MM Racing Chapter 397 Greenlandic Traditional Whaling
Chapter 397 Greenlandic Traditional Whaling
Chapter 395 Greenlandic Traditional Whaling
Thanks to his enhanced super brain, Lin Yu'an was able to understand basic Danish conversations thanks to the immersion he had along the way and his previous intensive study.
He put down his coffee cup, looked at the Inuit cub, and replied gently in Danish, "No, Alek. I am not a Greenlander; I come from a very far-off Eastern country."
"How far?" The little guy blinked. For a five-year-old, distance was a vague concept.
Lin Yu'an thought for a moment, then pointed out the window and used a metaphor that best reflected local understanding: "So far—if you had Grandpa's lead dog, 'Azure Sky,' pulling a sled nonstop, it would take two hundred sleeps to get there."
Upon hearing this number, Alek dropped the biscuit from his mouth.
His mouth gaped open in an "O" shape, his eyes filled with undisguised admiration and shock. He looked at Lin Yu'an as if he were a hero from a myth: "Wow! You mean—you drove a sled for two hundred days to get here?!"
"Hahahaha!"
The three adults in the room looked at the little guy's shocked face and burst into good-natured laughter.
Odak rubbed his grandson's head: "Silly boy, he came on a giant iron bird. No one in the world could have gotten here by sled!"
Interrupted by laughter, little Alek, who was eating a cookie, suddenly jumped up as if he had been electrocuted, almost spilling the milk in his hand.
He finally remembered his mission in braving the bitter cold to come here.
"Oh no! Aata (Grandpa)!"
The little guy's expression turned anxious, and he spoke rapidly, gesturing wildly as he described the disaster: "Dad tried to clean the oil boiler, but he didn't do it right! The machine made a 'bang' sound, and then it started belching black smoke. Now the house is so cold!"
"Mom is holding my little sister and hiding under the covers. She asked me to come and get you!"
Upon hearing this, the smiles on Audak and Maria's faces instantly froze.
In the polar regions where temperatures drop to minus thirty degrees Celsius, firewood is scarce and coal is rare. The boiler that burns diesel fuel to maintain the room temperature is the heart of the family.
Once it stops working, the thin wooden walls will be no match for the extreme cold, and the house will quickly turn into a giant freezer.
"That idiot with the broken leg! Does he think he's a mechanic?" Odak cursed, a hint of panic flashing in his eyes.
He quickly rummaged through his toolbox and checked that it contained pipe wrenches, a spanner, and spare fuel injectors.
"He must have broken the fuel line, or installed the fuel injector backwards, causing carbon buildup and backfire! Damn it, that machine is worth more than his life!"
Although Audak's tone was stern, it revealed deep lingering fear: "You silly grandson! Why did it take you so long to tell me about something so serious! If you had lingered a little longer on the way, your parents would have frozen solid!"
"Quick! Get dressed!"
Maria was no longer as composed as before. In just 10 seconds, she wrapped her grandson up tightly again like a packaged delivery, all the while muttering "God bless you."
"Lin, grab those bags of meat! Let's go!"
"Go see what my unfortunate son has done to the house! Hopefully, it's not the motherboard that's burned out, otherwise we'll have to wait six months for a shipping order to buy a replacement!"
Odak, holding Alek, pushed open the door, and the wind and snow rushed in instantly.
Inuk's house wasn't far from Odak's wooden hut, just a few minutes' walk away. But those few hundred meters felt like crossing two different worlds.
They walked through the neat area of detached wooden houses and arrived at the row of prefabricated houses on the edge of town.
The cold wind seemed to blow even more fiercely here, and the snow piled up at the doorway had frozen into a hard shell because no one had cleared it.
Before even entering the door, a pungent smell of diesel fuel mixed with the acrid smell of black smoke seeped into Lin Yu'an's nose through the crack in the door.
"Cough cough—" Odak covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve, and kicked open the icy door with a dark face.
