Traveling through a blizzard on skis was thrilling-and dangerous.
Despite how advanced technology had become, Hua'er Daji still did not dare try it in real life. It was practically suicide. He had tried several times in the custom mode of Skiing Adventure, and every attempt had ended in death.
But now Hua'er Daji had found a wonderful opportunity: a chance to have fun and go adventuring with a whole crowd, without worrying about actually dying. He had even less reason to miss out.
Hua'er Daji stood at the assembly point outside Tavitsky. The night sky overhead looked like a floor stained by a shattered ink bottle, dark and heavy enough to weigh on his heart.
The assembly point was not surrounded by complete darkness. The snow itself gave off a faint, sickly gray-white glow, barely outlining the crowd and the twisted silhouettes of distant trees.
He stood packed together with more than two thousand other players, like a vast stretch of black reefs shivering in the cold wind, resisting the invisible, howling tide of snow.
The blizzard that had "not looked that bad" was now silently baring its fangs.
The wind did not roar continuously. It came in short, piercing shrieks, each fiercer than the last, striking unpredictably from every direction and lashing every inch of exposed skin.
Swept up by the wind, the snowflakes no longer drifted gently down. They became countless tiny, hard pellets hurtling through the air at astonishing speed.
They struck Hua'er Daji's goggles with a fine crackling sound, as though someone kept throwing sand at him. Even with his thick, high-collared clothes and two heavy scarves, snow sometimes slipped through a gap around his neck, bringing a bone-piercing chill that made him jerk his head down.
So cold.
This was not the crisp chill