"What seasonings do you want? Let me see if I have them," Xu An said naturally.
Li Cheng and the others in the arena were still fine, but the crowd outside the screen couldn't take it anymore.
"Are Xu An and her group doing this on purpose? They're not here to kill beasts, are they? They're here for a picnic."
"That's right, that's right!"
But no matter what the outside audience said, Xu An in the arena was completely unaffected.
Li Cheng was also dumbfounded when he saw the various seasonings Xu An took out. He had actually just wanted to ask if Xu An had cumin, but Xu An even took out barbecue seasoning.
Xu An looked at Li Cheng's furrowed brow, thinking these weren't enough, and she didn't have much talent for cooking.
"Are these not enough?" Xu An wondered if she should take the time to go into her space to find some if these still weren't enough. Some seasonings she didn't know how to use were all put away.
Li Cheng heard Xu An's reply and snapped back to attention. He quickly shook his head, "Enough, enough, these are already enough."
"Then that's good. The cooking is up to you, I'm not managing it anymore!"
With that, Xu An threw down a large pile of ingredients and turned to leave.
Li Cheng suddenly felt as if he wasn't participating in a life-or-death competition on an ice field, but rather attending a picnic with Xu An.
Ever since they entered, his daily task had become cooking because he could cook. In contrast, Xu An and Zhou Haimei had become the ones responsible for combat.
As for his own sister, there was no need to mention her; she was like a mascot.
Just as everyone finished clearing all the snakes, they discovered that the sensors on their wrists had changed. The display screen, which was originally zero, now showed five.
Upon noticing this change, Xu An immediately went to find the others to check.
Zhou Haimei showed her wristband, finding that it also clearly read five. However, Li Xin and Li Cheng's wrists only showed one, while Guan Shan's wrist displayed the number three.
Everyone was puzzled.
"What does this number mean? Why is everyone's number different?" As several people were wondering, Li Xin suddenly rummaged through her backpack and pulled out a small booklet about the size of a palm.
"I remember the officials sent out information before about the points awarded for hunting beasts in the extreme cold arena."
Hearing this, everyone stopped asking and waited for Li Xin to give the answer.
Li Xin flipped through the booklet while looking for the rules about points.
"Ah! Found it, it's here!"
Li Xin opened one side of the booklet and pointed to a page with her finger, explaining to everyone.
"Look here!"
"It says here that this kind of small white snake is called a Silver Bone Snake. Because it grows in the snowfield, it's a mutated snake from the Great Apocalypse era. Most of these snakes live in groups, and after hunting humans, they don't eat them immediately. Instead, they transport humans back to their nests as breeding grounds for their offspring."
"So these snakes crawled over wanting us to hatch their young for them?"
Zhou Haimei felt a chill herself after saying that.
Li Xin nodded.
"What about the points?" Xu An asked.
"Because although these snakes don't have much attack power, they are difficult to deal with due to living in groups. Therefore, the Lighthouse has assigned points based on their numbers. One hundred Silver Bone Snakes can be exchanged for one point, with a maximum of five points accumulated. Any excess five points will be automatically given to teammates. When all teammates reach five points, killing more Silver Bone Snakes will no longer yield points," Li Xin explained.
Xu An understood.
Indeed, although these snakes were troublesome, compared to silver wolves and giant sharks, these snakes were nothing.
The Lighthouse probably did this to effectively prevent some people from exploiting loopholes and using these snakes to farm points.
After figuring all this out, Xu An no longer dwelled on it.
Li Xin, however, looked at Zhou Haimei and Xu An with some admiration.
"Sister Mei, Sister An, you're so amazing. My brother and I are definitely relying on your points." She then looked at Guan Shan, "But Guan Shan, you're also amazing. Did you really kill over three hundred yourself?"
Guan Shan didn't answer Li Xin. He seemed unaccustomed to such flattery and simply nodded faintly, showing no further reaction.
Zhou Haimei picked up the booklet and began to study it. Since killing these small snakes yielded no more points, she decided to research other beasts that could be used for scoring.
Most importantly, they still needed to aim for a ranking. Although Xu An hadn't said it, Zhou Haimei knew that Xu An wanted to truly reach the center of power in the Lighthouse through this competition.
All the preparations Xu An had made were just to ensure everyone maintained their best physical condition.
However, in this arena, things changed rapidly, and neither Xu An nor she could guarantee everyone's safety. They could only do their best.
At some point, Zhou Haimei had placed Xu An in a leadership position in her heart.
But Zhou Haimei didn't feel it was inappropriate. She could say that after meeting Xu An, she felt that her chaotic and unbearable days finally had some hope.
Xu An walked over to Zhou Haimei, "What are you looking at?"
Zhou Haimei handed the booklet to Xu An, "Looking at when we can go out and do something big."
Xu An chuckled and took the booklet from Zhou Haimei.
However, as she casually flipped through the booklet, her eyes suddenly flickered.
Seeing Xu An's expression, Zhou Haimei knew that the other party's thoughts were likely the same as hers.
"Are you saying we should go back and kill all those giant sharks?"
This was also something that puzzled Xu An and Zhou Haimei. If killing the beasts here would earn points on their wristbands, then why did the silver wolves and giant sharks they killed before yield no points?
Zhou Haimei took back the booklet and said, "After discovering the change in the numbers on our wristbands, I've been curious about this matter. If what Li Xin said is true, then those giant sharks and silver wolves should have at least had over 20 points. But we don't know the scoring criteria, which means there are two possibilities."
Xu An looked directly into Zhou Haimei's eyes and continued along her line of thought, "Either someone is manipulating everything in this competition and wants to maintain the balance of the arena by suppressing prominent contestants like us, or those silver wolves and giant sharks didn't actually die, and someone else scooped up those points!"
Zhou Haimei sneered and looked outside the tent, "I can guarantee that the giant sharks under my control are all dead. There's absolutely no chance of any survivors. And how would those people outside know precisely how many snakes we killed? You know, at first, even we didn't know how many snakes had died in total. But before we could even tally them ourselves, the points from outside were already registered on our wristbands!"