Free Web NovelChapter 47: The ice within the blood
The silence of the concrete basement was broken only by the ragged, wheezing gasps of the seven-year-old girl. Guo Jiong’s tough, weathered face was twisted in a mask of paternal terror, his knuckles white as he tried to pull his wrist free from Lin Qing’s vice-like grip.
"Let go of me!" the hunter hissed, his voice a low, dangerous growl as he glared at the woman. "She’s burning up! If I don’t give her these antibiotics, the fever is going to cook her brain! What do you mean it will kill her?!"
Lin Qing didn’t budge an inch. Her eyes remained completely fixed on the shivering child, unaffected by the hunter’s mounting rage. With her right hand still clamping his wrist like an iron shackle, her left hand reached down, her slender fingers gently turning the little girl’s chin toward the dim amber light of the lantern.
"Look at her temple," Lin Qing stated flatly, her voice carrying a chilling authority that immediately arrested Guo Jiong’s panic. "The veins aren’t dark red or purple from a viral infection. They are a pulsing, translucent blue. Her core temperature is rising, but her skin is covered in a faint layer of dry frost."
Guo Jiong froze. His sharp eyes looked down, and for the first time, he noticed the tiny, microscopic crystals of ice forming along the edges of his daughter’s damp eyelashes.
"She isn’t suffering from an illness," Lin Qing explained, releasing his wrist with a smooth motion. "The apocalypse is only a few weeks old. The global spiritual energy is highly unstable. Her body is currently undergoing a latent supernatural awakening. Her human cells are mutating to adapt to an evolutionary core."
Guo Jiong’s breath hitched. He had heard rumors of ’awakeners’ or ’evolvers’ appearing in the larger cities during the first week of the collapse—human beings who could manipulate elements or nature like the massive commander standing beside Lin Qing. But he had never imagined his own frail daughter would be one of them.
"The military antibiotics you are holding are heavily concentrated with chemical stabilizers designed to suppress aggressive cell cellular mutations," Lin Qing continued mechanically, her voice devoid of emotion. "If you give her that compound right now, it will violently clash with her forming energy nucleus. Her internal pressure will spike, her respiratory system will collapse, and she will be dead in five minutes."
Guo Jiong broke into a cold sweat, the medical vial slipping from his trembling fingers and clattering onto the concrete floor. "Then... then what do I do? How do I save her?"
Before Lin Qing could answer, a small, quiet pair of footsteps echoed from the wooden stairs leading down into the basement.
Having spent a long time cramped inside the SUV, Han Ye and Gu An had stepped out of the cabin to stretch their legs under the tight supervision of the soldiers. Drawn by the faint commotion, the two children had quietly slipped down into the storage cellar, standing just at the edge of the dim lantern light.
Han Ye stood perfectly straight, his tiny face still slightly pale but his expression completely rigid and cold. His pitch-black eyes slowly drifted toward the shivering girl on the cot.
With his memories spanning a lifetime of apocalyptic warfare, Han Ye recognized the exact biological signature instantly. This wasn’t just a standard mutation; it was a rare, high-tier ’Ice-Awakened evolution’. In his past timeline, Ice users who awakened this early were destined to become absolute powerhouses, capable of freezing entire encampments with a single wave of their hand.
From the shadows, Han Ye caught Lin Qing’s gaze. Standing perfectly still, the five-year-old gave his stepmother a subtle nod of affirmation, confirming her analysis with absolute certainty. Although neither of them had ever said their secrets out aloud, they had formed a bond of unspoken trust.
Lin Qing received the silent signal without a blink. She turned back to the trembling hunter. "Fetch the ice-cold bottled water from our transport trucks. Do not give her oral medication. Use the cold water to pack her joints and lower her external temperature manually. Her body needs to finish the evolutionary cycle naturally. Once the nucleus stabilizes, the fever will break on its own." ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
Guo Jiong didn’t hesitate. Rushing up the stairs, he grabbed the pristine water crates provided by Old Wang and ran back down, frantically soaking clean cloths to wrap around his daughter’s burning forehead and wrists.
