The moment Spades' hand pierced through Bai Liu's chest, the heart Bai Liu had fastened to his arteries slipped out through his back.
Still beating, it sank into the abyss of the dark blue ocean.
Bai Liu's eyes were half-closed. He knew it was useless, yet he couldn't stop himself from reaching toward the heart disappearing into the blue-black depths.
His slender fingers opened and closed weakly in the freezing seawater.
Spades gripped Bai Liu by the ribs and lifted him upward briefly before turning and diving into the depths, clearly intent on retrieving the heart and destroying it.
Bai Liu's limbs drifted apart in a dazed sprawl as he floated upward under buoyancy, rising toward the surface of the boundless ocean veiled in a faint phosphorescent glow.
The sun had already sunk silently beyond the horizon, leaving only a pale silver rim of light gilding the endless waters.
Glaciers and drifting ice floes—souvenirs of a planet that had cooled and warmed, perhaps remnants of something older—brushed past Bai Liu as he drifted with the currents.
Above him stretched a cloudless black sky, where countless stars shimmered with hypnotic brilliance, dazzling like crushed diamonds or strands of pearls scattered across velvet.
Like all things luxurious and unforgettable in this world, when they shatter, they bloom into heartbreak and a terrible, magnificent beauty.
That beauty was veiled in pale green light trembling across the southeastern sky—the aurora borealis.
The aurora flowed across the night, its fluorescent hues drifting like a fragile curtain at the beginning of a dream.
Bai Liu's eyes remained half-open. His mental and life values were dropping so rapidly that he almost imagined he could hear Edmond's mournful voice echoing in his ears.
[Child, never test your beloved with truth or falsity. I did that once and endured the experiment, but the only conclusion I reached was—]
[They can tell the difference.]
[What is the difference between monsters and humans? I still do not understand. Even if they possess the same memories, the same bodies, the same structure as us—like parallel versions of ourselves—they are still not us in the eyes of those who love us.]
[What separates them from us?]
[My original experiment sought to determine whether these monsters could become indistinguishable from humans by passing the Turing test—to discover what truly sets us apart.]
[If they are the same, then are we truly human?]
[Perhaps we are merely another kind of monster placed on this planet, inside this game, carrying memories injected into us by others—a species manufactured for war and self-destruction, just as my superiors ordered me to manufacture these monsters.]
[I understand now the misfortunes that befell me, my friends, and everyone around me—perhaps we were born this way. Perhaps there exists a higher being, or God as he is called, who determined that the world would be this cruel.]
[But if we are different, where does that difference come from, when the body, the core, and the memories are identical? How can anyone recognize the real us when we ourselves cannot distinguish real from fake?]
[The people at Tarzan Station gave me the answer, and through you I have verified it again—yet I remain confused.]
[Where does this difference originate?]
[Before you arrived, I experimented on many guests. Some left midway; some remained here forever. Beneath every ice fissure lie the "corpses" of failed experiments.]
[Again and again, the people at Tarzan Station erased their memories, reread their files, and began anew. Yet they still recognized one another. Sometimes, even the guests could recognize each other.]
[But why?]
[Why can some be identified and others not? Why are the people at Tarzan Station always recognizable, while the guests lack such consistency?]
[I could not determine what variable affected the outcome. No matter how many times I repeated the experiment, I could not manipulate the results—until I met Spades.]
[He was the fastest guest I have ever seen to identify a teammate. He was willing to speak with me, and he gave me the answer—intuition.]
[The strangest experimental variable I have ever encountered. If one of my students submitted a lab report with that conclusion, I would send him to jump into the Ross Sea out of shame.]
[I saw you, Bai Liu, in the memories of Spades' friend—the Judge of Defying Gods. You would create an experiment a thousand times more extreme than mine. You would construct an unsolvable game with thousands of copies of yourself to test another person's perception.]
[I know you would do this. And you know the consequences. But you want to witness it again, as I do—to verify the result once more—]
[These Bai Liu share your appearance, your memories, your core. You have even alienated yourself into one of these monsters—become the monster itself.]
[So can Spades still find you?]
[Thank you for finally giving me the answer to this unsolved puzzle.]
[I once believed it was the human side that identified the monster. But that is not true. It is the monster that cannot return the specific emotions the human heart seeks.]
[Though you are a monster, you love him, Bai Liu.]
[You cannot hide Tawil's heart in another "Bai Liu," because it is a heart that belongs to you.]
[Your response betrays you.]
[Love transforms you from monster to human. Love gives you a weakness. Love makes you clutch his heart and float in the abyss. Love makes you stand apart from millions of identical monsters and become the most special one in Spades' eyes.]
[And so he found you.]
[Do not grieve, child. It is not fate that leads you to your destiny—it is love.]
