Chapter 193: Broken System, Unreliable

After arranging for Niu Boyi to come and pick her up, Liu Mu walked directly toward the seaside.

It was bad enough that the temperature was low, but there was also a strong wind; and it was bad enough that there was a strong wind, but there were also ice shards in it—this kind of weather was simply going to be the death of her.

Liu Mu considered her body to be exceptionally hardy, but even now, she wanted to turn back every single minute.

Covered in icicles, every step she took caused a few pieces to fall off.

The seawater crashing onto the shore piled up into ice walls over a meter high, and there were even terrifying waves several meters high near the coast; one could foresee just how dangerous it must be in the sea.

Just behind that rapidly rising ice wall, a translucent, oval-shaped mollusk, being rolled up and tossed down by the waves, was constantly testing the waters, trying to get ashore.

"Lv Ge, why did you come? What major event happened at sea?"

Otherwise, it wouldn't have risked having its Split Body frozen to come here.

That's right, that ball was precisely the Giant Octopus Split Body that Liu Mu had ridden just ten days ago.

"Iceberg, sea mountain, come, save..."

The cold wind was urgent, the ice waves were fierce.

Separated by a hundred meters or so, even Liu Mu's hearing couldn't make it out clearly.

"Wait there, I'm coming over now."

The Split Body bobbed up and down in the seawater and sharp ice fragments, many of its tentacles already severed; what worried Liu Mu was that she could see several wounds on it even from this distance.

One could imagine how much danger it had experienced along the way.

Liu Mu wiped the ice water from her face, gritted her teeth, and charged into the ice fragments.

The boots under her feet immediately emitted a teeth-grinding crunching sound, and at the same time, she sank into them, becoming very heavy. There was also a chill that quickly penetrated the waterproof fabric, bone-piercing, as if her body fluids were about to be completely solidified.

【Warning: You are currently in a low-temperature environment; please leave this area as soon as possible.】

Heitao A issued a warning as usual, seemingly able to deduce that Liu Mu would not listen to advice, and its voice continued, 【Does the host require assistance in resisting the cold?】

"You guessed it," Liu Mu chattered her teeth, cursing a couple of profanities as per her habit to encourage herself, "Cover my body surface with energy to insulate against the low temperature."

She could use energy to launch attacks; as long as she controlled this energy to a suitable equivalent, she could make it cover her body surface like flowing water.

But this method could not last long; not to mention that the speed of energy consumption made Liu Mu's heart ache every second, just the fact that this layer of energy converted into heat could only maintain a limited zero degrees was enough to make one miserable.

This is equivalent to paying for a gym membership, but the fitness results are limited, and the coach even gaslights you, saying your physique can't build muscle. Money spent, and you're still a fat person.

Energy used, and you still feel cold.

But without the kind of cold that made her feel like she was about to turn into an ice sculpture at any moment, Liu Mu took a dive into the ice fragments; there was still some seawater below, so she could barely swim over.

But this process took a full half-hour, and that was only after she swam out of the ice fragment belt first and returned from the waves to make contact with the almost frozen Split Body.

She herself was also cold to the point of being unable to bear it; she could only violently smash the frozen ice and hoist the Split Body up to re-enter the sea.

Although the seawater was cold, it was still better than land when it wasn't frozen; besides, once the Split Body was moved ashore, it would be completely frozen into a giant ice ball if it didn't freeze to death.

"Seawater, iceberg, escape..."

The consciousness within the Split Body was very weak, intermittently repeating these few words.

"Don't talk for now, I'm taking you to a warm place!"

Liu Mu had a complete map of all the buildings in the Haicheng area in her mind; before jumping into the sea, she had already determined the escape route.

From the sea surface down, at a depth of about four meters, two three-meter-high culverts had been chiseled into the continental shelf; through them, one could pass into the underground area of the Headquarters.

The seawater at this depth, even along the edge of the land, showed no signs of freezing.

This indicated that the temperature on land was higher than in the sea, which also made Liu Mu even more worried about the Split Body's arrival.

There was an electronic lock on the door cast from stainless steel bars as thick as an arm; Liu Mu pressed her hand against the lock face, and after a blue light scan, the door opened.

She placed the Split Body in front and pushed it into the passage while swimming.

After they entered, the door behind them automatically closed and locked, simultaneously transmitting the information that Liu Mu had entered back to the Underground Control Center, which was Heitao A's external system.

The next four doors did not require Liu Mu to scan her palm; they all opened directly.

The tunnel was four hundred meters long, with the terrain slowly rising; at the end was a small docking pier that could accommodate four small boats.

After passing the third door, Liu Mu had the system raise the sluice gate to cut off the internal seawater from the outside, which would maintain a certain temperature.

The Shengli Group Headquarters had four independent ventilation systems designed underground; although construction was only halfway through, the ventilation systems were basically usable.

The Underground Dock was eight meters high from the top to the bottom underwater, and the top was covered with a layer of translucent membrane, green in appearance; if one didn't look closely, it looked like a layer of algae. Of course, that wasn't any kind of algae, but the type of root system that the Great Master Flower used to maintain the underground passage.

Liu Mu pushed the Split Body into the dock before swimming ashore, lying exhaustedly on the rock that had only been roughly polished.

Li Gang and the others, who had rushed over, arrived just in time; they hadn't been sure which passage Liu Mu would take until they received the signal sent by the system, so they had been delayed a bit.

"How are you?" Xu Xiaofeng rushed over, her touch icy cold, and Liu Mu's body was trembling, "Are you injured? Why are you so cold?"

Liu Mu's face was pale, and her body surface was encased in a shell of ice that was slowly melting.

"Cold, too cold," her body temperature was so low that she didn't even exhale white mist when speaking, "Sister, check on it first, find a way to raise the water temperature; the seawater outside is too cold, we can't let anything happen to it."

"Okay," Xu Xiaofeng stepped back and touched the wall with her hand; the green membrane on the top lit up with a faint light, and a layer of white mist gradually rose from the water surface.

The root system of the Great Master Flower was in the soil of the entire underground building, and as a system-protected organism connected to Heitao A, she didn't need any other operations to activate all the equipment in the building.

This included the heating system. There was heating equipment underwater; although it couldn't be like burning a water heater, it was still possible to raise the water temperature by a few degrees.

Liu Mu withdrew the energy from her body surface, and the cold water made direct contact with her skin; her body, which had just felt a little better, began to tremble again.

"Put this on," Luo Sanlin had come in a step late; he directly took off his outer coat and removed the thermal underwear inside.

Liu Mu understood; she sat up while her teeth chattered and struggled to pull off her soaked down jacket, "Thanks, brother."

She had also worn thermal underwear, but it was all soaked through. The low temperature made her unable to take dry ones out from the system.

First the blizzard, then being soaked in ice water for over an hour—even with her current physique, she couldn't hold up.

"When is it that you're still being cheeky," Luo Sanlin thought for a moment; since they were all brothers, he finally just reached out and wrapped her in his own coat, "Make do with this, going back?"

Liu Mu did not resist; her body was like a low-temperature crash at this moment, needing some external temperature to reboot.

As for Heitao A, the broken system hadn't answered her for half an hour; if she weren't certain she was still alive, she would have suspected the system had determined she was dead.

Broken system, it drops the ball at critical moments; it's unreliable.

She shook her head, "No, we must wait for the Split Body to recover; something has happened at sea."