"So what are you going to do with... us?" Liu Jiayi shrunk into her seat and buried 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 and looked at him with red eyes: "...What's the matter?"

"Because no one has completed Ice Age yet, there is no [end] line yet, so the time in the game corresponding to reality is stagnant. The copy has not yet been loaded into reality, so there is still room for reality to turn around."

Bai Liu said, "I need you to leave the game and stop that plane from crashing in Antarctica."

Liu Jiayi stretched out her body. She also realized that there was room for maneuver here. She frowned and asked, "But according to the usual routine of this game loading into reality, this plane is probably already over Antarctica. As soon as we get out, the real time will start to flow, and it will crash soon."

"We can't stop a plane from crashing in Antarctica."

Bai Liu smiled: "No, someone can."

Liu Jiayi looked up in confusion: "Who?"

Bai Liu: "Du Sanying."

Tang Er knocked on the helicopter's hatch: "I can already vaguely see the outline of the metal box."

He exhaled a breath of white air, and his eyebrows and hair were covered with frost, but Tang Erda's expression was colder than the frost: "--It's a box from the Bureau of Heresy."

————————

Reality, over Antarctica.

The biplane that was about to land had been sending out communication signals for a long time but none of them were received. The five escorts on the plane had already noticed something was wrong.

They looked at each other, and a sense of foreboding came over them.

"Aircraft - beep - calling ground communication station - beep - encountering a large number of clouds and air currents, please respond if you hear me -"

The radio station remained silent, while the air currents rushing towards both wings became stronger and more turbulent. The escorts took a deep breath; they had to prepare for the worst.

"What's ahead?"

"Ross Sea."

"Prepare for an emergency landing."

…

Antarctica, open space in front of the Dome A observation station.

A group of observers wearing conspicuous red sprint jackets rubbed their hands and stamped their feet, looking up at the sky. They whispered to each other with a little uneasiness:

"We were supposed to check for ice cracks today to facilitate landing, why haven't we arrived yet..."

"I don't know. I just came out of the observation station. The contact person inside said that they haven't been able to contact the pilot for a long time. They have tried every means on the satellite phone, but there is no signal feedback..."

"Nothing will happen, right?"

…

Bureau of Heresy, District 1.

Su Yang looked tired and tense as he wore a captain's uniform that was a little too big for him. He walked through the brightly lit corridor at night and turned a corner into a machine room.

The machine room was in chaos. Coffee cups were scattered all over the table. Several ground communications personnel with unshaven beards were staring at the big screen while operating the instrument tables.

These people have dark circles under their eyes, and it looks like they will die suddenly at any moment if their heads tilt.

Captain Su attached great importance to the matter of escorting the corpse, so the people under him naturally became nervous.

From the time the escort left the port to now being over Antarctica, the ground communicator has been maintaining communication without interruption throughout the entire process, working overtime for several days without sleeping.

But even with such caution, when the plane was about to arrive at Antarctica and everyone was about to breathe a sigh of relief, something suddenly happened.

No matter what means they used, they could no longer contact the escorts on the five planes.

The ground communicator turned around with a pale face and said, "Captain Su, what should we do?"

Su Yang had never closed his eyes since he sent the escort away. He stared at the pure white snow in Antarctica detected by satellite on the big screen. The overly dazzling color made his mind go blank for a while.

A feeling of powerlessness came over me, that I could not stop certain things from happening no matter what I did.

"So this is the meaning of the Prophet having supreme authority in the Bureau of Heresy." Cen Mingming appeared beside the confused Su Yang without knowing when.

Su Yang turned around in a daze and looked over: "Captain Cen..."

Cen Mingming crossed his arms and stared at the snowy surface with his eagle-like yellow eyes for a while, then turned to look at Su Yang: "Because [seeing] is much more important than [doing]."

"——Fate has its own plans, and we, the characters on the cards, can only obey."

Cen Mingming brushed past the dazed Su Yang without looking back and said, "Get ready to collect the bodies of these five escorts."

"Captain Su, what should we do?"

"Captain Su, are we still in touch?"

"Captain Su..."

"Captain Su..."

Su Yang closed his eyes, holding onto the edge of the table, and said in a hoarse voice, "If he's alive, I want him to be found. If he's dead, I want him to be found dead. Tell Antarctica to prepare search and rescue personnel and...body bags."

"Bring him back to me no matter what."

In-game.

Bai Liu and Mu Sicheng took turns to take over Tang Erda's work. The wind was not as strong as before, and was replaced by the sun with strong ultraviolet light.

