352: Chapter 352 We'll fight again when they arrive

The warmth of the victory celebration had barely faded when the alarm sounded.

4:17 AM.

All thirty-six sensor nodes on the outer ring of the Shelter were triggered in the same second.

Red alarm lights flashed wildly in the corridors, and the piercing buzzing sound jolted everyone awake from their sleep.

Ling Shuanghan was the first to arrive at the command room.

She hadn't even had time to put on a coat.

She was only wearing a tight-fitting combat undershirt, her hair was loose, but her eyes were already completely clear.

The first thing her hundred-year military career had taught her—

Wake up within three seconds of the alarm sounding, and reach the command post within five seconds.

Xia Muqing was already at the console.

The holographic map was lit up, densely covered with red light points.

"It's not a beast horde."

Xia Muqing's voice was steady, but her fingers were trembling slightly as she typed.

"It's people. About 2,000 lifeforms, approaching rapidly from the northwest. Their speed far exceeds that of ordinary humans."

Ling Shuanghan's pupils constricted.

2,000 people.

Last time, the Ice Coffin Society sent 50 people, and Ji Wushuang burned them all to a crisp with a single fire.

This time, it was forty times that number.

"Activate the triple-ring defense."

Ling Shuanghan's voice had no fluctuations.

"Zhao Tieshan's military district, enter combat status. Qin Ziyan's Special Operations Team, take positions on the inner ring wall. Preheat all annihilation cannons."

Orders flowed down like water, and every unit was in position within thirty seconds.

This was the efficiency she had spent a great deal of time training for since she arrived.

The door to the command room was pushed open.

Lin Yuan walked in.

He was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt, and his hair was a bit messy.

He was holding a cup of hot tea—

It was unclear who had brewed it for him; the cup even had a cartoon penguin printed on it.

He walked to the holographic map and looked down at it.

2,000 red dots were approaching the Shelter at an extremely fast speed.

Then his gaze landed in the very center of the group of red dots.

There was one light point there that was different from all the others.

It wasn't red.

It was deep blue.

The intensity of its energy signal was stronger than the other 2,000 red dots combined.

"Frost Mother."

Luo Qinghan had arrived at some point as well.

She stood behind Lin Yuan, her voice tight.

"She came in person."

Lin Yuan held the cup with the cartoon penguin and took a sip of tea.

"Hmm."

Just one word.

Then, holding his teacup, he found a chair in the command room and sat down.

Ling Shuanghan turned her head and glanced at him.

Lin Yuan nodded at her, the meaning clear—you command, I drink tea.

Ling Shuanghan: "..."

She took a deep breath and pulled her gaze back to the holographic map.

Fine.

He could drink his tea.

She would fight her battle.

...

The 2,000 members of the Ice Coffin Society were harder to deal with than Ling Shuanghan had anticipated.

After the heat zone trap belt in the middle ring was activated, the effect was greatly diminished.

This batch of Ice Coffin Society members had clearly undergone deep frost modification—

Their skin was a translucent ice-blue, and their bodies were covered in a thin layer of ice-crystal armor.

Their tolerance to temperature differences far exceeded that of Evolved Beasts.

The heat zones could only slow them down; they couldn't cause effective damage.

But the ice-explosion traps were still useful.

Dense ice explosions detonated within the Ice Coffin Society crowd, and the shattered ice and shockwaves tore through the front ranks.

About 500 people were eliminated in the ice explosions, their severed limbs mixed with ice shards.

They paved a shocking blue-and-white carpet across the ice field.

The remaining 1,500 people continued to advance without slowing down in the slightest.

What was more troublesome was—

The figure at the very back of the group.

Frost Mother.

She walked very slowly.

Every step looked like she was taking a stroll.

But everywhere she passed, the heat zone traps in the middle ring simply failed—

Not destroyed, but frozen.

Those meticulously designed heating devices.

The moment Frost Mother passed by, their surfaces were covered in a thick layer of frost, turning them completely into scrap metal.

Ling Shuanghan stood on the city wall, watching the figure slowly approaching in the distance with her Clairvoyance.

Her hand tightened involuntarily around the hilt of her sword.

"Her strength... is at least SS-rank."

...

When the 1,500 Ice Coffin Society members rushed to the city wall, the annihilation cannons opened fire.

Golden beams shot out from the turrets on the city wall, plowing charred trenches into the ice field.

But the people of the Ice Coffin Society were not as dense as Evolved Beasts.

They moved in a dispersed manner, using every undulation and every ice stone on the ice field as cover to dodge the artillery fire.

About 300 people were eliminated by the annihilation cannons.

The remaining 1,200 people began to climb the city wall.

The battle on the city wall instantly entered a white-hot phase.