The temperature inside was almost as low as outside. In the dim light, a lingering pale blue haze filled the narrow room.
Odak sat in a wheelchair, his legs in casts stiffly straight, his face covered in soot from trying to fix the machine. He stared blankly at the silent red boiler, his expression utterly dejected.
On the sofa in the corner of the room, a young mother wrapped in two thick blankets was tightly holding her baby, shivering from the cold. When she saw Odak come in, tears instantly streamed down her face.
"Dad—" Inuk lowered his head in shame when he saw his father, like a child who had done something wrong.
"Shut up! Take your wife and kids to the next room!"
Odak didn't have time to listen to his explanation. He threw his toolbox on the ground and lay down directly in front of the malfunctioning oil boiler.
Lin Yu'an put down the meat in his hand and went over to help shine the flashlight.
This is an old-fashioned Danish-made oil-fired heater. Its structure is not complicated, but in the Arctic, it is more important than the heart.
At this moment, the malfunction indicator light on the machine panel was flashing wildly, and the combustion chamber was deathly silent.
Audak glanced at him, and his wrinkled eyes twitched violently twice.
"You idiot—"
The old guide took a deep breath, barely managing to slap his son on the spot, and pointed at the two copper pipes below the oil pump, yelling, "How did you manage to connect the inlet and outlet oil pipes backwards? Huh? Can't you see the arrows drawn on them? How could you make such a basic mistake?"
Inuk shrank back and whispered in protest, "That interface looks the same—"
"Looks the same? If you had this kind of eye for detail when putting a leash on a dog, you'd be strangled to death by now!"
Despite his insults, Odak's movements were surprisingly fast.
He skillfully used pipe wrenches to unscrew the copper pipe joint, closed the main valve, and pressed his thumb firmly against the gushing diesel nozzle.
Then the positions of the two pipes were quickly swapped, and the nuts were tightened again. The whole process took less than two minutes, with only a small amount of diesel fuel dripping into the drip tray.
Next, he removed the heavily carbon-deposited fuel injectors, sprayed them with carburetor cleaner, scrubbed them thoroughly with a wire brush, and then reinstalled them.
"Look closely! This is the exhaust button!"
Audak pressed the restart button.
"Boom boom boom!"
With a hum of the motor starting up, a reassuring explosion came from the combustion chamber.
A few seconds later, the flames began to flicker steadily in the observation window, and the deathly silence that seemed to freeze one to the bone was instantly shattered by the roar of the machine in operation.
The first wisp of warm air began to blow from the heater vent.
Audak stood up, wiped the oil off his hands on his clothes, and watched as the numbers on the thermometer began to slowly rise. His expression softened a little.
"Alright, at least it's not a broken motherboard."
He turned around and took the heavy bag of seal ribs from Lin Yu'an, placing it on the table with a dull thud.
"Stop feeding your children that junk food imported from Denmark."
Audak looked at his son and daughter-in-law: "This is a seal we just hunted, with its fat still attached. Have your wife cook a pot of seal soup, add plenty of oil. Drinking this will help your legs grow faster."
"Once your leg is healed, come to my dog farm. Stop playing your crappy Steam all day; you need to learn from me how to work with your hands."
Inuk looked at the bag of meat, then at his father, who, despite his foul mouth, had been kneeling on the ground fixing the stove. "Thank you, Dad—"
As the fire was reignited, the cramped prefab house finally began to feel alive again.
Before leaving, little Alek hugged Audak's leg, tilted his still slightly dirty little face up, and called out in a soft, sweet voice, "Aata (Grandpa), thank you for fixing the furnace."
Audak's stern face melted instantly.
He crouched down, his tone becoming unusually gentle: "Oh, my little angel Arke, you came to my rescue just in time. If the red light turns on again, remember to call for Grandpa first, and don't let Daddy touch anything."
The young daughter-in-law beside him, holding the baby, said with red eyes and deep gratitude, "Thank you, Father."
Odak waved his hand. "Thank you for your hard work, Anuya. Alright, start cooking the soup. I'm leaving."
