Outside, Brother Qiang’s furious roars and pounding on the door echoed:
“Damn it! You little brat! Open the door! I’ll kill you if you don’t!”
“Brother Qiang! The structure of this door… breaking it from outside requires cutting tools! And… just now, that feeling was off…” The glasses guy’s voice trembled faintly through the door.
“Shut up! Find some tools! Pry this damn door open!”
Inside the door, Su Qianqian pressed her back against the ice-cold metal, sliding slowly down to sit on the floor.
The pounding and roaring outside sounded muffled, as if filtered through a thick layer of cotton—dull, distant, but still terrifying.
She panted violently, her heart hammering like it would burst. Cold sweat ran down her temples, mixing with the grime on her face.
Had it worked?
Had she temporarily locked them out?
But an even greater shock seized her.
She lowered her gaze, staring in disbelief at her trembling hands.
The cool, outward-spreading mental ripple from earlier… and Brother Qiang’s and the glasses guy’s reactions… imprinted themselves like a brand.
It wasn’t an illusion.
She turned sharply toward the still-unconscious Lin Chen deep in the cold storage.
On the ground around him, an almost imperceptible layer of frost had quietly formed, emanating a chilling cold.
Though far less terrifying than when it had previously gone out of control, the chill was undeniably real.
Radiation… source matter… superpower…
Lin Chen’s frost…
Her own… Mental Interference?
A wholly new, surreal yet painfully real vision of the apocalypse unfolded before her, accompanied by the violent pounding outside and the silent frost spreading beneath Lin Chen, all in rhythm with her heart pounding from fear and shock.
…
The heavy metal door blocked Brother Qiang’s furious roars and frantic pounding, but the dull “thud! thud!” of each hit struck Su Qianqian’s tense nerves like a hammer.
The cold air in the storage seemed to quiver with each vibration.
Su Qianqian slid down against the door, gasping, her heart racing uncontrollably in her chest.
Cold sweat ran down her temples, mixing with the dirt on her face, leaving icy streaks.
She looked down at her trembling hands. The strange sensation from the earlier uncontrollable mental ripple had not entirely dissipated.
Mental… interference?
Or… an emotional effect?
She could clearly feel Brother Qiang’s momentary shock and the glasses guy’s strange guilt.
It wasn’t an illusion.
Radiation brought… more than just Lin Chen’s terrifying frost.
A mix of shock, fear, and a peculiar excitement churned in her heart.
Yet the relentless, murderous pounding outside dragged her back to the cruel reality.
“Brother Qiang! The door’s hydraulic lock makes brute force ineffective from the outside. You need cutting tools!”
The glasses guy’s deliberately hushed but anxious voice drifted faintly through the door. “And… that feeling just now… something’s weird! That girl might…”
“Bullshit! She’s just a scared little girl!”
Brother Qiang interrupted him violently, his voice laced with the fury of a wounded beast.
“Smash it! Use axes! If that doesn’t work, burn it! I don’t believe we can’t break this tin! Whatever’s inside, and that girl, I’ll have them all!”
With his roar, the pounding intensified, interspersed with the screech of metal scraping under fire axes.
“Bang! Ssshhh—!”
Each strike made the heavy door vibrate violently, the insulation along the frame deforming, debris cascading down.
Clearly, Brother Qiang’s threats were no empty words—they were actively trying to force the door open.
Even the chef seemed forced to join the chopping.
The temperature in the cold storage seemed to drop a few degrees.
Su Qianqian’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach.
Time!
They were buying time to find tools or to force the door, and the heavy metal barrier was not unbreakable.
She turned sharply toward the still-unconscious Lin Chen deep in the cold storage.
On the metal mesh beneath him, the thin frost seemed to thicken and spread visibly, stimulated by the violent malice outside. The chilling aura silently expanded.
Frost… Lin Chen’s frost power.
While dangerously uncontrollable before, now…
An audacious, almost reckless thought formed in Su Qianqian’s mind, heightened by fear and the awakening of the strange power.
She would gamble!
She would wager that the violent frost within Lin Chen could be triggered again by external threats and… could be guided!
“Lin Chen! Lin Chen! Wake up! They’re coming!” Su Qianqian crawled to his side, knees scraping, breath ragged.
Her voice dripped with deliberate, extreme terror and desperation, shaking his icy shoulders. “They want to kill us! Take our things! They’re going to—”
Her words pierced like knives, targeting any lingering subconscious vigilance within Lin Chen.
At the same time, she concentrated all her mental energy inward, not outward.
Like predicting an assassin’s movements in a canyon, her consciousness honed intensely, trying to touch and feel the increasingly dense, cold, destructive energy field around Lin Chen.
She didn’t know precisely how, only that instinct guided her to channel all her will into the cold energy, shouting in her mind—
Block the door! Freeze it! Keep those bastards out!
“Ugh…”
Lin Chen, deeply unconscious, seemed to sense her intense will and the violent malice outside. His body spasmed sharply.
A suppressed, beast-like growl escaped his throat.
The thickly bandaged right arm, where the wound pulsed with strange bluish-black veins, twitched slightly as if alive.
Then, “crack! crack! crack!”
A sickening cascade of ice crystal formation sounded, dense as popcorn popping.
From Lin Chen’s body, a visible surge of ice-blue energy, accompanied by freezing white mist, burst outward like a dam breaking.
The energy did not scatter randomly but surged, guided by some invisible will, toward the metal door being relentlessly struck.
The ice-blue chill instantly enveloped the door, frame, and surrounding insulation.
The heavy metal became coated with a thick, crystal-clear layer of solid ice at remarkable speed.
The ice thickened and spread rapidly, crackling as it froze.
In just seconds, the entire door and a surrounding area over a meter across were sealed under half a foot of frost, radiating a deadly chill.
The ice surface was smooth as glass, reflecting the dim yellow light of the cold storage, forming a brilliant, solid barrier.
The chopping and shouting outside ceased abruptly.
In its place came ragged intakes of breath and muffled exclamations of shock.