Chapter 248: The Ice Age

Muke spreads out the black book for all to see, with a fax report clearly taped to the left side of the book.

Muke pointed to the numbered code drop in the bottom left corner, "The number here is the year, month and day, a date you should be familiar with."

"0807." Liu Jiayi read it out, and as if realising something, she looked to Bai Liu, "This is the date when we entered this game."

Liu Jiayi, already vaguely familiar with such a formula, recalled the design of the last game and was even more certain of what Bai Liu had told her -

--The designers behind the game are deliberately targeting Bai Liu, specifically by having copies of Bai Liu log into the real world after he enters the game, or the people around him.

This feeling of being backstabbed ...... Liu Jiayi pursed her lips in displeasure.

Bai Liu's eyes fall on this year-old fax report - the English words on it are relatively simple and he can read them.

The fax was sent from another base, called Tai Shan, which is obviously a Chinese name, and it must have been a fax from the domestic observatory to this Edmond base.

The approximate content of this fax was.

[I'm sorry this sad thing happened when our plane landed at an ice airport while transporting dangerous goods ...... The five escorts on the plane also died instantly ......]

[The ending was sad, but not unexpected, and surviving in the snow and ice was a nightmare for everyone.

The only meaning of our existence here is to study more past and future weather trajectories, to slow down the rate of global warming, and to fight for a better harmony with nature for all mankind until we die, which is the meaning of life for each and every Antarctic person ......]

[...... during the search for the plane all of the observatory was involved, but when we were taking inventory, we found that three sealed boxes were missing from the crashed plane's storage, which did not match the original number, and although I don't want to speculate on you guys like this, in Antarctica, dark metal boxes disappear in the white expanse without human intervention That's not an easy task ......]

[I know that researchers in Antarctica for a long time, in this extremely boring situation, are always curious about mysterious foreign things, you always want to explore everything, analyze everything, always think that there is a key to save mankind and slow down global warming ......]

Edmond, I have to seriously warn you that those are some pretty dangerous boxes and I can't tell you anything about them, it's not allowed to be made public, I can only tell you that they were supposed to be buried under the "untouchable pole" and not touched by anyone... ...]

[But Edmond, there are always dangerous things in this world that are worth keeping in awe and not touching to study, not everything is just as objectively damaging as the weather ......]

[If you find any tracks of those three missing boxes, please do let me know, I need to seal them up under Ice Dome A immediately.]

It is inscribed [Your friend - Tarzan Observatory].

"It was a mass fax sent to all the observatories, not just Edmond." Bai Liu reads it and concludes, looking around him, "The three boxes must have been surreptitiously hidden by researchers at other observatories."

"According to the main thread of this game, we're supposed to be trying to find the box first and then figure out the cause of global cooling based on that box, and this Edmond observatory is supposed to be hiding one of those."

Bai Liu looks at Xiang Muke: " Muke, you and Liu Jiayi stay at the original station and search for any other clues, while Tang Erda Mu Sicheng and I gather and take food with us and prepare to go to other observatories nearby to have a look and search for other boxes."

All nodded in agreement and dispersed.

Bai Liu leveled his gaze at Tang Erda, who was silent and sullen: "Captain Tang, please come here for a moment, I'd like to talk to you alone."

Tang Erda's silhouette, ready to turn away, lurches as he turns around and silently follows Bai Liu into one of the cabins.

Bai Liu slammed the door shut with his backhand.

In the small five square metre cabin, there is a silence for a while, Bai Liu says he wants to talk to Tang Erda but doesn't have the slightest intention to speak first, just calmly holding his arms and resting his eyes, as if waiting for Tang Erda to speak first.

So Tang Erda spoke first, his expression dull and his voice hoarse: "...... I'm sorry for my error in judgment, I shouldn't have let you hand the body parts over to the Heretic Authority, I didn't think it would ...... "

It was only after this apology that Bai Liu took Tang Erda's words in an unhurried manner: "It's not all your fault, I made this decision on my own. "

But on a subjective level, although Bai Liu knew that someone was behind the situation, which was inevitable anyway, the Heretics Board did its best.

However, Bai Liu was still a little, slightly unhappy to learn that Xie Ta's health had come to such a pass.

Xie Ta's body, Bai Liu, was originally intended to be kept for himself in the real world, but given the influence of this body and the fact that Bai Liu does not have his own residence in reality and is now living in a low-cost apartment, he and Tang Erda finally compromised and decided to leave the corpse in place and have the Heretic Authority take over.

It is also a thinly veiled version of Bai Liu's sale of Tang Erda.

But I didn't expect it to hit me in the face so soon.