He put his heavy leather hat back on, turned around, pushed open the door, and walked into the snowstorm with Lin Yu'an.
The two left the slum and, braving the cold wind, headed toward the home of the widow Aviak, who lived on the hillside.
On the way, carrying the heavy bag of seal meat, Lin Yu'an recalled the scene from earlier and couldn't help but ask, "Odak, weren't you too harsh on him just now?"
Odak walked ahead, then paused for a moment.
“Strict?” He gave a wry smile. “Lin, I have three sons. The eldest and second eldest are both very smart. They left Karnak a long time ago and went to the capital, Nuuk.”
Now they wear suits and sit in heated offices as civil servants for the autonomous government. They've become "Danish," and rarely return home more than once a year.
Odak pointed to the row of gloomy prefab houses behind him: "And Inuk—he was my son when I was almost forty."
"He was never like a hunter from a young age. He was afraid of the cold, afraid of blood, and even seasick."
"My only hobby is sitting in front of that damn monitor and playing those games on Steam? Yes, Steam."
At this point, Odak's voice lowered, revealing a deep sense of powerlessness: "A few years ago, I also cursed him, even smashed his computer, and forced him to go to sea with me. But later—I stopped."
"Why? Because he can't learn it?" Lin Yu'an asked.
Odak stopped and turned around. In the cold twilight, a chilling sadness shone in his cloudy eyes.
"Lin, do you know? Greenland is the most beautiful place in the world, and also the most desolate."
"Our youth suicide rate is the highest in the world. Not just among the top few, but by a significant margin. Every year, on average, one in every 1000 Greenlanders chooses to leave prematurely."
He took a deep drag of his cigarette, as if trying to suppress the lump in his throat with nicotine: "You haven't seen a real winter yet, it's the polar night where there's no sunlight for four consecutive months."
"When you wake up in darkness, when you eat in darkness, when you sleep in darkness, that endless darkness will seep into your brain, devour your dopamine, and make you feel that life has no meaning."
"So alcohol became the only escape. Although the government set the alcohol tax higher than gold and restricted the time of sale in an effort to control alcoholism, desperate people cannot be stopped."
"Here, many people would rather forgo food and heating oil than spend their last bit of relief money on an expensive bottle of vodka. Once they're drunk, they won't feel cold or suffer anymore."
"The most terrifying thing is that in this hunter's country, every house, even every room, has guns hanging on it."
"Those guns were originally meant to be tools for self-defense, but on those desperate, drunken nights, for young people who couldn't see a future, they were an easy escape."
"Just shove the gun barrel under your chin, pull the trigger, and the darkness ends. In this town, almost every family has ever held a funeral where the elderly send off the young."
"I'm afraid too—I'm really afraid that one day I'll push open Inuk's door and see blood everywhere."
97
Lin Yu'an fell silent. A cold wind blew by, and the once picturesque, colorful town was now shrouded in a heavy gray in his eyes.
This is the cruelest and most unsolvable side behind this white paradise.
"So," Odak even said with a sense of relief, "I've thought it through. Let him play."
"Being immersed in that virtual game world is better than facing the despair of reality. At least in that world called Steam, he has friends, quests, and a sense of accomplishment."
"As long as he can still sit in front of the computer and yell at the screen, I know he's still alive, and his hands are still typing on the keyboard instead of touching the trigger."
The old hunter sighed, a hint of relief in his voice: "Fortunately, I arranged this wife for him a few years ago. Since he started a family and had children, he has changed somewhat."
"He's starting to accept life here. Although he's clumsy at work, at least he's trying to be a father, and that's enough."
"As for the hunter's skills? If I can't learn them, I won't. As long as these old bones of mine can still move, I can support them."
""
At this point, the two had arrived at a lonely little wooden house.
"We've arrived. This is Grandma Aviak's house; she's the most senior person in the village."
Odak stepped forward and gently knocked on the door frame.
