11: Chapter 11 This isn't an NPC, this is a living, breathing person.

Xie Dabao sat in his ergonomic chair, his fingers striking the mechanical keyboard with a crisp sound.

The title of the live stream had already been changed to: “FPS Number One, Speedrunning This ice and snow world in Half an Hour, Textbook Rescue Tutorial.”

“Guys, watch closely.”

Xie Dabao adjusted his headset, his tone carrying the confidence and composure of a professional player.

“That kid Jack, even though his reactions are fast, his brain isn't quite up to par.

For survival-type dungeons, the core logic is always ‘body temperature management’ and ‘aggro control.’

Since the system provided an NPC, there must be a mechanism to save him. Freezing to death? That’s just because you’re trash.”

The screen flickered. The sound of howling cold wind instantly flooded the live stream room.

Xie Dabao stood in the snowdrift. This was his first time entering the ice and snow world.

The air, forty degrees below zero, felt like a wad of ice-soaked cotton, instantly clogging his windpipe.

Xie Dabao shivered, but unlike Jack, he didn't make a fuss. Instead, he quickly surveyed his surroundings.

Visibility was extremely poor. The wind and snow were like a white sandstorm, with visibility less than five meters.

He quickly locked onto his target.

The NPC named ‘Little Shandong’ was huddled a few steps away, covered in a thick layer of hardened snow crust. If one didn't look closely, it was impossible to tell if it was a person or a rock.

“Found him,” Xie Dabao glanced at the bullet comments. “First, we need to solve the heat source problem.

The system prompt states this child is in a ‘hypothermic near-death’ state. Giving him hot water or strenuous exercise right now is suicide. The correct approach is—core body temperature sharing.”

Xie Dabao nimbly undid the buttons of his cotton overcoat.

This system-default coat, though worn out, at least had some thickness. He planned to take the coat off and wrap it around the little soldier.

As long as the temperature bar was pulled back up, the mission would be a success.

However, the moment the coat left his body, a chill capable of freezing his marrow instantly pierced through his thin underclothes. The red warning on the system panel flashed wildly:

[Warning: Core body temperature dropping rapidly.]

[Warning: Limb rigidity increasing by 30%.]

Xie Dabao gritted his teeth, forcibly suppressing the numbness that made his limbs uncontrollable. He draped the body-warmed coat over Little Shandong.

“This is just the first step,” he narrated to the air, his voice muffled because his teeth were chattering. “Next is friction to generate heat and promote blood circulation.”

He knelt on the snow, his hands, which were usually incredibly nimble on the keyboard, now clumsy as wooden stakes due to the hypothermia.

He grabbed Little Shandong’s right hand, which was frozen purple-black, and vigorously rubbed it in his palms.

According to the logic of the physics engine, friction generates heat. As long as his hands warmed up, blood could flow.

“Wake up! Don’t sleep!” Xie Dabao increased the pressure on his hands and rubbed quickly.

Crack.

An extremely faint, yet bone-chilling, crisp sound.

Xie Dabao’s hand froze mid-air.

He hadn't warmed the hand up.

As he rubbed forcefully, the layer of skin and flesh on the back of Little Shandong’s hand, frozen brittle, peeled off in large chunks, like old, damp wallpaper.

There was no blood.

The muscle tissue beneath the wound was a deathly ashen white, interspersed with fine ice crystals.

Xie Dabao stared at his own palm, which was covered in flesh and skin fragments mixed with ice shards.

His stomach churned violently.

“Brother…”

A faint breathy sound followed. Little Shandong struggled to open his eyes. It was the same gaze Jack had seen—hazy, yet clean.

He glanced at the back of his hand, where bone was exposed. There was no pain on his face, only a calmness that made Xie Dabao want to flee.

“Don’t strain yourself,” Little Shandong’s lips didn't move; the voice was squeezed from the depths of his throat. “It doesn’t hurt. Really.”

How could it not hurt? That was flesh separating!

Xie Dabao suddenly yanked his hand back, gasping deeply.

In the live stream room, the bullet comments that had been spamming “Brother Bao is awesome” instantly vanished. Everyone was staring at the mutilated hand.

“No… this isn’t right.” Xie Dabao even forgot to put his coat back on. He was shaking like a sieve in the cold wind. “This physics engine has a problem! How can the flesh just fall off from rubbing? This is a bug!”

He opened the system panel and selected [Restart].

The screen reset.

It was the same snowy night. Little Shandong was still huddled there intact.

This time, Xie Dabao didn't take off his clothes, nor did he rub the hand.

“If reviving on the spot doesn't work, then we relocate,” Xie Dabao’s eyes hardened.

“This is the windward slope; we must take him to a sheltered spot to start a fire. As long as we get out of this environmental judgment zone, he can live.”

He bent down and hoisted Little Shandong onto his shoulder.

Although movement speed would decrease under a heavy load, Xie Dabao was confident in his movement skills.

He crouched low, using snowdrifts as cover, and moved quickly toward the hollow down the mountain.

“As long as I run fast enough, the cold can’t catch me.”

He dashed out of the hiding zone.

He had run less than twenty meters when a dull buzzing sound suddenly came from above.

It was the sound he had heard tens of thousands of times in countless FPS games—the low-frequency noise of propellers churning the air.

An American 'Mustang' reconnaissance plane.

Xie Dabao instinctively wanted to find cover, but carrying a person on his shoulder made his movements half a second too slow.

Just that half a second.