[Love separated you, and love will reunite you.]
Chunks of ice broke apart and drifted away. The pale "body" of a frozen monster surfaced among the shattered floes, passing by Bai Liu as it floated.
Fine crystals of ice gathered along his eyelashes, glowing faint green beneath the aurora's light, while seawater flowed in and out of the hollow space in his chest.
Someone emerged from beneath the water.
Spades wrapped his arms around Bai Liu's waist and knees and carried him—apparently unconscious—back to the shore. In his hands, he held two hearts.
One was crushed and torn, yet still beating faintly. The other was sealed in a block of ice, so fresh it looked as though it had just been removed from a chest cavity. Spades had taken it from the body of one of the Bai Liu replicas.
He moved carefully to thaw the frozen heart.
"This is your real heart." Spades looked down at the motionless Bai Liu and placed the newly thawed heart back into his chest. "I'm giving it back to you."
Bai Liu's body, altered by Edmond, immediately began regenerating blood vessels to reconnect to the heart. The thin muscle fibers and torn skin healed at once. A slow, faint heartbeat began to pulse within his otherwise cold, rigid chest.
Spades turned away, retrieved the fuel and acid he had stored in the warehouse, and without hesitation began dealing with the heart still beating weakly in his hand.
Under the blaze of fire and the corrosive hiss of acid, the heart was reduced to ashes.
Bai Liu's frozen fingers twitched faintly. His dark eyes reflected the magnificent night sky—and nothing else.
His chest, which had just resumed rising and falling, faltered the instant the other heart was destroyed.
It was as though his heartbeat had paused in response to the complete annihilation of the second heart.
[System Alert: Player Spades has destroyed the final piece of the corpse and achieved the True End achievement. All players have cleared the game. The dungeon will close shortly...]
As the snowfield collapsed behind him, Bai Liu's system panel appeared and automatically initiated his exit from the game. Spades dropped to his knees beside the ashes and the seemingly lifeless Bai Liu, lifting his gaze toward the melting ice world.
Only after Bai Liu dissolved into a point of light at his side did Spades stand and prepare to exit.
Even he did not understand why he had waited for Bai Liu to leave first.
It felt like a deeply ingrained, intuitive habit.
Spades had the vague sensation that he had watched this man leave countless times before—disappearing into a beam of light, followed by long stretches of darkness while waiting to see him again at the start of the next game. And so, this time, he did the same.
It was like a subconscious instinct—to come here and destroy every fragment of the corpse.
Spades had a faint sense that whoever designed this game had used the scattered body parts and hearts as a means to trap Bai Liu forever—condemning him to remain alone in the snowy plains as a monster.
It was a highly plausible outcome.
Liu Jiayi was deeply grateful that the person who logged into this game with them had been Spades.
Because no one else could have stopped Bai Liu from losing control.
If Bai Liu had entered with other players and discovered that the main quest required destroying the corpse, once a single player found and destroyed a body part, the True End route would automatically trigger.
Even killing the other players and Edmond would not end the game.
Once the True End line was activated, the dungeon could only conclude after the final ending was completed and every fragment of the corpse was destroyed.
Bai Liu could choose to quit the game midway—but at that point, the dungeon would synchronize with reality.
After exiting Ice Age, Bai Liu would enter a mirrored version of Ice Age in the real world—essentially no different from remaining inside the game.
And in reality, once the method of destroying the body parts became known, their total eradication would be inevitable.
The remains would unquestionably be hunted down and destroyed, no matter the cost.
Bai Liu understood he could not stand as the enemy of the entire world forever.
That was why he had been prepared to remain in the game.
By staying, he could prevent the dungeon from reaching its True End—and prevent it from manifesting in reality.
From beginning to end, the game was a carefully constructed trap.
The moment Bai Liu stepped inside, only two paths lay before him—
—Either become a monster forever, remaining in the frozen wasteland.
—Or destroy Tawil's heart. Erase the only love, emotion, and weakness within himself. Become cold, ruthless, calculating—and clear the game as the victor.
Let Bai Liu become Bai Liu (6).
This was the intention of the ones operating behind the curtain.
From the bottom of her heart, Liu Jiayi was grateful that the player they encountered in this dungeon had been Spades.
Other players could not have stopped Bai Liu from making that choice.
But Spades could defeat him.
And as long as Spades won, Bai Liu would not have to choose.
The moment Spades destroyed the heart, Bai Liu was forced to emerge from the snowfields.
Liu Jiayi could not help but wonder where Spades's obsession—his instinct to destroy that heart—had originated, and who had planted it within him.
Though his intuition had been cruel—destroying the heart of the person most precious to Bai Liu—
He had saved him.
Because by completely eliminating Bai Liu's only weakness, the mastermind behind the game would no longer be able to exploit it.