Chapter 1800 - 926: The Grand Winter of Frozen North (Thanks to the Alliance Hierarch Low-Energy Power)

For the people of the Northern Realm, the eternal unchanging white and black are the colors of the world.

Snow falling from the sky and rocks growing from the ground overlap, like blades and teeth intersecting and slaughtering each other.

Each snowfall signals the feasting of the monster called the Northern Realm, its teeth chewing. The cold gusts hitting you are the foul winds blowing from the monster's mouth. The roar amidst the snowstorm is its bellowing.

To survive in such a world, every minute and second, there's only one thing to do.

Fight.

Become an enemy of the world.

Every time facing the cold wind, every step through the snow and black rocks, climbing higher peaks in the chill that could freeze your nose and eyelashes, is a challenge against all of this.

This is exactly how it should be.

The explorers prided themselves on this, wanting to conquer the world in front of them, aiming to break deeper into the storm and reach higher heights, no matter how many times.

If only that exhausting weird melody weren't coming through the headphones...

"Dulu doodoo, dullu doodoo, dullululuh dada——"

"How cold it is, I'm playing with mud in the Northern Realm..."

"I have no home in the Northern Realm..."

That seemingly insane song echoed again from the radio channel, following "The Boy Picked up a Pile of Money".

Just listening to it makes one's body go limp and evokes an uncontrollable urge to visit the bathroom.

Damn it, it's here again, right?

In the face of the incoming cold wind, the explorer cursed using some Northern Realm profanity.

Behind, just a few hundred meters away, at the prospecting team base station.

"Mr. Ji..."

In the command center, the helpless captain sighed, eventually mustering the courage to remind: "Everyone's ears can't take it anymore.

It's really hard to concentrate on work, why don't we just stop playing it?"

Straight to the point, do we really need to keep playing this damned song?!

"Huh?"

The perpetrator who tormented everyone for almost half a week turned around blankly, looking innocent: "You always have to listen to some music when working, don't you guys do the same in the Northern Realm?"

"..."

The captain couldn't utter the blood stuck in his throat.

He really couldn't tell whether it was a regional custom difference or another malicious attack on the Northern Realm: no matter how artistically void we are in the Northern Realm, we wouldn't listen to this crap!

"How about a different song?"

Ji Jue suggested, taking out two mysterious small USB drives from his pocket: "Don't be shy, I've got plenty of collections—do you prefer songs in Federation or Empire language?"

"..."

The captain swallowed dryly, unable to choose between curry-flavored dog poop and dog poop-flavored curry, he struggled hard:

"Just... don't you have... anything instrumental?"

"Oh, you have taste!"

Ji Jue's eyes lit up, showing a 'can't deal with you' expression, and took out a disc: "This is the 'Pure Enjoyment of 300 Hit Song Remixes' that Brother Feng and I treasure! I was worried you couldn't handle it... Geez, you should have said something earlier... Come on, come on, let me play it for you all..."

No!

Bro, I beg you, don't play it!

The captain's face turned green, not knowing how to stop him, until a voice came through the radio, seemingly a lifesaver: "Earth Veins branch number b02, survey completed, marking finished!"

On the distant mountain, amidst the oncoming wind and snow, the explorer swaying on the safety rope arduously nailed the flag into the ice beside him.

Boom!

Far away, ice winds surged like tides, in the chilling crackle, the pitons lost their strength one by one with the breaking ice, and in an instant of bewilderment, the explorer was flung into mid-air, helplessly flying up, screaming, falling into the endlessly swirling white below.

In that moment, amidst the swirling white snow, a dark silhouette rose, jagged and menacing.

It tore through the snowstorm, breaking the cold wave.

It reached out its hand.

Easily, it caught the falling explorer in mid-air in its giant hand.

Gently lifting, bringing him to the front.

Amidst the white snow, two points of blazing light like sun and moon burst forth, gradually becoming clearer as a beast-like metallic face approached, examining the survivor in its palm.

Once confirming there was no damage, it lost interest and retracted its gaze, bending down.

In a swirl of vertigo from weightlessness, the explorer fell 'down' with the hand to midway up the mountain, finally, with the overturning of the hand, rolling and tumbling helplessly.

Accurately, he landed on the stretcher raised by rescue cats.

With electronic meows, the rescue cats ran between ice and crevices, carrying the explorer in the direction of the mountain base point.

The explorer on the stretcher couldn't even speak, only instinctively raising his head to look at the huge silhouette standing in the storm.

In the swirling white, those legs standing like a Heavenly Pillar at the end of the endless blizzard, and even higher, the body seemingly covering the entire sky.

"Operations are about to commence, countdown is ending, all survey personnel please evacuate immediately, repeat, all survey personnel please evacuate immediately——"

After the sharp warnings repeated three times, the Dragon Mountain Giant standing in the storm extended its hand to catch the Flame Light falling from above.

In the propulsion and pushing from the thruster, the iron stakes launched from the distant base launching well flew out, one by one, piecing together, and ultimately forming a horrifying creation several kilometers long.