A few seconds later, the door was pulled open a crack from the inside. An old face covered with a network of wrinkles appeared behind the crack, and a pair of eyes that were almost sunken in their sockets scrutinized the two people outside.
"It's me, Grandma Aviak," Odak's voice became unusually respectful. "I brought a friend, and some fresh seal meat with me."
The door slowly opened. The light inside was even dimmer than in Inuk's house, and the air was filled with a strong smell of burning seal oil lamps, mixed with the aroma of some dried herbs.
There are no modern IKEA furniture or Samsung TVs here; the walls are covered with animal bones, feathers, and woven fabrics, making it like a living history museum.
Grandma Aviak took the heavy bag of seal meat, weighed it in her withered fingers, nodded in satisfaction, and gestured for them to come in.
She lifted a blackened copper kettle from an iron stove and poured two cups of steaming, deep red tea for the two of them.
The tea contained no tea leaves, only a few unidentified red berries and plant roots, emitting a strange, sweet aroma.
Lin Yu'an noticed that the old lady had a dark, blurry tattoo pattern on her left little finger.
The old lady noticed his gaze, and something seemed to have been switched on in her heart.
A distant light flashed in her cloudy eyes as she raised her wrinkled hand and looked at the already blurred pattern.
"This is Kakiornerit, the tattoo of us Inuit women." Her voice was hoarse, like the wind blowing through dry animal hides.
"When I was thirteen, my mother used a bone needle dipped in seal oil ash to prick me, one needle at a time. She said this would allow my soul to be guided home by the sea goddess Sedna after I died."
She gave a wry smile: "But then, the Danish priests came. They said it was the devil's mark, and that you couldn't go to church or go to school in Copenhagen unless you washed it off. Many girls rubbed it off with stones."
Odak sighed, "Times have changed, Grandma Aviak."
"Yes, times have changed." Aviak put down his teacup and looked out the window at the unchanging ice field. "When I was young, this place wasn't like this."
"Back then, we didn't live in these wooden boxes." Aviak looked around the dimly lit hut, a hint of nostalgia for the old days flashing in his eyes.
"Back then, we lived in harmony with the breath of ice and snow. In winter, we lived in thick walls made of stones and turf. As long as we lit a seal oil lamp, the house was as warm as a mother's embrace."
She paused, as if she could smell the air from back then: "Once April came, the sun came back, the permafrost thawed, and the mud houses would become damp and muddy. So we would lift the roof and let the sun kill off the musty smell left over from the winter."
"The whole family moved into a lightweight, breathable sealskin tent and chased schools of fish along the coastline. Summers back then were filled with the sound of waves and the scent of purple saxifrage, not the stale diesel smell that lingers in the cracks of wood now."
"Back then, the Danes," the old woman's voice betrayed neither resentment nor nostalgia, but rather sounded like she was recounting an unchangeable history, "were the kings of this place."
"They live in those brightly painted houses in the center of town, always clean and always warm. They have their own shops with royal coats of arms hanging at the doors, and we Inuit are not even allowed to step across their thresholds."
"We could only stand outside the window like beggars, holding up our best blue fox furs and walrus ivory, trying to exchange them through the glass."
"In exchange for some things we can't make—unbreakable iron needles, bullets that can kill, iron pots, and the most precious thing of that era—Danish butter biscuits."
"I remember the first time I ate Danish biscuits, that sweet and crunchy taste—I thought I was eating Sila."
"Food." She smacked her lips, as if she could still recall the taste from back then.
"But they also brought good things," Aviak added. "They brought doctors, which saved many of my children from dying of smallpox and tuberculosis."
"They also brought a school, although the school only taught Danish and we weren't allowed to speak our own language."
Lin Yu listened quietly. The history told by an old man who had lived for nearly a century was more impactful than any book.
"At the same time, the environment has changed." Aviak's tone was tinged with worry. "When I was young, in April, the sea ice here could extend to places that were out of sight, and it was three meters thick, as solid as land."
