Chapter 131: Progress Made in Ice Magic Research

"Everyone, the firewood we currently have stored will last us for a little while, but that's all it is—just a little while."

"The blizzard outside stops and starts with no sign of letting up. Before long, the woods will be completely buried under the snow, making it even harder for us to gather firewood then."

After a few seconds of silence, Sun Rong said, "Therefore, we need to take advantage of the present and continue logging, even if there are cannibals out there."

Gu Yihang, Chu Zekai, and Yu Feng looked at Sun Rong. This guy was looking more and more like a proper team leader.

Thinking back to the beginning, when they elected Sun Rong as their leader, it was precisely because of his talent for fearing death.

Especially when it came to communicating with Her Majesty the Witch; if anyone else had been in his place, they probably would have been shot by Her Majesty on the spot, completely without warning.

Yet so far, Sun Rong had survived quite well and had even awakened a special ability.

This made them even more firmly convinced of two things:

Whatever Sun Rong refused to do, they absolutely must not do.

Whatever Sun Rong felt was acceptable to do meant it was genuinely safe to try.

Judging by the current situation, not only had Sun Rong awakened a special ability, but his self-confidence had also grown immensely, and his tone of voice was increasingly carrying the aura of a true leader.

Whether he was getting carried away or not, they couldn't be sure.

If Sun Rong did get carried away, it would become dangerous.

Gu Yihang said, "That is indeed the case. We have a huge deficit in firewood, and as for the cannibals outside, I believe that the moment we see one, we should wipe them out. We must never harbor any thoughts of softness or holding back."

"They are even more terrifying than wild beasts that like to eat human flesh, because they can use tools and possess human intelligence, which makes them far more frightening."

"Besides, we don't need to carry any psychological burden when killing cannibals."

"Back when the world was still somewhat normal, those cannibals belonged to the category of receiving the death penalty with immediate execution."

Chu Zekai glanced at Gu Yihang.

When they first encountered the cannibals, who was the one who didn't dare to fire their gun and had almost been scared out of their wits?

He gave a light cough and said, "I have no objections."

Yu Feng said, "Me neither."

"Then it's settled," Sun Rong said. "By the way, we'll make a trip to Her Majesty the Witch's place tomorrow to report the news about the cannibals to her..."

Chu Zekai interrupted, "Captain, have you forgotten why Her Majesty planted trees over there in the first place?"

Sun Rong straightened up and thought for three seconds. "You mean Her Majesty knew about the cannibals all along?"

Chu Zekai said, "Well, otherwise why do you think Her Majesty would plant so many dangerous mutated trees?"

Mentioning the mutated trees made the men feel somewhat guilty.

Were the vegetables they ate every single day actually mutated?

If they didn't notify Her Majesty every time they went out to harvest them, would those vegetables turn around and eat them instead?

Sun Rong said, "Alright, let's all get a good night's sleep, and we'll go observe the situation tomorrow."

They all went off to sleep.

Around 9:00 AM the next day, Sun Rong, Chu Zekai, Yu Feng, and Gu Yihang got ready, boarded their snowmobiles, and headed toward the Vulcan Base.

Before long, they arrived at the belt of mutated trees planted by Su Miao.

When they passed by here yesterday, those mutated trees were only about half a person tall.

However, after just a single night, the mutated trees were now two to three meters tall, and their trunks were as thick as two or three fists combined.

"Even though we're already getting used to this kind of thing, seeing it again is still a bit terrifying."

Yu Feng looked at the belt of trees and said.

Recalling yesterday's absurd experiment, all four of them felt a lingering sense of dread.

"Should we go across?"

Gu Yihang felt a bit nervous.

All their gazes turned to Sun Rong.

Sun Rong said, "We'll leave the snowmobiles here and walk the rest of the way on foot."

Crossing through the belt of mutated trees carried a certain degree of danger, but they had all prepared themselves well and exercised caution, so there shouldn't be any problems.

Besides, Her Majesty the Witch had also planted some mutated trees on the small hill where they lived.

As long as they carried fragments of vegetables on their bodies, they wouldn't be attacked.

As they passed through the tree belt, Sun Rong's heart was practically in his throat.

Because a few branches drifted down and gently patted him on the shoulder.

He almost thought those mutated trees were going to pierce his neck with their branches and kill him on the spot.

One had to remember that all these mutated trees were poisonous.

With lingering fears, the four of them crossed the belt of mutated trees and remained silent for a long time.

