Chapter 32: The Blizzard Season
Re-energized, Zhao Man asked Tang Heng, “Are there that many mutated beasts in the mountains?”
Tang Heng nodded.
Seeing him nod, Zhao Man’s worries flared right back up. “With that many, won’t the base be in extreme danger once the snow melts?”
Tang Heng reached out to cup Zhao Man’s cheek, reassuring him gently, “No. Almost all the beasts in that mountain are just there to seek shelter from the cold. Once the big blizzard passes, they’ll clear out of the energy shield’s range. Otherwise, if they miss their mutation phase, death is their only path.”
“Mutation phase?”
“Yeah. The base is packed with suppressors designed for mutated beasts and aberrant plants to keep the perimeter safe. That makes the base much warmer than the wild. But the acid rain season right after the snow melts is their critical window for mutating. If they stay within the base’s borders, their mutations will practically always fail. Linger here, and they’ll be culled by the base; go back out into the wilderness, and they won’t stand a chance against the beasts that mutated properly.”
“Then when they leave, doesn’t the base move in to round them up?” Zhao Man asked.
“No. Animals that haven’t gone through a proper mutation cycle rarely form energy stones in their bodies. The base isn’t going to waste valuable ammunition just for a bite of meat. Besides, once the snow clears, both the patrol teams and the base hunting corps have to push deep into the mountains to clean out the native mutated beasts anyway,” Tang Heng explained.
Hesitating for a moment, Zhao Man asked, “Can Betas sense psychic energy?”
He had searched about mental strength on his terminal before. The answers were an all-over-the-place grab bag: how an Alpha feels after flexing psychic energy, how Betas without psychic power survive in the barrens, how Omegas soothe Alphas with their mental energy—but there was never a word on how Betas perceive an Alpha’s psychic presence.
“Some can. A Beta’s psychic energy naturally rests over your skin like ambient air, but you can’t actively register it. Of course, if your rating hits around 78, you might sense a trace. Push it to 95, and you might even project a tiny sliver outward, though it won’t do much in practical terms.”
Noticing Zhao Man’s deflated mood, Tang Heng assumed that watching him train his mental strength earlier had made him feel insecure. He scooped Zhao Man straight into his arms.
“It doesn’t matter, A-Man. Being able to project psychic energy just means you’re sent to far more dangerous zones, chained down by the base’s mandates. You don’t need to project mental energy—just drill your marksmanship and keep yourself safe. That’s more than enough.”
Zhao Man didn’t care to over-explain and let him indulge in the misunderstanding, wrapping his arms around Tang Heng’s waist and letting out a quiet, docile “Mm.”
After chatting for a while, Zhao Man resumed his target practice while Tang Heng continued his sensory drills. The morning passed smoothly as each focused on his own training.
Come afternoon, Zhao Man wanted to haul soil up to the rooftop planting deck. But lugging heavy sacks of earth up a rickety ladder was far too risky.
Hearing this, Tang Heng said, “Then let’s build two proper staircases—one on each side. We should also add a perimeter railing around the planting zone just in case.”
“Do we have enough materials?” Zhao Man eyed the scrap pile in the courtyard. Every piece of usable length or width had already been laid down by the worker ants across the cultivation deck.
“Those scraps are enough for a basic frame.” Tang Heng pondered for a moment, shot off a few messages on his terminal, and after scanning the replies, turned to Zhao Man. “Come on, get changed. Before the storm hits, let’s head out and haul back some materials.”
With that, he took Zhao Man by the hand and led him inside.
“Right now? Isn’t that too dangerous?” Zhao Man glanced nervously out the window. The trees outside were already swaying violently in the mounting wind.
“It’s fine. It’s close by.”
Zhao Man had no choice but to follow suit and pull on his snowsuit. The second he stepped through the door, an uncontrollable shiver racked his body. It was brutally cold. Even with the Cloud-Cocoon layer, the padded clothes, and the heavy snowsuit on, the icy wind seemed to find every microscopic seam in the fabric, sticking directly against his bare skin.
Tang Heng gripped Zhao Man’s hand tightly, tucking him behind his broad back to break the oncoming wind.
