350: Chapter 350 It's useless to earn money

The moment Lin Yuan placed his hand on it, the atmosphere in the ice cave changed.

It didn't become more tense.

It became quieter.

That kind of quiet was like the air before a heavy rain—

All sounds were suppressed by something much larger; even the ticking sound of water seeping from the ice walls vanished.

Ling Shuanghan gripped her sword, standing three steps behind Lin Yuan.

Her Frost Emperor Domain was half-open, ready to deal with any sudden situation at any time.

This was an instinct formed over her one-hundred-year military career—

To always maintain the highest level of alertness in the face of an absolutely unknown threat.

But her eyes fell involuntarily upon Lin Yuan's back.

That back was very relaxed.

Broad shoulders, slightly hunched, showing no signs of gathering strength.

It looked just like someone leaning over a table, casually opening a delivery box.

...

Golden light began to spread from Lin Yuan's palm.

It wasn't an explosion, nor an impact.

It was that kind of slow, confident infiltration.

Like ink dropping into clear water, spreading out in circles.

The deep blue energy vortex inside the ice crystal felt this intrusion and began to tremble violently.

That was instinctive resistance.

A massive existence that had accumulated for who knows how many years.

It let out a final roar as it was forcibly dismantled by another power.

But to Lin Yuan, this roar was probably about the same as the whistling of a boiling kettle.

He simply pressed his hand down tighter.

"Gurgle—"

A visible torrent of deep blue energy began to pour back into Lin Yuan's body along his arms.

It wasn't a trickling stream.

It was a bursting dam.

Ling Shuanghan watched that torrent of energy, her throat tightening.

She had seen powerful individuals absorb a crystal core.

That was an extremely delicate process that required total concentration; the slightest carelessness would result in a backlash.

At best, it would cause severe injury; at worst, it would cause the body to explode.

But Lin Yuan...

While absorbing, Lin Yuan turned his head and gestured with his chin at the pile of ice sand and broken bones on the ground that had been crushed by the earlier spatial pressure.

"Sweep the ground."

Ling Shuanghan: "...What?"

"That pile of stuff."

Lin Yuan's gaze returned to the ice crystal, his tone flat.

"It looks a bit messy, it affects my mood."

Ling Shuanghan was silent for a full three seconds.

She looked down at the pile of remains on the ground, then at the two frost longswords in her hands.

Then she raised her head and looked at Shen Bingtong with an extremely complex expression.

Shen Bingtong happened to be looking at her too.

Their gazes met in the air.

Neither spoke.

But they both understood what the other meant—

This person is serious.

Ling Shuanghan took a deep breath and sheathed her swords.

She crouched down and began using her Frost Emperor Domain to freeze the remains on the ground into neat little blocks.

Pushing them, piece by piece, into the corner.

She, the highest military commander of the Everwinter World, Ling Shuanghan.

Was currently three hundred meters underground, cleaning up the battlefield for a man who was absorbing the source of the Apocalypse.

Shen Bingtong stood where she was.

She watched Ling Shuanghan's back for a while, then looked at her own hands.

The cleanser fragment inside her was unusually active in this environment.

Silver energy flowed beneath her skin, as if ready to erupt at any moment.

She had originally wanted to use this power to do something more meaningful.

For example, to fend off a potential new wave of evolved beings.

For example, to provide some kind of protection for Lin Yuan's absorption process.

But the ice cave was now unusually quiet.

Those evolved beings that had run away were clearly truly terrified; not a single one dared to return.

Shen Bingtong stood for a while, feeling like a martial artist left on stage only to find that their opponent hadn't shown up.

She eventually walked over too.

Crouching next to Ling Shuanghan, she used her silver energy to directly erase the ice blocks Ling Shuanghan pushed over.

The two of them cooperated with unexpected tacit understanding.

One froze, the other erased.

The efficiency was extremely high.

As Ling Shuanghan swept, she suddenly stopped and turned her head to glance at Shen Bingtong.

"That ability of yours... the one that can erase existence, you're just using it like this?"

Shen Bingtong paused, then said calmly: "There is no place that needs it more right now."

Ling Shuanghan was silent for a moment.

"...My Absolute Zero doesn't have a place that needs it more right now either."