Chu Zekai finally spoke up, "That was probably just them saying hello to us."

Sun Rong, Gu Yihang, and Yu Feng looked at Chu Zekai, thoroughly impressed by his wild imagination, but still nodded in agreement.

"Let's go, let's head over and take a look first."

The four of them crunched through the snow, moving quickly to explore ahead.

After walking a considerable distance, they arrived at the area where the cannibals had been discovered.

Standing on a small hill, they looked out into the distance, but as far as the eye could see, there was nothing except a vast, blinding expanse of white.

"With so many cannibals, it's impossible for them to have all vanished just like that," Sun Rong muttered to himself.

Chu Zekai speculated, "Could it be that these cannibals already met Her Majesty the Witch, which is why they disappeared?"

Yu Feng felt a chill running through his body. "It's possible."

Recalling the Vulcan Base that had suddenly vanished, it wasn't out of the question that a group of cannibals—who were far inferior to the Vulcan Base—could suddenly disappear as well.

Furthermore, the belt of mutated trees had grown fully, making it impossible for the cannibals to cross through safely.

As for forcing the cannibals to climb mountains and detour around the mutated tree belt...

That was also a possibility.

However, they hadn't seen a single trace of the cannibals along their entire route.

Looked at this way, apart from Her Majesty the Witch making the cannibals disappear, there was simply no other explanation.

"Let's head back," Yu Feng said.

"Wait a second."

Gu Yihang took out his shovel and began digging frantically into the ground.

Chu Zekai asked in puzzlement, "What are you doing?"

Gu Yihang replied, "Have you forgotten? We found quite a few firearms and pieces of ammunition here yesterday. I want to see if there are any left."

Right.

Sun Rong joined in and started digging as well.

After a good while, aside from a few scattered, frozen fragments of corpses indicating that many cannibal corpses had once been here, not a single intact body was found.

The more the four men dug, the stranger it felt, and an icy chill gripped their bones.

"The bodies are gone."

"Same here."

"I've dug in several spots consecutively, and I haven't seen a single body."

"Did the mutated trees eat them?"

Sun Rong, Gu Yihang, Yu Feng, and Chu Zekai all shook their heads. That was obviously impossible.

Suddenly, a gust of wind and snow blew past.

Sun Rong instantly spun around to look into the distance, but he saw nothing at all.

"What is it?" Chu Zekai asked.

Sun Rong shook his head. "I just had a feeling that something over there was watching us, but the moment I turned around, I didn't see a thing."

Gu Yihang said, "Captain, now is really not the time to be telling ghost stories."

Yu Feng remarked, "We are near the Vulcan Base."

There were moving corpses inside the Vulcan Base.

He didn't say that out loud, but everyone in the group understood.

Sun Rong said, "Let's head back. Unless there's something important, let's not come around here anymore."

Without another word of nonsense, Sun Rong, Gu Yihang, Yu Feng, and Chu Zekai immediately turned and fled back toward the belt of mutated trees.

Not long after they left, the Undead Queen appeared in the vicinity once more, accompanied by a few silent undead. She looked at the disappearing footprints on the ground and whispered softly, "We need more fresh blood..."

The silent undead behind her wanted to give chase, but the Undead Queen stopped them.

In a hoarse voice, the Undead Queen said, "No need to pursue. Do not cross the forest left behind by Her Majesty. We will continue to wait."

Another flurry of wind and snow swept past, and the Undead Queen vanished into the blizzard along with her silent undead.

...

Over at the Sihai Base.

As soon as day broke, the cannibals launched another frenzied assault on the Sihai Base.

Ning Hongmei faced off against Xu Ting, Shamo took on Pei Fu, and He Chao confronted Lin Henian. The two sides clashed with earth-shattering intensity.

They had originally hoped to capture the Sihai Base while the snow had stopped, but today's battle was even more brutal and tragic than yesterday's.

Yu Yuangui lay on a hospital bed, commanding the overall situation, nearly coughing up blood on several occasions.

The more he commanded, the more he felt like crying.

Because yesterday, while commanding, he could still deploy a large number of well-trained Sihai Base defense guards.

However, from yesterday through today, the elite members of the Sihai Base defense guards had either died or been severely injured, losing more than half their forces.

Now, the troops deployed were reserve units and hastily cobbled-together teams.

Their combat effectiveness and execution were both utterly abysmal.

To give a simple example, even the most mediocre stormtrooper would be ten or a hundred times better than them.

