Chapter 174: Global Extreme Cold 17
“The tables have turned, Brother Bai, goodbye.”
A wicked smile on her face, Chu Yian pulled the trigger without hesitation.
The bullet passed through his forehead, and blood bloomed on the snow like fallen plum blossoms. The scourge was finally dead. Chu Yian unceremoniously stomped on his corpse twice.
With Bai Sinian dead, the other three NPCs stopped what they were doing.
After all, in this world, whoever has a gun is the boss.
Chu Yian glanced at the bullets in the gun; one was left. She searched Bai Sinian’s corpse and found five more bullets in his pocket.
She thought he had robbed a police station, but it turned out he was a very poor man.
“You only had six bullets, yet you were so arrogant.”
Chu Yian didn’t miss the opportunity, even mocking the corpse.
Lu Qingyuan had already tied up the three NPCs with rope. They did find gasoline in the small house where Bai Sinian was hiding—six barrels in total, but they were all frozen solid.
As the two walked out of the gas station with the gasoline, Lu Qingyuan suddenly asked, “Did you two know that man just now?”
“Oh, he was a mortal enemy.”
Chu Yian replied upon hearing him.
“I can tell.”
Lu Qingyuan answered faintly.
However, according to his memory, Chu Yian had just graduated and, by a stroke of luck, started working at Huayuan. She was usually well-behaved; where did this mortal enemy come from?
To be precise, she was completely different from the little office worker he remembered.
Her foresight regarding the low temperatures, her calm and mature demeanor in the face of crisis, and her inexplicable familiarity with him… He had many doubts about her.
“Achoo, achoo—!”
Chu Yian let out two particularly loud sneezes beside him. “Teacher Lu, do you feel like the weather has gotten even colder?”
Chu Yian’s attention had been entirely on the fight just now, with adrenaline surging, so she hadn’t felt the cold. But now, walking on the road, the feeling of coldness became increasingly obvious.
It was cold!
Especially cold.
It was like wearing only autumn clothes in the winter snow, and her fingers and feet were starting to ache from the cold.
As she finished speaking, she suddenly noticed that the snowflakes falling from the sky had shrunk in size. They were tiny, like sesame seeds, having turned into crushed ice.
“Walk faster!”
Lu Qingyuan grabbed her arm and pulled her, making her run outwards.
In just a few minutes, the hail had grown larger. From the size of sesame seeds, it became grape-sized, and from falling lightly to the ground, it now hurt when it hit a person.
Even more terrifying, a strong wave of cold air swept in!
Chu Yian felt a chilling sensation on her back, and her limbs became stiff as if frozen. She looked back and saw a layer of white frost rising from the small town behind them, spreading in the air.
“Teacher Lu, behind you!”
She widened her eyes and pointed frantically behind her.
At this moment, a black dog with very thick fur ran out from a nearby house, but its speed couldn’t outrun the white frost. A few seconds after the white frost caught up to it, the black dog turned into an ice sculpture.
An ice sculpture!
“Run fast!”
Lu Qingyuan pulled her, making her run even faster.
The white frost moved incredibly fast, rapidly approaching them, like the Grim Reaper wielding a scythe. Chu Yian’s limbs had already lost sensation, and her back was throbbing with pain after being frozen. She didn’t even need to look back to feel the white frost closing in behind her!
Finally, they reached the small house where the snowmobile was hidden.
The snowmobile’s engine roared.
Lu Qingyuan pulled open the car door, pushed Chu Yian in, then followed suit and closed the door.
Through the snowmobile’s window, Chu Yian saw the white frost seeping in through the gaps in the house door. The walls and floor instantly condensed a layer of frost, and a thumping sound of heavy objects falling came from the roof.
It was hail.
The sound of large chunks of hail falling.
Lu Qingyuan sat in the driver’s seat and turned the snowmobile’s air conditioning to the highest temperature. Chu Yian took out the last bottle of strong liquor, took two sips, then turned and handed it to him.
Outdoor temperature: -87 degrees Celsius.
The snowmobile’s outdoor thermometer was almost maxed out, and even at its highest setting, the interior temperature offered no warmth.
“Chu Yian, where are the hand warmers and down comforter?”
“Here!”
Chu Yian took them out.
It’s worth noting that the snowmobile’s engine and fuel tank were both inside the vehicle.
Lu Qingyuan took the items and then placed the hand warmers on the car’s engine and fuel tank. To prevent the car from freezing, he then covered them with the down comforter.
Lu Qingyuan looked at the ice crystals on the car window. “Pay constant attention; don’t let the car stall.”
“I-I-I’ll try my best.”
Chu Yian’s voice was trembling.
To be precise, her entire body was trembling.
It was simply too cold; her body temperature was constantly dropping, already reaching a dangerously low level. If not addressed, she might die from hypothermia.
But she was so frozen that she couldn’t even manage to open a hand warmer.
Lu Qingyuan noticed her pale lips and finally realized her problem. He quickly picked up the liquor, pried open her mouth, and poured several more gulps down her throat.
Chu Yian felt as if she had been force-fed two sips of fatally cold liquor, which then burned fiercely in her stomach.
She couldn’t take it anymore and fainted… Throughout the night, she was alternately cold and hot.
Chu Yian felt as if she was in a purgatory of ice and fire, her head throbbing to the point of explosion, then she was woken by her own violent coughing.
The blanket covering her mouth and nose was suffocating.
She tried to pull the blanket down and poke her head out, but as soon as her head emerged slightly, the extremely cold air outside froze her, making her retract back in.
No, to be precise, with just a slight movement, the surrounding cold air eagerly seeped in through every gap in the blanket.
Chu Yian, shivering, squeezed towards the warm spot beside her. Her hand unconsciously slipped into the clothes of the person next to her, pressing against him, and her legs were draped over his body, her icy feet pressed tightly against his warm inner thigh.
Hiss—
The man beside her opened his eyes in the darkness and let out a heavy breath.
Lu Qingyuan immediately took measures when he discovered Chu Yian had hypothermia.
He cleared out the back of the car, placed dry clothing at the bottom, and spread a down comforter on top to create a makeshift bed. Two sleeping bags were put together, and she was tucked inside, with another down comforter covering her. Besides these, he also force-fed her a lot more liquor and gave her a dozen hand warmers, but the effects were still insufficient.
Her body remained like ice, her face bloodless, and her lips had turned bluish-purple.
To save her, they ended up in a situation where both were wearing thin inner shirts, squeezed into the narrow space of the sleeping bag.
The close contact between their skin, the mutual transfer of body heat.
Between a man and a woman, this was already somewhat ambiguous.
Originally, both of them were still wearing clothes, but as Chu Yian moved, her palm had already slipped into Lu Qingyuan’s clothes, pressing tightly against his abdomen. The position of her legs was even more delicate, leaving Lu Qingyuan unable to move.
He suddenly opened his eyes in the darkness, looking down at the person whose face was pressed against his chest. “Chu Yian…”
