Chapter 48: Confused Deity
“Woohoo!!!”
“Let’s go!!!”
“Hahahahahaha!!!”
Across the frigid snowfields, wherever Cheng Qisheng looked, the air was filled with the cheers of Blue Sea’s people.
At first, everyone had simply been inspired by the three-person team.
Walking through the snow in bulky protective suits was painfully slow. Using a snow beast as transportation? Who had come up with that?
It was sheer genius!
But once they actually stood on a wooden board and let a snow beast pull them across the ice, the Blue Sea pioneers became even more exhilarated.
The wind and snow roared around them. Their prey raced ahead while they gripped their lassos tightly, hurtling toward a dangerous and unknown horizon.
It felt like they had returned to the age of primitive hunters.
The people of Blue Sea had always been enthusiastic when it came to learning new combat and survival techniques.
Once more than seventy people started doing it, nearly every pioneer had mastered the new trick.
The best part was that almost everyone happened to be carrying both a lasso and a wooden plank.
The lasso needed no explanation—it was standard hunting equipment for Blue Sea’s people.
As for the wooden plank, everyone had brought one in preparation for spending the night out in the snow. A snow shelter could be dug out easily, with the plank serving as a windbreak over the entrance. If necessary, it could even be broken apart and used as firewood to boil water or keep warm.
As a result, the snow beasts living near Safe City suffered terribly.
Situations soon arose where hundreds—even over a thousand—people competed for a single snow beast.
It couldn’t be helped. Everyone’s movement was restricted by the heavy protective suits, making walking painfully slow. With so many people traveling together, many were still following the same route.
The scramble would only end once someone successfully slipped a lasso over a snow beast’s head.
To shake off the burden trailing behind them, the snow beasts would slam on the brakes, make sharp turns, and swerve unpredictably. If the person standing on the wooden board lost their balance even slightly, they would topple over and be flung off.
The snowfields of Dazzling Star were nothing like the soft, fluffy snow left behind by an ordinary snowfall. After enduring more than a century of relentless cold, the ground beneath people’s feet was less a blanket of snow than a century-old sheet of solid ice.
If they fell and slammed into the ground, there was nothing to cushion the impact.
But the Blue Sea pioneers who were thrown off would instantly adjust their posture, rolling with the momentum to dissipate the force. They used their own muscles as shock absorbers, minimizing the damage to their bodies as much as possible.
Almost every Blue Sea citizen possessed this skill.
As for why, all you had to do was ask about their favorite childhood pastimes.
Even Qin Zhi—who now appeared to be the very picture of composure—had done her fair share of reckless things at the age of nine.
She had fought foxes in the mountains, bitten dogs back the moment they bit her, climbed a twenty-meter-tall tree in an attempt to raid a bird’s nest, and countless other exploits.
The only thing that made her seem a little smarter than the other children was that, after climbing about eight meters up the tree, she had at least remembered to tie a safety rope around herself.
Unfortunately, there were no safety ropes on the snow beast express.
Some snow beasts managed to bite through the lassos, while others succeeded in throwing their riders off.
The Blue Sea people who were flung away relied on the impact-dispersing techniques they had practiced since childhood. After lying there dazed for a moment, they would wobble to their feet on their own.
The odds of catching up with the snow beast again were slim, but they didn’t dwell on it. They simply treated it as if they’d “gotten off midway.”
Compared to those who had never even managed to “board” a snow beast in the first place, they considered themselves lucky enough.
At least they no longer had to crowd together with everyone else, competing over the scarce prey in the same area.
Some of these people would search the surroundings for another snow beast. If they happened to obtain a Building Card, they would simply set up camp on the spot.
Others would wait for another Blue Sea rider to come speeding by on a “snow beast express,” then hop aboard together and head off toward the next unknown destination.
The whole approach was based on one principle:
Go with whatever happened.
As for whether it was dangerous?
If they were afraid of danger, they never would have signed up for an Extreme Danger mission in the first place.
Cheng Qisheng rubbed her forehead.
Well… it wasn’t exactly surprising.
Old Eighth had always been like this. Most of the time they were perfectly reliable, but every now and then they’d completely let themselves loose.
It seemed that after spending several months with their heads down digging in the mines during the previous world, everyone had become thoroughly pent-up.
This world, she’d just let Old Eighth do things their own way.
…
Wang Moning had long since gotten used to Blue Sea’s unique way of doing things.
Standing on a sled—well, technically a wooden plank—as the howling wind and snow blasted her face and drowned out every other sound, she found herself completely understanding everyone’s train of thought.
Dazzling Star was simply too cold. Just traveling from place to place was already a huge challenge.
Using a snow beast as your driver?
Genius.
Sure, the snow beast wasn’t exactly cooperative, the destination was completely random, and there was always the chance of being thrown off halfway.
But it was fast!
As for the possibility of ending up somewhere so far away that they couldn’t make it back to Blue Sea…
The old Wang Moning might have worried about something like that. But after truly becoming one of the faithful, she finally understood why Blue Sea’s people always seemed so utterly fearless.
