Chapter 47
Qiao Ning knew it could understand her, so she asked it directly, "What happened to your injuries? Who hit you?"
Ice Scale seemed to have been hit where it hurt. It immediately raised its front paws, twisted its body, bared its teeth and shook its head, making all sorts of gestures at Qiao Ning. Finally, it made a gesture of being paralyzed on one side.
To be honest, this dog-like but not-quite-dog creature actually has some acting skills; its movements, expressions, and emotions are all spot-on.
At least it made Qiao Ning understand that although it seemed to have lost the fight, the other party didn't fare any better either, and was even more seriously injured than it.
Qiao Ning sighed. This creature was, after all, wild and couldn't live during the day; it couldn't stay under her watchful eye forever. It had its own struggle for survival to face.
Ice Scale's scales are extremely hard. If it weren't for this thick layer of scales protecting it, the wound on its body might not have been a cut, but rather a tear in two.
Qiao Ning made it lie down, and then took out some wound medicine from the storage box.
"I don't know if this medicine will work for you? It shouldn't cause any harm, right?" Qiao Ning hesitated as she held the wound healing spray.
Binglin brought her nose close to sniff, then nudged Qiao Ning's arm with her head.
Qiao Ning immediately understood; it sensed the medicine was safe and could be given to it.
She looked at the gruesome, bloody gash on Ice Scale's scales and carefully sprayed some water onto it. For a human, a single spray would have almost completely healed the injury, but Ice Scale's wound showed virtually no change.
It's possible that too little spray was applied, so it didn't have much effect.
Qiao Ning sprayed it two or three more times, and the bleeding from the wound seemed to slow down a little.
She simply opened the bottle and poured the medicine directly onto Icescale's wound.
After emptying one bottle, they replaced it with another, using a total of five bottles of medicine before the bloody gash was finally healed.
Ice Scale looked in surprise at the medicine bottle in Qiao Ning's hand, then turned to look at its beautiful scales that had been restored to their original state, and excitedly spun around and wagged its tail.
Qiao Ning: ...What's going on? The more I look at this guy, the more he looks like a canine. Especially his exaggerated movements and wise expressions; any screenshot could be used as a meme.
Ice Scale wanted to lean over and lick Qiao Ning to express its affection and gratitude, but Qiao Ning saw the barbs on its tongue and immediately refused.
This tongue doesn't resemble that of a canine; it's more like that of a feline.
However, this creature is a hybrid of different species and can transform into various strange creatures. Once, she even saw Ice Scale transform its tongue into a long, thin one like a lizard's.
In short, it cannot be classified according to the types of animals on Earth, and Qiao Ning didn't dwell on this point much.
Before, Ice Scales would at least change its disguise to appease her, but after the disguise fell off, it simply couldn't be bothered to even change the color of its scales.
Along the way, besides running around happily following the car, she also carried supply boxes to Qiao Ning's place to exchange for food. Tonight, Bing Lin brought her thirty-five treasure-guarding monsters.
Many of the enhanced snow tires and ice tires exploded, along with tire covers, their blueprints, heating water balloons, and other supplies, totaling over a thousand items.
The items were mostly tires and heated water balloons, followed by tire covers and blueprints.
Qiao Ning certainly didn't need that many things. She kept only a portion of them, and used one-third of the remaining amount to trade with Pei Jing, Li Yangxing, Yuan Heng, Tao Tao, and others. She put the other two-thirds up for sale in the trading area to exchange for materials, useful blueprints, talent experience books, skill books, and so on.
Items that even she doesn't have must be expensive, but in a server with over 110,000 players, there are always players willing to trade for them.
By the time dawn was approaching, the outside temperature had dropped to minus fifteen degrees Celsius.
On the fourth day of the natural disaster, a level 2 cold wind accompanied by rain and snow was blowing, and the temperature continued to drop at a rate of 1 degree per hour.
Before eight o'clock, Binglin had already left. Before leaving, Qiao Ning packed a lot of delicious food for it, as well as more than a hundred bottles of medicine in its spatial backpack. It had both internal and external injury medicines, which it could take out and use after getting injured. Anyway, it could transform into other animals and figure out how to apply the medicine itself.
