Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 490 Liu Li
Liu Li's pale and thin body was immersed in a mixture of ice water at zero degrees Celsius. He was in a very contradictory state. His body temperature was rising due to the "overload mode," which he had to suppress with ice water. However, as the chill seeped into his bones, his fingers, toes, and other extremities began to gradually lose sensation. His biological instincts drove his muscles to tremble and generate more heat.

This is probably what is meant by "experiencing both ice and fire".

The ice cubes floating on the water occasionally bumped against the inner wall of the bathtub due to Liu Li's trembling body, making a soft, crisp sound.

The large group of people gathered around the bathtub held their breath, not daring to make a sound, for fear of disturbing Liu Li, who was conducting precise calculations.

As for touching Liu Li's body, that was absolutely forbidden.

Liu Li, who was in a semi-comatose state, knew that he had very little time left. He almost frantically squeezed out his brainpower and the computing power of the main brain. There was no trick to this calculation method. He could only use the stupidest but most reliable method to simulate the possible movement paths of all the building blocks in the entire Baikal Remains, and then deduce the changes that might happen in the next few tens of minutes over and over again.

The city of Baikal has a building area of ​​over 2,700 square kilometers, while the remains of Baikal are even larger than the original city of Baikal, with hundreds of thousands of movable land plots—and this does not even include the strange structures that could sink underground or rise from the ground at any time.

Any normal person who has even a basic understanding of the Baikal Remains would realize that calculating a precise path is absolutely impossible—all the roads in the entire city of monsters are random, there are no fixed routes at all, and even if there is a moment when the calculated route overlaps with the real road, as time goes by, the subsequent routes will also diverge... In the face of complete randomness, there is simply no way to have an absolutely correct solution.

But Liu Li doesn't think so.

While it's true that the movement of Baikal's remains is random, he doesn't need to provide Sun Hang and the others with a so-called correct route. What he needs to do is to build a complete dynamic mathematical model that, in the face of each change in Baikal's remains, provides the next solution for the "dynamically correct route" in real time.

Liu Li couldn't help but think of a puzzle game called "Huarong Road" that he played when he was a child. However, Huarong Road only had ten movable blocks, while the Remains of Baikal increased that number by tens of thousands of times.

If it were just a simple "Giant Huarong Road", the optimal solution could be easily obtained with the computing power of a supercomputer. However, this "Giant Huarong Road" also adds a lot of random elements. All the blocks will automatically and randomly swap positions, which makes it difficult to solve.

"The sample data is still too small..." Liu Li couldn't help but complain inwardly, "If the sample data could be close to infinity, maybe I could calculate whether the changes in the remains of Baikal are truly random or pseudo-random... If it's pseudo-random..."

But Liu Li also knew that an infinitely large sample size was simply a pipe dream—all the sample data at present was obtained by the soldiers of the reconnaissance team at the cost of their lives. For this small sample size, many people had already perished in this strange city.

A seemingly insignificant string of data may represent the lives of several individuals and the stories of a dozen or so broken families.

“Faster…Faster…”

……

"Ah!" In the tense silence, a young nurse suddenly broke the atmosphere—she pointed at Liu Li's ear and exclaimed, "He...it seems like he's bleeding..."

Just as the nurse said, a blotchy red liquid was slowly oozing from Liu Li's ear canal, spreading in the ice water. At the same time, blood was also flowing from his nasal cavity, and the thick blood plasma all accumulated at the point where the breathing mask and skin came into contact.

"I demand that Liu Li's mission be terminated immediately!" said Liu Li's direct supervisor—a forty-year-old woman wearing a dark red suit skirt with a knee-length white coat over it. Her long black hair was styled into a high bun at the back of her head, and a pair of exquisite gold-rimmed glasses sat on her high nose.

Her surname is Nangong, and everyone who knows her knows that Professor Nangong of the fourth research group of Tian Shu Tower is simply the epitome of elegance and intellect... But at this moment, her elegance and intellect have been completely replaced by anxiety and tension. If her colleagues hadn't stopped her, she would have already rushed up and carried Liu Li out of the bathtub filled with ice water.

“Professor Nangong, if we stop the mission now, all our efforts will be in vain,” another researcher said. “We are also very worried about Liu Li’s physical condition, but the situation at the Baikal Remains is much more urgent than here!”

“Liu Li’s ‘overload mode’ physiological limit is fifteen minutes. Only thirteen minutes have passed, so there are two minutes left… He should be fine,” another person who looked like a doctor reassured him.

"Fifteen minutes is the limit measured under strict monitoring with various medical support equipment, not by soaking him in a bathtub full of ice water like this!" Professor Nangong said coldly. "Liu Li's physiological functions are no different from those of an ordinary person! Tell me, in your place, who can guarantee that they can last fifteen minutes in this environment every time?"

“But…” The doctor wanted to say something more, but under Professor Nangong’s fierce gaze, his lips moved slightly, and in the end, he lowered his head with a look of guilt.

As the doctor in Liu Li's dedicated medical team, he and Professor Nangong were the two people in the world who knew Liu Li's physical condition best... He was also well aware that letting Liu Li soak in ice water at zero degrees Celsius for fifteen minutes was a gamble.

No one knew whether what was pulled out of the icy water fifteen minutes later would be a dying infected person or a cold corpse.

Even if Liu Lin survives, his physical functions will suffer irreversible damage.

“The mission continues.” A man who had been standing in the corner of the bathroom and hadn’t spoken since entering said, “I just asked the mainframe, and it said that Liu Li hasn’t reached his physical limit yet… I believe he can keep going.”

