166: Life's tough? Time to explore the Arctic Ocean!

Behind him were tens of thousands of soldiers.

There were also thousands of researchers making various preparations.

Further away, the snow-white fur of an arctic fox almost blended into the ice sheet, with only its amethyst-like eyes giving it away—this creature, known by the Inuit as the 'Snow Soul,' was intently staring at a lemming burrow beneath the ice.

Just as Lu Chen was staring intently at a deep pit not far away!

The Grand Elder walked over at this moment and asked, 'Mr. Lu, shall we continue digging?'

'Yes.' Lu Chen nodded. 'Continue until we get close, then we will descend.'

'Understood.' The Grand Elder continued to carry out the instructions.

Lu Chen admired the Arctic scenery while also contemplating his next move.

Not far away, when a polar bear, fully three meters long, slowly stood up from behind an ice floe, Lu Chen seemed to hear the crisp sound of ice forming inside his thermal suit.

In fact, the thermal suit had no real meaning for him, but fortunately, it was the uniform.

In the distance, this polar bear's golden-brown pupils reflected the desolation of the entire ice sheet.

The debris kicked up by its front paws striking the ice surface was like a miniature avalanche. This made me suddenly understand why the ancients revered the polar bear as the hegemon of the icy sea—when it turned and leapt into the freezing sea to hunt seals, its fluid muscle lines reminded me of silver lightning racing across the snowfield.

A polar bear seemed to notice Lu Chen and wanted to launch a dangerous attack.

But Lu Chen merely released a terrifying Aura, instantly scaring the polar bear so much that it scrambled away in a frantic retreat.

Lu Chen smiled and thought to himself, 'Fortunately, this place hasn't been completely contaminated, otherwise these white bear cubs would be in trouble.'

He tossed the snow in his hand into his mouth, and it instantly transformed into an ice wall, blocking the wind and snow blowing in front of Lu Chen.

Lu Chen turned and left the place.

As the excavation deepened, some researchers gradually began to decipher the light and shadow codes of the Arctic.

They discovered that under the heavenly dao contamination, the powerful natural laws here were still working to save and restore the deep-sea ecosystem.

At noon, the sun would trace a standard elliptical path on the sky screen, causing the ice surface to shift into a new color spectrum every two hours: from misty blue mixed with rose gold, to silver-gray with hints of emerald green, and finally settling into a mysterious hue between cobalt blue and indigo.

Occasionally, drifting wisps of clouds would be ignited by the low-angle sunlight, forming fiery clouds that stretched across the horizon, elongating people's shadows into giants spanning three ice hills.

As night gradually fell, the aurora remained the most breathtaking sight. Under the heavenly dao contamination, the edges of the aurora here possessed a certain black ribbon-like quality.

On an instrument monitoring auroral particles, emerald green light bands tore through the sky screen, followed immediately by ribbons of crimson, deep purple, and cobalt blue, twisting and deforming crazily under the effect of magnetic storms—and at its center was a black vortex of light.

These solar wind particles, coming from 150 million kilometers away, were currently performing a cosmic tango 80 kilometers above their heads, turning the ionosphere into a disco for the gods.

The Heavenly Dao was using such natural phenomena to implement its will. Fortunately, however, it could not control everything.

The instrument recorded this four-hour high-energy particle rain, which nearly left the retinas of some personnel scorched by the afterimages of the light trails.

However, because everyone was well-equipped, they had all put on their snow goggles during such times.

There was still some time before the descent. At this moment, China's nuclear submarine had also been dispatched and was surfaced and moored on the ice not far away.

After the commander on board came to report to Lu Chen, Lu Chen ordered them to stand by at all times. He also had several water-element Grand Magisters board the submarine with them, as this would help them at critical moments.

'Mr. Lu, our excavation site is beneath a village.' 'What do you mean?' The Grand Elder led Lu Chen to take a look.

In the abandoned Inuit village, whale-bone harpoons half-buried in the snow and ice allowed one to touch the wisdom of humans surviving in this desperate environment.

In the ochre murals remaining on the walls of the stone houses, the ancients recorded stories of the aurora and the icy sea with concise lines, while the silver-white dome of the modern scientific research station twinkled twenty kilometers away, like a future capsule that had fallen onto the snowfield.

I looked at the place and asked, 'Can't it be destroyed?' 'This is a civilization site...' 'Don't worry, destroy it first, it doesn't matter; I will take responsibility.'

I collected three-million-year-old glacial meltwater from a small pit not far away and said very calmly. For these so-called civilizations, I had no pity. They were inherently insignificant.

At this moment, Lu Chen realized that he was standing at the intersection of time and space—holding the legacy of the Quaternary glaciation in his left hand and the fate of the future human era in his right. Therefore, he knew very well how to decide.

When twilight descended (if twilight truly existed during the polar day), Lu Chen stood on the brightly lit top of an ice hill, gazing at the horizon.

His eyes could see the lights of oil drilling platforms flickering three hundred nautical miles away, and the black silhouettes of cargo ships cutting through the ice floes on the newly opened Arctic shipping route. These tentacles of human civilization reminded Lu Chen of the predictions in the previous scientific research report: by the summer of 2040, the Arctic Ocean might face a completely ice-free state.

Such a rapid situation was precisely because of the heavenly dao contamination below. If it was not solved quickly, humanity would have no future.

Amidst the whimpering of the wind passing by his ears, Lu Chen seemed to hear the ancient ice cores weeping, and the melting snow in his hand was quietly rewriting the future of this blue planet.

'Human civilization is now in my hands... old friends!' Lu Chen looked up at the polar sky. He was filled with emotion. Alone. All by himself. Between heaven and earth, he was the only one. One hundred thousand years had passed.

Deep in the Arctic Ocean shrouded in polar night, Lu Chen ignited a ghostly blue phosphorus fire at his fingertips, carving the last piece of ice floe into a hexagonal key.

Shelley, wrapped in a silver fox fur cloak, knelt on the ice, the ice crystal condensing at the tip of her staff resonating with the distant glacier, producing a low-frequency vibration.

'Are you sure you want to awaken that legend?' The dark gold patterns flowing on the Undead Monarch's bones suddenly stalled, and the Soul Fire in its eye sockets turned toward the glacial rift three nautical miles away, which resembled the fangs of a giant beast. 'The Polar Abyss Sea Eye, frozen three hundred years ago, is a hundred times more dangerous than the 'Royal Trial Grounds' your ancestors spoke of.'

'There is no choice. This time, we must destroy the heavenly dao contamination, so we might as well use the Secret Realm to trigger a magical riot!'

Shelley's fingertips brushed over the cracks in the royal emblem on her staff, her ice-blue pupils reflecting the eternal night aurora. 'The Ice Soul Bead left behind by my mother is still in the deepest part of the Secret Realm! This time I am not alone. I believe this is my home—and you are here too!'

When she suddenly said this Eastern term in Chinese, the frost and snow condensed into plum blossom shapes in the air. 'You also said you would help me take back everything that was taken from me, and also help remove the heavenly dao contamination here. This is my home, I believe in you, Lu Chen.'