"We could drive dog sleds all the way to Canada. Summers were short back then, and the icebergs melted slowly, so we never worried about running out of fresh water."
“But now,” she shook her head, “the summers are getting longer and the ice is getting thinner. Last summer, I even saw humpback whales in the sea that shouldn’t be here. They were coming all the way north with the warm ocean currents.”
"The glaciers are crying, the seals are dwindling, and the polar bears are getting thinner because they can no longer find sea ice to lie on and hunt. They have no choice but to come to our town and rummage through the trash cans."
The old woman looked at Lin Yu'an, her eyes turning serious: "You people who come in big ships and on iron birds, your world is too hot. Your heat is melting our ice."
These words left Lin Yu'an speechless with inexplicable disbelief. He knew the old man wasn't referring to him personally, but rather to the rapidly evolving industrial civilization he represented.
"All we can do is adapt," Odak broke the silence, trying to ease the tension. "At least now there are more tourists coming to hunt, and we can earn more money to buy heating oil and milk from Copenhagen."
"Money—" Aviak repeated the word, a complex look flashing in his eyes, "Money can buy heating oil, but it can't buy back the disappearing sea ice."
"What's the point of guarding so many crowns when even the last seal can't find a place to settle?"
A long silence fell over the room. The fire crackled in the fireplace, and the wind outside sounded like an ancient lament.
In the end, it was Aviak herself who broke free from this heavy burden. As if she had exhausted the strength of her memories, she transformed back into the serene old woman.
She looked at Lin Yu'an: "Hunter from the East, you are a polite child, and you are willing to listen to this old woman's ramblings. Sila (God) will bless you."
"Since you've brought me the best seal meat, I'll give you some news in return."
The old man stretched out his withered, twig-like finger and pointed northwest: "This morning, the young man from the village named Pita came back from the north. He saw steam rising from the large crack behind the Blue Wall (the glaciers)."
Upon hearing this, Odak abruptly raised his head, his eyes instantly sharpening: "Mist? What kind of mist?"
“Tall and straight,” Aviak gestured. “And he said he heard singing coming from under the ice, like birdsong or whistling.”
"It's a unicorn of the sea (narwhal)." Odak's voice trembled slightly with excitement. "Only they sing in the ice crevasses."
Aviak nodded, looking at Lin Yu'an: "They usually only stay in the deep sea, but the ocean currents these past few days have torn a big hole in the ice, and they've come up to breathe."
"Pita is a coward. He was afraid the ice there was too thin, so he ran back without daring to go near. But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you."
The old man gave Lin Yu'an a deep look: "Go and try your luck, child. The narwhal's tusk is the scepter of the sea god."
If you can obtain it, you will be a warrior recognized by this icy plain.
After saying this, the old man closed his eyes, leaned back on the animal skin cushion, and fell silent, as if he had sunk into another time and space, or was having a conversation with that bygone era.
Audak gave Lin Yu'an a wink, and the two of them, without disturbing the old man's rest any longer, quietly got up and respectfully left the small house filled with the dust of history.
Stepping outside and back into the glaring sunlight and cold wind, the oppressive sense of historical weight was instantly dispelled by the frigid air.
"Is she alright?" Lin Yu'an asked softly, concerned about the old woman's condition.
"That's how it is when you get old. Sometimes you're lucid, sometimes you just live in the past."
Odak sighed, but then turned around and patted Lin Yu'an's shoulder forcefully, his face revealing the greed and fanaticism unique to old hunters: "Don't worry about her, Grandma Aviak still has the sharpest ears in the whole village! If she says there are narwhals there, then there must be!"
He pointed to the vast ice field to the northwest and spoke very quickly: "Lin! It seems we need to revise our plans! The cows are always grazing on the mountain; they can't escape."
"But narwhals are like ghosts in the sea; they disappear as soon as the ice crevasses close!"
"That's the most precious prey in this sea, gold with long tusks! Let's go! We'll feed the sled dogs now and grab all the bullets!"
"Let's go to the Blue Wall! Let's meet those legendary unicorns!"
