There was simply no time to react.
When Ji Jue had seen the pale storm creep over the distant mountains three seconds earlier, it was already too late.
Three seconds later, an overwhelming tempest of raging snow and howling wind swallowed everything, including them. Looking down from the firmament, the entire world was shrouded in dancing, pure white.
Yet looking up at the sky from the earth, everything had fallen into a roiling, monstrous darkness.
Shrill clatters of impact rang out without pause.
Little Niuma shuddered violently, swaying helplessly again and again as if suddenly caught in a hail of gunfire. Even the bulletproof glass, reinforced through alchemy, developed streak after streak of white stress marks.
Countless pebbles, debris, chunks of snow, and shattered ice danced chaotically with the gale, turning the murky expanse enveloped by the storm into an invisible meat grinder.
Crack!
The first thing to shatter was the auxiliary searchlight mounted on the roof. Even its bracket groaned in twisted agony as the beam flickered and rapidly faded into darkness.
Yet even had it remained undamaged, it would have been meaningless.
Within a storm that had turned completely into a catastrophe, even with every light blazing, they could illuminate no more than a few meters ahead. And even then, myriad particles, fragments, and powdery snow swept continuously across the illuminated area. Nothing could be seen clearly; it was like static noise filling a screen, pervasive and absolute.
The only thing Ji Jue could do was floor the accelerator and surge forward.
Boom!
Amid the deafening blast, Little Niuma jolted violently and rolled over where it stood without any warning, tumbling like a gourd blown across the ground by the tempest. A boulder borne on the gale had slammed into the chassis with an impact comparable to an artillery shell.
Before it could be blown away completely, massive claws thrust out from the opening bodywork, sinking tenaciously into the frozen soil below. For a split second, sparks even flared.
Struggling to stabilize itself, it pushed forward once more.
Had the chassis not undergone countless reinforcements along with its mounted composite armor, that blow might well have gouged a massive hole straight through the vehicle's midsection.
And immediately after, the wind, snow, and flying debris pouring inside would have shredded everything in the cabin to pieces!
Crumbling collapses and booming roars rang incessantly, the outer armor rattling and popping. Amid the low rumbles, boulders and sheets of ice continually tumbled across the ground, flipped up, and blew away.
Worse still, the ground was shaking, each tremor stronger than the last. Blue veins bulged on Ji Jue's hands gripping the steering wheel. Through the sensory feedback transmitted by Little Niuma, he could feel the ground convulsing violently, as if—as if some titanic boulder were rolling toward them. Yet even after activating the ring's Transcendent Vision, which accelerated perception thirtyfold, he still could not see the source of the vibrations.
Amid his vigilance, he felt someone tap his shoulder.
Immediately after, someone pushed off and soared upward.
Like a phantom, An Ning passed right through the cabin. Flipping over, she planted her feet atop the violently shuddering, world-shaking roof, steady as a driven spike, without the slightest stagger or sway.
Dodging the debris swept along by the gale with effortless ease, she cocked her head to listen amidst the countless howling echoes. The instant she understood, Ji Jue inside the vehicle caught sight of a fleeting glimmer flashing from the roof, vanishing into the darkness in a heartbeat.
Immediately after, accompanied by innumerable massive chunks of ice and stone, the rumble of collapses and explosions echoed within the storm.
A millstone-sized boulder spun past the windshield and vanished into the distant darkness.
Thump!
A low rap sounded from the roof, signaling that all was safe.
As Little Niuma forged ahead, the howling gale actually began to ease. The flurry of snow dust and debris shrieking past the lights gradually cleared away, visibility improving rapidly to reveal a towering ice cliff alongside the vehicle.
Crash!
Unable to brake in time, the front bumper rammed into the ice. Amid a burst of sparks, the mad dash came to an abrupt halt.
Beneath the lee of the cliff, fracturing sounds cracked unceasingly from the mountain face. This fault line, formed for reasons unknown, had now become their shelter.
Ji Jue panted heavily, only now realizing his back was drenched in sweat.
