14: Low temperature zone

Cold.

Bone-chilling cold.

At least five degrees lower than outside the industrial park.

The wind cut across his face like a knife, forcing Qin Lin to pull up his scarf to cover his nose and mouth.

They stepped through the accumulated snow and entered the building.

Flashlight beams sliced through the darkness.

The lobby was a mess: the front desk had collapsed, and documents were scattered across the floor, all frozen in ice.

Commemorative plaques hung on the wall; the people in the photos had bright smiles, forming a cruel contrast with the current deathly silence.

Qin Lin walked straight toward the elevator bank—the elevators definitely wouldn't work, so he was looking for the emergency exit.

The stairwell was even colder.

The iron handrails felt like red-hot branding irons to the touch.

Under extreme low temperatures, metal creates the illusion of burning.

Qin Lin carefully avoided them, heading up step by step.

The second floor was the laboratory area.

Through the glass walls, lab benches, instruments, and incubators were visible.

Most of the instruments were damaged, their screens covered in frost.

Qin Lin stopped at the entrance of a laboratory and shone his flashlight inside.

There was something in the incubators.

Frozen plant specimens, strangely colored culture fluids, and—the corpses of several white mice, frozen in the poses they held at the moment of death.

"What... were they researching here?"

Su Yuran asked in a low voice.

"I don't know," Qin Lin said, "but it's definitely not what we're looking for."

He assessed the temperature.

Although it was cold here, there wasn't much difference compared to the outside.

If a crystal stone existed, it should be in a place where the temperature anomaly was more significant.

They continued upward.

Third floor, fourth floor, fifth floor... the temperature continued to drop.

By the time they reached the sixth floor, the breath Qin Lin exhaled instantly turned into ice crystals, pattering onto the floor.

"It's too cold..."

Su Yuran's teeth chattered.

"I feel like... my lungs are hurting..."

Qin Lin glanced at a thermometer.

He had brought a portable one; it showed -48°C.

This was already approaching the limit for short-term human exposure.

"Go back," he decided decisively.

The two returned the way they came.

Going down was harder than going up because the stairs were iced over and very slippery.

Su Yuran almost fell, but Qin Lin caught her just in time.

When they got back to the vehicle, both of their faces were blue from the cold.

Qin Lin turned the heater to its maximum setting, and it took several minutes before they recovered.

"Why... was it so cold there?"

Su Yuran was wrapped in a blanket, still shivering.

"Maybe..." Qin Lin looked at the building outside the window, "something is absorbing heat or releasing cold."

He started the vehicle and continued driving deeper into the industrial park.

Over the next two days, they repeated the same process:

Driving to find temperature anomalies, getting out to investigate, finding nothing, and returning to the vehicle to warm up.

Survival supplies were dwindling.

On the evening of the second day, Qin Lin took inventory:

12 bags of Compressed Biscuits left, 16 packs of Instant Noodles, and 15 bottles of mineral water.

If they rationed, they could last a few more days, but after that, they would have to risk going further afield to find food.

Or complete the mission to get the food reward from the RV.

Worse still, energy was down to [41/100].

"We must find the crystal stone tomorrow."

Qin Lin looked at the System interface.

"Otherwise, we'll have to find a place to hunker down long-term."

Su Yuran didn't speak.

She sat on the bed, looking at the darkening sky outside the window, her eyes somewhat hollow.

In two days of searching, she had seen too much death and despair.

Elderly people frozen stiff by the roadside, men brawling over half a bottle of water.

Children curled up in the ruins waiting for death... every sight wore away at her hope of "returning to normal."

"Qin Lin."

She suddenly spoke, "Do you think this disaster will ever end?"

Qin Lin remained silent.

In his past life, he had only lived for a year and didn't know the answer.

But he knew that, at least during that year, the disaster had not ended; instead, it had intensified, accompanied by other climate catastrophes.

Order had not been restored, and the world grew more cruel by the day.

"I don't know," he finally said. "But whether it ends or not, we have to survive."

"Survive..."

Su Yuran murmured the word.

"Just to survive?"

"Only by surviving will we have the chance to see the answer."

Qin Lin walked over to her side and sat down.

"Besides, living itself has meaning. Breathing, a heartbeat, feeling warmth and cold, experiencing joy and pain—these are all privileges that only the living have."

Su Yuran turned her head to look at him.

"The way you talk... sometimes doesn't sound like a twenty-year-old."

Qin Lin smiled slightly and didn't explain.

Of course he didn't.

His body was twenty, but his Soul had experienced a year of the Apocalypse, died once, and then achieved Rebirth.

That kind of experience would age a person rapidly.

"Go to sleep," he said. "We'll keep looking tomorrow."

The third day of searching for the crystal stone.

The sixth day of the seven-day survival mission.

Qin Lin drove to the deepest part of the industrial park.

There was an isolated factory area here, with high walls and tightly closed gates.

The sign on the gate read "Special Materials R&D Center."

The characters were covered in frost, barely legible.

Even more striking was the temperature.

The external thermometer showed: -51°C.

This was the lowest temperature Qin Lin had recorded since entering the industrial park.

And this temperature was consistent—he parked the car at the gate for ten minutes, and the reading didn't fluctuate.

"This is it," Qin Lin said.

He tried to open the main gate.

The iron gate was frozen shut, the keyhole filled with thick ice.

Qin Lin used Hydraulic Shears to cut the chain, and he and Su Yuran pushed it open together.

The hinges made a piercing grinding sound, as if they hadn't moved in a long time.

Behind the gate was a vast factory area.

Several huge workshops were arranged neatly, with wide paths between them covered in thick snow.

But the snow here was different.

The color wasn't an ordinary white, but a faint, almost transparent blue.

The ice layer was also thicker.

Qin Lin got out of the car and tapped the ground with his Entrenching Shovel.

The shovel only dug in a few centimeters; beneath was rock-hard ice.

He squatted down to observe closely and found subtle patterns inside the ice layer, spreading like leaf veins and shimmering with a faint blue light.

"This ice... glows?"

Su Yuran saw it too.

"It's not the ice glowing," Qin Lin said. "There's something beneath the ice layer."

He stood up and looked around.

The factory area was too large; searching through every workshop wasn't realistic, especially in this extreme cold.

They could only stay outdoors for a few minutes at most before hypothermia set in.

"Back to the car."

"We'll drive around the factory area and see if there's any place even more abnormal."

The two returned to the vehicle.

Qin Lin started the engine and slowly drove into the factory area.

The wheels rolled over the blue ice, making a crisp crunching sound.

The snow was pushed aside, revealing a deeper blue beneath.

The closer they got to the center of the factory area, the deeper the blue and the thicker the ice.

When they reached the third workshop, the thermometer jumped to -55°C.

Qin Lin stopped the vehicle.

This was already the center of the factory area.

Ahead was a building even larger than the other workshops, with a sign hanging at the entrance: "Superconducting Materials Laboratory."

Icicles hung from the metal edges of the sign, each half a meter long, like the teeth of a monster.

And the temperature—Qin Lin glanced at the reading, his pupils shrinking slightly.

-61°C.

At this temperature, humans are not suited for outdoor exposure.

Even the RV issued a warning:

[Warning: Low external temperature, life-threatening danger if going outside]

[Suggestion: Leave the current area as soon as possible]

But Qin Lin did not leave.

Because he saw it.