Chapter 261

The helicopter staggered across the long white snow field, and had to make an emergency landing twice due to strong winds.

By the time Tang Er arrived at the Edmond Observation Station with a group of people, it was already close to the morning of the third day.

The helicopter landed 5 kilometers away from the Edmond Observatory.

Now the wind and snow have stopped. From a distance, the Edmond Observatory is covered by thick snow, but the strange thing is that the snow on the field at the door has been cleared, exposing the An open space, the door is also half-hidden open.

Tang Er knew something was wrong when he saw the situation: "Someone is inside."

"Grass!" Mu Sicheng rubbed his arms, his face darkened, "It can't be that our clones are still inside?"

Bai Liu squatted in front of the trap door opening in the basement next to the helicopter hangar.

A cold ash and acidic pungent smell poured from the trapdoor in the basement.

The snow on the trapdoor was also cleared, and it was opened wide. The two barrels of gasoline placed in front of Bailiu's door next to the door were gone. On the contrary, the inside of the basement was pitch black, with some hot air gushing out.

From Bailiu's point of view, the walls are covered with coal ash left over from the incomplete combustion of the fuel oil, and the steps are still dripping with liquid and snow water. It seems that it has just been burned It's been a long time, and I haven't had time to freeze it.

Liu Jiayi also noticed the abnormality here, she squatted next to Bai Liu: "It seems that after we left, the group of clones burned the monsters in the basement, and poured strong acid to corrode them."

But as she spoke, her eyes swept over the layer of liquid on the basement floor, and she frowned puzzledly: "But before I left, I cleared up the supplies at the Edmond Observatory with Mu Ke. , I remember that there is no such a large reserve of acid here."

Chemical reagents such as strong acids are scarce resources even in scientific research stations. Liu Jiayi basically emptied the acid solution in the Edmond Observatory before leaving.

Even so, she had to use it carefully and plan carefully to barely deal with those monsters and escape smoothly.

Liu Jiayi got down on her stomach and took out a piece of metal to catch two drops of acid dripping from the steps.

The metal surface was quickly corroded, and gas was bubbling out. She frowned: "This man is pouring acid into the basement in buckets. How can he be so acidic?"

The person who cleaned the basement used strong acid randomly, spreading it everywhere on the walls and steps, which seemed extravagant and wasteful, and seemed to have no sense of cherishing strong acid, a resource that is hard to come by and very scarce in the dungeon.

"Then there is only one possibility." Bai Liu's eyes fell on the slowly freezing acid.

Liu Jiayi reacted abruptly: "There is a person who plays this game, and he brought acid in here——Spades are here?!"

At this time, Mu Sicheng's exclamation came from the second floor of the observation station: "Grass!! What's going on?!"

Bai Liu and Liu Jiayi looked at each other, and they took out their weapons and walked towards the door.

After they entered the observation station and went up to the second floor, Liu Jiayi dragged her gun and walked in front of Bai Liu vigilantly: "What's wrong?"

When Mu Sicheng came back, his face was blue and white, he shook his fingers to find the restaurant, his voice was also trembling, as if he was very frightened: "...You guys, take a look... ..."

Mu Sicheng, Bai Liuyue, looked at the restaurant behind him, and then raised his eyebrows slightly.

He understood why Mu Sicheng had such an expression.

The seats in the restaurant were roughly kicked away, and the broken tables, chairs and benches were scattered and piled up in the four corners of the room, leaving a large space in the middle of the restaurant.

And this open space was smashed out by something unknown, with a hole with an outline similar to a square.

The hole directly penetrates the floor of the second floor, and the scene of the first floor can be seen through the hole on the ground of the restaurant on the second floor.

On the edge of the hole, there is a circle of bloody handprints left by people struggling hard, densely covered on the floor - it can be seen that a group of people once huddled around the edge of the hole, trying to climb up.

On the first floor, directly opposite the hole, there is a huge glass water tank, which seems to have been moved down from the roof, and now it is filled with thick acid that is so viscous that it can hardly flow. bubbling.

And this glass tank, like throwing garbage, is full of various "corpses" that have been carbonized, coked, and fragmented.

Most of these corpses have not yet fully reacted, and they are wriggling bloody and bloody in the concentrated acid. Strange, corroded bubbles are constantly emitting from the flesh. Dropped by ‌ which dissolves half of the eyeball.

What made Mu Sicheng scream was the appearance of these corpses.

