——Cheng Weicai fell into the water!

The bone-piercing cold swept over his entire body in an instant, and his mind went completely blank!

He had known that Brian and Ed would eventually come after him, but he hadn’t expected it to be this soon… this impatient, this eager to be rid of him!

The iron rod was Brian’s tool—they had used it together more than once while searching for supplies, yet now, it was being used against him.

His body continued to sink. His bulky coat, like a sandbag filled with mud, dragged him down toward the depths of the ocean floor…

……

Brian stood on the ice, watching indifferently for a moment, then pulled out the iron rod.

In temperatures this cold, the cracked ice would refreeze quickly. There was no way that old man could survive.

As for himself—he had used the tool to stop the polar bear, and the old man had fallen in on his own. It had nothing to do with him, so it wouldn’t count as a violation.

Now, as long as he made it back into the blizzard ring before the polar bear caught up, the outcome of this game would be beyond doubt.

Brian glanced into the distance. He could faintly still hear the polar bear’s roar, though it was growing weaker by the moment.

He shouldered the rope, hauled the supplies, and continued moving in the direction of the castle.

……

The journey was smooth.

Aside from the blizzard freezing his limbs stiff and numbing his hands and feet, he encountered no other trouble along the way.

Brian pushed open the castle’s great doors and dragged all the supplies inside. His gaze swept across the hall and landed on Cheng Weicai’s flower seedling, still untouched and unharmed.

Brian smiled with contempt.

He had guessed correctly again: that fellow Ed truly hadn’t made a move.

A good thing he had dealt with the old man on the road just now—otherwise, once that old man’s flower grew large enough, it really would have caused a serious problem.

Ed was warming himself by the fire pit. Seeing Brian return, he craned his neck to look behind him and found no sign of Cheng Weicai.

Brian shut the door without mercy.

“No point looking,” he said, walking over with an easy stride. “That old man isn’t coming back. Stop sitting around being lazy—help me sort through these supplies.”

The Severed Hand had been standing guard beside the flower pot, but the moment it heard those words, it bolted toward the door!

It pressed itself against the gap in the door, scratching and clawing, but with only one hand, it simply didn’t have the strength to pull it open.

Brian glanced at it and curled his lip in a cold, mocking smile.

“Are you out of your mind?” Ed stared at Brian, wide-eyed. “You actually went after the old man? I already told you! We can’t do this! At least wait until the seedling grows a little more!”

Brian’s brow furrowed with displeasure. “If we wait any longer the flower will be blooming! Now is the best time! Look at the old man’s seedling—the leaves are broader than ours, the stem is thicker than ours! Once his flower blooms before ours, we’re both dead! Do you understand that or not?!”

Ed fumed. “You’ve already killed him! Of course you can say whatever you like now! What else are we supposed to do about it?!”

Ed stood up in a huff, went to tend to the firewood, and stopped paying Brian any further attention.

Brian walked to the fire pit and looked over the three flower seedlings.

His own seedling was in the worst shape—the leaves were narrow and small, and their color was dull and wilted. It was clearly lacking water, since Ed had been tending only to his own seedling and hadn’t paid much attention to Brian’s.

Rose flowers wouldn’t bloom all at once; there would always be a sequence, and whoever fell behind would inevitably become an ice sculpture in the Snow Queen’s hands.

Brian understood perfectly well that his enemies weren’t just Cheng Weicai—there was also his own teammate, Ed.

But there was no need to rush dealing with that fellow just yet…

Brian’s gaze fell on another flower pot.

That was Cheng Weicai’s seedling—robust and healthy, flourishing and full of life.

Nowhere in the game rules did it seem to say that swapping seedlings was forbidden, did it?

The corner of his mouth curled upward as he reached out to take that pot—

A dark shape suddenly lunged at his face!

The Severed Hand clamped down on his face with an iron grip, its fingernails digging into his eyeball!

“AAAAAAHHHH!!!”

—