Sicheng was almost frightened to death, he simply could not accept this kind of biochemical monster!

Tang Erda was still relatively calm: "Should we go in now? Or should we call Mu Ke and the others to report the situation first?"

"The phone was out of service when it landed." Bai Liu turned on the satellite phone to call Tang Er, but it showed that the signal was poor and the call could not be made.

Tang Er frowned.

All along the way, no matter how bad the weather was, the satellite phone signal was intact and we could make calls. Why did it start as soon as we arrived at Taishan Station...

"This should be an important location in the game." Bai Liu raised his chin and motioned everyone to get on the plane. "Grab your guns and we'll drive straight in."

Tang Erda piloted the plane into the air and taxied forward, tentatively flashing a signal light toward Taishan Station, indicating that someone was about to land. After a while, Taishan Station also flashed a signal light, which flashed a few times, indicating that someone was there to assist in the landing.

"The things in Taishan Station can communicate with us in this kind of high-tech way..." Mu Sicheng felt that nothing was right now, and he raised his elbow to nudge Bai Liu suspiciously, "It should be a person, right?"

"Perhaps these monsters have a strong learning ability and have already mastered this level of communication, specifically to trick us humans into landing over there?" Bai Liu said in a neutral tone.

Mu Sicheng rubbed the goose bumps on his arms and shut up obediently - he had realized that there was no way to get the words he wanted to hear out of Bai Liu's mouth.

This guy just likes to scare him!!

When Tang Er flew to the sky above Taishan Station, he looked down and saw someone on the ground waving a red flag to indicate that it was okay to land. He turned around and looked at Bai Liu, and after getting Bai Liu's consent, he began to control the plane to descend.

The propellers of the plane stopped spinning steadily, and the sled-like landing gear stuck in the landing groove in the snow.

In the wind and snow, Bai Liu and the others could see the general attire of the man waving the red flag through the transparent side door of the helicopter.

The man was wearing an orange penguin-style ski suit and was using his ski poles to steady himself in the strong wind. Most of his face was hidden under a thick woolen hat. He waved his hands in the direction of the helicopter, seemingly very happy to see Bai Liu and the others.

This kind of joy made Mu Sicheng shudder and he shrank behind Bai Liu's shoulder: "Damn, is he a monster or a human..."

"We'll know when we go down and take a look." Bai Liu said, and without any pause he pushed open the door of the helicopter, turned around and jumped down.

The man behind him wanted to take a step forward to catch Bai Liu, but Tang Erda, who jumped down from the other side, waved him away cautiously: "I can do it, thank you."

The man pushed his hat up, revealing a red face. He spoke fluent Mandarin, almost crying with excitement, and jumped up and down as he spoke: "I am a stranded person at the Taishan Observation Station. You are from outside, right? This is where you first landed, right?! Oh my God! This is the first time in a year that I have seen people from my motherland here besides the Observation Station. You have definitely not been [parasitized]! You must be human!"

"Come in quickly!" The man hurriedly led Bai Liu and the others inside, looking around vigilantly as he walked, aiming everywhere with the gun in his hand.

Bai Liu and Tang Erda looked at each other in silence, and the group followed this somewhat neurotic team member inside.

When we arrived at the gate of Taishan Station, we saw several members of the observation station wearing penguin uniforms standing there, with straight postures and guns at their feet, as if they were standing guard.

These "sentinels" stared at Bai Liu and his companions coldly, and relaxed a little when they saw their faces - Bai Liu and his companions obviously looked like Chinese. But soon, these "sentinels" became alert again, pointing their guns at their heads.

The man who led them here excitedly explained to the sentinels: "I'm Fang Xiaoxiao, and I just went out to pick up the meteorology graduate students on the plane. They came from outside Antarctica. Can I take them in?"

The sentinels were unmoved and said coldly: "They, including you, need to test cell activity after leaving the station before entering the station."

Fang Xiaoxiao smiled apologetically at Bai Liu and the others: "You may not know since you just arrived, but something happened in Antarctica. Every time we go out, we have to observe cell activity before entering the station. This is to protect the safety of the people in the station."

