Nan Yue clearly heard Tan Xiaonan gasp behind her. Looking around, she saw that almost every iceberg along the path was beginning to crack, and countless corpses were crawling toward the three of them, emitting a chilling mist.
The scene was so magnificent and terrifying that all three of them were momentarily stunned where they sat.
"How... how are we supposed to get through this? We're still so far from the Devil's Bay!"
Tan Xiaonan looked at the distant mast, which seemed just as far away as before, and felt like she was on the verge of tears. They weren't even sure they could have rowed there before, and now with these corpses crawling out to block the waterway, it seemed impossible.
The white mist exhaled by the three of them grew thicker. Even Nan Yue and Jiang Siyan began to feel their limbs stiffen and their consciousness slow down.
Nan Yue tossed her oar aside and turned to look at Tan Xiaonan.
Tan Xiaonan shrank her neck, wondering why Nan Yue was looking at her at a moment like this.
Did she want to throw her overboard?
But even if she were gone, the boat wouldn't move much faster.
Tan Xiaonan's thoughts were becoming increasingly sluggish. She didn't even feel much fear anymore, only that the blood flowing through her body had slowed to a crawl.
Am I that heavy?
Is the boat moving so slowly because of me?
As Tan Xiaonan was lost in her wandering thoughts, Nan Yue called out to her.
"Do you think our distance from the mast has changed at all since we started?"
Tan Xiaonan stared at the white frost forming on Nan Yue's eyelashes, thinking how beautiful it looked.
After a moment, she slowly shook her head. "It doesn't... seem like it."
Nan Yue asked again, "Then do you think we can row there in five minutes?"
This time, Tan Xiaonan shook her head decisively. It was impossible, because they would all freeze to death here long before five minutes passed.
Wait... but why isn't Nan Yue worried at all?
And that man was just looking at Nan Yue with a smile, showing no urgency either.
Are high-level players really that indifferent to life and death?
"So, you see, this was a mission that couldn't be completed from the very start. Especially with these..."
The corpses struggled out of the icebergs, their blue-purple, frozen hands reaching out to grab the boat.
A corpse whose neck was half-severed met Tan Xiaonan's gaze, its eyeballs frozen into a cloudy white.
Tan Xiaonan didn't know which was worse: freezing to death or being dragged underwater by these corpses.
"I've realized this mission really loves mental attacks..."
Nan Yue leaned back. "When we're clearly already on the ship..."
Tan Xiaonan's brain, which was practically turning into ice crystals, slowly processed the words. "On the ship..."
Nan Yue glanced at her. With her hair and eyelashes covered in frost and snow, she looked even more cold and detached.
"That's right. We've been on the ship this whole time."
"Or rather, we've been in the theater this whole time."
Almost as soon as Nan Yue finished speaking, Tan Xiaonan noticed the scenery around them shift. The bitter cold, the icebergs, and the stiff corpses vanished instantly.
They were standing on the theater stage. On the stage was a simple iceberg set made of fabric, and they had been inside it just moments ago.
Nan Yue didn't see anyone else on the stage, meaning the others had not yet escaped the hallucination.
She jumped off the stage and sat in the front row, feeling a bit worried.
She wasn't worried about Zhu Xi Ning, but Gu Xiang Kai and Wen Xiang Yuan were a different story...
If they didn't realize it was a hallucination and kept struggling inside, they would be frozen to death by the illusion even if they could resist the attacks of the ice corpses.
Therefore... whether they could get out was a matter of only a few minutes.
Zhu Xi Ning's boat was the next to emerge. Zhu Xi Ning didn't seem surprised that it was an illusion and jumped off the stage as soon as she returned.
"A-Nan!"
Nan Yue patted her. "Good job."
Zhu Xi Ning tilted her chin up and huffed. "Of course. I realized there was no real danger once I got there. Neither those ice corpses nor that place posed a direct threat."
"It was different from the previous nights. This proves that the place just now didn't even have anything capable of threatening us."
Zhu Xi Ning shrugged. "So, with a little thought, it was obvious it was a hallucination."
Nan Yue felt greatly relieved. This was the advantage of an intuition-based awakened ability user. Although Zhu Xi Ning's foresight was still somewhat uncontrolled, her intuition was also part of her power and a very useful one at that.
"It's just that one person on our boat didn't make it back."
Zhu Xi Ning's expression turned somewhat grim as she said this. Nan Yue noticed that ever since Zhu Xi Ning had obtained the Ant Mask and discovered her alternate personality, her character had become somewhat temperamental.
She would have to find an opportunity to ask Jiang Siyan about it.
"That man wouldn't believe me no matter what I said. He even planned to jump in and swim to the Devil's Bay."
Sharing the boat with Zhu Xi Ning were her roommate Su Qian and a man named Wang Yaxu. Since Su Qian lived with Zhu Xi Ning every day, she naturally trusted her.
But others probably wouldn't dare gamble their lives on the advice of a stranger.
"By the way, A-Nan, did you notice? The adventures in this mission all have something in common."
Nan Yue nodded. "They truly are adventures designed to select qualified explorers."
In the three missions they had experienced so far, the tests focused more on a scavenger's calmness and rationality.
While it was true that one could use violence to pass, the core requirement was for the scavengers to remain calm and ensure their psychological value remained stable.
Nan Yue thought of the notebook she had found, which also mentioned that a qualified explorer needed to be calm and brave.
She wondered if the subsequent adventures would also test these specific qualities.
Others began to emerge one after another. The benefit of this adventure was that if one teammate discovered the key to passing, they could largely bring the others out with them.
After Bi Danyuan and Wen Xiang Yuan came out, Bi Danyuan sat behind Nan Yue.
"Your new teammate is quite impressive."
Nan Yue smiled. "Yes, she is."
"It's my first time seeing a scavenger who judges whether a world is real based on the speed of hypothermia versus the speed of the boat's navigation."
Bi Danyuan laughed. "She doesn't act like a scavenger. She doesn't use the knowledge taught at the academy at all."
Wen Xiang Yuan sat next to Nan Yue with a smile, chatting with Zhu Xi Ning.
As Nan Yue listened to them talk, her gaze remained fixed on the stage. Only Gu Xiang Kai was left...
She really was a bit worried...
"Ahahaha! I told you it was a hallucination!"
"Brother, you're amazing."
Nan Yue's heart settled back into place. To her surprise, even though they weren't on the same boat, Gu Xiang Kai and Long Qinghe returned together.
"How did you two end up together?"
Gu Xiang Kai scratched his head. "When the mist came up, I just grabbed onto Brother Long's boat, thinking it would be better if we looked out for each other."
Long Qinghe nodded. "I happened to be thinking the same thing."
Nan Yue said, "...So you two used sheer brute force to turn this adventure into a team effort."
Gu Xiang Kai nodded. "Yeah. After our two boats gathered, we saw those ice corpses coming out. We weren't actually that scared because there were more of us."
The others were speechless.
Gu Xiang Kai continued, "But we couldn't just keep going like that, so I discussed it with Old Brother Long. There was no way we could have been instantly transported to another place like that."
Rate on N.U.