Qin Ziyan led the Special Operations Team to defend the front of the city wall.

Her Ultimate Enhancement was fully activated—

Muscles bulged beneath her skin, emitting a pale golden light.

Every punch she threw could directly shatter the ice-crystal armor on the Ice Coffin Society members.

Sending them flying off the city wall.

She fought very fiercely.

But also very rhythmically—

Changing positions every three punches, never staying in one spot for more than two seconds.

This was what Ling Shuanghan had taught her.

On the western section of the city wall, Murong Xueer's Stars Shifting formed a vortex of death around her.

Any Ice Coffin Society member who came within three meters of her.

Would be swept up by an invisible force and flung away.

A few unlucky ones were directly flung outside the city wall, crashing onto the ice field and creating humanoid craters.

Ji Wushuang was more direct.

She jumped off the city wall.

Nanming Li Fire burned on her body, turning her into a walking ball of flames.

She charged into the crowd of the Ice Coffin Society like a meteorite crashing into an ice sheet.

But this time, the people of the Ice Coffin Society didn't foolishly rush into the flames like they had last time.

They were dodging.

Dodging in an organized and disciplined manner.

Frost Mother had given them new instructions.

Zhao Tieshan's military district also joined the battle.

Tank cannons and heavy machine guns formed a net of fire around the perimeter of the city wall.

Although ordinary ammunition had limited effect on the ice-crystal armor.

The dense firepower was still able to suppress the climbing speed of the Ice Coffin Society.

The battle reached its tenth minute.

Frost Mother finally reached the front of the city wall.

She stopped, raised her head, and looked at the ten-meter-high everwinter alloy city wall in front of her.

Looking down from the city wall, her full appearance was finally clearly presented to everyone—

It was a woman.

Or rather, used to be a woman.

Now her body had been thoroughly modified by the frost curse.

Her skin was a translucent ice-blue, and one could see that what flowed beneath was not blood.

But some kind of glowing ice-blue liquid.

Her hair was made of white ice-crystal threads, making a faint tinkling sound in the wind.

Her eyes were pure white without pupils.

She raised her hand.

The movement was very light, as if swatting away a mosquito on her face.

But with just such a light wave—

A section of the everwinter alloy wall about fifty meters long let out an extremely sharp "crack."

And then, it shattered.

everwinter alloy.

Its hardness at minus 300 degrees is ten times that of alien alloy.

But Frost Mother's strike directly lowered the temperature of that section of the wall to below minus 400 degrees.

At that temperature, even everwinter alloy would become brittle.

Like glass.

A fifty-meter gap.

The defenders on the city wall were shaken, stumbling about, their eardrums buzzing.

The Ice Coffin Society members saw the gap.

They let out a roar of excitement, like sharks smelling blood, and swarmed in.

Ling Shuanghan blocked the front of the gap.

Frost Emperor Domain, fully activated.

Absolute zero at minus 273 degrees.

It erupted from her body, forming an invisible ice wall, blocking the first wave of the Ice Coffin Society's charge.

But—

Frost Mother moved too.

She simply extended a finger in Ling Shuanghan's direction.

An ice-blue beam of light shot out silently.

Ling Shuanghan's absolute zero domain was directly pierced through by this finger.

It was like a red-hot iron rod poking through a layer of thin ice.

Ling Shuanghan's body abruptly retreated ten steps.

Every step left deep cracks in the ground.

A trace of blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.

Absolute zero at minus 273 degrees, in front of Frost Mother—

Wasn't enough.

Ling Shuanghan gritted her teeth and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth.

She knew she couldn't block it.

But she wouldn't move aside.

Behind her was the Shelter. Those people who had just been singing at the victory celebration.

She raised her sword, preparing to meet Frost Mother's second strike—

"That's enough."

A voice came from behind.

Very calm.

So calm it was as if he were saying "It's my turn," or as if he were saying "The tea is finished."

Ling Shuanghan turned her head.

Lin Yuan stood behind her, still holding that cup with the cartoon penguin printed on it.

The tea in the cup was finished.

He handed the empty cup to a dumbfounded soldier nearby.

"Hold this for me."

The soldier mechanically took the cup, unable to say a word.

Lin Yuan walked past Ling Shuanghan and into the gap in the city wall.

He stood there, facing Frost Mother outside the city wall.

The distance between the two was about twenty meters.

Frost Mother's pure white eyes looked at him.

In her pupil-less eye sockets, there was no human emotion.

Only an instinctive perception coming from the deepest depths of the frost curse—

She sensed the thing inside Lin Yuan.

"The warmest spark."

Frost Mother spoke.

Her voice sounded like ice shards scraping against glass, sharp, piercing, carrying a penetrating power that made one feel cold to the bone.