As he got closer to the heart, the temperature on the ice surface kept rising and Mu Sicheng started sweating.

"Tsk, what's going on?" Mu Sicheng shook his collar, sweat and heat rising together, "Why is it suddenly getting hot? Can the weather here get any worse?"

Bai Liu squatted down and looked at the ice surface which showed obvious signs of melting: "It's not that the weather suddenly got hot."

"It's because we have to dig out our hearts to complete the main quest that global warming has begun."

Tang Er poked his head out of the helicopter and shouted, "——Bai Liu, the temperature is rising abnormally, it's above zero now!"

He jumped off the helicopter and walked in front of Bai Liu in a few steps: "According to this rate of temperature rise, the ice will melt quickly."

Bai Liu shook her head. "I think it's not just melting quickly. This heart is very likely the location of Edmund's core device for global cooling. It's also the last item in the [true end] line."

"——If it is taken out, I suspect that global warming will cause the entire Antarctic ice sheet to melt."

Tang Er frowned: "In that case, wouldn't Antarctica become a vast ocean?"

Bai Liu raised her eyes and looked at him: "There are things that are more troublesome than this."

"If the ice sheet melts completely, the area of ​​Antarctica will shrink greatly, and the disappearance of ice and snow will lead to dramatic climate change. Snowstorms that block visibility and mobile extreme weather will also be greatly reduced. In such a map, we will be easier to detect."

Bai Liu paused: "This will speed up the process of Hei Tao finding us."

Bai Liu's implication was very clear. He had to find a way to hide his secrets, otherwise Hei Tao would come to him sooner or later.

Tang Erda frowned, "But where is it hidden? Spade's attack speed and movement speed are too high. He can explore all places in Antarctica at any time. It won't be safe no matter where you put your heart."

He couldn't help but sigh: "Except for not being good at decoding, this guy is really a perfect main attacker."

Bai Liu smiled: "That's it. Let's give him a puzzle."

Tang Erda was stunned: "What puzzle?"

Bai Liu said: "Hide the trees in the forest."

Scott Cabin.

In the rapidly rising temperature, the snow around the cabin melted. Located in the middle of a wet hill, the wooden boards were covered with mud spots, making them look dirty.

When Bai Liu came to visit again, Edmund was surprised: "Did you dig up the heart?"

"Yes." Bai Liu looked at Edmund and handed him the metal box. "I have something to trouble you, Professor."

Edmund took the box and became more and more confused: "Is this the dirty box? Why did you give it to me?"

Bai Liu smiled and said, "Professor, please help me hide this secret so that Hei Tao won't find it."

Edmund smiled helplessly. "My child, Spade is the player who comes here most often. He may be more familiar with every plant and tree here than I am. I am not sure I can find a place in Antarctica to hide my good heart without being discovered by Spade."

Bai Liu said, "Maybe I have a good place to hide. Of course, this place is not perfect and there is a possibility of being discovered. But at present, this place is probably the most unfamiliar place for Spade in the game Ice Age."

Edmund asked in surprise, "What place is it?"

Bai Liu stared at him: "Inside my body."

"You already have a heart in your body, how can there be room for another heart?" Edmund teased him in a joking tone, "Kid, you can't be two-hearted when you meet love."

Bai Liu calmly answered him: "Yes, just dig out my heart and you will find it."

Edmund was stunned for a while, and then he realized that Bai Liu was not joking with him.

He looked back and forth in disbelief between Bai Liu and the box in his hand several times, then raised his head and looked at Bai Liu with trembling eyes:

"Are you crazy? You want me to take your dirt and put this in?!"

"You will turn into a monster!" Edmund looked at Bai Liu in disbelief. He raised the box containing his dirty thoughts and emphasized loudly, "You are a real person. You have a real life. You are completely different from a product of a game like me."

"Do you know what this means?!" Edmund roared tremblingly.

"If I put my heart into your body, after the heart has grown completely into you, you will become a, a ..."

Edmund gasped: "——a complete monster!"

Bai Liu raised his eyelids slightly, looked at the box held high by Edmund, and then lowered his gaze to his face.

"I've always been a monster."

Edmund took two steps back. He stared at Bai Liu for a long time. Finally, he collapsed as if exhausted and sat on the chair.

"But even if you hide your heart in your body, it's not enough." Edmund raised his head, "Spade may also find it. You know, this guy is good at everything except deciphering..."

"I know." Bai Liu said, "So I prepared a riddle for him."

