X-ray Eyes Little Wild Doctor-Chapter 208 - 203: The South Pole

Compared to before, the blood color in the Crystal Ball had become even more intense. The majority of the space inside was already filled with Demonic Blood, and it wouldn’t take long before it filled the entire crystal.

"King of the Night, your time of death is approaching! Hahaha!" the Hell King roared with wild laughter.

With a sudden turn, the Hell King stared at the mirror on the wall. Reflected in it were eyes brimming with maliciousness.

The pitch-black cloak slowly slid down, revealing the Hell King’s true face in the mirror. Without the cloak’s cover, his scorched visage was fully disclosed.

The skin on his face was all twisted and festering, looking incredibly horrific and nauseating. His body was the same, covered in scars that crisscrossed all over.

"King of the Night, this is all caused by you. In these years, I have been reduced to less than human, less than ghost. The reason I have come this far today is to kill you for revenge! This is all your fault, your fault!" The Hell King gazed at his own reflection in the mirror, his eyes growing even more malevolent.

As he spoke, his entire being emanated a fierce aura, his clothes billowing without any wind in a terrifying manner.

After howling at the sky, the Hell King suddenly fixed his eyes on the Crystal Ball floating in mid-air. He slowly raised his arm and lightly tapped the Crystal Ball with his fingertips. The crystal immediately vibrated at the touch, sending the red mist inside undulating eerily.

"King of the Night, I want you to slowly die in agony. I will torture you slowly, making you wish for death. Hahaha!" the Hell King roared ferociously.

"Do you really think you can leave Jiangcheng, King of the Night? You cannot escape my grasp; you’ll come back to me obediently!" The Hell King’s eyes were sinister as he stared at the Crystal Ball suspended in mid-air: "You can’t go anywhere. Sooner or later, you’ll have to return. Hahaha!"

At this very moment, on the Antarctic continent.

The razor-sharp wind swept past, lifting layers of snow off the ground.

This was the scarcely trodden Antarctic, the southernmost point on Earth, an uninhabited wasteland. In this world of ice and wind, sometimes not a single sign of life was to be seen.

Under the extreme cold, this world was unsuitable for the growth of flora and fauna, let alone human habitation.

Polar night, a phenomenon unique to the Antarctic and unlike the diurnal cycle of Jiangcheng, means 24 hours of darkness. Without the sun, the only light comes from the billions of stars in the sky, vast and illuminating the land.

Carrying a heavy pack, Ye Tian walked on the Antarctic ice cap with a long trail of footprints stretching behind him, leading back to the way he had come. But with a gust of the cold wind, those footprints would disappear.

This was the seventh day.

Ye Tian was like a lonely traveler, walking in a desolate world of swirling snowstorms, his only company the footprints behind him, with no one to talk to.

Life walking on the ice was monotonous and dull. Prolonged exposure to such days could even lead to mental illness.

Different from when he had just disembarked, Ye Tian was somewhat lethargic. The climbing staff made of alloy materials he had brought with him was nowhere to be seen, his thick down hat was covered in a layer of ice, and his polar warm clothing had long since frozen. He seemed to be wrapped in a thick layer of ice armor, which was exceptionally heavy.

Along the way, the Crystal Ball had acted up nine times, about once a day. Each time was nearly fatal, a pain so deep that he never wanted to experience it again in his life, yet he felt somewhat helpless about it.

Looking at the stars above, Ye Tian breathed in the air as sharp as a blade. Though the air was filtered through his balaclava, the pain as it entered his throat was still like the cut of a knife, but luckily he had grown accustomed to it.

His watch showed 17:23. At this time, Jiangcheng would be in the midst of the evening rush hour, the streets bustling with people. But here, only the howling Bei Feng broke the silence, eerily lonely.

"If only I could call the missus, I wonder how the little maid is doing, has the peacekeeper officer gone for her breast augmentation, and does the beautiful Bai think of me now?"

All Ye Tian could do was sigh wistfully under the moon.

The satellite phone had long been scrapped. In such extreme cold weather, all electronics were useless, even the expensive phones couldn’t withstand the temperatures of -60 degrees Celsius, sometimes even the extreme lows of -80 degrees.

Moving silently under the night sky, Ye Tian felt incredibly lonely, the biting wind cutting like a blade, never changing.

Only the cold wind, the harsh cold, and the snow remained faithful companions to Ye Tian, accompanying him on his journey, unwavering and constant.

He took out his compass, checked his bearings, and sighed with relief.

"I’m almost there."

Thinking that it wouldn’t be long before he could retrieve that item, Ye Tian felt a mix of excitement and unease. He really didn’t want to get that thing; it was the Hell King who had forced his hand, leaving him no choice.

The Antarctic ice sheet stretched for thousands of miles, forming its own world: a continent with towering icebergs and freezing gorges, where a fall would mean shattered bones and becoming an ice sculpture, with danger at every turn.

What was most terrifying were the sudden crevasses that appeared. You might think the ground under your feet was solid, but once you stepped on it, the earth could collapse suddenly, revealing the icy abyss hidden under the snow, a situation that often meant narrowly escaping death.