Looking down at the odometer, he realized that from when they first spotted the storm until now, they had only traveled a paltry two kilometers—a distance that normally took less than a tap on the gas. Yet twisting, turning, stopping, and starting, it had taken them more than ten minutes, and they had nearly gotten lost.
Had it not been for An Ning's premonition and guidance, car and driver alike would probably have been overturned by the storm by now.
Thud.
With a soft thump, An Ning dropped back into the cabin.
A few cracks had appeared on her cap, and specks of ice clung to her exposed short hair, but she was otherwise completely unharmed, looking as though she had just returned from a stroll.
She wasn't even breathing hard.
"It's so cold outside, Brother Ji Jue."
An Ning grinned. The next instant, Ji Jue felt a sudden chill shudder down his neck. Two freezing, ice-flecked hands slipped past his collar into his clothes, like snowballs suddenly shoved inside, making him shiver from head to toe.
In the rearview mirror, her smiling face looked ever more smug, shameless in trading a favor for a reward.
Acting completely entitled, she demanded:
"That was so exhausting just now! Let me warm up a bit, won't you?"
Ji Jue rolled his eyes with a silent sigh.
He didn't scorch her this time, merely raising his body temperature slightly to let her warm herself.
She's my lifesaver, she's my lifesaver. Can't get mad, absolutely can't get mad. If it's cold, it's cold—just endure it. It's for the team. Bear with it! For the greater good, Ji Jue!
Yet for some reason, those frozen hands stayed icy, showing no sign of warming up even after a long while.
"Aiya, what's going on?" An Ning gasped in mock shock. "Maybe your back isn't warm enough. Let me try the fro—"
Smack!
The mischievous hands were seized instantly and yanked out without mercy.
Before he could fling them away, the stiff, freezing hands gripped his palms, interlacing fingers with his, quickly softening as warmth returned.
They were small and soft, pale with a flush of reddish pink, a stark contrast to Ji Jue's calloused hands.
"Wow, worthy of Masterwork Nature! So amazing, I'm warm in no time!"
An Ning marveled, rubbing his hands together. Having taken full advantage, she pulled her hands back in an instant before his became a veritable furnace, letting out an impish chuckle.
"Thanks, Brother Ji Jue!"
Thanks for what? Thanks for warming you up, or thanks for letting you cop a feel?
Ji Jue rolled his eyes, sighing silently.
He couldn't very well make a fuss over something like this, could he?
Utterly helpless.
Amid the screaming gale, the distant earth shook and mountains trembled. Fractures cracked continuously along the ice cliff, threatening to collapse at any moment and keeping one's heart in one's throat.
Yet even if it did collapse, it hardly mattered. Even if Little Niuma was buried completely beneath it, they could dig themselves out once the wind died down.
For a moment, amid the quiet, an unexpected sense of peaceful tranquility washed over them.
Outside, the temperature was plummeting rapidly, falling past minus seventy degrees, but inside the shut-off Little Niuma, it remained thoroughly warm.
No other heating was needed; with Crucible Blood gradually released, Ji Jue was the greatest heat source of all.
Even now, in the midst of this catastrophe, Ji Jue could feel a ceaseless stream of minute points of light descending from the storm like an illusion, passing through the calamity and merging into his body.
[Unquenched Fuel]!
Fuel fell into the Crucible, and within his circulating blood, thread after thread of metamorphosis continued without interruption.
With Haian Auto Works wildly shipping out products over the past few days, the gifts of Embers had grown ever more generous and dense. They even formed starlike glimmers in his blood, just like the fine sparks drifting up as fuel burned in a hearth.
By now, with the completion of Unquenched Fuel, a certain perception had grown clearer and clearer, as though reaching all the way to Haizhou, the source of those countless sparks of fuel.
It was practically a vegetable platter:
Huasheng, Doujiao, Huanggua, Radish, and Cabbage.
Every vehicle cruising the streets or navigating the wilderness was silently nurturing tiny sparks, accumulating some subtle transformation at an agonizingly slow pace, which ultimately converged into an unending trickle flowing back to Ji Jue.
Yet compared to these, what seemed even more abundant now was actually—
Prosthetics?!
Ji Jue was stunned for a moment, unable to comprehend it.
