Hai Hour had arrived, and a cold wave swept in.
Four crimson coffins stood incongruously amid the white snow, their surfaces giving off a faint glow like flickering electric lights, lending them an eerie air.
To the north, Ren Ye sat on the ground, curling up as tightly as he could inside his fur robe to ward off the cold. From time to time, he peered through a gap in the robe to check on the four players keeping watch.
To the left of the four coffins, Li Yan and Tang Feng leaned against the wood, their hands tucked into their sleeves and their bodies huddled up, shivering with cold.
At first, Li Yan had tried talking to Tang Feng to break the awkwardness between them, but after a single exchange, the conversation had gone nowhere.
"What do you do in the real world?" Li Yan had asked.
"I have a mental illness. I've been suspended from work for almost a year. Why?" Tang Feng had looked at him resentfully.
"Oh. Never mind, then."
Just my fucking luck, Li Yan thought. What normal person could keep a conversation going with a mental patient?
That single exchange killed the conversation, and the two fell silent. They gazed longingly at the full moon overhead, trying to think of happy things to distract themselves so they would feel a little less cold.
On the snowy ground to the east, Guo Caier squatted with her arms around her legs, staring blankly at the sparkling snowflakes.
Too much had happened to her lately. Inside the Star Gate, there had been scheming and fighting to the death; in reality, she had just lost her mother...
Now that she had suddenly stopped and everything had gone quiet, she realized that, in this very short time, she had