"Professor, is there a way to prepare a large amount of [White Willow], and then perform a similar heart surgery on everyone inside, input [my] memories before the surgery, and then let me hide inside."

Edmund looked at Bai Liu in astonishment. "Are you planning to... prepare a multiple-choice question for Hei Tao about hiding a tree in the forest?"

"That's right." Bai Liu lowered his eyes, "and this is a multiple-choice question without an answer."

"——Because every [Bai Liu] here thinks that he is the real Bai Liu, and the dirty heart he hides is the real dirty heart. Even I don't know whether I am real or fake, and I don't know who the answer to the mystery is."

White Willow looked down at Edmund and said, "——As long as we keep producing White Willow, we can equalize the speed of Spade's kills. This is a puzzle that no one can solve."

"As long as I can keep him out of the game, I win."

Edmund sat on the wooden bench and was silent for a long time.

"Do you know what I saw in your face?" Edmund whispered to himself. "I saw the frenzy I felt before the experiment, determined to save the things I loved at all costs."

Edmund raised his head with tears in his eyes: "I will help you, child, even though it is wrong."

Bai Liu thanked him sincerely: "Thank you, Professor Edmund."

The coastline rises higher and higher, and the ice surface melts smoother and smoother under the sunlight, until the last ray of sunlight disappears from the horizon.

But the temperature is still rising.

"It's almost ten degrees." Tang Er took off his sniper suit, looked around, and frowned, "Why hasn't Bai Liu come back yet? Didn't he say he would take the Divine to Edmund to unlock the final plot, and then destroy the Divine to complete the game and leave?"

Tang Erda did not go to the cabin with Bai Liu, and he did not know what Edmund said to Bai Liu.

I don't know the consequences of destroying my heart.

Liu Jiayi pursed her lips and said nothing. Mu Ke glanced at her.

Mu Sicheng asked the same question as Tang Erda: "Yeah, how long has it been?"

"If he doesn't come back, the waterline will soon rise to us." Tang Erda took a look at the broken brick-like ice floe, "Let's get on the helicopter first--!!"

Before Tang Erda could finish his words, a pure black whip swept over from a distance with unstoppable force, entangled the landing gear of the helicopter and pulled it back, shaking Tang Erda who was about to climb onto the helicopter down.

"Shit!! It's Spades!!!"

Mu Sicheng subconsciously used his skills, opened his monkey claws with both hands, and tried to catch the black whip that continued to sweep towards them.

The seemingly light whip hit Mu Sicheng's palm, and he felt as if every metacarpal bone in his hands was shattered in an instant. He had almost no time to warn others and was thrown directly under the thick layer of ice.

Mu Sicheng's chest was sunken by the residual force of the whip and he spat out a mouthful of blood.

Tang Erda took out his gun without hesitation and started shooting at Spade rapidly. Only then did they see Spade walking out with the whip in his hand through the mist.

He held the whip in one hand with a cold expression, flipping his wrist and shaking it rapidly. The whip danced in front of him into an almost impenetrable afterimage, and the bullets hit the whip with crisp crackling sounds.

During the continuous shooting, Spade's shoulder and the right hand holding the whip were hit - Tang Er's target was obvious, he wanted to disarm Spade.

This is a conditioned reflex of a professional main attacker when encountering an opponent - controlling the opponent's organs used for attack.

Tang Erda did hit Spade, and blood kept gushing out of Spade's body. Logically, Spade should have stopped attacking after being hit.

But Spade seemed to be unaware of this and continued to move closer.

Tang Er fought and retreated, his scalp tightening due to an unprecedented strong sense of pressure. He had to activate his monster form - [Rose Hunter], and switched to an extended revolver to shoot faster.

Spade was repeatedly hit by bullets, and the blood seeping from the surface of his clothes left a long trail on the ice.

But he was still approaching, and his attack was getting faster and faster - but his target was not a person, but the helicopter on the ice.

Spade smashed the helicopter into pieces with a few blows, and used a whip to push the "wreckage" of the helicopter on the ice, as if looking for something.

But he didn't seem to find what he wanted. He turned around, put down the whip, and looked at Tang Erda: "Isn't my heart here with you?"

Tang Erda seemed to realize that this guy had no intention of attacking them, so he pretended that the gun in his hand was out of service and instantly fired two more shots at Hei Tao as a test.

As expected, Hei Tao was hit, but he did not fight back. Instead, he stared at Tang Erda with no emotion on his face, as if waiting for his answer.

