The Chill in March Isn’t the Weather

"You know him?" Lin Yiwan asked, raising an eyebrow. 

Lin Yujia's expression froze. 

Wait, she admitted it? 

So it was true. His sister had been gone for seven days… with Ethan? 

He felt like someone had slapped him with a cold fish. 

Just a week ago, he joked and called Ethan "Starlight Bro," a silly nickname after seeing the guy pine for a classmate. 

And now? That same guy somehow charmed his ice-queen sister? 

What kind of twisted soap opera was this? 

"You were together for seven whole days?" Yujia asked, her lips trembling a bit. 

Seven days. Away from home. A man and a woman. Alone. 

What they should have done, what they shouldn't have done… probably all done. 

"I didn't know you knew Mr. Ethan," Yiwan said, her brows knitted together. 

"Mr. Ethan?" Yujia nearly fainted. "Are you two seriously using titles like that?!" 

He grabbed the doorframe to steady himself. 

Was this real? His cold, untouchable sister was calling that guy "Mr. Ethan"? 

And her "Mr. Ethan" was the same dude he mocked just last week? 

"Do you know," Yujia said hoarsely, "that just eight days ago, Ethan confessed to a girl in our class and got completely rejected?" 

"Oh?" Lin Yiwan's eyes lit up with interest. Some of her fatigue disappeared. "There's someone with that poor taste?" 

It was a careless comment. A bit of teasing. 

But to Yujia, it felt like a slap in the face. Was she... defending him? 

His chest tightened. 

"He's my classmate!" he exclaimed, half in disbelief, half in grief. "How could you end up with him?" 

Yiwan's eyes widened in mild surprise. "Really? What a coincidence." She tilted her head. "But tell me, what happened with that confession?" 

Yujia gritted his teeth. 

Meanwhile, Ethan listened from the hallway, rubbing his temple. 

At this point, he had explained himself too many times. Why did everyone insist they were dating? 

Whatever. He was done justifying it. 

He walked past the two, expression flat. "So?" 

"So," Yujia suddenly straightened, eyes shining. "You owe me a dinner, brother-in-law." 

"Excuse me?" 

The shift was so quick, Ethan almost wrenched his back looking back. 

"Next time. For sure," Ethan muttered, brushing into the classroom. 

But as soon as he entered, every head in the room turned. 

Even Su Qianran—the girl he confessed to a week ago—was among them. 

Of course, she was. 

Since his name flooded the forums, the class group chat had been buzzing nonstop. 

But Ethan had experienced too much. The awkward looks didn't bother him anymore. Without missing a beat, he went to the back row and sat down. 

Just as he pulled out his phone to queue up a match of Golden Shovel Showdown, a message popped up in his hidden Apocalypse Online software. 

Murong Xin'er had sent him a private message. 

Murong Xin'er: "The Seer from the U.S.—Signor—just released a prophecy. Check it against what you saw in your Death Replay." 

An attached link followed. 

Signor, huh? 

He remembered the name. On Blue Star, only three players had S-tier prophecy skills: himself, Huaxia's old master Chang Yeqing, and this American prophet. 

That guy had already made a prediction? 

Ethan opened the message. A wall of English text appeared. 

He blinked. 

Mars language detected. 

Nope, he wasn't reading that. He glanced at his roommate, who had passed English Level 6. "Mind translating?" 

The guy nodded, took one look at the screen, and paled slightly. "Give me a second…" 

He pulled out a physical dictionary. 

"Let me check what this one means…" 

It took a while, but together, they managed a rough translation: 

"March snow falls. Keep warm." 

The roommate scoffed. "Keep warm? It's almost summer. Is this dude high or what?" 

But Ethan's face turned serious. 

March snow… keep warm? 

It wasn't just poetic nonsense. It was a warning. 

A subtle, metaphorical way of saying: the next Apocalypse will bring a planet-wide ice age, three months of unending cold. 

And depending on how low the global temperature dropped, the system would determine the apocalypse's classification. 

But… 

Ethan furrowed his brows. 

That didn't match what he saw in his Death Replay. 

He wasn't freezing to death. He was in a city. The environment was mild. He was stabbed by a man. A very real, deliberate act. 

And there hadn't been any sign of snow. 

If Signor's prophecy was right, and the next apocalypse was truly an endless winter… 

Then his death scene didn't take place in the next game. 

It was a death from real life. 

The realization hit him hard. 

Someone would try to kill him—not in the game. Not in the system. In the real world. 

Heart racing, he grabbed his phone and sent a message to John and Wang Zi Chen. 

"I think someone's planning to assassinate me." 

No response. 

They were probably still on the outskirts, training with the Panda Warlord transformation. 

He forwarded the message to Murong Xin'er, adding details about what he saw. 

Her reply came quickly. 

"Don't panic. I'll send you a classified staff list from the Bureau. Look through it. If you recognize the man from your vision, let me know." 

"Also… I'm assigning Lin Yiwan a cover identity as a professor at Ganshui University. She'll stay in the faculty apartments with you. That way, she can keep you protected around the clock." 

Ethan blinked. That was a lot of effort. 

But comforting. 

A few minutes later, his device filled with files—internal personnel profiles from the Bureau and a full registry of registered players from across Huaxia. 

There were hundreds—thousands—of entries. 

He skimmed the first few. 

It was going to take days to go through them all.