Han Zheng stepped forward, his towering frame casting a massive shadow across the concrete room. Moving with a delicate precision that contrasted wildly with his brutal combat style, the Commander flicked his wrist, generating a very faint, localized kinetic field directly over the little girl’s cot. The invisible barrier gently stabilized the atmospheric pressure around her body, easing the violent tremors racking her lungs.
Ten minutes passed in absolute, agonizing suspense.
Slowly, the little girl’s ragged breathing began to even out. The violent shivering stopped, and the deep, angry flush on her cheeks receded into a healthy, calm pale white. Her small eyelids fluttered open, her pupils clear, glowing with a faint, beautiful tint of crystalline blue before fading back into dark iris. The latent awakening had successfully stabilized.
"Daddy..." she whispered weakly, her small hand reaching out.
Guo Jiong dropped to his knees, his tough, rugged exterior completely crumbling as he wrapped his daughter in a tight, weeping embrace. The surrounding villagers let out collective gasps of profound relief, looking at Lin Qing and Han Zheng as if they were literal gods descended into their concrete tomb.
After ensuring his daughter was resting peacefully, Guo Jiong stood up, wiping his face with the back of his hand. He turned to Han Zheng and Lin Qing, his eyes burning with a fierce, unyielding intensity that was far deeper than his previous aggression.
"You saved my daughter’s life," the hunter said, his voice thick with emotion as he stood straight, bowing deeply from the waist—a gesture of absolute submission and respect. "The people of this village do not forget their debts. We cannot leave this cellar to follow your convoy right now, but I, Guo Jiong, swear upon my life: from this day forward, if your path ever crosses ours again, we will repay this kindness tenfold."
"No need," Lin Qing said flatly, her expression remaining calm as she checked her watch. "The trade was fair. We received the heirloom seeds."
"The seeds are not enough to balance the life of my child," Guo Jiong insisted fiercely, his tough demeanor returning as he picked up his hunting rifle. "Follow me. I have some things which might be of use to you. We have a stock of seeds which were specially developed to be of high yield and high quality. It was developed before the collapse but never got to hit the market. I will give it to you as gratitude."
Turning on his heel, the tough hunter began to lead Han Zheng and Lin Qing back up the concrete stairs toward the bare storefront of the general store. Gu An and Han Ye followed silently behind, their small steps echoing in the quiet stairwell.
They reached the top of the stairs, stepping back onto the clean linoleum floor of the empty agricultural center. The natural light filtering through the glass windows was dimming as the heavy grey clouds shifted over the village square.
But just as Guo Jiong reached for the keys to the upper manager’s office, Han Zheng suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
The Commander’s body instantly locked into a rigid, lethal combat stance. His dark eyes contracted into two sharp pinpricks, his chest heaving as his high-tier sensory awareness exploded with a frantic, deafening alarm. The invisible currents floating through the peaceful village air were suddenly being torn to shreds by a massive, violent displacement of weight.
"Commander?" Old Wang’s voice exploded through the short-wave radio from the square outside, laced with a sudden, uncharacteristic panic. "We’ve got a problem! The radar grid just picked up a signature—"
"Get down!" Han Zheng’s voice boomed with a terrifying, thunderous resonance that shook the dust from the store’s ceiling.
Before anyone could even react, the Commander’s hand whipped backward, using a massive burst of force to violently launch Guo Jiong, Lin Qing, and the two children back down into the mouth of the concrete stairwell, clearing them from the storefront.
Through his internal sensory field, Han Zheng could feel it clearly—something was tearing through the empty rural road leading into the village. It wasn’t a car, and it wasn’t any other standard vehicle. It was a single, high-tier entity moving with a terrifying, supernatural speed that shattered the sound barrier, leaving a massive plume of displaced dust and concrete trailing in its wake.
The entity was closing the three-mile distance in a matter of seconds, moving straight toward their stationary convoy like a heat-seeking missile. The peaceful silence of the apocalypse was instantly shattered, and the true nightmare of the evolutionary plains had arrived at their doorstep.
