8:00 p.m. in the real world, Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau.

Uniformed team members were moving in orderly lines, loading forty-by-forty-centimeter boxes onto transport vehicles. Su Yang stood off to the side, gun in hand, his attention fixed on the operation. He did not dare let his focus slip for even a second.

Tonight, they were going to deliver these Special Grade Red Heretics onto a plane and transfer them to District 3 for strict containment.

Originally, this had only been a routine, if dangerous, transport mission. But because of the existence of one particular special heretic, the entire process had become exceptionally tense.

Su Yang’s gaze shifted toward the end of the transport line.

There, several team members were carrying a few boxes with extreme caution. Compared to the others, these boxes were a darker metallic color and looked noticeably heavier. They sank heavily in the men’s hands, forcing even these long-trained team members to bend at the waist under their weight.

Su Yang stepped forward to help and asked, “Are you sure all the corpse pieces we dug up from the soil outside the Rose Factory are here?”

One of the team members caught his breath before answering, “Captain Su, we counted them. They’re all here.”

Su Yang nodded, but his guard did not lower. He instructed, “The danger level of these corpse pieces is different from the other heretics. They cannot be placed in the same vehicle, and they cannot be put on the same plane. I submitted a special application to the Bureau for a separate transport vehicle, a separate transport plane, and a separate transport route for this batch. They will not be traveling with the other heretics.”

The team member carefully placed the box onto the transport vehicle, then turned back and leaned against the vehicle, panting. He looked at Su Yang as he walked toward the end of the line. “...Captain Su is being especially careful this time. He even applied for a dedicated transport line just for these corpse pieces.”

Another team member who was resting nearby chimed in, “You don’t know how powerful this batch of heretic corpse pieces is. The team members who went to the factory to dig them up went insane after they came back. They’re still undergoing mental dimension-reduction training right now. Who knows whether they’ll ever recover.”

The first team member clicked his tongue and rubbed his hands together. “...Is it really that terrifying?”

The teammate beside him rolled his eyes. “What else? Why do you think Captain Su separated these pieces on purpose? If we put them together with the other heretics and this thing gave them some kind of buff effect, then boom—everyone on the plane would be finished.”

“But even if they’re transported separately, the plane escorting this heretic won’t be safe either, right?” the team member asked worriedly.

“Of course it won’t be safe. But at least we won’t need that many escort personnel.” The teammate shook his head with a self-mocking laugh. “Besides, in our line of work, when is anything ever truly safe?”

“Apparently, Captain Su originally wanted to escort them himself. But ever since Captain Tang left, District 3 can’t be without someone in charge, so the Bureau forcibly kept him here.”

At the mention of “Captain Tang leaving,” both team members fell silent at the same time.

...Back when Tang Erda had still been here, dangerous missions like this had never fallen onto their shoulders.

Tang Erda would resolve everything with thunderous decisiveness before the danger even had the chance to break out, bearing all the risks alone. Although the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau was a place where people lived from one crisis to the next, as long as Tang Erda was there, they could always hide beneath that protective umbrella and shelter from the storm.

But that umbrella had finally left.

The team member forcibly changed the subject. “...I can understand Captain Su applying for a separate vehicle and a separate plane for this heretic, but he even arranged a separate flight route?”

The Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau had escorted Special Grade dangerous heretics before—Bai Liu, for instance—but those had merely been single-person escorts. Planning a unique flight route like this was truly a first.

“And this route isn’t normal either. I just sneaked a look. The landing point is somewhere near Antarctica, right? Isn’t that...” The team member searched for the right words. “...a bit too much of a fuss? Why transport this heretic all the way to Antarctica?”

The teammate looked around to make sure no one was paying attention, then leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Captain Su applied for it. He said this heretic can’t be kept in District 3, and it can’t be placed near any permanently inhabited area either, or something will go wrong. This heretic’s influence is too great. It’s too easy for people to die.”

“In the end, the Bureau reported Captain Su’s application upward, and the approval only came down yesterday. They said they contacted the polar research station and finally decided to turn this heretic into an ice core, then sink it beneath the Antarctic ice sheet for containment. They’ve already dispatched people from District 3 to guard the containment site year-round, three hundred and sixty-five days a year without interruption.”

