Rules Ch.370

Chapter 370: The Wonderful Adventures of Whale Whale (I): Run, Whale Whale!

This happened in the year Everly graduated.

By then, she had finished her studies and returned to the gas station in the wilderness. She was working diligently with Old John on the bulletin board, solving cases in exchange for points and items.

That evening, after a full day of working at her desk, Everly stretched and went downstairs to the restaurant. She turned on the TV and sat down with Old John to eat dinner while watching the news.

As they ate, the news suddenly cut to a new segment. A group of people dressed in fluorescent-colored quick-dry athletic gear appeared on the screen, running forward as spectators lined the route to cheer them on.

[Now for our next news story: At 9:00 this morning, the Western 200 Ultramarathon, organized by the Earth Guardians Environmental Protection Foundation, officially began with a starting gun at Gilosha Port in Yanifly State. A total of 3,200 runners from around the world have gathered in Gilosha. Over the next 72 hours, they will cross a wide variety of terrain, including mountains, rivers, and deserts, with a cumulative elevation gain of 6,000 meters and a descent of 7,500 meters, completing this grueling approximately 240-mile ultramarathon. Through their actions, they hope to raise public awareness of and encourage the protection of the fragile ecosystems of the western region…]

As the news anchor continued speaking, the camera moved steadily forward through the packed crowd until it finally reached the very front of the runners.

There, a tall, athletic figure was leading the pack, running at a speed far beyond what an ordinary person could match.

After an imposing aerial shot, the camera switched to a frontal view of the runners. The close-up briefly swept over the leader’s long, muscular legs, his loose athletic shirt covered in environmental slogans, and his head of silver-white hair streaming in the wind.

His long, silver-white curls flew and whipped behind him like a soft length of silk. Amid the beautiful silver strands were also two streaks of black.

That familiar combination of hair colors inevitably reminded Everly of her whale friend in the ocean, Kesuye.

She lived in the hot, arid interior, while Kesuye was a marine creature who couldn’t leave the ocean. As a result, she and the great whale could only meet up and spend time together when she went on vacation each year. The rest of the time, they could basically only keep in touch through Kesuye’s phone…

Come to think of it, hadn’t she gone several days without hearing from Kesuye? Could it be that his phone had run out of credit and been disconnected?

While Everly was distracted by these thoughts, the camera continued moving upward, and the man’s face finally came into view.

He had calm, gentle, downturned eyes, with striking black pupils surrounded by blue irises. His nose was high and straight, his eye sockets deep-set, and his face was practically the embodiment of a perfect Greek sculpture. When he wasn’t showing any expression, there was a strangely inorganic coldness about him—a face so beautiful and distinctive that once you’d seen it, you could hardly ever forget it.

The hot milk in Everly’s mouth nearly shot right out.

This—this—this… Was she hallucinating?!

“Everly, isn’t that Kesuye?” Even the usually composed Old John couldn’t help exclaiming in surprise.

Well, all right. It seemed this wasn’t a hallucination. Kesuye really was participating in that ridiculous ultramarathon…

Everly desperately swallowed the milk in her mouth, set down her cup, widened her eyes, and stared at the screen without blinking, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.

Unfortunately, this was only a simple sports news report. If the ultramarathon’s finish line hadn’t been in the small town of Osentao, Dwight State, the local news station might not even have bothered covering it. So after that brief glimpse, the broadcast switched to the next story.

Everly: “…”

She wOrffed down the rest of her dinner in a few bites, then hurried over to the computer and searched online for the “Western 200 Ultramarathon.”

Just as the news had mentioned, it was a mountain ultramarathon organized by an environmental group. The event aimed to encourage people to measure the vast lands of the western United States with their own feet and raise awareness of its fragile ecosystems.

The race placed no restrictions on nationality or identity. As long as participants didn’t have conditions such as heart disease or high blood pressure that made them unsuitable for extreme sports, and were under 65 years old, they could register either online or in person.

The ultramarathon had a total prize pool of 40,000 USD, with the champion alone receiving a prize of as much as 10,000 USD. The substantial prize money attracted ultramarathon runners and enthusiasts from all over the country, as well as participants from abroad. By the time the race officially began, the number of competitors had swelled to an astonishing 3,200-plus.

It looked like a fairly legitimate event, but Everly still couldn’t see what it had to do with Kesuye.

—Why was Kesuye participating in an ultramarathon?! And when the heck had he grown legs?!

After quickly scanning the event introduction on the official website, Everly clicked the livestream link below and entered the event’s live broadcast page.

The environmental foundation organizing the event had spent quite a bit of money. In order to attract enough viewers and expand the event’s reach, they had arranged for the entire ultramarathon to be livestreamed.

There were two types of livestreams. The first consisted of fixed cameras set up at several checkpoints along the route. Clicking on one of these brought up footage of different participants running past the camera one after another, some looking relaxed and others exhausted. Quite a few were already too tired to continue and had approached the staff to withdraw from the race.

Whenever someone gave up, viewers who loved nothing more than watching others suffer would gleefully flood the chat with comments like, “Another one!”, “Useless!”, and “Not even one of Everly’s hairs can compare!” Clearly contrary to the organizers’ original intentions, these livestreams seemed to have devolved into nothing more than outlets for netizens to vent their frustrations with their own disappointing lives.

Everly’s gaze lingered for a moment on the occasional “Everly” comments drifting across the screen. She closed the fixed-camera livestream and clicked on the other type: the “tracking livestreams.”