The two looked at each other for a second.

Then they both lowered their heads and continued sweeping.

A kind of strange empathy, transcending their opposing stances, quietly formed at this moment.

Both were people who had been "dimensionally reduced" by this man.

...

Lin Yuan's absorption speed was much faster than Ling Shuanghan had anticipated.

That fifty-meter diameter ice crystal was shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Fifty meters.

Thirty meters.

Twenty meters.

Like a piece of ice placed under the sun, only this "sun" was Lin Yuan's palm.

Lin Yuan's constitution data was jumping wildly in his mind.

constitution: 253,000... 310,000... 380,000... 450,000.

Spiritual Power: 300,000... 360,000... 430,000... 500,000.

The system's notification sounds were as dense as a machine gun.

Lin Yuan was too lazy to look at them one by one.

He just felt the sense of fullness spreading from his bone marrow as that torrent of energy poured into his body.

"The purity of this energy is a bit lacking."

He evaluated in his mind, his tone like a diner being picky about ingredients in a buffet.

"There are too many impurities; it tastes a bit astringent. But the quantity is large, it's filling."

When the ice crystal shrank to only ten meters, Lin Yuan felt something unusual.

It wasn't from the ice crystal itself.

It was from the bottom of the ice crystal.

There was a tiny crack there, and the light shining through the crack was not deep blue.

It was silver.

Lin Yuan's eyes flickered slightly.

He recognized this silver.

He had seen it in Shen Bingtong's eyes. He had seen it on that cleanser Vanguard.

He did not stop his absorption.

He just diverted part of his attention, focusing on sensing the information coming from the crack.

In his mind, a set of images flashed by like a revolving lantern—

A massive silver existence sealing a fragment into the ice crystal.

The sealing action was very careful, very solemn, as if burying a seed.

This was a beacon.

Regularly sending Blue Star's coordinates, civilization level, and the status of the authority fragment to some distant place.

The cleanser's eye.

Buried under Blue Star for who knows how many years.

"Oh."

Lin Yuan's lips curled up slightly.

"So there's a buy-one-get-one-free."

Shen Bingtong was bending over, sweeping.

She suddenly felt the fluctuation of that silver energy and jerked her head up.

"That is a cleanser beacon!"

Her voice carried a rare hint of urgency.

"Lin Yuan, that thing is corrosive; if you touch it, you will—"

"I know."

Lin Yuan calmly interrupted her.

"So I'm going to eat it."

Shen Bingtong froze.

Ling Shuanghan also stopped what she was doing, raised her head, and looked at Lin Yuan's back with an expression that said, "Did I hear that right?"

"Eat it?"

Ling Shuanghan repeated, "That is a cleanser beacon. The corrosiveness of that thing—"

"I heard you, corrosiveness."

Lin Yuan's tone remained calm.

Even carrying a bit of nonchalance.

"But it only corrodes ordinary people."

He paused.

"I am not an ordinary person."

This sentence was spoken without any sense of showing off, just like stating an objective fact.

Just like saying, "The weather is nice today."

Ling Shuanghan opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but ultimately didn't say it.

She couldn't find a reason to refute it.

She had seen too many "not ordinary" powerful individuals fail in the face of the cleanser's power.

But she had also seen Lin Yuan scare thousands of A-grade evolved beings into scrambling away with just a single word: "Scram."

She no longer knew where the boundary between "ordinary" and "not ordinary" lay for this man.

Perhaps, there was no boundary at all.

...

Silver energy gushed out from the crack, rushing straight at Lin Yuan.

That energy carried a strong, almost instinctive repulsion—

The cleanser beacon naturally had a corrosive and assimilating effect on all non-cleanser existences.

But the moment it collided with the golden authority fragment inside Lin Yuan.

It was like a small stream crashing into a dam.

The golden light suddenly flared bright.

It wrapped around that silver energy, beginning to forcibly dismantle and convert it.

In this process, the beacon was like someone grabbed by the collar, struggling desperately.

Lin Yuan felt that struggle, his expression unchanged.

He simply pressed his hand down tighter.

"Stop struggling."

He said in his heart.

"Struggling is useless."

The silver light grew fainter and fainter within the gold.