She could feel that, just like every other Blue Sea citizen, she was sheltered within the warm embrace of the great Creator God.
It was difficult to describe.
It was a bit like when she had been a high school student on Velvet Star. Even though she hardly stayed at home and spent most of her time at school, and later would leave for university in a completely unfamiliar city, she had always known one thing:
If anything happened to her while she was away, her parents would come for her.
She would always have a home to return to.
After the apocalypse struck Velvet Star, Wang Moning lost her parents, and with them, that absolute sense of security.
But after becoming a believer of the great deity, she found that feeling once again.
No matter how far she was from Blue Sea, no matter where she happened to be, the deity was always with her.
So what was there left to fear?
Wang Moning thought that the Blue Sea people’s way of thinking often seemed rough and impulsive, as though they simply made decisions on the spur of the moment.
But wasn’t that exactly the mindset best suited for surviving in the apocalypse?
A Safe City would only ever remain in an apocalyptic world.
Like the people of Blue Sea, facing danger honestly—even actively seeking it out—and constantly growing stronger through battle was the best way to survive the apocalypse.
Sometimes, Wang Moning even felt that most Blue Sea people were the kind who seemed foolish on the surface but possessed great wisdom underneath.
Though every time she spent more than five minutes with any one of them, that impression quickly disappeared.
Take this moment, for example.
Song Xi burst into laughter.
“Hahahahahaha!!!”
Wang Moning had known Song Xi for quite a while and had seen her laugh countless times.
She knew Song Xi had an easygoing personality and loved to laugh.
But in a situation like this—surrounded by pitch-black darkness, illuminated only by the wavering beams of flashlights, where the snow had long since turned into a field of blood and the roars of savage beasts echoed all around like the set of a horror movie—
Did she really have to be laughing now?!
The thought had barely crossed Wang Moning’s mind when she suddenly saw the afterimage of a snow beast lunging toward her.
It was her supernatural ability activating.
Almost instinctively, Wang Moning identified the afterimage representing the beast’s movement one second into the future. She ducked beneath the attack and, following the trajectory revealed by the vision, slashed backward with her blade.
The ambush failed.
Instead, the snow beast took a deep cut across its abdomen and immediately let out an enraged roar.
Still laughing, Song Xi rushed forward and drew her curved saber viciously across the beast’s throat.
Their third teammate, Shen Jinyang, also wielded a long saber. Despite dragging her injured right leg behind her, she managed to hack off one of the snow beast’s legs.
Only then did the three of them finally succeed in pinning down the three-meter-tall monster.
But it still wasn’t dead.
The three women clung to the beast like predators more savage than the beast itself, repeatedly striking it to deepen its wounds and hasten its blood loss.
They kept it up for more than forty minutes.
At last, the snow beast’s breathing stopped.
Even then, none of them relaxed their grip.
Only after a silver card slowly condensed above the beast’s corpse did they finally let their guard down.
Snow beasts only dropped cards after they had truly died.
Wang Moning leaned back against the massive carcass, breathing heavily in relief.
Having just finished the battle, Wang Moning was drenched in sweat, and her body temperature had risen sharply. If she sat down on the ground now and melted even a thin layer of snow beneath her, the frigid nighttime temperatures of Dazzling Star would freeze her protective suit to the ice before she could stand up again.
Still, although the cold-weather suit from the Item Card transferred body heat away rather easily, it was far better than the bulky polar protective suits the three of them had originally worn from Blue Sea.
At the very least, if they had still been wearing those heavy suits from their first few days in this region—when even moving was a struggle—they definitely wouldn’t have been able to defeat such a ferocious snow beast.
“Captain… why were you laughing the whole time?”
After catching her breath a little, Wang Moning finally asked the question that had been bothering her throughout the fight.
For a moment back there, she’d even wondered whether the snow beast had somehow bitten one of Song Xi’s ticklish spots.
Song Xi was exhausted as well. She spoke between heavy breaths, but that didn’t stop her from laughing.
“Hahahahaha! Halfway through the fight, I suddenly realized this snow beast matches the combat strength of a Tier-2 snow beast!”
“A Tier-2 snow beast! That means it’ll drop a Tier-2 Item Card! Hahahahaha—we’ve struck it rich!!”
The moment she said that, both Wang Moning and Shen Jinyang felt the corners of their mouths shoot upward as well.
“Tier 2?”
Shen Jinyang rolled over with some effort. Her injuries were fairly serious, but the pain couldn’t outweigh her desire for contribution points.
She reached out and picked up the silver Item Card.
Sure enough, the words on it identified it as a Tier-2 Item Card.
“It really is!”
Now, in the middle of the night, standing on a blood-soaked patch of snow, there were three people laughing wildly.
Song Xi and Wang Moning slowly got to their feet and helped support Shen Jinyang.