The people who handled these corpses were a little rough and didn't care too much. Quite a few of the faces of the corpses were still not completely burnt by the fuel, and the appearance of "them" could be clearly seen.

——These corpses cover the faces of Bai Liu, Mu Sicheng, Tang Erda, Liu Jiayi, and Mu Ke.

Such a group of scorched corpses with their own faces struggling so painfully in the viscous thick acid, the skin, muscles, and bones were eroded by the acid.

Even knowing that these group of things are not human beings but monsters, it is inevitable that they feel the creepy feeling.

Mu Sicheng took two steps back, distanced himself from the blood-stained hole, swallowed nervously, and said in a very hoarse voice: "...someone killed all the monsters that turned into us at Edmund's station .”

"And the speed is very fast." Tang Erda squatted halfway on the edge of the hole, touched the remaining blood stains with two fingers, raised his face and added solemnly, "The blood is not completely coagulated."

Bai Liu's gaze shifted from those blood stains to Mu Ke's face: "I remember you said, these monsters that become us have skills?"

"Yes." Mu Ke also looked shocked, his pupils were in a slightly constricted state, and he was stunned for a second or two as if he couldn't think, before he began to answer Bai Liu's question, "Let's talk to Bai Liu before we leave. These monsters clashed and were almost held hostage by them."

"But they are not as strong as us. I think it may be because they are immature, and their ability feels only about one-half of ours." Liu Jiayi answered, she looked at the first floor with a condensed expression, and slowly Let out a slow breath.

"But there is not only one [us] standing here in Edmund, but a group of [us] fighting in melee."

"—He quickly controlled such a group of monsters whose abilities are roughly similar to ours in a short period of time, and even used a whip to break open the floor to create this acid pool, and threw the corpses into it for disposal."

Liu Jiayi's face was so ugly for the first time: "Spade's ability... is too strong, he is stronger than Qugou."

"Even if we are in a team fight, we can't beat him, what should we do next?" She looked up at Bai Liu asking for instructions.

Bai Liu squatted on one knee and one foot on the edge of the cave, staring at the [Bai Liu] who were gradually submerged and dissipated in the acid pool below for a while with an unclear expression.

After these scorched corpses with their own faces turned into bones, and then into bubble particles and some wreckage with no specific shape, Bai Liu stood up, he withdrew his own gaze, turned to look at ‌‌Others:

"Search the entire Observatory for why Spades are here."

Half an hour later, a group of people gathered on the first floor again.

Mu Ke, who is good at memorizing and searching maps, first reported his discovery:

"A lot of places have been searched. I should be looking for something, but the search is very brief. It doesn't look like I'm looking for textual materials and small objects."

"So far, no spades have been found to take anything away, so what he is looking for should not be found yet."

"He didn't move the rifles/guns and bullets scattered on the fourth floor." Tang Erda added, "The situation is similar to when we left."

Bai Liu sat by the table, he took out a piece of paper, summarized the information on the paper, and made a summary in a calm tone: "First of all, we can make sure that Spades repeatedly entered this game to find something, and this thing is very important. It may be related to the main line of the game."

"Spades and I logged in at the Edmund Observation Station together at the beginning, but he didn't search here at that time, but left here and went outside. We can judge from this-at that time, Spades felt that Edmond The Mon Observatory doesn't have what he's looking for."

Bai Liu paused on the paper with the pen tip: "But now he's back again."

Liu Jiayi quickly realized why: "I couldn't find the spades outside, so I decided to go back to the Edmond Observatory to try my luck, but I happened to meet the clones we left here, so I killed them, and found them again." I searched again, but still couldn’t find it, so I left.”

Bai Liu's eyes were half-closed, and the tip of the pen drew bit by bit as if thinking: "The crux of the problem now is, what exactly is Spade looking for when he repeatedly enters the game?"

"The main task of this game is global warming. What Spade is looking for may be something related to global warming." Mu Ke pondered and asked, "Is it possible that the bottom boss is Edmund? According to the general design of the game , as long as you hit the bottom boss, you can pass the level and reach the [normal end].”

"I don't think with Spade's ability, he won't even reach [normal end] after entering the game so many times." Bai Liu denied.

His pen tip paused twice on the paper, and then he wrote the word "corpse part".

Bai Liu raised his eyes: "I think what Spade is looking for may be a particle meteorological device transformed from [corpse parts], he should be following the [true end] route, to eliminate the possibility of the world getting cold again from the root. "

"According to Edmund's business style, it is very likely that he has placed particle weather devices on the six hundred locations where he feels that Antarctica affects the world's climate."

