Hearing the dog barking getting more and more shrill, Xia Yibing closed her eyes, unable to bear to see Lily fall on the ice wall and turn into a dog biscuit.
But the expected scream did not come.
"Ouch!"
“Woof woof woof woof…”
"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu"
The dog's barking soon turned from frightened "manic" to "whimpering", sounding like it was being wronged and was acting coquettishly.
"It's Heidi!"
I heard the girl's scream.
"She's down there!"
"She has been waiting for us here!"
I looked down and, sure enough, it was Heidi.
She stood on a raised platform on the snowy cliff, her arms transformed into soft purple vines, which swept and wrapped around Lily in mid-air, catching her safely.
"Are you planning to hang there forever?"
Heidi looked over and stretched a part of the vine forward to catch the two people hanging in the air.
"Thank you this time..."
Xia Yibing looked a little unnatural.
She was not very satisfied with her performance and always felt that she was overshadowed by others.
"Woof woof!" Lily barked around her fiercely.
It is very smart and can see that it was abandoned at that time.
"Why do you have an objection? Stop arguing! I'll go back and make you something delicious."
"Wang Woo!"
Lily began wagging her tail again.
“This is not the right place.”
Hitzfeld had been standing nearby, taking in the surroundings.
How should I put it...it's not uncommon to find hollow tunnels inside Arctic glaciers.
Not to mention the Ice Lake People, it has even been mentioned in some books, which are rigorous analyses of various geographers and geologists.
But why, why is there light constantly reflecting and changing on the ice walls surrounding the cavity here?
Instinctively, Hitzfeld thought of the aurora that caused the Ice Lake People to mutate.
She also saw the light and instantly received some messy memories.
But compared to what she had experienced before - compared to the huge amount of information she had seen and recorded, that little bit of memory was really insignificant. It was so overwhelming that she immediately looked away.
Could it be the result of the aurora reflecting off the falling light?
Some of the ice surfaces do look too smooth... They are like mirrors here, mirror surfaces, and they are constantly refracting the aurora?
That thing in the sky may not be the aurora.
Hitzfeld thought secretly.
After all, no one has stipulated that light can only shine down from the sky.
It is also possible that things work from the bottom up.
That is, its source is underground.
--------
There will be more updates from the cute master later.
Chapter 33: Heidi's Surprise (for the new protagonist Jeann)
As the Blood Crystal Crow flapped its wings and flew out of the tunnel, it spontaneously landed on Lily's head, and the four people and one pet of the Hitzfield expedition team announced their reunion.
"There's something wrong with this place." Hitzfeld kept muttering to herself. She waved for the others to look at the aurora reflected on the opposite wall. "...Do you feel anything when you see this thing?"
Xia Yibing came first.
"I feel a little uncomfortable with this halo..."
Really uncomfortable.
Turning off the flashlight, the color inside the cavity was dark. She could clearly see a pool of autumn water-like light shining on the ice wall below, and the light was still trembling spontaneously. It was a gradient of faint blue to blue-green light.
"It gives me a headache after staring at it for too long..." Heidi also expressed her feelings, "But I don't think this thing contains any curse."
Xia Yibing had already told Hitzfeld what happened on the ice wall during the brief process of looking at it. After listening, Heidi did not comment. As a tree person who had been to the ice field and could even be said to have been born here, she had never seen the aurora that could induce mutations in life.
"This doesn't make sense," she told Xia Yibing at the time. "This is impossible... I know a lot of people are studying the aurora. Isn't this an astronomical phenomenon? I mean, its light should come from the sun?"
Don't underestimate modern astronomy, okay? The aurora is the solar wind, at least she understands this principle.
If there is a problem with the aurora, it is equivalent to saying that there is a problem with the sun.
But if there is something wrong with the sun, don't people get sunbathed in the south every day? Then everyone would mutate, and if tens of millions of people had memory confusion at the same time, and their bodies spontaneously mutated into deformed forms according to the disordered memories, wouldn't that be the end of the world?
But it didn't.
There is no doomsday.
Everything is still fine. People go to work and class as usual during the day. Although the secret police are still busy saving the world in the streets, the citizens are not greatly affected.
Heidi felt that this was enough to prove that it was not the sunlight that was the problem, which could further prove that it was not the aurora that was the problem.
She believed that the culprit that induced the mutation of the Ice Lake People and caused confusing mutations among the biological populations on the ice field was not the Aurora.
Even though the light looked like an aurora, it wasn't supposed to be that - it had to be something else.