A beam of searchlight, sharp as a surgical knife, swept down from mid-air, precisely enveloping the moving black dot in the snow.

Immediately following was the sound of gunfire, like a cloth-tearing machine.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat—!

Two lines of fire plowed deep trenches in the snow. Xie Dabao felt his body lighten, and his perspective instantly spun.

He had been cut in half by the heavy machine gun fire.

Before falling, he saw the entire squad of 'ice sculpture' soldiers who had been lying motionless in the surrounding snowdrifts—because of his exposure—all dragged into the line of fire.

The plane circled back and dropped an incendiary bomb.

Orange-red flames engulfed the entire squad's hiding spot. Little Shandong, who was originally just supposed to freeze to death, was now reduced to ashes in the raging fire.

The squad leader’s roar echoed through the inferno, not scolding him, but a desperate scream: “Don’t move!! Who told you to move!!”

[Mission Failed.]

[Entire squad annihilated.]

[Cause of Death: Target exposed.]

Xie Dabao stared blankly at the blackened screen.

“Again.”

For the third time, he tried to use his entrenching tool to dig a deep pit in the snow and bury Little Shandong inside for shelter.

Result: Beneath the excavated snow layer was frozen earth. The shovel snapped, and the huge noise attracted a patrol team.

For the fourth time, he tried to curl himself up, using his body to shield Little Shandong from the wind.

Result: Neither of them survived the night. When the charge sounded in the morning, he and Little Shandong were frozen together, inseparable.

The tenth time.

The twentieth time.

The man known as the “Tactical Master” in the FPS world used every game skill he had learned in his lifetime in this small snowdrift.

Exploiting camera angles, back-strafing, extreme maneuvers, exploiting bugs.

He even tried taking out all his grenades, arranging them in a circle, and detonating them, attempting to use the residual heat from the explosion to warm up.

The ending never changed.

Either freezing to death or being discovered and blown up.

Here, there were no medkits, no safe houses, and none of the ‘game balance’ that protected the dignity of players.

Nature and the steel torrent displayed the raw, unadorned crushing power against these flesh-and-blood bodies.

The thirty-fifth restart.

Xie Dabao didn't move anymore.

He sat beside Little Shandong in his thin clothes. Frost had already formed a thick layer on his eyebrows.

His hands no longer touched Little Shandong, nor did he reach for the gun.

Those hands, which usually only operated a mouse and keyboard, only taking pride in reaction times measured in hundredths of a second, now hung limply on the snow.

The cold had stolen all his sensation.

He finally understood one thing.

This place didn't require “skill.”

All tactics, all maneuvers, were a joke in the face of an absolute disparity in resources and extreme environments.

The only way to keep this person alive was to prevent him from ever coming here.

But if he didn't come, who would guard the nation’s gate behind him?

“Brother…” Little Shandong’s voice sounded again, the same line:

“I miss home. The dumplings my mother made are so delicious.”

Xie Dabao turned his head.

This time, he didn't skip the dialogue or rush to complete the mission.

He looked at the child covered in frostbite, his voice hoarse: “How delicious?”

“More delicious than potatoes.” Little Shandong laboriously pulled out the potato from his arms, which was hard as a rock, and shoved it into Xie Dabao’s hand.

“Brother, you eat. You’ll warm up after eating.”

Xie Dabao looked at the potato.

It was dark, smelled earthy, and was still covered with cotton lint from Little Shandong’s torn clothes.

He picked it up and brought it to his lips.

Click.

He felt a sharp pain in his front teeth. It was too hard; he couldn't bite it at all.

But that icy, earthy taste drilled down his tongue straight into his throat, causing his heart—long filled with traffic and money—to seize violently.

He lowered his head and took a second vicious bite.

Tears mixed with snot flowed into his mouth, salty and cold.

“It’s really fragrant,”

Xie Dabao cried as he forcefully chewed the icy lump he couldn't swallow. “Brother, it’s damn fragrant.”

The live stream camera couldn't capture his face.

It could only see the usually arrogant big streamer, now huddled in the gaming chair like a wronged child, making swallowing motions toward the empty air, his shoulders convulsing violently.

On the screen, the wind and snow gradually covered the figures of the two men.

Little Shandong spoke no more. His head slowly tilted onto Xie Dabao’s shoulder, as if, in this long, cold night, he had finally found a pillow to rely on.

This time, there was no gunfire, no explosions.

Only a suffocating, endless silence.

[System Announcement: Prologue 'Ice and Snow Chosin' exploration concluded.]

[Player: FPS_Brother Bao, achieved Special Achievement: The Limits of Mortals.]

[Achievement Annotation: You used thirty-five chances to prove that on this battlefield, there are no gods, no heroes, only mortals who burn themselves out for victory.]

Inside the rental room.

Su Yun looked at the backend data.

Xie Dabao’s live stream room had contributed a full thirty million in emotional value.

Among them, 'Despair' and 'Awe' accounted for a massive 90% share.

“Skill?” Su Yun closed that window, tapping lightly on the Enter key.

The snowstorm image on the screen began to fade.

The sound of piercing cold wind gradually receded, replaced by a noisy sound full of mundane life.

The hawking of candied haw vendors, the ringing of bicycle bells, the distant sound of a steam whistle.

“Let them see what these people exchanged their lives for,”

Su Yun murmured softly.

In the ears of all online players, a warm, yet inexplicably unsettling system notification sounded simultaneously:

[Chapter One officially begins.]

[Chapter Title: Homeland.]

[Current Mission: Go home and eat a meal.]