Odak glanced at his watch. It was already three in the afternoon, but the sun outside the window was still high in the sky, only slightly shifted to the west.
"But Odak," Lin Yu'an hesitated, "we've been running all morning, don't we need to rest for a night and go again tomorrow morning? The dog is tired too."
"Take a break? Tomorrow?"
Odak seemed to have heard a joke. "Lin, throw away your city-based concept of time! Here, the sun doesn't sleep, and neither do the hunters!"
"Narwhals breathe through crevasses in the ice; that crevice is a wound torn open by ocean currents. Perhaps if the wind changes direction, the wound will heal in two hours! Then those whales will swim tens of kilometers away to find other breathing holes!"
"On the ice sheet, opportunities expire! We must get there before the crevasse closes!"
The two quickly returned to Odak's home.
The atmosphere instantly became tense; this was no longer a casual hunt, but a meticulously planned battle.
Now that the target has changed from a cow weighing a few hundred kilograms to a sea monster that could weigh one and a half tons, the equipment must be completely upgraded.
Lin Yu'an put the lightweight Type 56 semi-automatic rifle back and took out the Sako 85 Kodiak.
This Finnish-made heavy rifle has finally found its home ground.
Lin Yu'an skillfully inspected the bolt and loaded a box of gleaming .375H&H Magnum bullets into the magazine.
This bullet possesses over 5500 joules of kinetic energy, easily penetrating the skull of an African elephant. It also has enough kinetic energy to penetrate the thick hide and blubber of a narwhal.
Meanwhile, Odak was dragging several orange-red, hard plastic buoys that looked like giant balloons out of the depths of the warehouse.
"What is this?" Lin Yu'an asked.
Odak patted the hard plastic shell, making a dull thud.
"This is a modern version of a buoy. In the past, we would use whole stripped seal skins to make air bladders, but this one is more robust, and its bright orange color makes it easier to spot on the sea surface."
Next, he took out a bundle of heavy-duty hand-thrown harpoon heads with barbs, and a roll of nylon rope as thick as a thumb.
While adjusting the ropes, Odak began giving Lin Yu'an his most important tactical lesson: "Lin, listen carefully, hunting narwhals is completely different from hunting seals. Seals will float to the surface when they die, but narwhals will sink to the bottom of the sea hundreds of meters deep within seconds, like a stone."
"If we had shot it dead, it would have sunk before we could even lower the hook. That would have meant not only losing tens of thousands of euros, but also being branded as 'killed but not recovered,' which would have been the greatest blasphemy against Sila."
He said with a serious expression, "We used to paddle kayaks; it was a game for warriors. Hunters would paddle onto the back of a whale, pierce it with their spears, and then be dragged across the sea for hours by the frenzied whale until it was exhausted."
"Now we have guns, but it's still a technical job." Odak gestured a shooting hand signal and explained in detail, "When the whale surfaces to breathe from the crevasse, you're responsible for the first shot. Remember, absolutely no headshots! And no spine!"
"You need to shoot its lungs, which is behind the side fins. That .375 bullet will puncture its alveoli, preventing it from diving deeper and forcing it to float on the surface gasping for air."
"At this point, it will be injured and panicked, but still alive. I'll take this opportunity to stab the harpoon, still attached to the buoy, into its back!"
"Only when this orange buoy catches it and makes sure it won't sink can you fire the second shot, blow its head off, and end its suffering."
Lin Yu'an understood. This was a cruel but necessary tactic: "First, inflict heavy damage, then anchor, and finally kill."
"Understood." Lin Yu'an nodded. "I will leave it with a breath of life."
A greedy glint gleamed in Audak's eyes: "It's worth it for that tusk."
"A perfectly spiraled tooth, two meters long, can fetch 15,000 euros or even more at an auction in Copenhagen! That's gold from the sea!"
"Not to mention whale skin, which is attached to blubber and can sell for several hundred kronor per kilogram in the Greenland market."