As he spoke, he opened his mouth as usual. The sentry put on gloves and carefully used a cotton swab to scrape off a small piece of mucosa from Fang Xiaoxiao's oral mucosa and put it into a small test tube.

The sentries took out three new cotton swabs and motioned for Bai Liu and the others to open their mouths.

Bai Liu calmly stopped Mu Sicheng from raising his gun, took off his hat obediently, walked forward, opened his mouth slightly, and let the other party scrape a piece from the left side of his oral mucosa.

Mu Sicheng and Tang Erda also had their mucous membranes removed.

Fang Xiaoxiao said to them, "We'll send it for testing soon. It'll be quick. If there's no problem, we can go in in ten minutes. Please wait a moment."

Bai Liu gently asked, "What happened? Why are you so alert?"

Fang Xiaoxiao sighed: "It started in August a year and a half ago. I'm not sure about the details. It was around the time of the summer shift in the polar regions."

"Summer shift?" Bai Liu asked.

Fang Xiaoxiao explained: "The team members here at the Polar Observatory basically come once a year, because the weather in Antarctica is too extreme, and there are four months of polar nights in the cold winter from April to October."

"Staying in the dark for four months is very damaging to one's mental health. It can easily lead to mental disorders and T3 syndrome. Therefore, the crew members who spend the winter in Antarctica will basically leave in the summer of the following year. At that time, the icebreaker will bring a new batch of crew members to take over."

"But we've been here for three winters." Fang Xiaoxiao smiled bitterly. "Originally, our observation station team should have been rotated out in the summer of the year before last, but no one came to take over, and we were almost out of food..."

When he got to this point, he suddenly stopped talking, as if he had touched upon some unspeakable topic, leaving the young graduate student feeling stuck in his throat, not knowing where to continue.

Bai Liu expressed his praise at the right time: "You are amazing. You have managed to survive until now with only one year's worth of supplies."

Fang Xiaoxiao fell into a rare silence. He closed his eyes and tears oozed from the corners of his eyes.

The two sentinels beside him also looked more serious, but they patted Fang Xiaoxiao on the shoulder as if they couldn't bear it: "——It's all for survival."

The cell test results came out at the right time, and everyone's cell activity was within the normal range.

Fang Xiaoxiao heaved a sigh of relief and happily led Bai Liu and the others inside: "I'll take you to the cabin here. You must have traveled a long way from outside. Take a rest first and have a good sleep."

Bai Liu realized that Fang Xiaoxiao thought they were summer team members who came from outside to rotate with them, but he did not point it out. Instead, he pretended to know nothing and asked, "You are trapped here, why don't you take the initiative to contact the outside world?"

"Because we couldn't get in touch." Speaking of this, Fang Xiaoxiao's smile became more bitter. "We were trapped here for a year and a half. We tried all kinds of ways to ask for help from the outside world, such as the Internet and satellite calls, but the Internet had long been gone. The outside receiving station seemed to have problems as well and there was no response. We waited for a year and a half, but the outside receiving station didn't call us back."

"We even risked sending biplanes and helicopters directly out, but once the planes flew out of Antarctica, the radar detection was disturbed by the magnetic field, and they eventually crashed into the glacier."

Fang Xiaoxiao shook his head, his eyes wide open as he muttered to himself, "If you don't come, we may not be able to integrate into human society anymore, and we will all go crazy in the polar night..."

Seeing Fang Xiaoxiao's sad and dazed expression, Mu Sicheng couldn't help but whisper in Bai Liu's ear, "This NPC is so pitiful. It seems that he has been trapped in Antarctica and doesn't know that the world is getting colder outside. The people at the receiving station he mentioned are probably frozen to death..."

In the context of global cooling, it is difficult for people trapped in the extremely cold environment of the Arctic Circle to feel anything, because the climate here is extreme, survival is difficult, and it is difficult to communicate with the outside world. Therefore, Fang Xiaoxiao and the people at Taishan Station may have thought that there was something wrong with the communication equipment, and have not yet thought about the Ice Age.