"Must... be extinguished."

Lin Yuan didn't speak.

He just stood there, looking at Frost Mother.

Then—

He activated the Authority of Frost.

Without any flashy special effects.

No golden light bursting forth, no energy shockwaves, no changing of the heavens and earth.

Just—

The air changed.

The air around the gap became different in an instant.

Ling Shuanghan was the first to feel this change.

She was the heir to the Frost Emperor bloodline, and her perception of temperature was precise to 0.01 degrees.

But at this moment, her perception... failed.

It wasn't that the temperature was too high or too low.

It was that the very concept of temperature itself, around Lin Yuan, had been rewritten.

Frost Mother felt it too.

She raised her hand, attempting to release an ice-blue beam of light just as she had done to Ling Shuanghan earlier.

The beam shot out.

But—

Nothing happened.

After the ice-blue beam came into contact with the invisible rule-rewriting area around Lin Yuan.

It was like a drop of water falling into a bottomless abyss.

It disappeared.

It disappeared silently.

Frost Mother was stunned for the first time.

She tried again. This time using her full strength—

The temperature of the air around her plummeted.

Minus 300 degrees, 400 degrees, 500 degrees, far exceeding physical limits.

But that coldness, like a river trying to flow backward—

Was directly negated by some higher-level power.

The act of "cooling down" itself, in front of Lin Yuan, was cancelled.

In Frost Mother's pure white eyes, confusion appeared for the first time.

Then—

It was fear.

Lin Yuan began to walk towards her.

He walked very slowly.

With every step he took, a layer of the ice-crystal armor covering Frost Mother shattered.

"Crack."

One step.

"Crack."

Two steps.

"Crack."

Three steps.

Frost Mother was retreating.

An SSS-rank existence.

A monster that had made Ling Shuanghan bleed in ten steps.

In front of Lin Yuan, she retreated.

Lin Yuan walked up to her and stopped.

He looked into Frost Mother's eyes—

Those pupil-less, pure white eyes.

"Your 'god',"

Lin Yuan's voice was very soft, but it clearly reached everyone's ears.

"Has already been absorbed by me."

Frost Mother's body stiffened.

"The Icebound Body beneath the ice layer."

Lin Yuan said, "Is gone."

In Frost Mother's pure white eyes, cracks appeared.

Not physical cracks.

They were cracks of collapsing faith.

She opened her mouth and let out a sharp, extremely shrill roar.

There was no anger in that roar, only a pure, desperate emptiness.

Like a believer.

Who learned that the temple they had knelt before their entire life had been torn down one morning to be used as firewood.

Frost Mother turned around.

And ran.

The direction she ran was northwest.

And those 1,200 Ice Coffin Society members who were still trying to climb the city wall and rush into the gap.

The moment Frost Mother turned around, they all stopped their actions.

Like marionettes whose souls had been pulled out.

Then, they ran too.

Following Frost Mother, fleeing towards the northwest.

Like a flock of sheep driven by a sheepdog.

From Frost Mother reaching the city wall to the Ice Coffin Society fleeing in full retreat.

The whole process took no more than two minutes.

On the city wall, all the defenders, soldiers, and Ability Users.

Watching that sea of blue figures retreating like a tide, for a moment, there was dead silence.

Ling Shuanghan walked to Lin Yuan's side.

She wiped the blood that hadn't dried yet from the corner of her mouth with her sleeve, watching the direction in which the Ice Coffin Society was fleeing.

"She will go find the Ice City."

Ling Shuanghan said, "The Ice Coffin Society regards the Ice City as their new 'god'."

Lin Yuan glanced at the gray-hued horizon in the northwest.

"Let her go."

Ling Shuanghan was silent for a second.

"Aren't you worried that she will come back after she grows stronger?"

"I'll fight them when they come."

Lin Yuan turned around and walked towards the soldier who was still standing there dumbly, holding the cartoon penguin cup.

He took the cup, turned it over, and found that the tea had gone cold.

"Is there still hot water, Yanran?" he asked the person beside him.

Ling Shuanghan watched his back, the corner of her mouth twitching.

She had almost been poked into internal injury by Frost Mother's finger just now.

And this man's focus was that the tea had gone cold.

On the city wall, the female soldier who had helped Lin Yuan hold the cup.

Looked down at the cartoon penguin cup in her hand, then looked up at Lin Yuan's departing back.

She turned her head and, in a tone that felt like a lifetime ago, said to her equally stunned pretty female companion:

"Was that just now... real?"

The female companion was silent for a long time.

"The cup is real."

"I wasn't talking about the cup."

"I know."

The female companion swallowed, "But I only dare to confirm the cup."