Chapter 182: Ice and Fire
“Haa…”
Feeling the stimulation of light on her eyelids, Lin Xiwan’s right index finger twitched slightly. Her consciousness felt like it was thawing from a frigid chill, gradually becoming aware of the burning sensation spreading through her body.
And the immense energy flowing within.
What… what happened?
Although Lin Xiwan couldn’t open her eyes yet, she could feel the surging power within her.
“Haa…”
After a difficult exhale, Lin Xiwan felt her bodily functions slowly returning, like a living corpse crawling out of a grave.
So hot…
What on earth happened…?
Lin Xiwan vaguely remembered her consciousness gradually succumbing to paralysis after drinking her sister’s blood.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t move, and there was only endless darkness before her eyes.
But she could feel things.
She could feel the intense pain throughout her body, the repeated agony of suffocation and blood loss.
As if she had been thrown into the eighteen levels of hell and tortured repeatedly.
She felt her body alternating between hot and cold. When cold, it was like her blood vessels were freezing; when hot, it was like molten iron being poured down her throat.
This repeated torment nearly broke Lin Xiwan. Countless times, she wanted to reach up and snap her own neck, just to end the pain, but she couldn’t move.
But just as her spirit was about to shatter, she seemed to see her sister, her face radiant with a smile, leaning over her. Her sister looked at her gently, whispered, “It’s okay, Sister,” and kissed her cheek.
It felt like the fleeting images one saw before death. She had heard that people see their dreams before they die. Perhaps she was about to die.
But for some reason, just thinking of this image strengthened Lin Xiwan’s will to survive. Like a dying person in the desert seeing a mirage of an oasis, even though it was fake, it gave her hope to keep going.
She had to survive.
Because if she survived, she might actually see that scene.
Relying on the image of her sister’s smiling face, Lin Xiwan endured countless cycles of heat and cold, feeling like eons had passed.
Finally, just now, she sensed a faint light and felt the functions of her body returning.
Was it over?
She lay there for a few minutes, until the paralysis began to fade, and then slowly opened her eyes.
She saw the intertwined vines above, forming a canopy.
But these vines, perhaps due to lack of nutrients, had already begun to wither. The originally dense vines had thinned, allowing sunlight to filter through the gaps.
I’m not dead…
I succeeded…
Is this the power of B-rank…? I’m starting to understand…
Before Lin Xiwan could explore her newfound power, she quickly realized something.
Yao?
“Gurgle?” She tried to call out her sister’s name, but a thick, transparent mucus came out of her mouth.
Then, her body convulsed involuntarily, and she violently vomited.
“Ugh—”
A torrent of transparent pus erupted from her mouth, not just from her stomach, but from her lungs as well.
Perhaps this was one of the reasons she felt suffocated.
The vomit contained no food residue, completely transparent, and was quickly absorbed by the moss on the ground as soon as it was expelled, as if it were some kind of rare tonic.
And Lin Xiwan herself, perhaps because she had been completely filled with this tonic, could no longer absorb this translucent substance.
After a long time, Lin Xiwan finally finished vomiting, coughed, and sat up, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
Her sleeve?
Lin Xiwan looked at her black jacket, confused.
She remembered taking off all her clothes before losing consciousness.
She quickly looked around and soon noticed something unusual.
Not far from her was a large bed woven from vines.
And a figure, naked from the waist up and wearing only a skirt, was lying beside the vine bed.
It was her sister.
Her sister’s usually smooth back was now covered in bumps where the vines and tree roots were still connected, not yet removed. It seemed that her sister had collapsed after completing everything, even dressing Lin Xiwan, too exhausted to even take care of herself.
“Yao…”
Pushing herself up with her knees, Lin Xiwan quickly went to her sister’s side and squatted down to check on her.
Her breathing was normal, her pulse was normal, and she could feel her heart beating strongly through her clothes. Her sister was safe.
She seemed to be just asleep.
After confirming that her sister was fine, Lin Xiwan finally relaxed.
Although she didn’t know what happened last night, she knew that it was all her sister’s doing…
Perhaps during her promotion, her sister had really held her, constantly encouraging and accompanying her when she was on the verge of failing…
“Yao…”
Lin Xiwan’s eyes stung. She gently pulled her sister into her arms, lowered her head, rested her forehead against her sister’s head, and murmured her name.
A surge of emotions welled up in her throat, too complex to express in words.
Their bond didn’t need many words. They would respond to each other, as always, with unwavering companionship.
It had always been this way, and it would always be.
Perhaps because of her movements, her sister in her arms slowly opened her eyes.
At first, Lin Xiwan didn’t notice, until the vines and tree roots began to withdraw from her sister’s back.
“Yao?”
Lin Jiayao, just waking from the exhaustion, heard the gentle call and slowly raised her head, looking towards the source of the sound.
Her sister was awake… and seemed to be in good spirits.
“Morning… Sister.” Lin Jiayao greeted, her voice a little weak.
Last night, after helping her sister complete the promotion and the aftermath, Lin Jiayao had almost immediately fallen into a deep sleep.
But this time, it was different from the uncontrollable coma before.
Before, it was mostly due to mental exhaustion, a passive descent into unconsciousness. This time, it was physical exhaustion.
Her mental power wasn’t depleted much, but the physical exertion was too great.
Although Perfect Form had transformed her body into the most energy-efficient state possible, even abandoning the form of her legs, hearing, vision, and hands, it still couldn’t withstand Lin Jiayao’s efforts.
After all, Lin Jiayao’s current physical strength was probably not even at E-rank, severely lacking in basic attributes.
This was also related to the fact that Lin Jiayao hadn’t encountered any strength-enhancing evolutions in all her logins.