Mu Ke was puzzled: "But the 600 locations are all marked on the map. If you want to find spades, you can directly follow the map to find them. There is no need to go to the Edmond Observation Station to search for them——Edmond Observation There are no particle meteorological devices placed at the station."

Bai Liu wrote down [600], [Experimental Sample Preservation] on the paper, and then put a question mark next to it.

He opened his eyelids and looked at Mu Ke: "That means what Spade is looking for is not the corpses inside the six hundred particle installations, but the corpses outside the six hundred particle installations."

Mu Ke lightly repeated Bai Liu's words: "These 600 pieces of corpses outside the particle device..."

He seemed to realize something, opened his eyes slightly, and looked at Bai Liu: "It's Edmund who hasn't done the experiment yet, turning her into a particle device's corpse, right?"

"Edmund is an experienced scientific researcher." Bai Liu reminded lightly, "He will not consume all the experimental materials at once, and usually keep some of them as samples. This part of the samples should be what Spade is looking for. s things."

"Look through the experiment report. Among the body parts that Edmund obtained in the early stage, which one is untouched?"

Mu Ke quickly flipped through the pages in a low voice, his fingertips slid down one after another of the obscure report records, and finally fixed on a certain word.

"found it!"

"In the early days, the three-part body parts obtained by Edmund included the left hand, the rear ankle, and a whole heart with preserved arteries and veins."

Mu Ke raised his chin with a little excitement, and spoke quickly: "I can only find the experimental records on the left hand and the rear ankle, but there is no experimental record on this heart——Edmond probably reserved it. I took this heart as a sample reserve!"

Bai Liu put on her gloves and hat, and pushed open the door: "This heart should be what Spade is looking for, and it is also the key to clearing the [true end] of this game. Let's go."

The wind and snow covered Bai Liu's dark and deep eyes head-on, engulfing his calm voice in the dusk night and going away.

"——If we want to win the spades, we must find  before the spades destroy the heart."

The tide ebbs and flows along the ice-covered coast, and the brown soil and white snow on the ground inside are mottled and intertwined. There is an ancient log cabin on it.

It was a rather old-looking log cabin. Peeling paint on the door frames and floor rails had left spots like the skin of a leper on the exterior of the cabin. It is fixed against wooden planks arranged horizontally.

In front of the door stands a sign like a tourist site sign, with [Scott Cottage] written on it, and [built in 1912] written below.

This one hundred years ago, already a cultural relic, was used as a tourist attraction, and the old wooden house was emitting a warm fire, as if someone was resting and warming the fire inside.

Follow the light of the fire falling on the snow to the cabin. The fire is burning under the fireplace, and an old man with squinting eyes is sitting on the wooden bench next to him.

He wore a pair of faded gold pendant glasses, hummed an out-of-tune song softly, slapped his feet casually, his hands, feet and back were all hunched, and he seemed to have suffered a lot.

The firelight shone on his old, wrinkled face, and shadows swayed on the wall.

Spades stepped out of the dark shadows, standing upright on the edge of the fire, holding a whip in his hand, and snow that had not yet melted hung on his eyelashes and hair tips.

Spade looked at the old man, and said in a clear and gentle voice, "Edmund."

The old man then slightly opened one eye to look around, he seemed a little helpless, and felt amused: "You are here again, young man, you seem to like coming to my place very much."

Edmund smiled kindly: "Have you killed me many times, just for that heart that you can never find?"

"Is that important to you?"

Spade opened his mouth, and answered the question in a wrong way: "You shouldn't remember that I killed you."

Edmund took off his glasses, stared at the spades, and smiled softly: "Because I'm just an evil npc in the game, every time this copy should be refreshed with your departure, and I forget everything, Yeah?"

Spades point ‌.

Edmund smiled: "It may be that I lived too long and did too cruel things, so God refused to forgive me and let me remember everything I did - I do remember that you killed me very much This time, you are the most frequent person in this game, I almost want to be friends with you."

His eyes rested on Spade's dripping whip for a moment in a mocking way: "If you don't strangle me with the whip as soon as you enter the game - the process of suffocation is always painful , if you will let me choose the method of death, I prefer to be burned to death."

Spade agreed without thinking: "Yes."

Edmund then laughed loudly: "Son, I believe you really don't understand other people's jokes."