The powered prosthetic system hadn't even entered formal mass production yet, and it didn't contain even a shred of alchemy!
It was purely an engineering product...
Yet right now, far away in Haizhou, starlike motes of faint light were rising in an unbroken stream, providing Ji Jue with fuel at an efficiency surpassing all those vehicles combined.
Even though only two or three thousand units had been distributed so far, the resulting feedback was already bordering on rivaling the entire output of Haian Auto Works.
Was this the generosity of Embers?
Ji Jue pondered, then immediately dismissed the thought.
No. Perhaps it had nothing to do with generosity or cruelty. Simply put, to Sovereign Virtue, to Embers: the impact and change brought by prosthetics were far greater and more profound than all those cars sold by Haian Auto Works!
Even though it was not an alchemical product at all!
Unrelated to alchemy, unrelated even to success or failure—a casual gesture born of a past obsession, an incidental project tacked onto the exoskeleton manufacturing plan as an extra embellishment—it was already dazzling Ji Jue.
Compared to those largely identical vehicle models—creations with incremental innovations that changed nothing essential—the powered prosthetic system had stirred up an enormous, unnoticed surge in an area far beyond Ji Jue's expectations.
Even if other manufacturers began to follow suit later, and even if the device had few technical barriers and could be easily replicated with a little time, the impact and transformation it wrought, the fuel born of it, would almost certainly be credited to Ji Jue.
It was as if he had stumbled upon a cornucopia out of nowhere. For a time, even Ji Jue found it hard to believe.
Because it really required little technological sophistication; it wasn't even difficult.
It was just—
It was just that the defense contractors who previously held exoskeleton technology had never deigned to bother.
In that moment of realization, Ji Jue fell silent, not knowing what to say.
In the quiet, he let out a soft sigh, laughed self-deprecatingly, and gazed at the dark, turbulent world outside the window.
Countless snowflakes poured down like torrential rain, swirling and drifting, piling up until they nearly buried the vehicle in the lee of the cliff.
"Such heavy snow," he murmured softly.
"Whoo-hoo—" A cheer flitted past outside the car.
In the subzero freeze and the howling wind that was anything but gentle, An Ning came running from nearby, rolling an exaggerated snowball even bigger than Little Niuma. Halting in front of the vehicle, she showed it off excitedly:
"Look, look!"
Without her usual cunning or aloofness, her smile was so sweet and delighted that Ji Jue momentarily froze.
Then An Ning spun the snowball around to reveal a chibi portrait of Ji Jue she had sculpted on the back. Unfortunately, she had zero artistic talent; she had sculpted Ji Jue looking like a goblin, with a pointed chin and monkey-like cheeks.
Smack! An Ning gouged the face off the snowball and slapped it onto the window:
"A gift for you!"
Could you please give me back my touched feelings from a second ago?
Ji Jue rolled his eyes and shook his head.
Still a brat!
He closed his eyes, leaned back against the reclined seat, and rested.
An Ning hopped into the car to play on her phone for a bit, then darted out to scavenge random oddities before scampering back, having the time of her life.
There wasn't a trace of the quiet demureness from when she had disguised herself as Xiao An; instead, she was like a child out of the house for the first time, finding wonder in everything.
Before long, the storm began to subside, as if returning to calm.
The entire ordeal had lasted barely an hour.
It was unbelievable.
What was even harder to believe was that once the polar night began, storms like this wouldn't be rare at all; they were like sneezes, coming whenever they pleased.
Far from just once or twice—
As the wind and snow began to let up, Ji Jue prepared to set off.
Thanks to the storm blowing away the vast majority of the snow cover, the road ahead promised to be somewhat easier to navigate. But before he could start, a convoy approached from the distance.
The lead vehicle was pure white throughout, flashing ambulance warning lights.
Through the slightly subdued gale, loudspeakers called and shouted, searching for survivors.
It was a rescue team.
They had probably set out without a moment's delay the instant the snow stopped.
Only—
An Ning smiled, an expression completely unlike her earlier sweetness, like a hunter watching a fox put on a show.
"Should we make a move, Brother Ji Jue?"
Chapter 356