Lu Liran saw the audience’s worried comments. “Exactly. Which is why I have no intention of climbing down into the crevasse.”
“I’m going to send the camera sphere down to have a look for me.”
As soon as Lu Liran spoke, the camera sphere seemed to understand his intentions and slowly descended into the crevasse.
The image switched to night vision, showing the livestream viewers an entirely real, unfamiliar world beneath the ice.
The camera’s top-down angle made them feel as though they were looking down from the roof of a building dozens of stories high. The hair on their bodies stood on end.
Below was an apparently bottomless abyss. On either side, walls of blue ice dropped straight down, like the two sides of a gateway to hell.
[HOLY SHIT, HOLY SHIT! I wasn’t ready for this angle! I can’t fucking breathe!]
[Comments, protect me! Comments, protect me! Comments, protect me!]
Lu Liran paid the chat no further attention. He focused on the camera’s feed, searching the gap in the ice for any sign of life.
The sphere descended another five meters or so. The picture remained empty, except that the fissure appeared to narrow as it grew deeper.
[Doesn’t look like anyone’s down there.]
[Documenting the streamer’s first epic failure.]
Just as the comments began predicting failure, Lu Liran’s gaze suddenly sharpened. “Found something,” he said in a low voice.
The camera sphere drifted toward a narrow recess between the inner ice walls. An inconspicuous shadow lay there, curled into a ball and wedged between the walls.
The sphere searched for an angle and finally caught the shadow from the front. It was indeed a human being.
The person’s face was blue-white and his eyes were shut. There was no telling whether he was alive or dead.
The camera automatically switched to life-sign detection mode and performed a basic scan of his vital signs.
Lu Liran’s conclusion was that the man was alive, with a displaced fracture. The absence of any serious bleeding elsewhere was a pleasant surprise.
[HOLY SHIT! FOUND HIM! HE REALLY FOUND HIM! —City Lord gave the streamer 1 Sukiyaki Pot]
[Damn! Is he still alive?!]
[The streamer is amazing!]
For once, Lu Liran’s eyes curved in a smile. He let out a breath of relief. “This should be the missing person we’re looking for. I’ll launch a signal flare now. Rescue should arrive soon.”
He drew a flare from his terminal and fired it skyward. With a sharp whistling sound, orange-red smoke slowly spread high above them, impossible to miss.
At the same time, Lu Liran dropped a location beacon beside his feet. Once activated, it would send precise coordinates to the association official at base camp.
Almost simultaneously, base camp received the coordinates. “Someone’s found Rockefeller! Hurry and notify the Rockefeller family!”
“Understood!”
“Which team was it? The bounty this time is enormous!”
“What are Rockefeller’s vital signs? Is he alive?”
“I’m contacting the hunter now.”
Shortly afterward, Lu Liran received a request for a video call from base camp.
“It’s you!” The association official on the other end looked surprised. He had learned early on that Lu Liran had gone off alone, and he had even doubted the man would make it out of Arlok alive.
The official quickly recovered and got down to business. “How is the missing person?”
“Alive. No major traumatic injuries, but he has a displaced fracture and severe frostbite around his wounds. He fell into a crevasse, approximately five meters deep,” Lu Liran answered, brief and precise.
“A crevasse?!” The official sucked in a breath. Fractures and frostbite were one thing, but falling into a crevasse? That was among their worst-case scenarios.
The missing man’s luck was truly awful.
“Our rescue team is already on its way, but because of the blizzard, it will take us a little over three hours to reach you,” the official said. “Please keep monitoring the missing person’s condition, and stay in contact with us.”
Lu Liran acknowledged the instructions and ended the call.
The two other teams on the mountain were bitterly frustrated. They had both seen the orange-red signal flare announcing that the target had been found, and it meant the substantial bounty was now completely out of reach.
“Can’t believe that other team got there first.” Yuan Ding angrily kicked a hole in the snow.
They were close to where the flare had appeared. Another half a day and they might have found the missing omega themselves.
“Do you know which team it was?” his brother Yuan Xiao asked curiously.
“What other team is there besides ours?” Yuan Ding rolled his eyes, clicked his tongue, and raised his voice slightly, glancing sideways at An Ke walking nearby. “You can’t seriously think it was that bounty hunter who abandoned his team?”
“We don’t even know if he’s still alive. After a blizzard like that, anyone on their own would be in trouble.” Yuan Ding curled his lip.
An Ke stopped and looked over coldly. He was about to speak when he spotted another team trudging toward them from across the snow, dirty and thoroughly bedraggled.
Yuan Ding noticed them too. He froze, then asked, “Wait. You weren’t the ones who found him?!”
“You weren’t either?!” the other team cried in unison.
“Then who was it?” someone on the other team asked, baffled. “Weren’t there only two teams?”
Yuan Xiao explained, “Lu Liran left our team and went off alone.”
