After successfully absorbing the snowman, Hercules began to march in the direction of the World Tree with a mixed army of more than 60,000 men, preparing to mine the Ice Crystal.

At first, the ice surface was very flat and quite comfortable to walk on, but after a while, Tianxuan found that the ice under his feet began to slope, and the slope became larger the further he went, and in the end it exceeded 45°.

Due to the increasing slope, the walking speed of the crowd became slower and slower, and finally there was even a situation of advancing and retreating.

"Why is this road getting harder and harder!" Tianxuan began to complain.

"Look there!" Blake said, pointing ahead.

So, Tianxuan looked in the direction that Blake pointed: he saw an icicle as thick as a hundred meters in the distance connecting the heavens and the earth, and countless branches extended irregularly from the icicle like tree branches, looking like a crystal clear ice world tree from a distance, and there was a platform the size of a football field near the world tree, which looked very open.

"I didn't expect that there was such a big world tree made of pure ice here!" Tianxuan said excitedly.

"Woo! That's true! Blake and Hercules, who were beside him, also sighed.

"Ahh Yes! Tianxuan shouted.

"What's going on?" Hercules looked back and saw that Tianxuan was too excited to watch the World Tree, and he didn't stand firm and was about to slide down.

Just when Tianxuan's feet kept smearing oil and were about to slide down, a hand reached over and grabbed him strongly.

"Wow! It hurts! Tianxuan shouted and found that it was Hercules who was holding him, and said with some anger, "You can't be light!" I'm not as rough as you! ”

"Cut! If you were a woman, I would definitely be gentle! If it's not a woman, hurry up and hold on to me! Not to be outdone, Hercules scoffed.

Tianxuan glared, speechless, so he had to grab Hercules' arm.

With a "whew", Hercules pulled Tianxuan back with a shake of his shoulder.

"Wow, woo!" Tianxuan half-squatted on the ice panting, and kept rubbing the place where he had been pinched by Hercules just now, so painful.

After a few minutes, Tianxuan came back to his senses and continued to move forward. After climbing the ice slope for more than an hour, he saw that everyone was gradually approaching the platform of the World Tree, so he wiped his forehead with his hand, smiled faintly, and said, "Oops! It's finally time to get to the platform and get out of this damn ice slope! ”

"Hmmm! Yes! It's almost the end! Everyone sighed with relief after Tianxuan.

However, just ten minutes later, when the first group of them had just stepped onto the platform where the World Tree was located, something terrible happened.

When the first thirty snowmen and more than a dozen elite warriors had just stepped onto the platform and had no time to stand firm, suddenly a "tearing" sound came.

Just as the people on the platform were looking around, the people who were climbing the slope and were about to get to the platform shouted: "Ahead, watch your step!" ”

At this time, the dozens of people on the platform suddenly looked at their feet: they saw several milky white cotton wool-like things appearing from the direction of the World Tree, winding towards them and quickly extending towards them. After seeing this scene, the people on the platform hurriedly dispersed around, but because the milky white flocculent extended too quickly, a few people were still unable to dodge. As a result, when the thing reached their feet, something crystalline suddenly emerged from under their feet.

However, this was not a crystal, but ice, and in an instant, those few people who didn't have time to run began to freeze rapidly from their feet to their heads, and within a minute, they became a pile of ice sculptures.

Dozens of other people who were glad that they had escaped had just stopped to catch their breath, and before they could think of it, a few milky white flocculents extended again, and now even the hardy snowmen could not escape, and they all turned into ice sculptures.

This frightened the remaining seven or eight survivors, and they quickly jumped off the platform and avoided the disaster. However, the people who jumped down were not very comfortable, because the slope of the ice was greater than 45 degrees, so that the people who jumped down were still inertia like a ball and kept rolling for as much as a kilometer, and when they stopped, they were not lightly injured and could not get up from lying on the ground.

At that time, the people behind had learned from the past, and they didn't dare to climb onto the platform easily.

"What a good thing that is! The Ice Crystal is just around the corner! Hercules sighed.

Indeed, large pieces of ice crystals hung among the numerous ice walls above the platform, and although they seemed to be within reach in their current state, they could only be viewed from a distance and could not be played with.

"That's it! Do you want to withdraw it? Tianxuan asked suspiciously.

So, after a while, everyone decided to build a simple mining operation table on the ice.

The solution was figured out, but it was really difficult to implement. The reason for this is simple, after countless tests, it has been found that as soon as anything touches the platform around the World Tree, it will immediately be frozen into large ice blocks by the ice branches that extend over it.

Eventually, with their efforts, dozens of consoles were erected on the ice slope and extended to a plane to the World Tree platform, and under each console, dozens of snowmen lay on the ice slope to support the stability of the console.