The team member was amazed. “That’s really something... a dedicated guard detail for three hundred and sixty-five days a year. This is the first heretic to receive that kind of treatment.”

“Who said it’s the first?” The teammate curled his lip. “Did you forget Bai Liu? Our Captain Tang even stopped being a captain just to watch over him.”

The team member felt bad hearing about Captain Tang’s departure again, so he pulled the conversation back. “Hey, Antarctica is huge. Did they say where exactly they’re sealing this heretic?”

The teammate frowned, trying to remember. “...I didn’t hear clearly either. They said it was somewhere around Dome A, the highest point of the Antarctic ice sheet. High enough, thick enough, and able to suppress this heretic...”

—

11:30 p.m., the departure port.

One batch of heretics was headed directly for the airport, while the transport vehicle carrying the corpse pieces arrived at the port and was loaded onto a small cargo ship.

This cargo ship would first transfer them to another port, where a specialized plane would be waiting to escort the heretics to Antarctica.

There were five escorts in total—the minimum number Su Yang had decided on after weighing every factor.

Su Yang watched the boxes being wrapped and towed onto the cargo ship. The gangway was withdrawn, and under the pull of a tugboat, the sturdy little cargo ship entered the water. The five escorts standing on the hatch covers saluted Su Yang onshore and waved as they drifted into the cover of night.

Su Yang stared blankly as the five team members disappeared from sight. He raised his hand and waved back, but the unease in his heart thickened together with the heavy mist.

The instant the ship vanished from his view, Su Yang felt so panicked that he could hardly breathe.

Before his eyes, he seemed to see the frost-covered corpses of those five team members.

Due to the aftereffects of the Rose Perfume and of excavating the corpses at the factory, Su Yang himself had begun to show symptoms of mental dimension-reduction. From time to time, he would see hallucinations.

It was precisely because Su Yang had personally experienced those things that he understood better than anyone how dangerous those corpse pieces were.

The first moment he saw those pieces, the chaotic desires inside Su Yang—a man who had always been firm and peaceful—surged to unprecedented heights. If he had not forced himself to stay rational and pack those pieces away, the other team members might have begun fighting and tearing at one another over them.

—These corpse pieces could catalyze mental dimension-reduction. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that these corpse pieces could catalyze a person’s negative desires, magnifying them infinitely until they destroyed the bottom line of humanity.

After realizing this, Su Yang had stubbornly demanded a change in the containment location. This thing absolutely could not be placed anywhere people were stationed, or something terrifying would happen—perhaps even something more terrifying than the Rose Perfume.

In the end, after many rounds of negotiation, it was decided that the corpse pieces would be placed beneath Dome A: the coldest place in Antarctica, known as the Pole of Inaccessibility, at an altitude of 4,083 meters, a place no human had ever set foot in before.

—That was the safest place Su Yang could think of.

But he also knew...

Su Yang’s light-colored eyes reflected the swaying waves of the sea. Heavy emotions pressed against his chest, layering themselves inside his heart along with the tide striking the harbor. He closed his eyes, feeling a long-lost sense of powerlessness.

...He knew perfectly well that in this world, there was no promised land where one could escape human desire.

He only hoped that no more innocent people would die in the process.

But how could that be possible?

Whether good or evil, once human desire reached its extreme, it was always such a hurtful thing.

After Tang Erda left, Su Yang began to understand what Bai Liu had said to him in the interrogation room that day.

That clean, clear-looking young man had raised his head and gazed at him with black eyes that seemed to contain everything in the universe. Then, softly, he had said, “Captain Su, a desire to protect that comes too close can kill people.”

Su Yang gripped the stinging octopus-shaped team badge on the right side of his chest and sighed. Then he turned and left in the freezing night wind.

Behind him, the small cargo ship sounded a clear departure whistle, sailing into the deeper, bottomless night.

—

The Game Pool.

Bai Liu and his group had staked out Spades’ team several times, and they had finally figured out a bit of their operating pattern. In general, they formed a fixed team and grinded a specific dungeon together.

But occasionally, Spades would leave the team and go alone to grind a certain ice-field dungeon—just like what Bai Liu had seen when he first entered the Game Pool.

He seemed to have a special attachment to this ice-field dungeon, much like a person’s attachment to their own home and bed. He returned to stay in this dungeon according to a rhythm that was almost biological.