Qiao Ning had a large stockpile of healing medicine, which had barely been used up during the two natural disasters. She also occasionally traded other supplies for more, resulting in a large accumulation in her storage box—at least a thousand bottles.
Ice Scale helped her track down and drive away so many treasure-guarding monsters, leaving them barely alive. This also required a certain amount of physical strength and energy. After working hard all night, her wages and food must be sufficient, otherwise it would seem that she was too heartless.
Perhaps it was because the two of them had kept each other company these past two nights, but Qiao Ning felt a pang of sadness thinking that after the natural disaster ended in three days, she might never see Bing Lin again.
Once she leaves this world of highways, will she be able to return here?
Will Ice Scale occasionally think of her in this world?
Qiao Ning was not a sentimental person, and her low mood only lasted for a short time before she returned to normal.
Today's breakfast consisted of beef noodles and roujiamo (Chinese hamburger). The beef noodles had chili oil she had bought as a gift, and each bite was incredibly spicy and flavorful, with a rich beef taste and delicious bone broth.
After finishing a bowl of noodle soup, Qiao Ning felt warm all over.
She opened the chat channel, and found that everyone's situation was much better than she had expected. Many players had leather stockpiles, so only a minority were currently suffering from cold and hunger.
As long as you're willing to drive around looking for supply crates and dare to kill the monsters guarding them, you can basically survive.
Without Binglin by her side during the day, and with her mechanical claws picking up supply boxes, Qiao Ning simply set up the smart butler's driving and pickup programs, and then went to sleep.
She hadn't slept all night, and was so tired that she fell into a deep sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
She slept for about eight hours, during which she encountered a spatial vortex, but luckily no red-named players teleported over to disturb her sleep.
Qiao Ning woke up, ate something, moved around, and then checked her private messages and email.
Yuan Heng: [Qiao Ning, the highway barriers have weakened. I discovered an Icefield Beast ramming into the barriers today. Be careful and don't sleep too soundly. During the day, fight more treasure-guarding monsters. Although the drop rate for items like tires is low, there's a very high chance they'll drop equipment to fight the Icefield Beasts. At night, the treasure-guarding monsters mostly drop items.]
I've hunted several kinds of ferocious beasts in the past few days. There are no other rewards for killing them, only a lot of experience points.
I discovered a unique item called "Beast Core" inside them. If you don't pick it up, the game system won't count it as an item. Even if you pick it up and put it in your inventory, the system doesn't provide much information about it.
You might want to pay more attention to this if you have the chance. I haven't found any use for it yet. Have you discovered anything about it on your end?
Additionally, the attack and defense of Icefield beasts are enhanced at night, so try to hunt them during the day.
Small predators are mostly carnivores, and many are social animals that hunt in packs; it's best to avoid provoking them. Larger icefield predators, on the other hand, are mostly solitary, but their aggression towards humans gradually increases as road barriers weaken. Currently, if you encounter a large icefield predator, it will not attack unless you approach within 50 meters.
Thank you for mailing me the supplies these past few days. I've received another Talent Experience Book, which can increase talent experience by 1000 points. However, it's not for card crafting; it can only be used by talents of purple rank or higher. See if you need it. If not, you can exchange it for something else.
Thanks to the warm supplies you gave me, otherwise I really wouldn't dare to go hunting in the ice field so often.
The temperature on the ice field is at least 15 degrees Celsius lower than on the road, and the further away from the road, the lower the temperature. I previously received a watch with a temperature monitoring function, and the lowest temperature I've ever been to was around -50 degrees Celsius on the ice field, just outside the road. Any further and it was impossible to go; the wind and snow were too strong, the oxygen was too thin, and it was impossible to move an inch.
After reading the message, Qiao Ning mentally gave Yuan Heng a thumbs up.
If it were another natural disaster, such as the previous wet disaster, she would definitely have explored a much larger area of the wilderness outside the highway than she had explored before, but this disaster... she really had the will but not the strength.
One of them, who was afraid of the cold, almost got stuck on the highway.