Although this method is very old-fashioned, it has managed to keep the mining work on track. However, Tianxuan was still a little worried. Hurriedly turned on the single-channel communicator and the Black Katy on the line call connection.

After a few minutes of noisy radio waves, Black Carty's voice came from the communicator.

"Tianxuan, what happened to you again, you must know that you only have the last few minutes!" Heikaty reminded Tianxuan on the other end.

"I understand!" Tianxuan closed his eyes and took a breath, and quickly regained his composure and said, "This will be in some big trouble, we are in the core area of the Extreme Frozen Region." ”

"The core area? Did I hear me right? Black Carty exclaimed.

"You heard it right, it's true!" Tianxuan said affirmatively.

"None of the people who said they had gone to that place could come back alive!" At this time, Nikos's panicked voice was heard on the other end of the communicator.

"Don't worry! It's not dangerous for the time being, it's just that you're in trouble! Tianxuan said lightly.

"That's it! Don't talk about the inconsequential ones, tell us about your situation, and come back as soon as it's resolved. Black Katy said in a commanding tone.

"Understood! ......" Then Tianxuan briefly told Heikati about the situation of the World Tree here.

When Black Katy listened to the narration, he directly came out with a sentence: "Death icicle!" ”

"Death icicles?" Tianxuan looked a little surprised. At this time, he remembered the image he had seen before:

It is in the southernmost part of the earth, in the extreme cold region, when the sea temperature drops to a certain level, the sea freezes and extends to the bottom of the sea in a column, and everywhere it goes, all marine life freezes to death.

The cause of this phenomenon is that when the sea surface temperature is too low and the sea water begins to freeze, the salinity of the sea water around the ice increases due to salt analysis. These highly salinity seawaters, on the one hand, have a lower freezing point and a higher density on the other hand, and do not freeze when the temperature around the ice drops below the freezing point of ordinary seawater, and because of the high density, the sea water below is constantly sinking, so that the temperature of the seawater below drops below the freezing point, and thus solidifies. This process occurs continuously, resulting in the formation of rapidly downward-growing icicles.

This "icicle of death" increases rapidly in the process of sinking to the bottom of the sea, because the density is much higher than that of seawater, the salt water sinks rapidly, and the surrounding sea water freezes quickly after encountering salt water, at this time the icicle is more like a sponge, the edge of the cotton wool continues to expand and erodes the surroundings, not ordinary ice.

And now, what is happening in this part of the World Tree is like the expansion of the icicle of death, only more quickly.

When the Tianxuan image recalled this, Black Carty interrupted his thoughts and said, "You can think of it as a "chemical garden". We have long been based on this principle, by adding solid metal salts to the aqueous solution of sodium silicate, the crystals are precipitated as quickly as plants. ”

Hearing this, Tianxuan nodded and said, "Understood!" I know what to do! That's it! ”

This time, it was Tianxuan who took the initiative to hang up the communication, and Heikati on the other end was not angry at all, she understood: the communication time was only two minutes, and Tianxuan did this to save energy and buy more time for herself.

After ending the communication with Black Katy, Tianxuan immediately called Hercules and Blake to tell them about the Death Icicle, and began to study how to reverse the crystal precipitation phenomenon.

After some tossing, Tianxuan and the others successfully used the medicine to prevent the crystals from precipitating in several places on the platform, and successfully set up the mining operation table on the platform.

Next, on several operating platforms on the platform, they managed to mine several basin-sized ice crystals from the surrounding ice walls. However, because the cold released by such a large piece of ice crystal is too heavy, it is packed by the accompanying snowman.

The work was in order, and Tianxuan was also very relieved, but he suddenly noticed that there seemed to be liquid flowing up and down in the thick main stem icicles of the World Tree in the distance.

"Could it be that there is life?" Although Tianxuan thought about it for a while, he immediately shook his head with a smile and said, "Impossible! No way! ”

"Well done, the first batch is successfully mined, we can mine two more times and go!" Hercules opened his mouth and laughed.

However, the matter did not end there, just as they were about to mine for the second time, an unexpected situation suddenly occurred - a burst of cyan light flashed, and the miner who was mining suddenly shivered and fell off the operating table.

Due to inertia, the miners fell onto the platform and rolled in the direction of the World Tree. As you can imagine, these poor miners rolled for less than a minute before they became a lifeless ice sculpture against the ice.

Seeing this, some people on the ice slope hurriedly ran to the workbench where the miners were before. Just as the group of people who ran up were looking around, another burst of cyan light flashed, and they also fell off the console.

But fortunately, the group of people in the back just fell on the ice slope and rolled down like a ball for as many as a kilometer, and they only fell with a broken bone, half of their bodies were paralyzed, and they did not freeze into ice sculptures.

This book originated from reading a book