If she encountered one next time, Lin Jiayao would definitely choose it without hesitation.
Unless there was a golden evolution available.
And the physical exertion from helping her sister evolve last night far exceeded Lin Jiayao’s limit. She had only managed to persevere thanks to the passive skill, Hunting Rhythm.
It was as if Lin Jiayao had been doing push-ups on her sister all night without any external assistance.
Anyone would be exhausted.
So, after helping her sister complete the evolution, Lin Jiayao deactivated Perfect Form.
She had no strength left to go back. Lin Jiayao had forced herself to create a bed, intending to carry her sister onto it so they could sleep together, but she blacked out as soon as the bed was finished.
But fortunately, the evolution was finally over, and her sister had finally evolved to B-rank.
B-rank, among human Awakened, was almost at the top of the pyramid.
And her sister was also a close-combat Awakened, with extremely strong self-preservation abilities.
With her sister’s increased strength, Lin Jiayao felt a little more at ease.
As for whether her sister would also fail when evolving to A-rank, and whether the Perfect Form method would still work, these questions were not within Lin Jiayao’s consideration.
Because it was too far off.
Lin Jiayao hadn’t even seen an A-rank zombie with her own eyes yet. If she wanted to see one, she would probably have to wait for her fishing plan to be steadily implemented.
Actually, the part of Lin Jiayao’s fishing plan about clearing the seabed city had a simpler solution.
Originally, Lin Jiayao planned to take No. 5 and the people from the “Ino Cult” to clear it area by area.
Although this could clear the area, there was no guarantee that other seabed zombies wouldn’t happen to wander into the area she wanted to log into before logging in.
After all, Lin Jiayao’s manpower couldn’t completely blockade a city, no matter how small the city was.
And if a “species” could “invade” Japan, it would make Lin Jiayao’s cleaning plan much easier, and no seabed creatures would intrude.
Hive Zombies.
Using the Hive Zombies’ instinct to gather zombies, she could effectively gather the zombies in an area and kill them, just like the Japanese using sonar to attract dolphins for hunting before the apocalypse.
Of course, they were doing evil, and Lin Jiayao was eliminating evil, but the methods used were the same.
However, if she wanted to use this method, there was a problem.
How could she transport a C-rank or higher Hive Zombie from America to Japan?
Saving enough Blood Crystals and letting Huayibai carry Goldie across the Pacific Ocean was indeed a solution.
But this method was the riskiest.
The maximum flying altitude of the flapping-wing insect simulated by Goldie was only about two hundred meters. This distance could be reached by a seabed zombie with a single flick of its tail.
Not to mention that there might be many B-rank or even A-rank zombies in the sea. Flying across the Pacific Ocean was like flying across the endless sea in World of Warcraft, purely courting death.
But Lin Jiayao would still consider the Hive Zombie option, and she would think carefully about whether there was a solution while Goldie was evolving.
Anyway, this plan was to be implemented step by step. Before the previous step was completed, the subsequent plans could be modified and improved at any time.
“Morning.”
While Lin Jiayao was lost in thought, her sister beside her rubbed her head, then picked her up, letting Lin Jiayao’s head rest on her shoulder.
“Are you very tired?” After picking up Lin Jiayao, her sister asked with concern, “Shall I carry you back to sleep?”
While saying this, Lin Xiwan, who was carrying Lin Jiayao, walked towards the empty space where her sister’s clothes were placed, preparing to help her sister put on her clothes to avoid catching a cold.
“Not tired.” Lin Jiayao replied.
As long as it wasn’t mental fatigue, it was nothing to Lin Jiayao.
If her mental power reached its limit, it might collapse, which Lin Jiayao was a little worried about.
But the body was not as important as the mind in Lin Jiayao’s heart.
Maybe it was because she had logged into too many strange zombies and adapted to many bodies, Lin Jiayao didn’t care much about the damage to the body.
Even if her whole body was crushed, she could reshape it by devouring and using mycelium. The body was just a shell – this view had gradually emerged in Lin Jiayao’s mind.
After obtaining the system, in the early stages of her body’s mutation, Lin Jiayao was very concerned about any changes in her body, afraid that she would become a strange-looking zombie.
But after yesterday’s Perfect Form, Lin Jiayao had completely accepted this change in form – she had been given a strong dose of medicine.
If she had to make an analogy, it was like a person who usually didn’t eat anything bitter being forced to eat a Switch game cartridge. After that, bitter melon tasted sweet.
Lin Jiayao was in this state. After turning into that kind of monster that was unbearable to look at yesterday, now even if there were any minor changes in her body, she could accept them.
At this time, Lin Xiwan, hearing her sister say that she wasn’t tired, squatted down to pick up her sister’s clothes and was about to help her sister put them on when she suddenly thought of something and asked:
“By the way, why did you take off your clothes last night?”
“It was hot.” Lin Jiayao told a half-truth.
The real reason was that she didn’t want the changes in her body to damage the clothes her sister gave her, so she took them off in advance.
“Oh… okay, I also felt quite hot…” Lin Xiwan nodded, agreeing with her sister’s statement.
Because she also felt some painful heat last night, but she couldn’t recall the details.
“By the way, Sister,” Lin Jiayao, sitting on the ground with her hands raised, letting her sister help her dress, asked, “Have you tried your ability?”
“Huh?” After helping her sister put on the red knitted sweater, Lin Xiwan was stunned by her sister’s words, “No.”
“Try it.” Lin Jiayao looked at her sister and said with a smile, “I want to see.”
Actually, Lin Jiayao was quite curious about what her sister’s ability had evolved into. After all, she was a rare close-combat B-rank.
As for the retain evolution prompt given by No. 7’s extraction, she would choose it after her sister tried her ability and carried her back.