A few newly recruited base ability users even failed to harm the cannibals with their attacks, instead ending up injuring most of their own comrades.

Fortunately, the cannibal side was attacking with reckless disregard for consumption, and the combat losses among the cannibal elites were extremely severe, leaving the replacement units sent up later of very mixed quality.

Some cannibals possessed formidable abilities on paper, yet they didn't even know the most basic methods of applying them.

For instance, there was a cannibal who had awakened an ice and snow ability.

His entrance had generated an immense aura of intimidation.

Yet at the start of the battle, he ended up freezing large swaths of his fellow cannibals to death.

In a sense, the combat strengths of both sides had reached a peculiar balance.

To fill the gaps in combat power, to prevent the Sihai Base from being breached, and to protect their families living within it, many injured defense guard members re-entered the battlefield after receiving only the most rudimentary emergency treatment.

Yu Yuangui watched this unfold, feeling deeply distressed.

Because a situation like this would never have occurred at the Vulcan Base.

Even though his heart was as hard as iron, seeing this stirred his emotions, and it even began to shake the plan hidden deep within his heart—the plan to abandon these people and run away with Mili.

Following yesterday's battles, Yu Yuangui had already formulated a plan to abandon the Sihai Base battlefield.

As far as Yu Yuangui was concerned, the Sihai Base had a population of nearly fifty thousand.

Among them, the regular defense force numbered six thousand, with one thousand being elite troops—this was already the absolute limit of their ratio.

From yesterday until today, those six thousand men had been reduced to just over three thousand survivors.

One could easily imagine how brutal the fighting had been.

To fill the gaps on the battlefield, he had been forced to conscript temporary defense personnel from among the ordinary civilians.

Men and women alike, he wanted them all, as long as they could take the battlefield.

Under these circumstances, Yu Yuangui had only managed to conscript a little over three thousand people.

Among them were about 1,400 young men, 1,000 elderly people, and 500 women.

This came as a shock to Yu Yuangui, because this total of three thousand-plus was far fewer than he had anticipated.

One had to remember that the entire Sihai Base had nearly fifty thousand people! Were there really only this many individuals out of such a huge crowd willing to protect the Sihai Base?

Didn't they know that if the Sihai Base was breached, the cannibals would devour them all?

Didn't they know that if the Sihai Base was breached, everything they usually cherished and protected would be lost?

Yu Yuangui's heart turned ice cold.

"Young Master Lan, can we enforce a mandatory conscription?"

"The supreme command is in your hands right now."

Lan Shaokong glanced back at the Sihai Base and spoke.

Yu Yuangui said, "There are still quite a few ability users hiding within the Sihai Base. They ought to come out and fight for the Sihai Base, but right now..."

He looked at the group of ordinary elderly people in the newly conscripted unit, and his heart grew increasingly conflicted.

Lan Shaokong remained silent.

Yu Yuangui said, "Very well, Young Master Lan. I am going to issue a mandatory conscription across the entire Sihai Base. If anyone resists and the law enforcement personnel are unable to handle it, I ask Young Master Lan to step in and suppress them."

Lan Shaokong asked, "Then, are you able to stand up?"

Yu Yuangui's expression instantly turned somewhat awkward.

Had his cover-up regarding his injuries been discovered?

Lan Shaokong stated, "I must remind you of one thing: the King of Daxi has been keeping his eyes on me the whole time. If I am not standing here, some people will die, and if they die, the defense line will collapse."

Yu Yuangui threw off the blanket, stepped down from the hospital bed, and said, "Rest assured, I won't let Young Master Lan waste too much time."

Lan Shaokong nodded. "Good. Then go ahead and do whatever you deem necessary."

Yu Yuangui looked up at the snowy sky and said, "I'm just waiting for the snow to fall a bit heavier."

Lan Shaokong turned his gaze back to the battlefield and said no more.

It was true that Yu Yuangui had sustained severe injuries during his battle against the King of Daxi.

Fearing that Yu Yuangui might die, Lan Shaokong had even personally examined him. However, after the inspection, he realized that the truth wasn't necessarily what people saw with their own eyes, let alone what was visible on the surface.

Yu Yuangui was an extremely rare dual-ability awakener, and one of his abilities was self-regeneration.

Had his own strength not been overwhelmingly powerful, even he might have been fooled by Yu Yuangui.

Yu Yuangui re-dressed in his new-style military overcoat and began issuing the mandatory conscription order directed at everyone within the Sihai Base.