"Those teammates of yours have been hurting you all the time, right? That guy named [Judger against God] has been so distressed that he can't help but confide his troubles to an npc like me, saying that he doesn't know what to do with you alright."

Edmund looked at Spades jokingly: "He looks so rare that he's about to cry. It's really interesting and troublesome to have a friend like you."

Spade doesn't comment on others' definition of himself, he speaks and does things straight to the point: "Are you still unwilling to tell me where your heart is this time?"

Edmund's eyes reflected the firelight. It seems that an old man like him should have a pair of cloudy eyes, but Edmund's eyes were still pure and flawless, as clean as if they fell under the Antarctic ice 30,000 years ago. The snow, glowing a kind of light blue that is close to the ice surface.

"No, my child." Edmund's expression became distant, he shook his head, "You can kill me again, but I will never tell you where I hid my heart."

"That's my original sin, only God knows where it's hidden."

Spade pursed his lips into a straight line, he was obviously dissatisfied with the result, a kind of very shallow depression emerged from the small movement of his nails on the whip.

Edmund looked at Spades, with a friendly smile that saw everything on his face: "This time you also found my six hundred particle devices. I rarely see players who can find all of them without being frozen to death." Yes, you are amazing."

"But one device is ineffective." Spade looked at Edmund, "The device under Ice Dome A is not filled with corpse particles. I can't gather all six hundred corpses."

"But you have already won this game, haven't you?" Edmund shook his head seriously, raised his finger and emphasized, "Your friend, Nishen told me that you only care about winning or losing, you have already won the game." ‌Get what you want, why not keep my secret just a secret forever?"

Edmund looked at Spades, with a smile on his lips, and the light of a campfire shone in his light blue eyes like shattered ice: "Why are you so attached to a heart that doesn't belong to you? It's not romantic."

Spades paused for a moment—it seemed that he didn't know the exact answer to this question either.

"Intuition—I must destroy this heart and all the body parts."

Spade raised her eyes: "Everyone has their own established destiny. I can see that the destiny of this heart is connected with mine, and it should be destroyed by me."

"Neither ‌ nor I should exist in this world."

The smile on Edmund's face gradually faded, and he muttered to himself: "You are destroying yourself, child..."

"Hmm." Spade replied calmly, and then asked, "What is the original sin you want to hide?"

There was no trace of a smile on Edmund's face, he finally showed a little of his old age.

He leaned on his forehead and sighed, he couldn't hide the tiredness in his expression and movements: "My original sin is something that I didn't realize from the beginning to the end that I should repent for it. .”

"I hate the things that persecute me, I hate the students who betray me, and I pity the friends I admire." Edmund took a deep, deep breath, and slowly exhaled it from the nasal cavity as if smoking a cigarette, his eyes pierced The fire at the foot looked far away, "I didn't do one thing right, and I repent for it, but one thing made me understand that my ugliness is far more than that."

Edmund's hands on the side of the chair trembled, he closed his eyes, tears fell into furrow-like wrinkles, and he said in a hoarse voice, "—that's those corpses."

"That's not a corpse, it's a dismembered limb of a living creature. He has consciousness, feelings, and emotions. He knows what ugly things I'm doing to him."

Edmund opened his eyes, his clear eyes finally became cloudy at this moment, he choked up and said: "—and I only know what I have done when I see the beating heart."

"I'm killing a living person."

Edmund turned to look at Spade, who seemed to be dying in an instant:

"The plot of the game you mentioned may be my destiny. I was led by this destiny, by the invisible god, into the abyss of self-destruction, forming a paradise-like cycle for others to play and entertain. I Thought I could escape this horrible game myself."

"But after escaping, I found that I just entered a bigger cycle of fate. I will always be just a toy in the hands of the gods who make my destiny, and human beings will always suffer from out-of-control desires in all world lines. To be self-destructive is our God-given destiny - He wants to see this."

There were tears in Edmund's eyes: "All of us should be punished for the cruelty endowed by fate, but I know that in the eyes of the invisible god, the injustice I inflicted because of anger Punishment is not part of his fate."

"Everything I do is just... a game."

Spades looked at him calmly: "But you can decide how you die this time."

"I will burn you to death if I wish, and this is not a game for you, nor for me."

Edmund smiled tearfully: "I know."

"This is... the victory you want, and the fate I want."

—————

Another ‌.