Huddled behind Tang Heng, Zhao Man watched him navigate toward the right. Skirting around the outcropping sulfur rocks, they arrived at the third household down the row. Tang Heng sent a ping at the front entrance, and a moment later, the door swung open.
Following him inside, Zhao Man looked around. The plot was larger than his own, but inside sat four head-high courtyards surrounding a central two-story structure. The heating was off. The homeowner who had opened the gate lived in the unit nearest the entrance.
“Captain!”
Captain? Zhao Man looked over at the voice; he had never seen this man before.
“This is my partner, Zhao Man. This is Fu Dan, a former squad mate from my reserve days.”
“Hello.”
After exchanging greetings, Fu Dan led them to a far corner of the yard. A large mound of sand was piled there, alongside four or five black bags stamped with the bold characters: POLYMER.
“Everything’s right here,” Fu Dan said.
Tang Heng nodded. “I’ll take the whole lot. Market rate.”
With the deal struck, Fu Dan wheeled a heavy-duty handcart out from his ground-floor unit. Tang Heng took the handles and began ferrying the supplies home load by load.
The front entryway had already been framed, but Zhao Man had wanted to install a sliding door. Lacking the chance to head to the market to browse, the opening was still a bare doorway—which made rolling the cart in and out remarkably convenient.
Eight trips later, all the materials were stacked in their courtyard. On his final run, Tang Heng wheeled the empty cart back and returned carrying two buckets, with a metal chest nestled inside.
“Is that a toolbox?”
“Yeah. Fu Dan’s kids are growing up, so he’s building them separate rooms. He happened to have these leftover materials and tools on hand,” Tang Heng explained.
Over the next few days, Tang Heng dove into construction steps that Zhao Man couldn’t make heads or tails of. First, he hauled in several tree trunks, stripped the bark, marked out measurements, and used a portable saw bench to slice them into uniform planks. Next, at the junction where the recreation space met the bedroom, he framed out the staircase risers, mixed the aggregate labeled “Polymer” with sand, and poured the wet slurry into the forms.
Only then did Zhao Man realize that this “Polymer” was essentially their world’s version of concrete—except here, it was called Polymer Black Earth. It was a mutated loam harvested from high-radiation zones. Once shipped back to the base, it required only minimal processing to become construction-grade mortar, serving as the foundational building material for all Outer Ring housing.
Before the planks were even finished, the blizzard struck.
It was the first time Zhao Man had witnessed a snowstorm of this magnitude. The ground snow was violently ripped into the air, exposing slick sheets of bare ice beneath. Billowing clouds of white whipped across the sky, swirling with shredded vegetation, gravel, and the occasional carcass of a mutated beast, each crashing onto the roof with a resounding thud.
Peering through the window, the bamboo grove had vanished entirely, swallowed whole by the blinding, gray-white tempest. Even the sulfur rocks were lost in the haze. But the sharp, cracking snap-pop of splintering bamboo rang out day and night without pause, punctuated now and then by the heavy, muffled groan of collapsing timber.
The home’s automated defense perimeter was powered down, and the structure entered full Blizzard Mode. A protective outer shell, molded from a slurry of Polymer Black Earth and sand, extended over the roofline to absorb kinetic impacts.
“In weather like this, what can the patrol squads even do on shift?” Zhao Man held a trowel, tamping down the black mortar inside the forms to work out trapped air pockets.
Tang Heng carried over two buckets of wet mortar and poured them into the wooden formwork. “Even in this weather, mutated beasts still prowl—namely Ice Vultures and Iron-Carapace Snow Worms. To humans, Ice Vultures have zero offensive threat, but they can fly and are totally immune to blizzard storms. Iron-Carapace Snow Worms, on the other hand, have ravenous appetites and could devour the entire base down to the bone. But they’re tiny and virtually paralyzed in this cold. Plus, with the energy shield active, the worms can’t get in on their own. So they burrow into the plumage of Ice Vultures, and the vultures slip through structural weak points in the shield. What the patrols have to do is project their psychic perception around the clock, track down every Ice Vulture, and take them out.”
Zhao Man listened, momentarily struck dumb. Even with preparations this thorough, cautious, and extensive, the people here still lived in perpetual chaos, their lives hanging by a thread at any given second.
