Bai Zhuo set the indoor thermometer she’d dug out of the system inventory on the table. Unlike the thermometers sold in stores, this system-issued one could measure temperatures from plus to minus one hundred degrees Celsius, perfectly suited to the current situation.
Xue Yanhen came back after finishing the dishes, showing not the slightest hint of surprise at the thermometer, and instead asked whether Bai Zhuo wanted to rest a while longer.
Bai Zhuo shook her head. She looked toward the window, frost had already formed on the glass.
Too fast.
At a doubling pace, in a single day the temperature had already dropped to minus forty.
The gale howled with fury, driving snow that battered ceaselessly at the doors and windows, rattling the glass so hard it seemed it might give way and shatter at any moment.
Xue Yanhen carried down the mattress from the upstairs bedroom and set it against the wall in a corner of the living room.
Once done, she turned to look at Bai Zhuo, who was standing by the window.
“What are you looking at?”
“The snow. It’s really coming down.”
Xue Yanhen walked over and stood shoulder to shoulder with her.
Wind and snow had blanketed the whole world. They were both northerners, but a temperature and a situation like this were something they’d never experienced before.
Bai Zhuo placed a hand on the glass and could feel the bone-deep chill.
Night fell, and the storm grew fiercer still.
With the system’s reinforced insulation material, the indoor temperature hadn’t dropped to an unbearable level.
Bai Zhuo absently rubbed her fingertips together, a sign she was slightly on edge.
The house was warm and supplies were plentiful, but somehow, Bai Zhuo felt a faint unease.
The unease had come too suddenly and refused to be pushed down, gnawing at her and leaving her irritable.
Bai Zhuo abruptly threw off the blanket, drawing Xue Yanhen’s instinctive glance from the sofa.
“What is it?”
“Stay down here, I’m going up to take a look.”
When she’d scouted the whole house earlier, Bai Zhuo had noticed a door leading up to the roof, where there was a platform.
Bai Zhuo pulled a long, thick down coat from the system warehouse and threw it on, then hauled open the door to the rooftop platform. Wind and snow poured in at once, nearly knocking her over.
Cold instantly seized her whole body, and Bai Zhuo shivered violently.
The platform was already piled with thick snow. Bai Zhuo tested her footing, then, bracing against the wall, slowly made her way out toward the edge.
She narrowed her eyes, straining to make out the situation in the distance through the assault of wind and snow.
The storm masked all movement, but Bai Zhuo didn’t miss that one gleam of light not far off, and, set off starkly against the white snow, the black combat gear.
It was the squad she’d run into at the gas station!
Bai Zhuo swiftly turned and went back downstairs, telling Xue Yanhen what she’d seen.
Xue Yanhen didn’t bother asking where Bai Zhuo’s down coat had come from, only asking calmly, “You want to save them?”
Save them?
Bai Zhuo thought for a moment, then nodded. “I do. But I’m not the only one here now, I have to be responsible for both our safety.”
Xue Yanhen gave a soft laugh and turned to walk toward the door.
“What a coincidence. So do I.”
Gu Zhun was the captain of this squad. He’d led his team to the Yun City weather monitoring station to find someone, but by the time they arrived, the station had already fallen, every single staff member, without exception, had turned into a zombie, including their target.
Mission failed, they had to withdraw as a full team back to Ning City. But on the way back they ran into the extreme weather, their vehicle broke down outside Ning City, and they were forced to enter the city on foot.
The squad’s fire-type ability user was pale-faced. Her ability was only barely tier two, and holding out this long was already her limit.
But she never once withdrew her hand, because she knew that the moment she did, her teammates would all freeze to death in the storm.
Gu Zhun walked at the very front. The navigation had been rendered useless in the extreme cold, so they could only press on by instinct.
“Hey!”
Gu Zhun’s head snapped up. Not far ahead, the door of a house stood wide open, and beneath a warm yellow glow, someone was waving.
Was it a hallucination?
A hallucination before freezing to death?
Behind Gu Zhun, the tall, burly man narrowed his eyes and recognized her at once.
“Captain! It’s that girl from the gas station!”
Hallucinations couldn’t be shared, could they?
“Hurry! Come on over!”
Once all six of them were inside, Bai Zhuo shut the door with a “BANG—” and locked it.
The moment the warmth wrapped around them, Gu Zhun and the others all let out a long breath.
They’d made it back alive.
The girl who’d been sustaining the ability finally couldn’t hold on any longer, her body went limp and she started to collapse.
Xue Yanhen reached out and caught her steadily, sparing her the misfortune of hitting the floor.
Bai Zhuo rubbed her face. From just standing at the door for that little while, the wind had cut into her like a knife and taught her a harsh lesson.
Gu Zhun, having recovered somewhat, looked at Bai Zhuo and thanked her in a low voice.
Bai Zhuo shook her head. “You helped us out too.”
Over there, Xue Yanhen had already laid the unconscious girl on the sofa, while the others watched anxiously.
“She probably passed out from overusing her ability. She’ll be fine after some rest.”
Bai Zhuo opened the hiking pack in the corner and dug out some compressed biscuits.
She’d saved them, but there was no guarantee how they’d react once they suspected she might be a space-type ability user. So hot water was out of the question, compressed biscuits were already generous.
“Got a bottle?” asked a somewhat slight young man from the back.
Bai Zhuo handed him an empty bottle, and then watched a clear liquid gradually appear inside it.
Hm. Water, presumably.
Bai Zhuo mulled it over, a special-ops team possibly made up entirely of ability users. Quite the lineup.
Gu Zhun hesitated before accepting the compressed biscuits. “Once the storm stops tomorrow, we’ll head out to look for supplies.”
Bai Zhuo gave an acknowledging hum, then turned and walked to the other side.
The two groups took the sofa as a dividing line, each occupying half of the living room.
The warm yellow glow Gu Zhun had seen earlier came from a rescue glow stick Bai Zhuo had pulled out. Once its light died away, the house sank into darkness again.
Gu Zhun sat holding the compressed biscuits, lost in thought. The room was so warm. It wasn’t that they hadn’t thought of finding a house to shelter from the storm, but the houses they’d entered earlier had been cold as ice cellars, no one could stay in them.
Gu Zhun flexed his hand, the near-frozen feeling from before had vanished.
He raised his head and looked at Bai Zhuo across the way with a probing gaze.
Bai Zhuo, under his scrutiny, looked as though she were resting with her eyes closed, but she was actually communicating with the system.
For no other reason than that, once Gu Zhun and the others had come in, the system had issued a mission related to them.
The mission reward was quite generous.
Bai Zhuo was curious. 【System, is there someone very important among them?】
【This System doesn’t know~】
Bai Zhuo really wanted to give the system an eye-roll. Wasn’t this obviously fishy?
“Um…”