There were three tracking livestreams in total. Each was filmed by a cameraman driving a small vehicle alongside the group of runners, following them as they moved along the course.

At present, there were only three tracking livestreams, positioned at the very front of the ultramarathon pack, one-third of the way back, and two-thirds of the way back.

Compared with the fixed-camera livestreams, which were filled with people venting their frustrations and hurling abuse, the tracking livestreams presented an entirely different scene. The one following the front of the pack was especially lively—almost absurdly so.

The moment Everly clicked into it, she was overwhelmed by a dense wall of comments. In order to see the screen clearly, she had no choice but to enable the setting that hid 50% of the bullet comments.

The screen immediately became much cleaner, and the figure running continuously at the very center of the footage, his silver-white curls spilling down around him, finally revealed his exquisite face, beautiful as an angelic doll.

He was still running.

Even though the sky had already begun to darken, the runners following behind him had either run out of stamina or grown hungry and stopped along the way. Kesuye, however, remained expressionless and continued running at a steady pace like a tireless machine.

Even with his body splattered with dust, even with no one left running behind him, even with the shoes on his feet already worn through, he kept running, running, running…

[Everly! Everly! Everly!]

[Aaaaaah! I’ve seriously been crying this whole time!]

[He’s truly amazing! I’m going to donate to the foundation right now!]

The comments were overwhelmingly full of praise. Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought they’d stumbled into the fan site of some major celebrity.

Every now and then, newcomers like Everly, drawn in by the news report, would enter the livestream and post confused questions such as:

[Why is he still running?]

[I’m new here. Does he naturally look like that, or is he cosplaying?]

The moment the questions appeared, a flood of comments immediately sprang up in response:

[Everly is an upstanding environmentalist of noble character. He hopes that his perseverance will raise people’s awareness of ecological conservation!]

[His hair is dyed, and he’s wearing colored contacts.]

[The silver-white represents the ever-expanding salinized land in the deserts; the black represents the scars left across the western landscape by excessive resource extraction; and the blue rings around his eyes symbolize the rapidly shrinking natural oases.]

[That’s right. Everly is using his distinctive appearance to warn people!]

Seeing how enthusiastic the viewers were, Everly quickly posted a comment as a newcomer:

[Is his name Everly?]

[Yes, Everly is his name.]

[You can check out the videos on my profile. You’ll understand once you watch them.]

Seeing that comment, Everly immediately clicked the poster’s username and opened their video profile. The latest video was about the ultramarathon, uploaded at 9:33 that morning.

It was a handheld recording filmed at the event itself. The location looked familiar—probably Gilosha Port. It was the starting point of the ultramarathon, where, at 9:00 that morning, more than 3,000 participants had set off to begin their cross-country run.

However, the person filming had clearly arrived late. By the time the video started, the starting area was already deserted, with not a single competitor in sight. Only a few people dressed like staff members were busily taking down banners, display boards, and other event materials.

“Oh, damn it, I overslept. I missed Lilia’s start… I’m screwed. She’s definitely going to be mad at me…” Everly heard the person filming mutter under their breath.

Just then, a brightly colored figure suddenly entered the edge of the frame.

It was a tall man wearing a racing uniform. He looked as though he’d just been pulled out of the water, drenched from head to toe, with water continuously streaming off him as he walked. His athletic clothes clung tightly to his body, outlining the smooth, graceful contours of the muscles beneath the fabric.

The man had long silver-white hair with two black streaks running through it. He was presumably wearing colored contacts, with a beautiful ring of blue around his black pupils. The bold color combination and water dripping from his entire body did nothing to diminish his beauty. If anything, they made him look like an enchanting water spirit that had just crawled out of a swamp.

The person filming immediately forgot all about muttering to themselves. Holding up their DV camera, they hurried after the man and began filming him.

The man’s looks were simply too striking, and dressed in such an eye-catching fluorescent racing uniform, it was impossible for him not to attract attention. Several staff members who were packing things up spotted him as well and put down what they were holding to approach him.

“Hey, bro, what’s wrong? Why are you soaking wet? Need a towel?”

Surrounded by the friendly staff, the man seemed a little shy around strangers.

He took a small step backward, his large eyes timidly sweeping over everyone. His lips moved, and he mumbled two indistinct words:

“Everly… where?”

“Everly? OK.” A staff member wearing a cap happened to walk over at that moment. Hearing the man’s reply, he apparently mistook it for the man’s name. He casually scribbled a few things in the registration book he was carrying, then pointed in a direction, indicating that the man should look over there.

“This is the starting point. Just follow this road and keep running straight ahead. There’ll be fluorescent markers along the way, so don’t worry about getting lost.”

“Everly… over there?” The man’s eyes lit up, and he asked haltingly.

The man in the cap nodded firmly. “Mm-hmm, over there. Go on. You’re half an hour late, but this is a three-day ultramarathon, after all. As long as you’re willing to stick with it, there’s no reason you can’t reach your goal.”

A brief smile appeared on the man’s face.

At that moment, he was so innocent, naïve, and radiant that he looked practically like an angel who had fallen into the mortal world—so beautiful that anyone would have wanted to frantically screenshot the moment.

With everyone watching, the silver-haired man resolutely stepped onto the racecourse.

In front of the computer screen, Everly’s eyes lit up, then went dark.

Mystery solved. This was how Kesuye had somehow ended up joining the ultramarathon!

But where on earth had he gotten the racing uniform, and how had he grown legs?!

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