Live Streaming: Great Adventure in the Wilderness

Chapter 397: Chapter 395: Alive, truly alive!

“Cough cough.”

The cold air made Bi Fang cough uncontrollably. When he raised his head to look at the chat room again, he suddenly found that the previously bustling space full of barrage comments had become refreshingly clear, just like a pine tree shaking off its snow.

Strange, why has everyone suddenly stopped talking?

After a long while.

[Holy shit, Old Fang is alive!]

[Damn, I just prayed for Master Fang’s safety by sacrificing my roommate’s chance at love for a lifetime, and now my roommate’s doomed to be single forever.]

[Roommate: ?]

[Roommate: Thanks a lot, dickhead.]

[Awesome, he survived an avalanche! Who else could do that!]

[Crap, I was yelling so loud, my mom asked why I’m not asleep yet.]

[Badass, bro, you’re supremely badass!]

“They survived! They survived! They’re okay, oh God, they’re okay!”

Inside the Arctic Circle, Elvan hugged Lenin’s shoulders tightly and jumped around with joy.

“Yes, yes, God blesses the kind-hearted,” Lenin said, stroking his big beard and laughing heartily.

Étienne ran around the vast lake, shouting at the top of his lungs, “They’re too awesome! Woo!”

In the brightly lit building, the duty staff immediately contacted Li Yawen to share the good news as soon as possible.

“Boss, Master Fang’s live stream is on!”

In the living room, seeing Bi Fang safe and sound, Li Yawen clenched his fist and pounded the table: “Damn it, I knew this kid wouldn’t go down so easily. Bloody hell, it’s got my blood pressure soaring.”

After opening the drawer and taking his blood pressure medication with some water, Yao Xuehui sat back in his chair and heaved a sigh of relief, while the woman beside him gently patted his chest to calm him down.

“This damned kid, always messing around. He could’ve used the time to promote his own brand instead of this nonsense! He’s driving me crazy.”

“Oh come on, quit it, you worry too much. You get angry when the kid’s in trouble and just as mad when he’s fine. You might as well be a balloon.”

In the brightly lit building, the sound of smashing items and growling could be heard from time to time.

“What’s up with the manager? Did the stock market tank or did he find out his kid isn’t his own?” The same situation, but now it was little B asking little A.

Little A, looking at Bi Fang scanning the surroundings on his phone screen, chuckled: “Probably because some business plans that had just been agreed upon have gone bankrupt again. But, what does it have to do with us? We’re just working stiffs. If the company profits, we don’t see a cent. If the company losses, it’s not going to declare bankruptcy and lay us off.”

Little B was taken aback, as if he had an epiphany, then slowly put down the document in his hands and picked up the mug beside him.

The sounds of destruction continued, but little A and little B, holding their coffee cups and gazing up at the ceiling, sipped their coffee and exhaled a stream of hot vapor.

Every time you slack off, a boss loses his dream.

[Lin Chang gifted the host with Spaceships*10—compensate me for my lost sleep!]

[Holy smokes, why’s the second-place big shot not sleeping in the middle of the night? Turns out, it’s because of him!]

[By the way, what’s the deal with this cave? Why is there a cave anyway!]

[Master Fang, you finally stopped pretending, you urban superpower!]

[I’m laying it all out there, I’m not pretending anymore. Here’s my transformation device; yes, I am the light!]

The audience followed Bi Fang’s perspective for a full scan and discovered that the space they were in was actually not small—almost as large as a minibus.

A breath of cold mist was exhaled as Bi Fang sat on the ground, taking a deep breath to explain, “Just now, we encountered an avalanche. Aside from the two missing Sherpa guides, everyone else in the team is in stable condition, with no major issues beyond some scrapes.”

What can fly without wings? What can punch without fists? What can see without eyes?

This is a riddle that has been circulating since medieval Europe.

The answer is an avalanche.

An avalanche is also known as the white death.

When an avalanche occurs, the snow relentlessly collapses down the mountain from high elevations under the force of gravity, at high speeds and with immense impact force, often leveling everything in its path.

According to statistics, avalanches are the greatest natural risk leading to fatal accidents in winter outdoor sports—without equal!n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Bi Fang leaned against a snow wall, feeling incredibly fortunate. There have been numerous avalanches on Mount Everest, with the Khumbu Glacier being a disaster zone, mostly happening in the early hours of the morning. This is mainly due to the terrain of the Khumbu Glacier.