Tang Erda said: "Your heart is not with us."

"Oh." Without hesitation, Heitao gave Tang Er two slaps, then raised his eyes and said, "I know you could have stopped just now. This is to pay you back for the two shots you fired."

Tang Erda: "..."

After getting the answer, Spade left again.

Mu Sicheng was helped up while spitting blood. His head was full of questions: "He just came here to ask questions?! So why did he hit me?!"

If Hei Tao was here, he might answer him. Intuitively, I think I should beat up Mu Sicheng first, otherwise he will rush over and it will be very annoying.

But Hei Tao is not here, so Mu Sicheng doesn't know the answer to this question, which may be a good thing for him.

Mu Ke looked at Hei Tao's departing back with worry: "He should be going to find Bai Liu."

"Bai Liu will be fine. He can clear the level as long as he destroys his heart." Liu Jiayi raised her head. "We have to quit the game before he clears the level. This way, real time will freeze for us, and we can solve the problems in the real world."

Tang Erda suddenly turned his head and looked at Liu Jiayi: "Did Bai Liu tell you how to solve the problems in reality?"

"He told me." Liu Jiayi said.

Tang Er heaved a sigh of relief and smiled for once: "He always has a way. Let's log out of the game first."

Mu Sicheng also relaxed and said with a smile: "Why didn't you tell me earlier? I was scared to death. I thought he was in trouble."

"But think about what could happen to that bastard Bai Liu in the game. It's almost the same as if something happened to me."

Liu Jiayi clenched her fists.

No one questioned Bai Liu's decision, and no one thought that Bai Liu had no solution.

He has always been omnipotent, never makes mistakes, and has no weaknesses.

She believed this, too, so she always wanted to... wait a little longer.

Maybe Bai Liu will suddenly come back, say with a smile that everything has been handled, and then everyone will log out of the game together.

But now that Spade had appeared, the whitewashed peace in her heart was shattered, and arrangements had to be made immediately.

She needed to be prepared for Shiroyanagi's defeat and send the team out of the game before Hei Tao returned.

Bai Liu's mask-like smile appeared in front of Liu Jiayi. He touched Liu Jiayi's hair and smiled in a hypocritical and warm way.

[Jia Yi, you are a smart little girl, you know what to do. When I am not around, I will temporarily hand over the team to you.]

[You were originally trained by Red Heart as the second tactician. Now I think you are fully capable of taking on this role.]

He smiled and praised her: [Because no one is more suitable for this position than you, Jiayi. ]

Liu Jiayi gritted her teeth, raised her head and ordered: "Log out of the game immediately!!"

coast.

Scott's cabin was completely submerged in the water. Spade, who came on the ice floe, looked down at the abandoned cabin swaying under the water.

Spade untied his heavy sprint jacket and spiked shoes and jumped into the water. He swam into the cabin and passed through. A strange feeling captured Spade. He quickly turned his head to the side and a pure white bone whip pierced out from behind his ear.

Bai Liu, in a white shirt and suit pants, smiled at him underwater and stabbed him a second time without any pause.

Hei Tao opened it and noticed that blood was oozing from Bai Liu's chest, so he reached out and grabbed the collar, pulling open Bai Liu's shirt.

The buttons of the shirt burst in the water and floated everywhere. There was a long scar across the entire right chest of Bai Liu's thin white chest.

The scar seemed to have just appeared and had not yet healed. The dense blood threads were like untied threads being pulled out of the scar.

Hei Tao stared at the scar for a while, then raised his eyes to look at Bai Liu. At the moment when Bai Liu rushed towards him, he grabbed his neck, then clenched his palms and strangled him to death.

The corpse fell downward.

Spade opened his mouth in the water, bubbles overflowing from the corners of his lips, and he commented: "Inferior quality."

He emerged from the water and climbed onto the shore.

Hei Tao looked at the dark bottom of the water and frowned, which was rare for him: "What a trouble..."

This guy named Bai Liu prepared a bunch of replicas that were exactly like himself and hid them under the water.

These replicas are difficult to kill in a map where the Antarctic has completely melted and there is water everywhere - the weaknesses of these monsters, whether it is burning or strong acid, are difficult conditions to achieve.

Then this Bai Liu hid his heart in his own body, but these Bai Lius were impossible to kill and impossible to kill. When one was defeated, another would soon revive and come back to appear.

...Even if the real Bai Liu was caught from the monster pile, since everyone's memories were the same, Bai Liu himself probably wouldn't know which Bai Liu had the real dirty heart.