Even fully armed in the frigid zone where temperatures drop to minus fifty degrees Celsius, she still struggles to overcome the psychological hurdle. Psychological factors are beyond her control, because she herself doesn't understand why psychological fear of the cold can affect her physical body.
Qiao Ning hesitated for a long time in the car before finally deciding to explore the ice field herself.
She needs to try her best to overcome her sensitivity to cold; it's essentially her weakness. She needs to find a way to address this weakness.
Qiao Ning carried a space backpack with a large amount of supplies such as oxygen cylinders, medicine, food, and drinking water, arming herself from head to toe, and even putting heat patches inside.
Before leaving the highway, she went to the trading area and bought tools for temperature detection, oxygen content monitoring, and direction finding, making sure she hadn't forgotten anything before stepping over the highway barrier and into the ice field.
The ice on the ice field and the ice on the road feel completely different when you step on it. The latter is smooth and hard, while the former, because it is covered with snow, has a cushioning effect when you step on it and doesn't feel hard.
To Qiao Ning's astonishment, there were quite a few plants on such a cold ice field, and their colors were either frost-white, ice-blue, or bluish-purple.
Qiao Ning even saw a vast snow-covered forest, a slowly flowing blue river, and the aurora borealis in the sky, a blend of blue and purple.
The scenery here is so beautiful it's like a dream.
The temperature in the ice field area near the road was about minus thirty degrees Celsius. The wind and snow were not heavy, just a normal light cold wind and slowly falling snowflakes.
The snowflakes were quite large, about the size of a finger joint when they landed on my palm.
"Moo—"
Qiao Ning was captivated by the dreamlike beauty of the distant Snow Forest and Blue River when a beast's roar, seemingly coming from nowhere, jolted her awake.
The sound was somewhat like a cow's, but much more ferocious.
She looked in the direction of the sound and saw a giant beast, its size comparable to a small mountain. Its roar sounded like a cow, and it looked like a yak magnified many times over.
After letting out two cries, it lowered its head and continued to gnaw on the snow forest trees. The snow trees, which were more than ten meters tall, looked like grass on the ground in front of the giant beast.
This kind of big guy is definitely not someone to mess with, so Qiao Ning decisively took a detour.
Walking along the Blue River, Qiao Ning didn't know how far she had gone, but she didn't encounter any packs of ferocious beasts. Occasionally, she would come across a giant beast that was visually stunning.
After a while, Qiao Ning felt her breathing become slightly rapid.
The air in this area was starting to thin, but it was still within her body's tolerance range.
Just then, Qiao Ning suddenly heard a familiar whimpering sound.
Ice scales?
Qiao Ning didn't care about the oxygen anymore and ran towards the direction from which the sound came.
When she saw the beast that had made the noise, a wave of disappointment washed over her.
That wasn't Ice Scale; it was a giant silver-frost wolf.
It was attacked by a group of small, ferocious beasts that looked like rats and hyenas, with shifty, rat-like appearances.
The low growl just now was a threatening warning from the Silverfrost Wolf.
Qiao Ning had never heard Icescale's cry before, but she had heard Icescale's low growling when it drove away the treasure-guarding monster more than once, and it really sounded like this Silverfrost Wolf.
Thinking of this, Qiao Ning couldn't help but glance at the Silver Frost Wolf again.
It wouldn't have mattered if they hadn't looked, but their gazes met those of the Silverfrost Wolf.
Upon seeing the strange creature, the latter not only showed no alarm but quickly averted its gaze, as if...
After changing her identity, she pretended not to know Binglin.
Qiao Ning: "..."
She stared at the wolf expressionlessly.
Silverfrost Wolf immediately pretended to be very busy with the battle.
Due to the vast disparity in strength between the two sides, even though the Silverfrost Wolf was reluctant to deal with the group of snow hyenas so quickly, they still died one by one, their numbers dwindling until soon only snow hyena corpses remained on the ground.
Qiao Ning stood there motionless, while the Silver Frost Wolf pretended to be checking and counting its spoils.
Qiao Ning simply strode towards it.
When the Silverfrost Wolf saw her approaching menacingly, it instinctively took two steps back, then sat upright in place like a large dog.
For some reason, this enormous wolf looked rather pitiful at that moment.
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