This man is named Liu Zhushi, and like Ye Xuan and Ye Jiu's father, he is a member of the Federal Parliament. But besides being a member of parliament, he also has another identity: Liu Li's adoptive father.

On the day Liu Li was confirmed to be infected, his biological parents, who were notified, were so emotional that they speeded on their way to the research institute and caused a car accident, resulting in their deaths. Upon learning this news, Liu Zhushi adopted Liu Li and treated him as his own son.

Even when Liu Li killed someone at school because someone insulted him, it was Liu Zhushi who did everything he could to protect him.

“Councilor Liu, Liu Li... he’ll die.” Professor Nangong bit his lip hard, his clenched fists making a cracking sound.

She took several deep breaths before she managed to suppress her anger.

"Liu Li is an infected person and also a monster hunter. From the day he became a hunter, he should have been prepared to sacrifice himself for humanity at any time... in this war between human civilization and monsters," Liu Zhushi said with a stern face.

"You're... treating hunters like expendable resources..."

“That’s right.” Liu Zhushi didn’t deny it. “In this war, everyone is a expendable resource, including you and me… except that their role is much greater than ours. Professor Nangong, although the Eternal Night has ended, this world is still shrouded in darkness. If we compare human life to firewood, burning us only produces a faint glow like a firefly; but burning them releases much more light and heat… even igniting a raging fire.” “When it’s time for me to make a sacrifice, I won’t hesitate,” Liu Zhushi continued. “How I wish I could lie in the icy water in Liu Li’s place… but I don’t have that right; that’s a power only he possesses.”

"Fourteen minutes have passed, sixty seconds left." The doctor glanced at the timer. "Everyone, prepare for resuscitation..."

A small cart was already parked next to the bathtub. Several syringes were placed on a sterilized metal tray, which were pre-filled with adrenaline and other emergency medications. The doctor's assistant held an AED with both hands, waiting for others to pull Liu Li out of the ice water so that he could be given an emergency defibrillation.

Professor Nangong had never imagined that sixty seconds would be such a long time.

The second hand of the mechanical watch on her wrist ticked away, and with each tick, everyone felt as if a heavy drumstick was striking their hearts.

The bathroom fell silent once more.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Just as the timer ticked to 14 minutes and 27 seconds, Liu Li, who was lying in the bathtub, suddenly sat up. He opened his eyes wide and ripped off the breathing mask that was attached to his face.

"I've figured it out! I've figured it out!!"

With a roar, the blood that had accumulated in his nasal cavity gushed out and fell into the icy water.

Blood plasma mixed with snot sank and spread in the water, quickly turning a small area of ​​the water pink.

After shouting twice, he began to breathe heavily, his pale face and bluish-purple lips forming a stark contrast, the sound of his heart pounding in his chest completely drowning out the ticking of his watch.

After a brief moment of stunned silence, everyone rushed towards Liu Li. Several nurses hurriedly lifted Liu Li out of the bathtub and wrapped his body in a thick towel. Meanwhile, the doctor, who had been waiting in the room, grabbed Liu Li's arm and injected all the injections into his body.

"Quick! Get him into the medical pod!" the doctor shouted. "Stabilize his condition first, then transfer him to the emergency room!"

"Heart rate too fast! Do not inject adrenaline! Switch to β451! Inject it together with the stabilizer!"

"Take the electrodes off his head! Hurry up, check his blood pressure and ECG! Temperature? What's the point of checking his temperature? Can't you feel how cold he is?!"

"Pay attention to the memetic frequency! This overload mode is nearing its limit, and the infection process is likely to be affected! If a significant change in the infection process is detected, immediately inject four units of memetic stabilizer! If necessary, this can be increased to six units!"

A group of people were busy surrounding Liu Li, while Liu Zhushi, leaning against the bathroom tiles, slowly let out a sigh of relief.

He has been married for twenty-two years, but due to health reasons, he has never had a child of his own—to Liu Zhushi, Liu Li is just like his own son.

He looked up, staring somewhat dazedly at the LED light on the bathroom ceiling. The soft white light suddenly became a little dazzling for some reason, causing Liu Zhushi to subconsciously close his eyes.

"This is a war, we are all in a war..." Liu Zhushi muttered to himself in a voice only he could hear, "This war... what are our chances of winning..."

……

……

The remains of Baikal lie 1,500 kilometers away.

"Wow, it seems I didn't misjudge him." Sun Hang looked at the "dynamic model" sent out by the mainframe and praised, "This Liu Li actually calculated the change pattern of the Baikal skeleton."

"You figured it out?" Yan Yu'an looked at Sun Hang in surprise. She had entered the Remains of Baikal many times, and she knew better than anyone how difficult it was.

"Well... to be precise, he didn't calculate a standard answer, but rather gave us a solution, a solution that can be solved using a formula," Sun Hang said.

"What do you mean?"

"He built a dynamic mathematical model that calculates the feasibility of each route based on the real-time changes of Baikal's remains, and continuously optimizes itself until it guides us to the right place. I've sent you this model; you can import it into the power armor's main control calculator to see what it's like."

Yan Yu'an immediately did as instructed. After a few seconds of loading time, messy lines appeared on the inside of her goggles. The number and shape of these lines were constantly changing, but a few lines remained highlighted.

Yan Yu'an quickly realized that these highlighted lines were the "correct route" calculated by the model.

The correct path is constantly changing, but as long as the model keeps working, they can stay on the right path.

"Luckily, the destination I was navigating to was such a big target as Victory Avenue." Sun Hang sighed. "If I had specified the destination as the veterans' sanatorium... I'm afraid Liu Li still wouldn't have been able to calculate it even after another hour."

(End of this chapter)