“Let’s head back first. Then we can discuss whether we should exchange this card for contribution points… or exchange it for contribution points… or maybe exchange it for contribution points.”
The three of them burst into laughter again.
After all, there wasn’t really anything to discuss. A Tier-2 Item Card was far more valuable as contribution points than as a random draw. For them, turning it in for points was practically a foregone conclusion.
The three of them trudged slowly through the snow for about three minutes before reaching their little cabin.
Although they had a habit of picking fights, tonight’s battle really hadn’t been their doing.
They had just obtained a torch that could raise the indoor temperature to that of a normal summer day and were happily celebrating at home.
Then the Tier-2 snow beast had come crashing right to their doorstep.
After fighting all night, they were genuinely exhausted.
Still, it hadn’t been for nothing—they had earned themselves a Tier-2 Item Card.
As soon as the three women stepped inside, a wave of warmth greeted them.
Looking closer, it was obvious that almost all of the heat came from the torch standing in the middle of the room.
Without a word, Song Xi walked over to the cabinet by the entrance, opened a drawer with practiced familiarity, and took out a green syringe, handing it to Shen Jinyang.
Shen Jinyang removed her cold-weather suit, exposing her injury, and injected the medicine directly into the wound.
It was a healing serum obtained from a green Item Card, capable of repairing injuries.
The fact that the three of them had become increasingly fearless in battle recently also had a lot to do with the box of twelve healing injections they had been lucky enough to obtain.
“Hiss! That’s intense!”
Shen Jinyang shut her eyes tightly and gritted her teeth as she stared at the ceiling.
About a dozen seconds later, the tension left her face.
The gruesome wound had completely healed. After wiping away the blood, aside from looking a little pale, she appeared no different from normal.
Meanwhile, Wang Moning had already set a pot of water on to boil.
“You two both got hurt today. I’ll heat the water. Once it’s ready, we can all have a proper wash and then get a good night’s sleep.”
The pot and the water had both come from Item Cards.
The same went for the smokeless stove she was using.
No matter how many times she used it, Wang Moning still found it amazing.
This thing was practically science fiction.
Yet it was precisely because of so many miraculous high-tech items like these that, despite living in a place where they didn’t even know exactly where they were, the three of them were gradually building a life that was becoming surprisingly comfortable.
When they had first arrived, the three of them had gone three straight days without obtaining a single Building Card, forcing them to survive by hiding inside makeshift snow shelters.
Once they finally got a Building Card, they at least had a proper place to rest.
Now they spent their nights sleeping in this little wooden cabin and their days searching the surrounding area for newly arrived snow beasts.
Little by little, life settled into a routine.
Now they could even enjoy hot meals and hot water.
And this was only after opening a small portion of the Item Cards they had collected. Most of them remained unopened.
What a joke.
No matter how comfortable life was out here, it was still out here.
The good stuff naturally belonged back home.
They had never forgotten that they were pioneers of Blue Sea.
“It feels like we’ve already been away from home for four months.”
They had traveled incredibly far and accumulated a great deal of loot.
But precisely because they had traveled so far, the three-person team had never found an opportunity to return.
Seriously—who would have guessed that the snow beast that carried them away would suddenly take flight halfway through the journey?
If it had wings, why had it bothered charging at them on foot in the first place?!
Fortunately, Wang Moning’s precognitive ability had shown her the moment the snow beast was about to fly, allowing her to warn the other two in time.
The three of them clung desperately to the lasso and ended up dangling beneath the flying beast for more than half a day. They were so cold they nearly went to meet their God ahead of schedule. Eventually, when the beast descended to a suitable altitude, they wounded it, forcing it to drop them safely back onto the ground.
Back in the present, Song Xi had suffered only a few scrapes, so she didn’t bother using a healing injection. Instead, she casually pulled out a packet of biscuits, kept one for herself, and tossed one each to her teammates.
“Tonight we hit the jackpot. And now we’ve got transportation for traveling long distances too. Let’s take stock of everything we’ve got and prepare to head home.”
Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she carefully placed the silver Tier-2 Item Card into a small box, then gently patted it.
“With this many Item Cards, we should definitely have enough for the down payment!”
Song Xi sighed nostalgically.
“It’s been so long since I prayed beneath our God’s statue.”
Shen Jinyang stretched her arms and legs before getting to her feet as well.
“Me too. I even dreamed about our God last night.”
Wang Moning wanted to go back too.
Her best friends were right here beside her, their living conditions had become increasingly comfortable, and every so often she could faintly sense the deity’s gaze falling upon them.
Especially during their first days in this region.
Back then, Wang Moning had even found herself wondering:
Was our God confused about why everyone else was hitching rides on snow beasts, yet the three of us somehow ended up this far away?
It had to be her imagination.
An omniscient deity wouldn’t experience something like confusion.
Wang Moning looked into the distance, toward where Blue Sea Safe City was supposed to be.
“It’s been so long since we’ve gone back… I wonder what the temple is like now.”