Tang Erda was worried about the five escorts in reality, and at the same time, she was suffering from Bai Liu's seemingly light-hearted, but in fact, gun-slinging questioning. My fault, otherwise those five escorts would not have been killed ......"

"It's not necessarily dead yet." Bai Liu calmly stops Tang Erda from talking.

Tang Erda couldn't help but look up sharply as he looked straight at Bai Liu: "You have an idea?!"

Bai Liu felt the swish of Tang Erda's ears and tail for a moment.

Don is so unapologetic and stern with everyone during training that it's hard to remember that Bai Liu is still a canine character.

But after Tang Erda herself said so out of the blue, she seemed to look away in shame, clenched her fist hard and said instead, "It's okay if I don't, I'll try logging out of the game first to see if I can stop the plane from taking off ......"

In Tang Erda's case, he was the main cause of the situation and Bai Liu could be considered a victim, but now the victim is being asked to help with ideas ......

In short, it's not something Tang Erda could have done.

Bai Liu had already had a go at the man behind it in The Rose Factory, and from what he knew of the man, it wasn't like he'd mercifully leave them with a game designer who could exploit loopholes.

He reached out lightly, the Tang Erda who had stopped him tapped out of his panel, "The plane has mostly taken off, you logging out of the game and going back to reality will only speed up the passage of time, so why not play through the route in this game first and find out why things have gone this way and how to undo it."

Tang Erda slowly put down the panel, "You got game ideas?"

Bai Liu nodded: "Yes, but information is still missing, the game is designed with reference to the realistic background, you said before that you were trained in Antarctica in reality, you should have a relatively good understanding of the situation here, tell us specifically."

"Where do I start?" Tang Erda asked.

Bai Liu lifted his eyes, "Start at the beginning and talk about them one by one, like why are you here for training?"

Tang Erda took a deep breath, "...... I came on duty here for a year and flew helicopters for a while on the Zone 4 Project."

Bai Liu raised an eyebrow, "The Zone 4 Project?"

Tang Erda explains, "The Zone Four Project is a plan to examine the suitability of the geography here in Antarctica for a new heresy management zone, as it is off the beaten track and well suited for the containment of extraordinarily dangerous heretics."

"So why wasn't it built again in the end?" Bai Liu asks rhetorically.

"Because of the large scale construction over here, it's too difficult to avoid the watchers from other countries, the domestic watchers know a little bit about the Zone 4 Project, because of the communication with them about the matter of building the new zone, but these foreign watchers they don't know everything about the heresy."

Tang Erda sighs, "With a resident population of over 5,000 in Antarctica in the summer, there was no way we could risk telling everyone about the existence of the heresy by building a new district here and eventually abandoned the Zone 4 Project."

Bai Liu asked nonchalantly, "So why did his body parts make you restart the program again?"

"The retention data from the Zone 4 Project shows that if you were to seal a highly dangerous psychotropic heretic, this would be the safest place to seal it." Tang Erda said.

Bai Liu turned to the subject: "Do you have any impressions of this Edmond Observatory?"

Tang Erda paused briefly in contemplation before replying, "No, there is no such observatory in the real world."

Bai Liu: "What about the Tarzan Observatory?"

Tang Erda shakes her head honestly: "If my memory serves me correctly, the observatory in the country is not called by that name either."

Bai Liu nods knowingly - it seems the situation is the same as in Bursting at the End.

The people behind it referenced reality, but didn't fully subsume it to design the game.

Bai Liu changed the question: "Do you remember any observatories located near the poles?"

The map of the Antarctic posted on the wall of the Edmond Observatory in the game shows that the Edmond Observatory is located a hundred metres from the South Pole.

Tang Erda wrinkled her brow, "...... has it, and one of the A country observatories is here."

Bai Liu then asked, "And do you know what kind of research they are doing now?"

Tang Erda realised what Bai Liu was trying to ask and he replied slowly and arduously, "...... not sure exactly, the external talk is about the effect of special cryogenic animals on climate recovery, I heard the other team members tell me while I was staying over here that these special cryogenic animals they were studying are including two forms, the living and the dead ......"

"Bai Liu--" Mu Sicheng hurried in without knocking, holding up a book of some sort, and gasping for breath as he shoved the object in his hands into Bai Liu's arms excitedly. "Look at this!"

Bai Liu looked down at the object in her hand - a tightly wrapped package of tarpaulin, squared off, with a waterproof label attached to it.

The label reads in English: [Special Cryogenic Animal Remnant Sections (Cells Still Active) and Ground Temperature Change Study Fact Sheet].