“What?! Wait, you mean… the scar-faced guy went off by himself? Are you telling me *he* found the missing person?!”
Yuan Ding was still trying to absorb the shock. His eyes widened in disbelief, and he was so furious he could have coughed blood.
“Fuck, that guy’s incredible! He found him all by himself?! When did he split from you?”
“Right at the beginning,” Yuan Xiao answered honestly.
Yuan Ding desperately wanted to cover his brother’s mouth. He shot Yuan Xiao a furious glare. Hadn’t they been humiliated enough already?
The members of the other team all sucked in a breath. “So he survived that super-blizzard in Arlok on his own?! And still completed the mission?! That’s insane!”
“How did you not stick close to someone with a golden touch like that?!”
“And now he gets to pocket the entire bounty himself! How satisfying is that?!”
Each remark made Yuan Ding feel worse. Finally, he turned and stormed away.
Meanwhile, the gathering of rich young heirs in the rooftop garden was coming to an end.
The idle, wealthy young men were dumbfounded. None had imagined that an ordinary-looking bounty hunter, left all on his own, would be the one to complete the mission.
Xian Yu burst out laughing and demanded that everyone who had placed a losing bet hand over their money.
“Who would’ve thought? Rockefeller’s luck is incredible. He fell into a miserable little crack like that, and someone still managed to find him.”
“Tsk. That bounty hunter is going to be famous now. The Rockefeller family’s missing precious young master—this has been the biggest headline around lately.”
“Hey, look at the galactic network! The Rockefeller family has already issued an official statement, and they’ve sent a whole formation of search helicopters. What a spectacle.”
At that, Xian Yu immediately looked at Lu Liran’s livestream. As expected, the number of viewers flooding in after hearing the news had skyrocketed.
Within just ten minutes or so, the live audience passed fifty thousand, and the figure was still leaping upward.
The platform even immediately assigned Lu Liran a prominent temporary recommendation on the homepage.
[Congratulations, streamer! Your livestream has been featured on the homepage’s giant-screen recommendation! Keep up the good work~]
An official System notification swept across the livestream homepage.
[Aaaaaah! My hidden-gem streamer has finally made it big!!]
[Congratulations, Young Master!!] —This was Jin Fei, the butler.
[I have no idea why everyone is calling him “Young Master,” but it has a certain ring to it… Congratulations, Young Master!]
[Congratulations, Young Master!]
[Congratulations, Young Master! Keep the chain going!]
The author has something to say:
Yuan Xiao: Not only did we fail to cling to our lucky charm, we actually made him angry enough to leave.
Yuan Ding: Please stop talking. orz
The livestream’s audience was shooting upward. New viewers poured in, all asking what was happening.
[Hardcore man digs a hole! Living person buried in snow!]
[An on-site survey of the Arlok Glaciers, uncovering nature’s hidden dangers!]
[Live bounty-hunter search-and-recovery! One hand delivers the goods, the other takes the money!]
[What???]
Seeing the answers become increasingly ridiculous, Lu Liran had to step in. “Hello, everyone. I’m Lu Liran, a wilderness survival streamer and bounty hunter. I’m currently in the Arlok Glaciers, where I’ve found the target of a missing-person mission, a person missing for three days, below a crevasse whose snow bridge collapsed. His vital signs are stable.”
[So it really is this streamer! I thought my friend was pulling my leg!]
[Impressive! All of Desolate Star knows you’ve found the Rockefeller family’s precious young master!]
[Checking in before this goes viral!]
[Here on a group sightseeing trip!]
[Visibility down that crevasse is terrible. Is the streamer psychic or does he have X-ray vision? How could he know someone was hiding in a corner like that?]
[Quit making snide remarks. The streamer’s just that good. If you don’t like it, keep quiet.]
[I’m on the streamer’s side, but I’m curious too! He sees the same camera feed we do, right? So how did he notice the person?]
Lu Liran skimmed the comments. Most viewers simply wanted to know how he had spotted the missing man.
Ignoring the occasional sarcastic voice, he withdrew from the edge of the crevasse and explained, “The image I saw is indeed identical to the one you saw in the livestream. But I extracted more useful information from it.”
“At a depth of about five meters, I noticed an inconspicuous bulge in the blue ice on the right-hand side. The curve was subtle, but against the relatively flat surface, it stood out.”
“A smooth bulge like that doesn’t resemble the natural fractures caused by a glacier moving and knocking against other ice. It looks more like localized warmth has melted the surface slightly. Body heat, exhaled carbon dioxide, urine—things like that.”
While he spoke, the camera sphere returned to the vicinity of the missing man and showed the livestream viewers the scene again.
For the newcomers, this was their first direct view inside a crevasse. The darkness of the gaping abyss made them feel dizzy, as though they were falling.
Lu Liran continued, “After noticing that, I studied that region more carefully and found a shadowed corner on a slightly protruding ledge. If I were down there, that’s the sort of place I would take shelter while waiting for rescue.”
