That was true enough.
Elsewhere, in a warm, brightly lit rooftop garden, several wealthy young heirs had gathered to watch the search teams. They joked among themselves. “What do you think? Will anyone manage to find Rockefeller this time?”
“I think so. I heard that Rockefeller’s locator finally switched on. Surely the search teams can find him now.”
“Then let’s bet on who finds him! Ten thousand star coins says it’s An Ke’s team, the one led by the retired special forces soldier.”
“I’ll bet on the other team, then. Hahaha!”
“Xian Yu! Hey, what about you?”
A young man hunched over a screen, typing, drawled lazily, “Fifty thousand star coins on the one going alone.”
“What?! They didn’t even leave that guy a drone to scout with!”
Xian Yu didn’t answer. Curled up in his armchair, he looked as if he might fall asleep at any moment.
Someone wandered behind him and discovered that he was furiously posting comments in a livestream, attacking every viewer who disagreed with him.
“Pfft! What are you doing, watching a livestream and fighting with anonymous accounts? Hahahaha! The son of one of Desolate Star’s wealthiest men, doing this? Your dad would be furious!”
“That’s not all. He even sent the streamer a Buddha Jumps Over the Wall gift!”
“Hmm, that might be the only remotely rich-heir thing Xian Yu has done today.”
“Which pretty omega was it for?”
Xian Yu lazily raised his eyes, glanced around at his disreputable friends, then jerked his chin toward the garden’s enormous display. “That lone bounty hunter. The one without a single drone following him.”
“What?!”
The author has something to say:
Brother Lu, a man of the world: Spare me the fancy nonsense. The bounty matters most.
Xian Yu’s good-for-nothing friends were still watching the other bounty hunters’ movements.
With his streamer offline, Xian Yu was bored enough to follow their gaze for a while.
The giant screen was split in two. An Ke’s team occupied the left half, and the other team the right.
The blizzard over the Arlok Glaciers had shown no mercy to anyone. But because the teams were traveling in different directions at different speeds, the two other groups encountered it one or two hours later than Lu Liran had.
Both teams had prepared thoroughly for emergencies like this. They took out compressed tents and set up camp on the spot.
One of Xian Yu’s friends turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “What about your streamer? How is he doing?”
“He dug an emergency snow shelter.” Xian Yu lifted his eyelids, glanced at the seven or eight tents on the screen, and gave a dismissive snort. Child’s play.
His friend stared. “Huh?”
Xian Yu couldn’t be bothered explaining. He only tilted his chin toward the screen. “The hot prospects you all bet on are about to go under.”
They hurriedly looked. The tents belonging to one team were being savaged by the blizzard; within minutes, several had been torn away. The team members huddled together for warmth, trembling uncontrollably.
An Ke’s team, at least, had secured all four corners of its tents.
One man who had bet on An Ke looked smug. “If they don’t even know to anchor their tents, what good would finding the missing man do? They’d never bring him back!”
“Don’t laugh at the others yet. That retired soldier’s team won’t hold out much longer either,” Xian Yu said.
Snow was piling higher and higher on the roofs of An Ke’s tents. The fabric creaked under the weight, threatening to collapse at any moment.
Sure enough, An Ke’s group lasted only a little longer than the other team before their tents caved in one after another. All four members scrambled miserably out from under the snow.
For a moment the young heirs stared at each other, then at the screen. All nine searchers had brought tents, yet they had ended up in exactly the same predicament: clustered in separate shivering heaps, trying to keep warm.
“Xian Yu, what’s happening with yours?” one of them asked.
Xian Yu was about to say the streamer had gone offline when a notification chimed. The platform was telling him that a streamer he followed had just gone live.
///
The blizzard had lasted almost forty minutes. Outside, the temperature had fallen by at least another ten degrees.
The snow shelter was much warmer than the open air, but it was still bitterly cold.
Hearing the howling wind gradually weaken, Lu Liran looked at Ke Ji, who lay across from him, and called softly, “Ke Ji, wake up. We have to go.”
Ke Ji opened his eyes at the sound, looking as alert as if he had never been asleep. Almost immediately, though, a misty haze settled over them and his expression became drowsy, making that first flash of alertness seem like an illusion.
He yawned quietly and murmured in a weary voice, “It’s so cold.”
“Obviously. You’re in Arlok.” Lu Liran gave a derisive laugh.
He came over to inspect Ke Ji’s condition.
Ke Ji gave him a soft smile. “Other than being cold, I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”
The slightly sharp lines of his handsome features softened as his eyes curved into crescents. His damp, steel-blue gaze was as gentle as a sunlit azure sea.
No alpha could resist a smile like that.
But Lu Liran was no alpha.
He gave Ke Ji a glance, curled his lip, and walked away.
Ke Ji touched the tip of his nose. Evidently, the chief of staff’s *Ten Quick Tricks for Being an Omega* had not been much use.
The break was over. Lu Liran switched his livestream on again.
