Chapter 249: The Ice Age

Bai Liu retrieved a cutter from a drawer in the dormitory, warming it in his hand for a few moments before he could smoothly snap out the blade, which he used to cut through the tarp and reveal what was wrapped inside.

It is a pile of neatly divided lab report sheets.

The sheets are full of technical abbreviations, measurements and graphs, and the odd black and white or colour stained section, in short something that is difficult to read and impossible for the layman to understand without the appropriate knowledge.

Bai Liu flipped through it briefly, then looked up at Mu Sicheng: "Where did you find this?"

Mu Sicheng took a breath and said, "The basement, when I went out to check the helicopter hangar I found a sliding cellar door hidden beneath the docking bay and a two-storey basement with all sorts of experimental equipment and some pickled cabbage and radishes."

"Were there any logs of experimental records and related finished papers found in this basement?" Bai Liu asked.

The experimental reports of these people's research are simply too raw material, and Bai Liu needs at least some basic knowledge of the transition to understand what the data in these reports mean.

Mu Sicheng shook his head, "I didn't look hard enough, this bag was on the table and I felt it was important, so I took it and came up here to show you first."

Bai Liu: "Get Muke over here, you follow Liu Jiayi and take stock of the food on the ground floor and prepare our share for the night out while Muke and I go down to the basement."

Mu Sicheng turned to Muke, and Bai Liu gave Tang Erda a sideways glance, handing him the document in his hand: "Can you read it?"

"I can read some of it." Tang Erda flipped through it briefly and replied quickly, but his eyes stopped at a certain chart, "This chart ...... is a pattern made by using dual frequency radar echoes to detect the thickness of the ice underneath the surface several times, and obtaining the data to see the topography underneath the ice, It's easy to drill through the ice without encountering rocks or other obstructions."

Bai Liu noticed the difference in Tang Erda's expression and asked, "Is there something wrong with this chart?"

Tang Erda hesitates for a moment and then points to the following note on the chart, "This chart is a very common ice sounding chart in the polar regions, but it is sounding at dome A, or Ice Dome A."

"There are only domestic observatories stationed near Ice Dome A, which falls under the research domain of the domestic observatories. Although the atmosphere between the national observatories on the Antarctic side is relatively peaceful, the research areas between them are relatively well-defined, and Edmond Observatory is not capable or qualified to explore Ice Dome A. In other words, it is impossible for Edmond Observatory here to have any first-hand experimental data on Ice Dome A."

Tang Erda puzzled, flipping through a few more pages of data from the experiment: "But they have quite a few reports here on ice soundings from Ice Dome A, ice core studies, which is not normal."

"One observatory has classified research information from another." Bai Liu lightly scanned the information in Tang Erda's hand, "Common sense says there are only two possibilities."

Tang Erda looked over as Bai Liu continued unhurriedly, "One good possibility is that the domestic observatory, the in-game Tarzan Station, has taken it upon itself to share its first-hand experimental data with the Edmond Observatory."

Tang Erda denied it with a wrinkled brow: "That's impossible, it's a very serious scientific data breach."

Bai Liu looked up and smiled, "It seems that Captain Tang prefers the bad possibility as much as I do - that the Edmond Observatory has somehow forced its way into Ice Dome A's research data."

"Or worse, this group of guys from Edmond Observatory just killed the Tarzan station and then took over the Tarzan observatory to make scientific measurements of Ice Dome A." Liu Jiayi appeared at the door.

She leaned against the doorway with her arms folded and raised an eyebrow at Bai Liu: "- I found Edmond's cabin, and I have a feeling this guy is not a light-hearted scientist, and from the remnants of his cabin, he looks pretty aggressive."

"Show us up." Bai Liu stepped forward and took Liu Jiayi's hand, naturally swapping his warmed gloves with Liu Jiayi's empty ones and putting them on her.

The researchers at Edmond Station are all very tall, not a single child, so the matching clothing is oversized, Bai Liu wears a blouse that goes down to his ankles, not to mention Liu Jiayi.

Although Liu Jiayi had the foresight to wrap herself in several pieces of clothing and look neat, there were inevitably gaps in her clothing that let in air, such as her gloves.

But Liu Jiayi, who is strong and does not like to be taken care of, is now so cold that her hands are almost frozen, and not only does she not say a word, she does not show any sign of it.

Bai Liu's glove change came so naturally to him, as if he was born to change Liu Jiayi's gloves, that the others didn't even react to what he had done.

Liu Jiayi just gave a beat and shook Bai Liu's hand, " Edmond's cabin is on the 4th floor."