—It was as if Spades treated this ice-field dungeon as his home.

And Bai Liu’s target was precisely this ice-field dungeon.

He was not so arrogant as to believe that the Wandering Circus could challenge the entire Killer Sequence team right from the start.

But under circumstances where there was no threat to their lives, Bai Liu felt that they could certainly try to “boss raid” a star player as a group.

This was a move where the benefits outweighed the risks.

They could obtain intelligence on the star player, polish their own team’s coordination, and, if they were lucky enough to actually defeat a star player, they could use that to gain an enormous amount of hype.

Although it was shameless, it was effective.

Out of a certain peculiar curiosity, Bai Liu decided to use Spades as the trial run. He kept his gaze fixed on the players coming and going around the Game Pool. When he saw a certain person who scared off all the surrounding players appear quietly, the corners of his lips could not help but curl upward.

Spades walked to the edge of the Game Pool, holding his neatly bound whip.

The moment the surrounding players realized it was him, they all held their breath and backed away. They did not even dare enter a game, afraid that they might be unlucky enough to pick the same one as this god of slaughter.

But Spades did not seem to care much about his surroundings. He observed the rapidly rotating posters in the Game Pool for a moment, then decisively selected one and leaped in.

In that instant, Bai Liu lashed out with his whip without the slightest hesitation. The whip hooked around Spades’ waist, and Bai Liu dragged the string of team members behind him into the game.

Spades glanced back at him.

That one glance was without wave or ripple, cold as water beneath ice, and then he was swiftly swallowed by the Game Pool.

By the time the Game Pool calmed again, the surrounding circle of players had been stunned speechless by the sight of that group “dragging their whole family” to their deaths. For a long while, no one dared step forward and enter the pool.

After a long time, someone asked hoarsely, “...What the hell was that?”

—

Snow and ice covered heaven and earth. The gale howled.

Bai Liu woke up coughing. Because of the extreme cold, he subconsciously curled in on himself. In only a few minutes, he was so frozen that his skin had gone numb and lost all sensation.

It was not until a voice sounded behind him that Bai Liu realized he was not lying on the ground, but in someone’s arms.

“You shouldn’t have followed me into this game.” Spades was holding Bai Liu, who had fallen against him. Feeling the tremor of Bai Liu’s skin beneath his palm, he stated flatly, “You’re very afraid of the cold.”

Only then did Bai Liu look back.

Spades was very close to him. If Bai Liu turned his head even a little farther, he would touch the other man’s nose.

That made Bai Liu’s breath catch for a moment, and he instinctively pulled back.

Spades, however, did not seem to think there was anything wrong with such close proximity. He stood up naturally, bringing Bai Liu, who had been draped over him, up along with him. With practiced ease, he took a windbreaker down from the wall, put it on, zipped it up, and handed another one to Bai Liu.

Once fully equipped, Spades opened the door to go outside.

Bai Liu narrowed his eyes as he took the windbreaker. “Aren’t you going to ask why I followed you in?”

He had already prepared quite a few reasons to deal with the other man, such as wanting to ride on the popularity of the number-one star player.

Spades pushed open the door and looked back amid the violent rush of wind and snow. The gale blew his bangs into wild disarray, but the eyes beneath them were pure black and devoid of emotion, just like Bai Liu’s.

“Didn’t you follow me in because you wanted to play this game with me and beat me?”

Bai Liu paused.

Spades pulled down his goggles and stepped out the door. His voice was strangely clear, still audible even within the blizzard.

“Don’t use other reasons to deceive me or yourself. Since you want to play this game with me, then play it properly. Use everything you have to beat me, Bai Liu.”

—

Author’s Note

Dome A was already reached by our country’s scientific research team in 2004! It was the first team in the world to reach the highest point of the Antarctic interior!

But in this world line, Dome A has not yet been reached. This isn’t a bug; it’s part of the setting.

Right now, Bai Liu is sitting on Spades.

Spades thinks, steady as Mount Tai: He’s afraid of the cold, so he should stay farther away from me.

Later, Bai Liu is sitting on Spades, whose body temperature is very low, and wants to get up.

Bai Liu: I’m afraid of the cold. Stay farther away from me.

Spades, calmly pressing him back down: ...It won’t be cold after you sit for a while longer.