Chapter 82: Sleepiness
Shen San looked down at his master’s exposed shoulders, paused awkwardly for a moment, and then nodded. “It looks good on you, Master… Do you want me to fashion a shawl for you next? Leaving your shoulders bare like that might make you cold, right?”
“I won’t be cold, there’s no need to push yourself,” Lu Yunxi replied offhandedly, still caught up in the sheer novelty of her shrunken state as she hopped around the deck, examining every little thing.
Shen San picked up his sewing needle once more and began draping a scrap of fabric to sketch out a small waistcoat for her. When he tilted his head down to adjust the cloth, he covertly pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long breath of relief.
He had easily seen thousands, if not tens of thousands, of women back in the real world, and there were certainly plenty who were considered both stunning and conventionally attractive. Yet none of them had ever managed to take his breath away or leave him as thoroughly stunned as his master just had.
His brow furrowed in deep annoyance at his own thoughts, and he pressed his cold hands against his burning ears. What is wrong with me… Am I actually a closet pervert?
Clutching the remaining fabric in his fist, he let out a slightly depressed sigh. Whatever! I just need to hurry up and finish this waistcoat to cover Master’s shoulders, before I end up giving myself a massive nosebleed!
A few days later.
Lu Yunxi was outfitted in a tiny green skirt that cascaded all the way down to her ankles. Over her upper body, she wore a matching, adorable little waistcoat that completely obscured her shoulders.
The fabric of the garments was exceptionally thick. Under normal circumstances, an outfit of this quality would be more than enough to ward off any chill, even out on the open sea. But right now, she was absolutely freezing.
Completely abandoning any lingering self-consciousness regarding the boundaries of gender or their master-disciple relationship, she scrambled up and burrowed herself straight into the collar of Shen San’s robes, leaving only her wide eyes peeking out at the world. She let out a long, content sigh as the radiating warmth of his body temperature washed over her.
However, while the shrunken Lu Yunxi could easily leverage his bulk to shelter herself from the elements, Shen San himself had absolutely nowhere to hide. At this very moment, he was huddled in the absolute center of the lotus boat, his entire frame shivering violently. Even though he had systematically wrapped himself in three separate layers of heavy winter quilts, the system penalty refused to lift.
The cold seemed to saturate the entire map. No matter which way they turned, the ambient drop was brutal, and an icy numbness was actively creeping into every major attribute node of his body.
“M-Master… are you holding up alright?” His teeth chattered together with an audible click as he tried to offer some comfort to the tiny figure curled against his neck. “By the way… do you require some water? To try and raise your core temperature?”
Lu Yunxi’s internal status indicators were rapidly deteriorating. Shen San was shaking with such violent intensity that she was being jostled around inside his collar like a passenger in a runaway carriage. Furthermore, though the trend line was subtle, she could perceive that his body temperature was steadily and continuously plunging.
“Shen San, drink some water and force some food down to replenish your stamina bars!” She aggressively patted his neck with her miniature hands, desperate to keep him from dropping into a permanent unconscious state.
Shen San forcefully suppressed his tremors, focusing his remaining motor control to extract a fresh supply of water from his spatial backpack. However, the exact millisecond he poured a bowl of the liquid, the fluid instantly crystallized into a solid block of ice the moment it encountered the ambient air. He stared down blankly at the frozen mass before he could even bring the rim to his lips, utterly speechless.
Realizing that the environmental parameters were fundamentally broken, Lu Yunxi immediately began tearing through her own spatial vaults.
A sudden, savage gust of wind howled across the deck, carrying a dense wave of frost that caused their bodies to stiffen uncontrollably under the sheer force of the status penalty.
“Shen San, accept this technique manual and memorize it instantly!” With immense physical difficulty, she hauled a heavy skill book from her storage slot and thrust it into her apprentice’s freezing hands.
The crisis was far too urgent. If she were to attempt to learn the spell herself, her native programming would force her to read and assimilate the text page by page—a luxury their current timers simply didn’t afford. But Shen San was an outworld player; his interface permitted him to bypass the traditional cognitive load and instantly integrate skill lines with a single click.
Paying zero heed to the frost biting his fingers, Shen San slapped his palm against the cover, and the manual dissolved into a shimmering streak of data as the skill registered to his account.
In the next heartbeat, a translucent sphere of orange light—resembling a massive, beautifully polished glass marble engulfed in flickering embers—manifested beside the duo, radiating a sudden, powerful wave of thermal energy. The profound numbness gridlocking Shen San’s limbs systematically unspooled, and his physical control returned.
“Master, would you like to sit directly on top of the fireball? The core temperature here is exceptionally warm.” His eyes caught the rich, flickering orange light as he quietly regarded her, a relaxed, easy smile returning to his face.
Seeing that her disciple had successfully stabilized his vitals, Lu Yunxi let out a massive sigh of relief, though a trace of helpless amusement touched her lips. “There’s no need. It’s just a shame you had to squander a valuable character slot on this particular technique. It’s merely a Green-grade utility spell.”
An outworld player’s memory matrix was strictly limited by server architecture; an account could only anchor a maximum of ten active techniques simultaneously. The spell book she had just surrendered was an absolute joke. Beyond its capacity to provide artificial warmth during regional winter cycles and look visually striking for aesthetic purposes, it possessed zero functional scaling. It didn’t contribute a single point of raw damage to a player’s combat rotation. Had it been otherwise, she would never have left the manual rotting in the bottom of her spatial drawers without ever intending to learn it herself. Most of these cosmetic techniques were entirely useless in high-tier play.
Shen San blinked in confusion. Wait, does Master operate under the same slot restrictions and mechanical limitations as our player accounts?