She doesn't like this kind of very aggressive male, it always makes her think of something bad and the sight of it makes her subconsciously repulsed and agitated, but Bai Liu is also a ridiculously aggressive male, it just doesn't show it at all ......

Liu Jiayi shakes Bai Liu's warm, wide gloves that he has just replaced, covers his face and exhales a breath of water vapour, pursing his lips and looking much calmer.

Although Bai Liu is also quite annoying, she doesn't know why, but she just accepts this person well.

Liu Jiayi leads Bai Liu around the corner to a room about a square metre wide in relation to the other cabins, where Bai Liu can look up and see the wind coming in through a crack in the seal on the window, whipping through and taking away all the warmth.

The seal is surrounded by dripping, condensed, ballpoint pen-thin ice prisms, which glow dully in the dim light.

Liu Jiayi tucked his gloves into his pocket: "I didn't realise at first that this cabin was Edmond the boss's cabin because it was located at the windward end and would have been the first to be blown in any stormy weather, and it was too dangerous for a base manager to live here and probably freeze to death in his sleep."

"But I found this behind the door." Liu Jiayi kicked the door of the frozen solid room.

The ice-stained door clicked shut with a crunch, then thudded shut under the wind, with iron hooks on which hung a neat row of modified rifles about 70cm long, also with ice prisms on their muzzles.

"I found no signs of gunfire in any of the other rooms, basically books and computers, drugs and such, only this room had a gun and quite a few reserve rounds."

Liu Jiayi hooked her toes around a box at the bottom of the bed and yanked it outwards with a strong tug at her waist. She exhaled a long breath and stomped on the neatly arranged 7.62mm rounds in this box with her toes and sneered.

"I thought at first it belonged to some military person at the observatory, but I rummaged under this box of ammunition and found purchase invoices used for reimbursement; the guns and bullets were purchased in Edmond's personal name, and this must have been his living quarters."

Tang Erda frowned, "The Antarctic Convention forbids the use of firearms by people at the Observatory, and the storage of similar items is strictly forbidden here."

Liu Jiayi shrugged: "But he used it, I see the date of purchase and the notes on the invoice, or he had already arrived in Antarctica and asked the helicopter transport team in Antarctica to buy it for him on the grounds of self-protection."

"And he would have lived here alone, I found no sign of a second person having lived here, and I guess no one but him knew about him having a gun."

Bai Liu glanced over the pile of rifles and stood again at the entrance to the room, mimicking an empty pose with his rifle raised, half-squinting through the non-existent sniper hole at the front of the floor.

"So this Edmond, who in the name of self-defence had bought a bullet rifle and hidden it in his room, preferred to live alone in the bitterly cold windfall dwelling at the end, where he raised his gun in the cold every day, and the only people he could point it at were the other dwellers in this cloister - "

Bai Liu lowered the 'gun' he was holding and said with some interest, "It seems that this Dr Edmond, who is afraid of some other person in the Observatory attacking him, has become so afraid that he has bought a gun to protect himself."

Muke walks up from the third to the fourth floor corner, followed by Mu Sicheng.

When they saw Bai Liu at the end of the corridor, Muke walked over to him with a slightly gloomy look on his face, took out a large stack of lists and handed them over, explaining, "When Mu Sicheng and I were preparing the food for your trip, we saw a lot of fresh food rotting in the warehouse and a lot of canned food sitting untouched in the warehouse, without any outer seals. The outer seals had not been removed."

"Mu Sicheng and I both felt that something was not quite right, so we checked the running sheets that record the consumption of food and medication here. "

"But then I double-checked the consumption of food and drugs and found that although all the food names recorded on [Must Intake Consumption] were food names, the various foods on it did not represent actual food, which actually referred to a variety of drugs, such as bread referring to [lithium carbonate]."

Muke stared at Bai Liu: "The people in this observation are being fed drugs, served three meals a day, and someone is forcing them to take these drugs."

Bai Liu asks, "Do you know what kind of drug it is?"

"Lorazepam, diazepam, chlorpromazine, olanzapine ......" Muke enunciated a long list of drug names without pausing for a word before giving the conclusion, "Mostly anti-severe depression, severe anxiety, and manic type psychotherapeutic drugs."

" The people at Edmond's Observatory are ingesting so much of these drugs on a daily basis that they don't even eat much food anymore." Muke took a deep breath, "If that's true, then this is the equivalent of an asylum on the very ground, and these are still very physically fit, aggressive and seriously ill people when they have an attack."

Bai Liu moves his gaze to the floor of Edmond's room, where a whole box of cold bullets sits.

"I can probably understand why Dr Edmond bought the gun and the bullets." Bai Liu said softly, "He's trying to hold these dangerous patients under control."