The icy wind swept snowflakes across the land. Everywhere he looked was a boundless expanse of white, while the distant mountains were obscured by the blizzard, leaving only a series of faint, undulating shadows lying on the horizon. The only landmark visible nearby was a stand of pine trees swaying unsteadily in the wind. Even those evergreen plants that could grow on the frigid snowfield were now completely buried beneath the snow, with hardly a trace of green showing. Occasionally, a strong gust swept through, making the pines sway and sending snow cascading from the branches with a rustling roar, kicking up clouds of white "smoke."
Hao Ren stood on the snowfield, his legs almost buried to the knees in the deep snow. He glanced back at the passage he had come through, only to see that the enormous vortex of black-and-red clouds had vanished without a trace. One or two blood-red arcs of lightning still crackled in the air, while the snow blown outward in all directions was the only proof that a powerful energy release had once occurred here.
He exhaled, and a cloud of white mist blurred his vision. "Whew... I actually landed on a snowfield?"
He tried calling Data Terminal and Raven 12345 through the mental connection, then tested several backup communication channels. As expected, he found that they had all been severed. He knew this was the "security system" Raven 12345 had mentioned at work: he was now on Mirror Two Earth, which had been completely contaminated by abnormal spacetime. This mirror world was located inside a secure sandbox, and until the contamination faded, the sandbox would remain in its highest-level security mode, with all communications in and out cut off by the system. Raven 12345 should still be able to learn about Mirror Two