"Evil God?" Xia Yibing analyzed with his chin held high.
"Do you remember the 'Nine Evil Gods'? One of them, the 'Great One', showed an 'irregular gradient light pattern'. Could it be something similar? The light bands above are actually alive. Is it an unknown life form?"
"I do not think so."
Hitzfeld's voice came from behind.
"Aisun?"
Xia Yibing turned around and found that she was gone.
She quickly took a few more steps in the direction where the sound came from, turned on the flashlight and shone it forward. She found that there was an ice cave tunnel on the ice wall behind her to the left and rear of the raised platform.
At this moment, Hitzfeld was standing in the tunnel with her back to them. Did she seem to have discovered some clues?
"Listen carefully."
The girl tilted her head, revealing half of her face to warn her companions.
"There's movement coming from the tunnel."
"..."
"..."
Not only Xia Yibing and Heidi, but even the Blood Crystal Crow tilted their heads as if listening, and then they heard... a faint whistle coming from the ice tunnel.
"Wind?" Heidi raised an eyebrow.
It is indeed the wind.
Xia Yibing had already confirmed it in her heart.
The faint whistle was so long and sad that it sounded like a person in pain squatting at the end of a tunnel sobbing with his head in his hands. If a normal person encountered this, it would be quite scary.
Wait—whimper?
"Do you realize it?" Hitzfeld frowned. "I suspect that the 'whimpering' that Ice Lake Town hears from the mountain every month is this."
Is this a "whimper"?
Does it sound a bit too small?
The others seemed a little unsure.
There are indeed a few doubts here.
"I won't tell you how quiet the noise is, Hitzfeld," Heidi said. "How do you explain what Sintara said about 'the sobbing only happening at the end of each month'?"
They all understood what Hitzfeld meant, which was simply to dispel superstition and show that the so-called "whimpering" legend was actually just a special phenomenon formed by nature.
But if it is a natural phenomenon, shouldn’t it be disordered?
How can you be so punctual every month and come at the end of the month?
"I guess there is a cycle." Hitzfeld clenched her fists and stared at the ground. Her eyes were somewhat empty and lifeless, which was a concrete manifestation of her immersion in thought.
"It's like the sun rises and sets every day. It's also a natural phenomenon, right? But we never question why the sun rises on time every day. This is the law of cycles. Everything in nature and even the universe must operate according to this law. I think there must be a cycle law for 'Whimsies' as well."
Heidi was surprised: "What kind of pattern is that?"
"I don't know yet." The girl shook her head, and then emphasized: "I'm not keeping you in suspense. I really don't know yet."
"Can't you see with your left eye?" Blood Crystal Crow asked her.
After all, you have eaten the Three Evil Eyes... a very nutritious thing. Even if that eye cannot reach the power of Abu Gesar in his heyday, it should be easy to trace back time and space to check the cause and effect, right?
"I have tried."
Heidi's eyes widened in surprise when she saw the crow talking, while Hitzfeld lifted up his left hair, and his left eye, which was like golden amber, shone brightly as they stared at him.
"But I can't see anything unusual..."
"I saw glacier collapse, the rise and fall of life, blizzards, iceberg landslides... Everything here is operating normally according to the natural laws. I can't tell... which law affects 'Whimsing'..."
"Do you have any guesses?" Xia Yibing asked.
"That's true."
"Tell me about it."
I thought this was not an excessive request, but I didn't expect Hitzfeld to purse his lips and hold it in for a long time without any movement.
"You don't want to tell me?"
Xia Yibing frowned.
"Why not just forget it?"
"You are the leader, it is enough for you to know what is going on..."
"No!" Hitzfeld frowned, "I just think this guess is too ridiculous."
"absurd?"
"I think - I guess..." Hitzfeld stretched out the last word, "maybe it's because of the melting of the glaciers."
Heidi: “……?”
Xia Yibing: “……!”
Blood Crystal Crow: “…Ah?”
Lily: "Woof?"
glacial melting.
Glaciers...melting?
"But the temperature in the Arctic has never dropped, right?" The Blood Crystal Crow flapped its wings. "I don't remember it... Oh, except for those two times when the 'Fire Sword' fell, or am I remembering it wrong? Has the temperature risen in the past few decades?"
"No." Xia Yibing shook her head.
The Arctic is cooling.
It's getting colder here.
Compared to when Vilfort first came to Ice Lake Town, the average temperature here has dropped by about 2°.
"Wait a minute, someone tell me what's going on with this bird..."