"Except for research personnel equivalent to departmental staff, regardless of rank or status, everyone must accept conscription. Anyone unwilling may leave the Sihai Base."

"..."

As the mandatory conscription commenced throughout the Sihai Base, chaos broke out within the city walls as well.

"What are you people doing?"

"By what right are you forcing us to join the fight? We haven't fallen short on a single grain of the food we're supposed to pay as tax."

"This is just like living in a hotel—we paid our fees, and when intruders break in, instead of fighting to protect us, you're demanding that we join the resistance. What kind of logic is that?"

"The Sihai Base is being attacked by cannibals! Do you have any idea what your fate will be if the cannibals breach the Sihai Base?"

"Who cares..."

A few ability users stepped forward to protest.

Possessing a certain degree of strength, they had intended to play it safe and scavenge benefits after the dust settled.

They absolutely refused to go directly onto the battlefield to fight the cannibals unless things reached a truly desperate impasse.

"Are you thinking of waiting until the cannibals and the Sihai Base exhaust each other so you can pick up the scraps? You're still too naive."

They didn't get to act arrogant for long before Yu Yuangui arrived, ruthlessly executing those protesting ability users on the spot with thunderous methods.

Witnessing such a brutal display, none of the remaining ability users in the Sihai Base dared to defy the conscription order again.

"Mili, handle the reorganization."

Yu Yuangui dumped the task of reorganization onto Mili.

Mili felt like crying tears of blood. She had already taken heavy-injury medicine just to justify lying in bed; assisting with command was already hard enough, and now Yu隊 had gone and pitted her to this extreme degree.

[Wait a minute, did Yu隊 know all along that I had heavy-injury medicine?]

Recalling how she had managed to acquire that heavy-injury medicine in the past, Mili was left speechless.

She was thoroughly outsmarted and manipulated by Yu隊 in every possible way.

With no other choice, Mili gritted her teeth against the pain, pulled out a recovery potion, and drank it to neutralize the effects of the heavy-injury medicine.

In less than three hours, Mili grouped the conscripted personnel of the Sihai Base and reorganized them into sixteen regiments, with about two thousand people per regiment.

With the addition of these sixteen regiments into the combat forces, the Sihai Base's previously precarious defense line stabilized once more.

They could even implement a daily rotation system, ensuring that everyone got adequate rest.

"Yu-隊, you pit me like this—doesn't your conscience hurt?"

Once she finished, Mili marched right up to Yu Yuangui to complain.

Yu Yuangui coughed a few times, feigning that he still couldn't comfortably leave his bed. "Ah, Mili, Yu-隊 had no choice either. I got pitted too, you know."

Heh.

Lan Shaokong stood atop the ice wall, the corners of his mouth curving slightly upward.

He had heard this conversation loud and clear. Yu Yuangui was a smart man; if he had been plotted against and said nothing at all, Lan Shaokong would have actually been worried. Complaining was a sign of determination.

Although Yu Yuangui still harbored other calculations, he didn't care.

In fact, he was well aware of the situation inside the Sihai Base.

Handled through conventional methods, the Sihai Base being breached by the cannibals was only a matter of time.

No matter how strong his own combat power was, it wouldn't change the outcome—especially with a lunatic like the King of Daxi in play.

With a gloomy expression, the King of Daxi made a ruthless decision, directly committing twenty thousand cannibals into the onslaught.

In the span of a single morning, they had almost shattered the Sihai Base's stabilized defense line.

Who would have thought that the crumbling defenses of the Sihai Base would suddenly firm up again?

Out of the eighty thousand cannibals, five thousand had already been killed or wounded within a single day.

Even with the cannibals' insatiable appetite for flesh, suffering casualties of this magnitude meant they couldn't possibly consume them all in a short time.

In particular, that distant mynah bird had reappeared accompanied by nine bald eagles, which left the King of Daxi feeling extremely irritated.

Seeing that another blizzard was descending, the King of Daxi decided to order a temporary halt to the cannibals' assault.

If they kept attacking like this, the cannibal forces he had managed to gather with such difficulty would be completely wiped out.

However, before that happened, there was one thing that had to be done.

The King of Daxi marched forward toward the Sihai Base.

Upon seeing the King of Daxi taking the field, the cannibals along the route experienced a massive surge in morale and explosive combat prowess, momentarily making the newly reorganized defense line of the Sihai Base feel as though it was swaying once more.