“It doesn’t matter, Master,” he said, brushing off the optimization loss with an easy laugh. He leaned closer to the floating ember, allowing the warm currents to seep deep into his bones. “At the very least, this specific technique just saved both of our characters from a permanent wipe.”
“Master, can your station hold on?” Shen San asked, his voice tight as he carefully cradled his miniature mentor, his boots sinking heavily as he battled through the blinding blizzard.
Lu Yunxi looked up at him weakly, raising a tiny hand to press against his chin to arrest his movement. “Save your breath. Speaking aloud in this specific climate drains an immense volume of your stamina bar. We need to retrace our steps and get back to the coastline.”
She had been thoroughly baffled by the sudden appearance of a localized arctic system, but the geographic markers left no room for doubt: their boat had inadvertently mapped into the territorial waters of the Ice Continent!
Originally, their journey had launched from the Flower Continent, which was flanked by the Desert Continent on one side and the Ice Continent on the other. The layout of this world’s landmasses was structured precisely like a massive flower; a neutral island anchored the absolute center, while the surrounding continents spread outward like distinct petals. Much like the layout of a clock face, whether an entity traveled clockwise or counterclockwise, they would systematically circle the entire global map before inevitably returning to their starting coordinate.
Logically speaking, to reach the Ice Continent from the harsh wastes of the desert, they should have been forced to execute a massive, time-consuming loop across half the world. Yet against all statistical models, after being swept out to sea by the desert sandstorms and drifting blindly through the open currents, the maritime tides had dragged them straight to the absolute opposite boundary of the flower matrix!
“The gale winds from the desert must have propelled our vessel back across the Flower Continent’s maritime border, forcing us directly into the currents of the Ice Continent,” she calculated internally.
However, running theoretical calculations was entirely useless against their current environment. The conversation died out completely, leaving the valley dead silent save for the roaring whistle of the whiteout and the shallow, synchronized rhythm of their breathing.
Burrowed securely within the thick folds of his collar, Lu Yunxi slowly yielded to the comfortable warmth of the spell and drifted off to sleep.
Shen San periodically extended a gloved hand, gently tapping the miniature figure nestled against his neck to verify her coordinates, terrified that a sudden lurch might dislodged her from his robes without his knowledge.
The snow, however, was rapidly intensifying. The powder, which had initially coated the earth in a shallow layer of a few centimeters, was accumulating at an alarming rate. With every forward stride, his entire leg sank past the knee into the freezing drifts.
Their primary objective in approaching the coast of the Ice Continent had been to secure a local port to replenish their dry provisions, yet after charting the wastes for an hour, their map radar failed to detect a single resident node or outpost. Just as their structural parameters began to flash critical warnings from the sheer exertion, a high-intensity arctic gale slammed into their coordinates.
Initially, his intention had been to rapidly execute a tactical retreat back to the flower boat, return to open water, and follow the established maritime lanes directly to the next continent. Yet despite backtracking along their precise directional headings for over an hour, the familiar blue of the shoreline refused to materialize on the horizon. They had been navigating in a blind circle for over thirty minutes.
Shen San bent over, his frame heaving as he panted heavily, dense plumes of white condensation erupting from his lips with every breath. Even with the orange fire spell actively shielding his core from the raw frost penalty, his physical stamina bar was hovering dangerously close to zero. Lifting his boots clear of the deep, heavy snow drifts with every step was systematically draining his reserves.
Time began to lose all structural meaning, blurring into a monotonous white haze.
Just as his conscious awareness prepared to slip into a critical system blackout, his vision locked onto the dark opening of a natural cavern.
Summoning the absolute final reserves of his physical strength, he carefully transferred his master into the center of his palm. He cycled his internal energy to manifest a cluster of high-intensity warm fireballs, positioning them in a defensive perimeter around their coordinates, and hastily rigged a primitive alarm trap across the cavern threshold before allowing his avatar to succumb to a total faint.
“Shen San? Shen San! Force your consciousness to boot up! Wake up!”
Lu Yunxi hadn’t anticipated that a brief, comfortable nap would conclude with her apprentice collapsing into a profound comatose state. She had operating under the assumption that his new utility spell would completely insulate his character model from regional environmental penalties, but the Ice Continent apparently enforced a unique, systemic sleeping debuff across its zones.
[Status Affliction: Coma — Within this extreme arctic matrix, the system enforces a mandatory comatose state upon biological models to drastically minimize energy dissipation and guarantee baseline survival.]
The debuff icon was currently flashing over both of their character sheets.
Fortunately, although her surface parameters were locked at Level 10, her core matrix remained that of a high-tier Master-level expert whose attributes were merely sealed under a temporary modifier; otherwise, her consciousness would have been entirely gridlocked by the sleep penalty.
Sighing heavily as she rubbed her temples to ward off a headache, Lu Yunxi carefully climbed down from Shen San’s unmoving form, materialized a massive iron cooking cauldron in the center of the cavern, and began preparing a hot infusion.
Her spatial backpack was heavily loaded with dried chili peppers, crushed ginger roots, and various warming herbs—components explicitly classified under her Grandmaster Chef database as optimal materials to dispel systemic frost penalties. Thank goodness these raw elements were fundamentally inedible in their unrefined states, otherwise her frantic consumption during their ocean drift would have cleared out her entire inventory long ago.
Because her storage vault held a strictly limited supply of premium dry firewood, she manipulated the embers with extreme precision, utilizing her crafting mastery to minimize fuel consumption.
The kindling crackled sharply within the perimeter of the cave, and the rich, pungent aroma of the warming ginger soup slowly began to fill the stone chamber.