There were several times when Ye Tian nearly perished.

Perhaps from the exhaustion of walking, Ye Tian found a large ice block sheltering from the wind, leaned against it, rested in silence, took off his backpack, and pulled out the few remaining compressed biscuits. He grabbed a handful of snow from the ground, stuffed it into his mouth, and slowly chewed.

The snow gradually melted in his mouth, making the compressed biscuits taste less terrible and becoming precious food that filled Ye Tian’s ravenous stomach.

In a place like Antarctica, food is life.

In his backpack, there was a piece of dried beef Ye Tian wasn’t willing to eat, saving it for when he would celebrate at the end of his journey.

Having filled his stomach with snow, Ye Tian closed his eyes and silently practiced his Inner Clan Mastery, trying to minimize the dissipation of his body heat, concentrating the warmth within his body, slowly recovering his strength.

The Antarctic continent is vast, and the place Ye Tian was heading to was even deeper within the landmass; he couldn’t afford to be without strength. In this land of ice and snow, the energy expended to maintain body heat could even surpass that used for walking itself.

Suddenly, Ye Tian’s eyes snapped open, his serene face twisting into a grimace.

"Ah!" Ye Tian let out a heart-wrenching scream.

The Crystal Ball inside him flared up again, causing such agony that he writhed on the ground, smashing his fists onto the icy surface, and banging his forehead against the solid earth, yet unable to alleviate his present suffering.

Every time the Crystal Ball acted up, the pain worsened. This was the tenth outbreak since his arrival in Antarctica, and the excruciating pain was enough to be fatal.

"Damn you, hellspawn, I swear I’ll kill you!" Ye Tian roared to the sky, his face distorted in fury.

A cracking noise suddenly came from beneath his feet, and a fine fissure appeared on the ground. The crack spread rapidly, growing wider. Snow on the ice surface tumbled into the crevice like falling into a bottomless abyss, immediately vanishing from sight.

"Not good!" Ye Tian, in his agony, was shocked.

He had not expected the ground to split open while he was in such excruciating pain; it was likely caused by the trembling of the ice’s surface layer from his punches to the ground.

As quick as a flash, the ground collapsed with a roar, and the once-flat surface turned into a ravine thousands of feet deep. It was like an enormous, gaping maw ready to swallow everything on it.

Before Ye Tian could react, he was falling.

Within him was a pain like his heart and flesh being gouged out, while outside was the bottomless abyss of Antarctica. Just moments ago, when he had been safe, Ye Tian now faced a life-and-death predicament.

As his body plunged, Ye Tian’s hands grasped at the edge of a cliff, grabbing onto the ice. A large chunk of ice fell from above, striking his shoulder heavily. Already beleaguered both internally and externally, he dropped further down.

However, Ye Tian was a peerless expert after all, and his reaction to danger was extraordinarily strong. In the instant he fell into the abyss, he threw out the rope he carried with him, looping it over a massive piece of sturdy ice on the edge of the cliff.

Ye Tian hung in mid-air, secured by only a rope, with the pitch-black icy abyss below him and the bone-chilling blue ice beside him, in an exceedingly perilous situation.

Five minutes later, the intense pain inside him suddenly disappeared, and Ye Tian finally regained his senses. Climbing up the rope, he struggled greatly but at last managed to pull himself back onto solid ground.

Lying at the edge of the abyss and gazing up at the star-studded sky, Ye Tian felt as if he had experienced a rebirth after a calamity.

In truth, if not for the Crystal Ball’s eruption, such an abyss wouldn’t have been a challenge for Ye Tian, who had a thousand ways to escape danger.

"That’s the aurora!"

Ye Tian sat up, staring intently at the distant night sky, his eyes suddenly brightening.

At some point, the Antarctic sky had been adorned with swathes of aurora lights, which could not be compared to the glow of sunset, nor be equated with the beauty of dawn.

The aurora’s colors changed endlessly, beyond what human words could describe. Those splendid, ever-changing hues were not something one would typically witness on Earth.

During Ye Tian’s loneliest and most desolate moments, at his most vulnerable and weakest, nature granted him a magnificent spectacle, as if to comfort his soul, bringing him immeasurable solace.

The aurora lingered for a long time, and Ye Tian sat quietly at the edge of the abyss, watching from start to finish without ever leaving.

"Compared to nature, human power is truly insignificant," Ye Tian mused, reflecting on his experience after witnessing the aurora.

The dazzling aurora soon faded away, and Ye Tian composed himself, shouldered his empty backpack, and silently resumed his journey, taking steps toward his destination, inching closer to his direction.

The journey ahead was long, as if it had no end, similar to the eternal blizzards of Antarctica, where no one knows when it began, nor when it will cease.

But as long as the traveler keeps walking, as long as the steps continue to advance, even over great distances, there will come a time when the destination is reached.

"In a few hours, I’ll reach the Antarctic Pole," Ye Tian whispered to himself, standing atop the steep, knife-like glacier, gazing into the distance.