Once the tactics were finalized, Odak carried a bucket of frozen fish to the pack of dogs.
"Kids, have a good meal!" He tossed each dog a whole fish, a high-energy Snickers bar.
"Listen, Lin." Odak did one last check on the mooring ropes on the sled to make sure the heavy buoys wouldn't fly off.
"This trip to the Blue Wall may take twenty hours round trip. We will have to spend the night on the ice, and may even have to stay by the ice crevasses all day."
"Take all the coffee, and bring your Chinese gun too. Sako is for whales, but if we run into a polar bear that smells the whale meat while we're processing it, that semi-automatic gun could save our lives."
"Then, the two of us alone are not enough; we need one more person."
"If we actually hit it, we'll have to drag it onto the ice before it even sinks. Once it gets stuck under the ice edge, the ocean current will be like an invisible giant hand, pulling our sled into the sea along with it."
Audak turned his gaze to the other end of the village: "We need laborers, and we also need someone to lead the way."
"That kid named Pita may be a coward, but since he saw the whale, it means he knows the exact location of the crevasse."
"This ice field changes every day. Without him to guide us, we would have wandered around that chaotic ice area for three days and still not found a place."
"Let's go! Drag that scaredy-cat out of bed! He thinks he can hide at home drinking coffee? No way!"
The two walked through half the village and arrived at a blue prefabricated house that looked somewhat dilapidated and had peeling paint on its exterior walls.
Odak didn't knock at all; he just pounded on the window and shouted a few words in heavily guttural Greenlandic.
A moment later, the door opened a crack.
An Inuit man who looked to be in his thirties and was somewhat overweight poked his head out.
He is Pita.
Seeing Odak's furious face, Pita shrank back, clearly terrified of the village elder.
"Aata—I—I'm not going."
Before Audak could even speak, Pita chickened out and stammered in Danish, "The ice there is too thin!"
Seriously! It makes a loud noise when you step on it! And that whale was huge, we—"
"Shut up! You coward!" Odak grabbed Peeta by the collar and dragged him in front of him like a chick.
"You saw gold, but ran back because you were afraid of getting your shoes wet? That was a narwhal! Not a sea monster!"
Audak pointed to Lin Yu'an behind him, his tone full of temptation and pressure: "This Mr. Lin is a distinguished guest who paid a high price. You are responsible for driving the second sled and taking us to the place where you see the water spray."
"If you manage to kill it, you'll get 300 kilograms of meat, plus 2,000 crowns in cash!"
Upon hearing about the cash and 300 kilograms of meat, Pitana's wandering gaze finally settled.
In this impoverished place, lamb in the supermarket is ridiculously expensive, and this payment is enough to pay off his debts to the supermarket and shut his ever-complaining wife up for several months.
"Really—just me leading the way? And—help me pull the rope?" Pita swallowed hard.
"Lead the way, and do the hard work!" Odak released his grip, straightened his collar, and said, "You have ten minutes. Grab your gun and feed your dog. We'll wait for you at the village entrance!"
Half an hour later, Pita arrived at the meeting point, dawdling around in a slightly smaller sled.
Although he seemed timid, the seven or eight dogs he brought were well-cared for, with shiny coats. It seemed that although he was cowardly, he was a typical person who lived a simple life.
Pita brought the sled to a stop but didn't immediately come to help. Instead, he hunched his shoulders, his shifty eyes fixed on Audak, his voice betraying his barely concealed hesitation: "Aata (Grandpa) — are we really going to the back of the Blue Wall? I heard from the old folks that the ocean currents have been acting strangely these past few days, and the ice there is 'singing,' a sign that it's about to crack —"
"And—and what if it's a male whale that goes crazy and pulls the rope into the deep sea? My sled is too light; it'll be dragged down with it—"
"Shut up, Peeta!" Odak was inspecting the cable when he heard this and suddenly turned around, brandishing the huge harpoon head in his hand, which startled Peeta into taking a step back.