When the cohesive forces within the snow on a slope can no longer resist the pull of gravity acting upon it, the snow will slide downward, causing a large amount of accumulated snow to collapse. The Chinese Academy of Sciences Tianshan Snow Avalanche Research Station once found that on slopes with an angle of about 40 degrees, avalanches are most likely to occur, which coincides with the terrain of the Khumbu Glacier.

Once in danger, waiting for rescue is almost impossible. By the time it arrives, your body would have already become part of the glacier, buried for a long time, and you might, like the story Bi Fang previously told, reemerge with the movement of the glacier a century later.

Audiences watching the screen couldn’t believe it was true that Eagle Head Ice Slope had protected Bi Fang and his group.

[The Mountain God has manifested, this must be the Mountain God’s work!]

[Damn, that’s awesome]

[So good deeds really do get rewarded?]

“I had demonstrated avalanche survival before; I didn’t expect to really encounter one. There are usually three causes of fatalities in avalanches—bodily injury, asphyxiation, and hypothermia. There are rescue methods for each: one is to escape before the avalanche stops, two is to prevent being completely buried, and three is to reduce the time the trapped person is buried.

Generally, an avalanche doesn’t kill by impact; the cause of death is the cold and lack of oxygen after being buried. However, snow also contains life-saving oxygen. Ideally, after being buried, one should raise their arms to create a breathing space, which can effectively prolong survival time. If I had started the live broadcast earlier, you would have seen Sir doing exactly that, a very standard method of self-rescue.”

Bi Fang crossed his arms over his chest. Asphyxiation from being buried is not quite the same as ordinary asphyxiation. Once buried securely, it’s almost impossible to expand the lungs without certain escape techniques to widen the space, leading many avalanche victims to asphyxiate not due to the lack of oxygen, but because their lungs cannot expand.

“We are very lucky. There are many types of avalanches based on the physical properties of the snow and the fracture location, but basically, there are two kinds—dry avalanches and wet avalanches.”

Bi Fang grabbed a handful of snow from the nearby snow wall, and when he squeezed it hard with his hand, miraculously, the snow did not clump together but scattered like powder between his fingers, as if it was dry flour.

“We experienced a dry avalanche. Friends in the south may not relate, but those in the north must have encountered this situation, where the snow is as dry as flour, unable to clump together, totally unfit for a snowball fight. This is because the winter temperatures in the north are too low and the air is dry, similar to a dry avalanche.”

“When the snow’s water content is less than 1%, it’s generally considered to be a dry avalanche. During a dry avalanche, due to the low viscosity of the snow, a large number of snow particles collide with each other while moving, and will hang in the air forming a white fog. Viewed from high above, this kind of avalanche is very spectacular. Today it’s too dark, but you should see it very clearly in night mode.”

Indeed, many viewers nodded inwardly, because of the altitude issue, the drone wasn’t flying high, practically face-to-face with the avalanche.

Rumbling snow waves stretched for hundreds of meters, the sky filled with white dust, almost obscuring the sky altogether.

“High-speed fog compresses the surrounding air to form powerful shockwaves, destroying everything in its path. After the devastation of the shockwave, the real avalanche comes trailing after, the wild snow burying everything in its wake.”

[So where is the luck in this, LOL-cry]

[There’s dry, so there must be wet, and I bet wet avalanches are even more destructive!]

“Exactly,” Bi Fang smiled.

“When the water content exceeds 1%, it’s considered a wet avalanche. Wet avalanches mainly occur when the temperature rises. As the temperature increases, the snow melts and the meltwater infiltrates the snow layers, increasing the snow layer’s water content. The infiltrating meltwater can easily refreeze into ice crystals, altering the shape of the internal snow particles, and localized collapses on the snow surface induced by high temperatures cause collapsing snow to slide along the slope, gathering speed along the way and collecting more snow to gradually form snowballs.

Therefore, before an avalanche, large numbers of rolling snowballs tend to appear on the slopes.

Ultimately, the aggregated mass of rolling snowballs breaks the calmness of the snow surface and slides down, causing an avalanche. During the slide, snowballs grow in size and can carry melted ground soil, rocks, and the like, resulting in destruction far exceeding that of dry avalanches.”

Bi Fang paused, exchanging air a few times before continuing.

“This kind of avalanche, as you can imagine, is extremely dangerous. The rocks carried with it are as lethal as stones blown around in a storm; a hit could, at the least, result in serious injury, and at worst… you understand.”