Helpless, Yu Yuangui had to order the regiments that had just been rotated off for rest to quickly rush back and reinforce the lines.

The battle grew even more brutal.

"Is this King of Daxi going for broke?"

Yu Yuangui watched the King of Daxi stride onto the battlefield, feeling completely numb.

Anyone in the battlefield who came close to the King of Daxi—whether they were cannibals or defenders of the Sihai Base—instantly had the blood in their bodies surge and violently burst apart, dying horrible deaths.

"Lan Shaokong."

With a single step, the King of Daxi charged straight toward Lan Shaokong.

Lan Shaokong descended from the ice wall and met the King of Daxi head-on.

In an instant, it was as if a missile had been dropped into the center of the battlefield. Terrifying shockwaves of the explosion rippled outward in all directions, turning nearby cannibals and Sihai Base guards into bloody mists or shattering their bodies into countless fragments in a display of utter carnage.

Their exchange was blindingly fast—so fast that one didn't even have time to blink.

Ten seconds later, the battlefield fell silent.

Neither the King of Daxi nor Lan Shaokong remained in the center of the battlefield.

Among the ranks, the cannibals Shamo, He Chao, and Ning Hongmei wore expressions of shock.

On the Sihai Base side, Lin Henian, Xu Ting, Pei Fu, and Yu Yuangui stood frozen in a daze for a long time.

None of them had ever imagined that Lan Shaokong and the King of Daxi could be this powerful—powerful to a degree far beyond their comprehension.

Could these people even be considered human anymore?

"Retreat!"

"Fall back!"

The cease-fire orders from the King of Daxi and Lan Shaokong came at virtually the same moment.

The battle that had raged continuously for a day finally paused at this very moment.

"Fall back!"

Over on the other side, the mynah almost instantly issued the order, leading the golden-winged giant eagle and the eight gray eagles to rapidly distance themselves from the battlefield.

Those bald eagles had originally wanted to scavenge some corpses to eat, but it seemed today wasn't going to work out either.

"...Your Majesty, that's basically how things went."

Upon returning to the villa, the mynah reported the entire course of the battle between the Sihai Base and the cannibals.

Su Miao felt a tiny trace of disappointment.

Judging by the results provided by the mynah, far too few cannibals had died—only a little over ten thousand. How could that be enough?

And the Sihai Base—were they completely useless? With so many resources, so many firearms, and such tall ice walls, how on earth had they managed to sustain such heavy casualties?

What if the cannibals failed to breach the Sihai Base and instead turned around to cause trouble at her place? What should she do then?

She had no idea how many cannibals that newly grown belt of mutated trees could actually stop.

Terrifying~

She hoped they would keep fighting each other, especially the cannibals—it would be best if they all died off.

Su Miao pondered for a moment, took out her notebook, reviewed the ice-spike magic she had recorded yesterday, and straightened out her subsequent research train of thought.

Since it was currently a period of blizzard and extreme cold, using ice-type magic would yield a certain boost in power.

She decided to conduct further research.

Blizzards, freezing rain, ice lance spells, frost arrows, freezing spells, and so on—she was going to manifest every single ice-type magic trick she had ever seen in games she played into reality.

Su Miao stretched out her hand, and a water-type magic array outlined itself in the air.

A sphere of water condensed in front of the magic array.

"It should be modifiable like this."

Su Miao gave it a try. As the magic pathways shifted and several runic symbols within the water-type magic array transformed, the sphere of water in front of the array instantly turned into a sphere of ice.

Did it work?

Su Miao checked the magic array before her repeatedly, feeling a special enlightenment blossom in her heart.

She seemed to understand now!

The fireball and water ball spells she had learned initially were the most foundational types of magic.

No matter what kind of magic she wanted to learn in the future, she could use those two spells as a baseline to derive and deduce even more magic.

For instance, this ice magic, when boiled down, simply involved extracting more heat so that water could manifest directly in the form of ice.

Extrapolating from this, as long as she wanted to, she could even cast instantaneous small blue fireballs.

Su Miao dissipated the magic array, raised her hand once more, and a 60-centimeter-long ice spike condensed in front of the newly formed ice-type magic array.

Making a few minor adjustments, she conjured over a dozen ice-type magic arrays around her, each with an ice spike condensing in front of it.

The mynah had just wanted to ask if there was dinner ready, but upon seeing this sight, it was instantly rendered speechless.

It just wanted to eat dinner, that's all.

Terrifying~