"The ice is 1.5 meters thick! Unless you're as fat as a walrus, you won't fall in! As for getting dragged away? That's my problem, you just need to hold onto that damn rope!"
Seeing that Pita was too scared to utter a word after being yelled at, Lin Yu'an took the initiative to step forward in order to ease the tension.
His gaze fell on the weathered rifle behind Peeta.
It was an old-fashioned bolt-action rifle that looked ordinary, even somewhat rudimentary.
The stock is made of light yellow birch, but due to long-term use and the absorption of oils, the grip area has turned dark brown and is covered with various dents and scratches, which are the medals of time.
The metallic blue on the slender barrel had mostly worn away due to the extreme cold and years of wear, revealing the silvery-white steel underneath.
Most notably, this gun has no optical aiming devices whatsoever, retaining only the most primitive mechanical front sight and rear sight at the muzzle and rear of the receiver.
"Peeta, what kind of gun is that?" Lin Yu'an asked directly.
Pita paused for a moment, seemingly not expecting this wealthy foreign guest to be interested in the "fire poker" on his back.
He awkwardly unloaded his rifle, smiled sheepishly, and said, "Uh—this is a Carl Gustaf, an old Swedish-made one."
"I bought it from a drunkard. I thought the rifling was okay, so I traded it to him for two packs of cigarettes."
"Two packs of cigarettes?" Lin Yu'an raised an eyebrow.
"That's right, it's probably only worth a little over a thousand kronor," Odak interjected, his tone carrying a hint of a senior's assessment. "This is a military rifle made by the Swedes seventy or eighty years ago, namely the Swedish Mauser M/96."
"Later, the handguard was sawed off and it was converted into a hunting rifle and sold here. Although it was as cheap as junk, it was the most common national rifle in the entire Scandinavian Peninsula, including Greenland."
Although Odak was sarcastic, his eyes showed approval of the gun: "Its caliber is 6.555mm. In Europe, this is known as the legendary caliber of the Nordic countries."
"The recoil is very gentle, which is perfect for a coward like Peeta who is afraid of the butt of the gun hitting his shoulder."
"But don't underestimate it. Its trajectory is straighter than a laser, and its projectile is long and thin, with astonishing penetrating power. In this land, it is the absolute mainstay in hunting seals and caribou."
Lin Yu'an nodded; he knew the significance of this caliber. Although the gun itself was inexpensive, as long as the rifling was intact, it was a precise survival tool.
Then, Lin Yu'an noticed that Odak's sled also had two thick gun holsters meticulously fixed on it.
As Karnak's best guide, Odak's equipment is clearly a level above Peeta's, making him a typical "middle-class" pragmatist.
Odak patted his left holster and pulled out a bolt-action rifle with a stainless steel frame and a black engineering plastic stock: "This is my work rifle—a Finnish Tikka T3. It's from the same family as your expensive Sako. Although it's not as refined, it's just as sturdy and durable. It's .30-06 caliber, a versatile weapon."
Then, he pointed to the half-stock protruding from the right holster, his expression becoming more serious: "As for this one, it's for emergencies."
It was a Browning BAR, a semi-automatic rifle that used a reliable gas-operated principle.
"If a wounded and enraged musk ox charges at me, or if the harpoon isn't properly secured and I need to finish it off, a bolt-action rifle is too slow. This semi-automatic allows me to fire four bullets in one go."
Audak looked at Lin Yu'an and concluded, "You have heavy artillery, I have fast guns, and Peeta has accuracy. Lin, our team's firepower is safe enough."
"Alright! Now that everyone's here, let's not waste any more time!"
Odak tugged hard on the mooring rope on the Peeta sled to make sure the coward wasn't slacking off on the knots.
"Let's go!"
With a command from Odak, the three-person team officially set off.
Three snowmobiles, three people, casting long shadows under the ever-shining polar sun.
Amidst billowing snow and the excited howls of dogs, we sped towards the "Blue Wall" ice zone to the northwest, a region fraught with danger yet also brimming with immense treasures.
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