More than four hundred people were now following his channel, and a scattered dozen or so viewers entered almost as soon as he went live.
[It hasn’t even been that long! I thought we’d have to wait until tomorrow!]
[Did the streamer get any rest?]
[Rushed here as fast as I could! First-row comment: 6666!]
“Hello, everyone. I’m a wilderness survival expert and a bounty hunter. Right now I’m on the Arlok Glaciers, sheltering with another traveler who happened to get lost. We dug a temporary snow shelter. The blizzard has just passed, and the temperature inside is currently minus twenty-five degrees.”
Lu Liran curled his body inward slightly and kept rubbing his hands together, breathing warm air onto them. “I rested for about an hour before the cold woke me up. It’s freezing. My fingers and toes are starting to go stiff and numb, so we need to get out and find a way away from here as soon as possible.”
“First, I have to check how much snow is covering the entrance. I checked about half an hour ago, and it was already buried under a layer of loose snow. I just hope the snow hasn’t packed down too tightly.”
He approached the entrance. The camera sphere caught a fresh little drift of snow that had accumulated near the opening.
Lu Liran prodded the passage overhead. A small shower of snow fell down, but not even a sliver of daylight appeared.
There was clearly a substantial depth of snow above them.
“The worst has happened: we’ve been buried alive by snow.” Lu Liran turned to Ke Ji and briefly explained their predicament, quickly adding, “But snow deposited by a blizzard is relatively loose, so it shouldn’t be a major problem.”
[??? They’re actually buried?!]
[How can the streamer say something that terrifying with such a relaxed face?!]
[The weather bureau issued a notice a few hours ago. This snowfall broke the recent record—thirty whole centimeters!]
[Damn, the streamer’s luck is something else…]
After considerable effort, Lu Liran finally hauled himself up through the exit of the snow shelter.
He spat out a mouthful of snow and was preparing to pull Ke Ji up, only to discover that the other man had already climbed out right behind him, apparently without the slightest difficulty.
Ke Ji raised his head and met Lu Liran’s slightly lifted, inquisitive eyebrow. After a pause, he offered an innocent smile.
The camera sphere rose into the air and filmed the glaciers in the aftermath of the blizzard.
The previously distinct leeward slope looked as though half of it had been shaved away.
[Good heavens! A few hours ago, that slope was taller than a person, and now there’s only this much left?!]
[If that happened to me in Arlok, I wouldn’t last half an hour.]
[No, no, I’ve learned something now: first, dig myself a hole!]
Night lasted only four hours out of each day in Arlok. Lu Liran and Ke Ji had just endured their difficult first night, surviving the blizzard along with it.
Lu Liran unscrewed his water bottle, scooped up several handfuls of snow from the ground, and stuffed them inside.
“Replenishing water promptly is essential to survival. But I don’t recommend grabbing snow and eating it directly. It will supply water, yes, but it will also lower your core body temperature much faster.”
“A drop of even one degree in core temperature can cause pronounced discomfort. In severe cases, it can even lead to fainting or shock. It isn’t worth the risk.”
As he spoke, he tucked the bottle inside his clothes. The cold made him shiver slightly, and he hissed through his teeth. “So cold…”
Lu Liran glanced at Ke Ji. As if struck by inspiration, Ke Ji immediately understood the look and followed suit, grabbing some snow to melt against his body.
[Mom, I’m cold just looking at him! Sticking that straight inside his clothes—what a warrior! —Real Glutinous Rice Ball gave the streamer 1 Sukiyaki Pot: Something to warm the streamer up!]
Lu Liran did a few sets of burpees. Once he felt warmth spreading through his body again, he set off.
He walked for more than an hour. The sky cleared, and sunlight softened the snow, making the going even harder.
“The southern side of Arlok borders the ocean, and there are usually signs of human activity near the coastline,” Lu Liran explained as he walked. “If I haven’t found any trace of the missing traveler within three days, I’ll head south and leave the glaciers.”
While he was talking, a sudden beeping came from his person.
Lu Liran froze briefly, then realized it was the location detector issued by the Bounty Association.
The device would activate automatically whenever he entered the range of the missing person’s GPS signal.
“This is… a GPS response from our missing target. We’ve entered his signal range.”
He was surprised, though not entirely. He had been heading toward the place where the man had disappeared; the closer he came, the more likely he was to discover clues to his whereabouts.
He took out the detector and immediately hurried in the direction indicated by its coordinates.
[66666! Go, streamer! For the bounty!!!]
[This feels like watching a reality show… Almost as if it’s scripted.]
[Are you seriously accusing it of being scripted with no evidence? If you don’t like it, close the stream! —Plantain gave the streamer 300 Grains of Rice]
[But finding the missing guy this easily seems like too much of a coincidence.]
Lu Liran noticed the argument unfolding in his livestream. His dark-brown eyes grew stern, carrying an air of pressure that people could feel even through the screen.