This is a game that is designed to be unsolvable.

Spade didn't like this unsolvable game of whack-a-mole, so he sat on the ice for a while with his eyes blank, water dripping from his chin to the ground.

He was no good at this kind of situation, just like he was no good at dealing with tacticians.

This Bai Liu must be a pretty good tactician, because he is the first tactician who truly trapped him with his own body.

Most of the time, it is the tactician who has a headache with Spades, whether in or out of the game.

Hei Tao sat on the shore for a while. He stood up and his eyes stayed on the calm water for a long time.

【There is no unsolvable game in this world. 】

Someone whispered in his ear with a smile, leaning on his shoulder and looking up at him, with those dark eyes filled with the look of a vicious yet innocent gamer.

But Spade couldn't remember what he looked like or who he was.

He just remembered that he said that to him.

[A game is designed and presented to a certain person in the hope that that person can solve it, so there is no such thing as an unsolvable game in this world.]

[You can definitely win my game. Besides you, no one else in this place plays my game. You are my only player.]

[That is to say, my game is designed for you to win.]

Spade dived into the water, and was led by some intuition to dive deeper and deeper, until he reached an unknown depth on the seafloor, where a pile of White Willow's corpses lay scattered across the sea.

Occasionally, a [White Willow] would come back to life and float up, but would soon sink again due to suffocation.

These White Willows seem to dislike water very much. Whether they are floating up or diving down, their movements reveal a sense of rejection.

To find the right one among the white willows in this vast ocean seems to be like "finding a needle in a haystack" in semantics.

Spade was suspended in the cold sea water. White Willow kept trying to approach and kill him, but he knocked them down again. Finally, his sight stopped on a White Willow buried under layers of water.

——This Bai Liu never attacked him.

He was sleeping peacefully on the seafloor with his eyes closed, and the wounds on his front could be seen through his open shirt.

There was a very strange feeling about Bai Liu, a mixture of monster and human - like a transitional body in transition.

Hei Tao had an intuition that was so strong that it made no sense - this Bai Liu had some dirty thoughts.

He dived down quickly, and the moment he reached out and touched the white willow, the white willow opened its eyes.

Bubbles appeared from Bai Liu's lips, and then she swam quickly in the water, swinging her lower limbs.

The other white willows on the seabed swarmed over him like a school of awakened fish, surrounding him in the center. A large number of white willows swayed back and forth, making people dizzy. In almost a moment, the white willow that Spade had just locked onto disappeared.

But Spade quickly locked onto Bai Liu again.

It was as if Hei Tao had an instrument installed on his body to track Bai Liu. He could find the Bai Liu he was sure of from among all those that looked exactly like Bai Liu, even those that he himself couldn't tell apart, and then chase after it without hesitation.

The swaying blue water waves sparkled, with the melted remains of the world's largest ice and snow world floating on them. Large chunks of floating ice were drifting in the sea far away from the land, and the protruding parts of the icebergs looked like islands floating in the sky when viewed from the water.

Hei Tao and Bai Liu dodged and chased on this cold and white [island].

But no matter how Bai Liu escapes, how he hides, or how he uses various techniques to interrupt another person, Hei Tao can always find him among the millions of identical Bai Liu in this underwater world that is as cold as hell.

Under the melting ice dome A, on the darkest seabed, Spade finally caught White Willow.

Hei Tao gently inserted his hand into Bai Liu's wound which had not yet healed.

The blood vessels were twitching and matching the heart, the touch of warm blood overflowed Hei Tao's fingers. He held the cold heart that was beating inappropriately in the warm body, looking down at Bai Liu who was under his control.

For a moment, Spade felt that the expression of the tactician who almost trapped him to death was familiar.

It seemed like a long, long time ago, this tactician named Bai Liu had also been underwater, staring at him with such unwilling and cold eyes as if he hated him, tied up his rotten ankles, and buried his body under the water just like the man had just trapped himself.

Hei Tao slowly clenched his palms, and at the moment when his heart was breaking at his fingertips, he bent down and hugged Bai Liu for some reason, resting his chin on Bai Liu's shoulder, and mouthed the word "sorry".

Bai Liu closed his eyes in the water. A large cloud of blood mist exploded around him and his consciousness dissipated into nothingness.

Tawil, Shetta...

【Don't be afraid of me when I'm dead, or me when I'm alive. 】

[I will always stay in my winter and wait for you. ]

[——No matter what choice I make, you will leave me, right? ]

【--Yes.】