Bai Liu was patrolling the ground in a helicopter, and they had already passed three points marked on the map—one of the six hundred points.

But the results are not satisfactory.

The buoys on the sea surface have all been taken out and destroyed, so Bai Liu and the others don’t need to go down to find them. The wreckage of the instrument is placed directly on the edge of the coast, and the metal box is also casually thrown into the instrument. The particles inside have been removed. ‌was completely destroyed.

The particle devices on the ground were all tied up with weather balloons and flew into the sky.

Bai Liu and the others have seen several punctured balloons buried in the snow on the ground—the situation is similar to that on the coast, and the particles in the metal box have also been destroyed.

The further you go to the places marked on these maps, the worse the situation becomes.

When he saw the hollowed-out device next to the ice dome a, Bai Liu issued a termination order: "The 600 devices should have been found by Spades, and Edmund probably didn't hide his heart in the 600 devices." within a point."

"Then where will he hide his heart?" Mu Ke yelled in the strong wind, so as to ensure that Bai Liu could hear what he said in the wind. There are places with special significance, such as Ice Dome A, South Pole, Tarzan Station, and Scott’s Cabin, so is it possible for him to hide his heart in other places?"

"Yes." Bai Liu turned to look at Mu Ke, "Do you still remember the main task of this dungeon?"

Mu Ke pointed out: "Global warming."

"If global cooling is Edmond's punishment for everyone, including himself, after his desires got out of control, then global warming is an opportunity for him to change." Bai Liu breathed hoarfrost.

During the conversation, Tang Erda manipulated the helicopter to land steadily at a new location.

Bai Liu got off the helicopter that was landed steadily by Tang Er, and came to an empty snow field.

This is a brand new place without any footprints or traces. There is no device placed here, and there is no sign of anyone visiting. It is far away from all observation stations and does not even have its own geography. name.

No matter how you look at it, it is a strange place without any characteristics.

This is the place Bai Liu chose for Tang Erda to land.

Mu Ke trotted to keep up with Bai Liu, short of breath: "Bai Liu, do you think this is where Edmund hides his heart?"

He seemed to be about to ask why you thought it was here, but because of Mu Ke's blind trust in Bai Liu, he felt that digging first and then talking.

But when someone asked, Mu Sicheng turned around and looked around, and asked Bai Liu suspiciously: "Why did Edmund hide his heart here? I don't even know where this is, and I'm not in Edmund's fax or I saw this place in the experiment report."

Bai Liu put on anti-friction gloves and began to help Tang Erda carry the equipment for digging and detecting the ice surface.

Mu Sicheng stepped forward to take over, staring at Bai Liu with eager eyes.

Bai Liu leaned over and took off a stack of experimental reports from the back seat of the helicopter, and handed them to Mu Sicheng: "Explain while watching—I just said that global cooling is Edmund's punishment for human beings in his anger. But in the present, global warming is also a punishment, and it is a punishment that humans have brought upon themselves."

Mu Sicheng couldn't help sighing: "What did I do wrong? I'm being punished even if it gets colder or hotter?"

Bai Liu smiled: "Yes, this is a Christian concept, that people are born with original sin, and living is the process of redemption. If you regard the whole process as Edmund asking mankind to redeem sins, it will be clear. It's gone."

"He felt that others were guilty, so he punished others. He felt that Tarzan stood innocent, but this kind of innocence is also a sin in a guilty environment, because it will lead to bullying, so Edmund decided to sharpen Tarzan. Station, let them survive as humans on "Noah's Ark"."

"Edmund knows very well that what he did is wrong and sinful, and his own process of redemption—" Bai Liu's eyes were deep, "—is to hide the heart that he did not move. ‌Heart, under the protection of the suppression of various circumstances, he was forced to kill the first innocent person."

"He preserved the heart on the one hand to preserve the experimental samples, and on the other hand to preserve his own [original sin]."

Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng: "Where do you think people like Edmund would keep their original sin?"

Mu Sicheng shook his head honestly.

Bai Liu smiled: "It's the day when he makes up his mind to implement his crime and it takes effect."

There were question marks in Mu Sicheng's eyes: "This day, what day is it?"

"August 10th, the day he started pickling sauerkraut for the people at Taishan Station." Bai Liu looked at the open space in front of him and smiled, "And this place is the thirty-three accumulated in Edmund's According to ‌'s temperature records, it was the coldest place in Antarctica on August 10."

"There is no better place to store a beating heart."