The hole in the floor was a jagged wound, breathing freezing fog into the warm tunnel. The carcass of the Shadow-Swimmer Myriapod lay tangled in the debris, a broken coil of black armor and blue blood.
Ji Han stood over the breach, his chest heaving. The green fire behind him was sputtering, the oxygen levels fluctuating wildly as the draft from the hole sucked the air out.
"We can't seal this with stone," Ji Han said, kicking a piece of shattered granite. "If a Level 2 elite can break through once, another one will break through in an hour."
Lin Qinghe crawled closer, wrapping her furs tight. Her breath puffed white in the rapidly cooling air.
"They are aquatic," she noted, looking at the dead beast. "Amphibious, yes, but they rely on the Yin Pool for mobility. They swim up the water column, breach the ice, and climb the shaft."
"So we drain the pool?"
"Impossible. It is fed by the water table. We cannot out-pump an ocean."
She looked up toward the spiral tunnel, toward the reinforced door that led to the surface.
"Ji Han, what is the temperature outside?"
"Minus forty? Minus fifty?" Ji Han guessed. "Cold enough to snap steel."
"And the temperature in the Yin Pool?"
"Supercooled liquid. Maybe minus ten."
"That is the weakness," Lin Qinghe said, her strategist's eyes gleaming. "The Myriapods are cold-adapted, but they require liquid water to move effectively. If the water becomes solid..."
"They get trapped in the ice," Ji Han finished.
"We have been fighting to keep the cold out," she said. "We have been burning fuel to keep this tunnel warm. That is why they attack us. We are the only heat source."
She pointed to the upper door.
"If we open the top door completely... and channel the surface wind down the shaft..."
"We freeze the pool," Ji Han realized. "We turn the Yin Hollow into a block of solid ice."
"But," Lin Qinghe added quietly, "the tunnel is in the middle. If you open the door, the cold will pass through here first. We will be living in a wind tunnel."
Ji Han looked at the fire. He looked at his stack of roots.
"We don't need to live in the tunnel," Ji Han said grimly. "We just need to survive the flash freeze. Can you handle it?"
"I have the Centipede furs," she said. "And the Isopod stew has thickened my blood. I will survive."
"Then let's open the window."
The preparation took one hour.
They moved all the sensitive supplies—the dried roots, the leather, the meat—into the small alcove Ji Han had dug for sleeping. They built a barricade of Black Iron ore in front of the alcove to act as a windbreak.
Then, Ji Han went to the Myriapod carcass.
"Resource first," he muttered.
He didn't have time to butcher it properly. He sliced open the flank and ripped out the Poison Gland (to avoid contamination) and a massive strip of the black flank meat.
He ate it raw. There was no time to cook.
The meat was slippery, cold, and tasted of iodine. It slid down his throat like living jelly.
[System Notification: Consumed Shadow-Swimmer Meat.] [Attribute: Water/Shadow.] [Effect: Meridian Elasticity +1.0. Cold Resistance +10%.]
A shiver went through him—not from cold, but from the sudden expansion of his internal capacity. His meridians, previously stiff and narrow, felt like they were stretching, becoming rubbery and robust.
"Good," Ji Han gasped. "I'll need the resistance."
He climbed the ramp.
The granite slab at the top was heavily reinforced with Isopod plating. It was holding back the weight of the winter storm outside.
Ji Han grabbed the iron wedges.
"Take cover!" he shouted down to Lin Qinghe.
She huddled behind the rock wall in the alcove, pulling a heavy centipede skin over her head.
Ji Han kicked the wedges out.
BOOM.
The door didn't just open; it exploded inward. The pressure differential was massive. A blast of wind, carrying ice crystals like shrapnel, screamed into the tunnel.
The green fire was extinguished instantly. Darkness swallowed the bunker.
Ji Han roared, fighting the wind. He grabbed the edge of the slab and pulled it inward, locking it open.
"Go down!" he commanded the wind.
The cold air, heavy and dense, plummeted down the spiral ramp like a waterfall. It rushed past Ji Han, freezing the sweat on his armor instantly. It howled down the shaft, past the alcove, and slammed into the breach in the floor.
Ji Han stood in the dark, gripping the wall. His Iron Skin and Bastion Plate protected him from the worst of the wind chill, but his eyes were freezing shut.
He counted the seconds.
One minute. The tunnel walls crackled as frost coated the soot. Five minutes. The sound of the wind changed from a scream to a hollow moan.
Ten minutes.
From the deep below, a sound echoed up the shaft.
CRACK... GROAN.
It was the sound of a lake freezing over. The sound of immense pressure crushing ice.
And then, silence. No scratching. No hissing.
The liquid highway of the enemy had just become a parking lot.
Ji Han fought his way back to the door. His joints were stiff, the Isopod armor locking up. He grabbed the granite slab and heaved.
It took everything he had. Strength. Spirit. Structure.
He slammed the door shut against the storm.
Silence returned. The wind died.
The tunnel was pitch black and deadly cold.
Ji Han stumbled down the ramp, his boots crunching on a layer of fresh snow that had formed inside his home.
"Lin Qinghe?"
A pile of furs in the corner shifted. Lin Qinghe emerged, her face blue, her eyelashes frosted white. She was shivering violently, but alive.
"Did... it... work?" she chattered.
Ji Han walked to the hole in the floor. He dropped a piece of Black Iron down.
CLACK.
It hit solid surface. Not water. Ice.
"The pool is frozen," Ji Han said, his voice shaking. "We froze them out."
He looked at the unlit fire pit. The charcoal was cold.
"We have to relight the fire," Ji Han said, fumbling for his flint with numb fingers. "Fast. Or we die of success."