Chapter 3643: Dreamlike Reality

When the press conference was broadcast live worldwide, Ye Chen never expected the White House's response to be so fast, nor did he expect the other side's PR to be so good.

Not being able to cause them too much trouble was, for Ye Chen, admittedly somewhat disappointing, but his original plan and purpose had already been achieved.

By making the Japanese discover the problem, he thoroughly ruined the Antarctic exploration plan of that elder of the Broken Qing Society; given the current state of Antarctica being on high alert, that elder absolutely would not dare to act against any country's scientific expedition team.

This also means he has lost the assistance of modern technology and his team.

No matter what he was actually searching for in Antarctica, it can basically be considered concluded now.

Ye Chen speculates that this elder's next plan is likely to find a safe place, hide honestly, and wait until Antarctica's winter passes before trying to sneak into a commercial tour group to return to other continents.

In that case, Ye Chen need not worry too much about the threat the other side might pose; he can continue to look for a suitable opportunity to obtain more Sun Tathagata hand seals through the aurora.

However, in the following days, the aurora, which is normally common during Antarctic winter, did not appear for several consecutive days.

With no aurora, and it not causing Ye Chen too much trouble, he devoted more energy to closed-door cultivation, making his Sun Tathagata hand seal more proficient and allowing him to accumulate more spiritual energy.

At this time, Wu Bolin, trapped within tens of meters of ice, was already in a terrible state of mind.

Although he had planned to cultivate in seclusion until Antarctica's summer, the events of the past few days had thoroughly disturbed his Dao heart, making him extremely agitated.

Because in these days he carefully reflected, the trouble this matter would bring him afterward was merely due to his own small action, which had attracted the American military to Antarctica, meaning the US and Japanese governments must have already sensed something was wrong.

According to reason, they would certainly spare no effort to investigate clearly what had happened to the Japanese expedition members, and since those people had been given psychological suggestions by him, the investigation would only reach a dead end—but this is not a good thing, because such a dead end would appear profoundly strange and abnormal before the state apparatus, as under normal circumstances it is impossible for dozens of people's psychological defenses to be utterly impenetrable.

Once these two governments come to regard this matter as profoundly strange, the subsequent impact will certainly be far-reaching; they will surely treat it as a cold case, relentlessly digging deeper until they uncover the true cause.

Besides worrying about bringing fire upon himself, Wu Bolin is even more concerned that if this matter blows up too much, it might reach the ears of the Yingzhu.

If the Yingzhu holds him accountable for causing such a commotion in Antarctica, how should he respond?

If he merely tells her that he caused these things in Antarctica while searching for heavenly treasures and earthly riches, the Yingzhu will certainly not believe him.

That would mean he must tell her the truth and inform her about the Gate of Ascension.

Whether the Yingzhu will blame him for this remains to be said, but if she believes this legend and mobilizes the entire Broken Qing Society to come to Antarctica to search for it, then he could say he has missed a heaven-sent opportunity.

According to Wu Bolin's own conception, if he could secretly find the Gate of Ascension and obtain more cultivation resources and cultivation methods, his cultivation progress would certainly be unimpeded, and he might even, like the Yingzhu, obtain the resources for the Eternal Youth Pill.

The Yingzhu's yang lifespan now has less than a hundred years left; if he could live to five hundred years old, then the Broken Qing Society would very likely become his possession after the Yingzhu's natural death.

Having followed Wu Feiyan for so many years, he knows all too well the strength and industry of the Broken Qing Society; to control this organization is simply to be an uncrowned king.

But once this opportunity is grasped by Wu Feiyan, he would then completely lose the chance.

Moreover, this is still only a relatively favorable scenario; Wu Feiyan's exact character and conduct style, Wu Bolin knows very well, and if she truly learns that he has concealed such a major matter from her, he will surely lose all trust in him, and his future standing in the Broken Qing Society will not be secure.

The more he thinks about these problems, the worse Wu Bolin's mindset becomes, making it impossible for him, after trying for several days, to truly immerse himself in closed-door cultivation.

Originally, this cramped ice cave was not a trouble for him; as long as he entered meditation, everything around him would no longer be perceptible.

But precisely because he cannot enter meditation, he has begun to develop a strong aversion to this cramped environment, feeling as if he had suddenly acquired claustrophobia, restless and uneasy.

Yet the weather continues to oppose him.

Originally, beneath this ice layer, he could still faintly see some light from the aurora filtering through, so as not to have the feeling of being completely plunged into darkness.

But these past two days, the aurora has disappeared.

Adding insult to injury, the moon has also disappeared.

The moon and sun in Antarctica differ greatly from those in other regions; after entering the polar night, there will be several months during which the sun cannot be seen at all, but the moon will rotate in cycles of about 15 days, meaning that for nearly 15 days, the moon hangs continuously in the sky, but in the next 15 days it is completely invisible.

These past few days without moonlight and without aurora, the visibility across the Antarctic continent has dropped to an extreme; if one stands beneath the sky and still sees faint starlight, one can barely make out object outlines, but Wu Bolin, located beneath this ice layer, finds that even pinpricks of starlight cannot penetrate through, making his ice cave almost become a total darkness where one cannot see one's hand in front of one's face.

After countless failed attempts to enter meditation, superimposed with the current extremely dark environment, Wu Bolin's mindset has already somewhat collapsed; he even wishes he could immediately rush out from here, even if outside requires extra consumption of spiritual energy to cope with the extreme cold of minus sixty degrees or more; he would also rather choose to go out.

Having made up his mind, he completely abandoned meditation, rose to his feet, and prepared to break through the ice and emerge.

But what he did not expect was that, after his eyes had adapted to this extreme darkness for several days, he suddenly sensed that beneath his feet, there seemed to be a certain spot emitting an extremely faint light, barely perceptible.

That kind of light could not even properly be called light; it resembled the snowflake patterns that appear in one's eyes when closed, so he once suspected that under this extreme darkness he might have experienced some kind of hallucination or phantom vision.

At first he did not take it to heart, only thinking of getting out of this damned place as soon as possible.

But that eerie, minuscule light, the light spots that normally appear when one closes one's eyes, seemed to be somewhat different from usual.

The difference is that those unknown patterns seen when closing one's eyes are random and moving; frequent blinking makes those patterns feel as if they are floating all around when the eyes are closed.

But no matter how he blinks, that faint trace of light transmitted from deep within the ice beneath his feet has never changed its position.

Suddenly realizing, this might not be his own hallucination, but something truly existing.

Thinking of this, he could not help but mutter: "Those Japanese people explored Antarctica for over a month, and their feedback was that beneath the ice cap there was nothing but ice, only bedrock under ice thousands of meters thick; in other words, these ice caps may have already formed tens of millions of years ago—then what exactly is this minuscule light down here?"