Finally, it disappeared completely.

In Lin Yuan's mind, the last trace of signal connection before the beacon vanished.

It was like a thin thread, leading to some distant place, who knows how many thousands of light-years away.

He stared at that thin thread for a second.

Then, with a very mischievous sense of humor, he sent a signal composed of a thought along that thread to the other side.

Not text.

Not an image.

It was just a simple, golden, incredibly clear—

Middle finger.

"Pulling out your nail, and saying hello while I'm at it."

He said in his heart, his tone as relaxed as if he were sending a message to an old friend.

The thin thread broke.

The beacon disappeared completely.

...

Five minutes.

Exactly five minutes, no more, no less.

That huge ice crystal, fifty meters in diameter and floating for who knows how many years, along with the cleanser beacon sealed inside, was eaten clean by Lin Yuan.

Not a single scrap was left.

In the ice cave, the mass of deep blue light that had originally been floating in the center disappeared.

Along with it disappeared the "core" of the entire ice cave.

There was silence for about two seconds.

Then, the first crack appeared on the dome.

"Crack—"

The sound wasn't loud, but in this confined space, it sounded like some kind of verdict.

Immediately followed by a second, a third.

Broken ice began to fall from the dome, hitting the ground with a dull roar.

Ling Shuanghan stood up abruptly, her Frost Emperor Domain fully opened, protecting the three of them overhead.

"Retreat!"

Her voice carried an unquestionable sense of command.

A hundred years of military instinct took full control of her body at this moment.

But just as she shouted this word, she felt the air around her move.

Lin Yuan straightened his body.

He looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers, as if confirming whether the "meal" just now had been eaten clean.

Then, he let out a burp.

Not loud, but very solid.

Ling Shuanghan: "..."

Shen Bingtong: "..."

The ice blocks overhead fell more and more densely, and the entire ice cave began to collapse at an irreversible speed.

Lin Yuan casually made a slash in the air.

"Rip—"

A spatial rift appeared in front of the three.

On the other side of the rift was the corridor of the Shelter.

The warm yellow light, and the rich aroma of red oil hot pot base drifting from Chu Yanran's kitchen at the end of the corridor.

"Let's go."

Lin Yuan stepped in first, his tone calm, as if finishing an ordinary outing.

"That wasn't the main course; at most, it was an appetizer."

Ling Shuanghan and Shen Bingtong stepped into the rift simultaneously.

"Whoosh!"

The spatial rift closed.

Behind them, the huge ice cave three hundred meters underground completely collapsed, and endless darkness and broken ice buried everything.

And the man who had ended it all.

Walked into the corridor of the Shelter, raised his hand to take a cup of hot tea handed over by Ye Qingxue, and took a sip.

"How was it?" Ye Qingxue asked.

"It was okay," Lin Yuan said, "just a bit astringent."

Ye Qingxue looked at him, then at Ling Shuanghan and Shen Bingtong, who were following behind him with somewhat vacant expressions.

She didn't ask any more questions.

She just turned and walked toward the kitchen.

"Chu Yanran, bring out that plate of beef; he's back."

In the corridor, Ling Shuanghan stood where she was, watching Lin Yuan's back as he took the hot tea and drank it nonchalantly.

She had lived in the Everwinter World for one hundred years.

She had seen countless powerful individuals.

She had seen countless desperate situations, and had seen "this time it's really over" countless times.

But she had never seen a person.

Who could make "eating the source of the Apocalypse" look as ordinary as going downstairs to buy a bag of salt.

She suddenly remembered what Lin Yuan had said before they set off—

"With me here, you only need to think about what to eat after you come up tomorrow."

At the time, she thought it was a casual consolation.

Now she understood.

That was not consolation.

That was fact.

Ling Shuanghan lowered her head and looked at her own hands.

These hands had gripped swords countless times in the Everwinter World, killed countless monsters, and sent off countless companions.

But today, the main job of these hands was sweeping the ground for someone three hundred meters underground.

She was silent for a long time.

Then, she raised her head and looked at the back at the end of the corridor who was drinking tea.

The corners of her mouth, unknowingly, curved up a little.

As long as he is here.

This Apocalypse, it seems, is really nothing to be afraid of.