Bai Liu was not ready to tell this seemingly fragile NPC that the outside world he was talking about had already become an icy wasteland like Antarctica.

After all, this NPC currently doesn't seem to be able to bear this news.

Bai Liu's eyes inadvertently slid across Fang Xiaoxiao's open coat pocket - he saw two small bottles of medicine inside, which happened to be one of the drugs that Mu Ke had told him about, for treating severe mania and depression.

"You managed to survive for two and a half years with enough supplies for one year. How did you do it?" Bai Liu brought up the topic with great interest.

"There is solar energy storage at the extreme lows, so it's barely enough to save some energy for daily use. As for fuel..."

Fang Xiaoxiao covered his forehead and sighed uncomfortably: "I know that the Antarctic Convention stipulates that wild animals here cannot be killed, but throughout the past year, the number of krill here has increased abnormally fast. In October last year, the coastal waters on the Ross Sea were almost dyed orange."

"The penguins, seals, whales and many other polar animals here feed on krill. The abundant food allows these animals to reproduce abnormally fast. Their numbers have doubled in just one year, and the fat on their bodies is extremely rich..."

Fang Xiaoxiao pursed his lips, a look of pain from violating moral principles emerged on his face: "You also know that when early humans explored Antarctica, in the absence of sufficient food and fat, they would hunt these penguins and seals..."

"So you ate penguins and seals?" Mu Sicheng couldn't understand Fang Xiaoxiao's pain, but he probably understood that these Antarctic research team members who were doing research probably respected these animals very much.

Mu Sicheng patted Fang Xiaoxiao's shoulder with sympathy: "You want to survive. It's normal to eat animals when there is no food..."

When Fang Xiaoxiao heard Mu Sicheng mention the word "food", she couldn't help but shudder and her face turned pale and blue.

"No, he didn't eat penguins and seals." Bai Liu said calmly, "In the early Antarctic exploration, penguins and seals were not used as the main food because they were rich in fat. Instead, they were used as firewood for burning."

Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked at Fang Xiaoxiao: "If I'm not mistaken, you are hunting seals and penguins in large numbers, not for food, but for refining fuel to run the entire observatory. Otherwise, you will be frozen to death, right?"

Fang Xiaoxiao bit his lower lip and hummed softly, tears glistening in his eyes: "The oil extracted from animals cannot be used directly as fuel, but after some technological transformation, it can be simply burned to provide electricity..."

"...But the observation station is not short of food or fuel at the moment." Fang Xiaoxiao's eyes flashed with a glimmer of hope for survival. He stepped forward and tightly grasped Bai Liu's hand. "What we lack most is medicine! We lack drugs for mental treatment! Everyone suffers from severe T3 syndrome. We can't control our emotions and behaviors. We can't distinguish between reality and fantasy. We're all going crazy!"

Bai Liu looked at him slowly, his tone calm as always: "So your food doesn't come from these seals and penguins, then where does it come from?"

Fang Xiaoxiao looked at Bai Liu's face which showed no emotion at all. Her hands seemed to be stung by a bee. She retracted her hands in panic, her eyes dodging and her breathing becoming rapid.

"I guess your food is frozen in the ice cracks outside, right?" Bai Liu said indifferently.

"After you conducted various experiments on these biological monsters that evolved into humans, you were originally going to throw them away as waste, but the shortage of food made you decide to reuse these waste products, so you placed them in the natural [refrigerator] outside to store them."

Bai Liu spoke in a very light voice, as if he was making an irrelevant conclusion: "Your food is people, right?"

Fang Xiaoxiao screamed with red eyes: "They are monsters, animals, not humans!!"

The author has something to say:

The use of seals and penguins to make fire is a reference to a documentary about the description of Scott's (the second explorer to reach the South Pole) cabin in 1912. Penguins and seals were used for heating. It is said that penguins were beaten to death with a stick, and seals were cut up and used as firewood because they are rich in fat and can burn for a long time.