18: Chapter 18 does not include a tutorial.

Aside from the monotonous noise of the wheels hitting the steel rails, the only sound left in the carriage was the suppressed breathing of a few dozen men.

It was a smell mixed with dry tobacco, stale sweat, and gun oil.

Jack leaned against the icy carriage wall, and with every jolt, his spine made intimate contact with the hard wooden plank.

There was no sense of time here. Ever since crossing the Yalu River, Su Yun had forcibly shielded the time display in the upper right corner of the system interface.

"How much further?" Dai Dai's voice echoed from a dark corner, carrying a distinct tremor.

No one answered. The veteran NPC kept his eyes closed, clutching his rifle tightly to his chest as if it were his only lifeline.

Brother Bao sat opposite, still fiddling with the lace of his single rubber boot, his brow furrowed into a knot—he was calculating the rate of heat loss for the pair of boots in the minus-thirty-degree environment.

Just then, a sharp, piercing shriek tore through the thick carriage walls.

The sound wasn't like the wind; it was more like some gigantic metal insect diving at extremely high speed.

The veteran's eyes snapped open.

In that instant, the gentle feeling of wanting to go home and farm vanished, replaced by the alertness of a beast smelling danger.

He didn't even open his mouth to shout; instead, he directly kicked out at the carriage door.

Boom—!

A massive blast wave instantly overturned the entire carriage section.

Jack felt his body fly up uncontrollably, then slam heavily against the wooden plank opposite.

His ears were filled with a piercing ringing, as if someone had jammed a red-hot wire into his eardrum.

The world spun. Wood chips, dust, and someone's ration bag flew wildly in the confined space.

"Enemy attack—!!"

The shouts from outside were drowned out by successive explosions.

The carriage overturned, and the immense inertia threw everyone in a heap like dumped garbage.

Jack was pinned at the bottom, his face pressed against the coal-ash-covered floor, his nostrils filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder after the explosion.

"Get out! Hurry up and get out! Are you all waiting here to die?!"

The veteran's voice was hoarse and distorted. Someone grabbed Jack by the collar and dragged him forcefully out of the pile of people.

The iron door had been shaken crooked, revealing a crack to the outside. Firelight.

Blinding, dark red firelight streamed through the gap, illuminating the miserable scene inside the carriage in flickering light.

Jack stumbled out of the carriage.

The once silent wasteland had now turned into a purgatory.

That steel dragon, loaded with three hundred million 'new recruits,' was now broken into several sections, lying on the snowy plain like a dead snake with its spine snapped.

The engine section was engulfed in a huge fire, with thick black smoke billowing straight into the sky.

Overhead, several black shapes painted with white stars were circling at low altitude, the roar of their engines mocking the ants on the ground.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat—

Machine gun fire swept down, plowing straight trenches in the frozen snow, sending up snow spray and frozen earth debris half a person high.

"Don't run around! Get down! Get down!"

A commander wearing a peaked cap stood next to the burning railway sleeper, waving a Mauser pistol, coughing as he directed the evacuation.

There were no guiding yellow arrows from the system, no beginner's protective shield, not even that damned 'Current Quest' prompt box.

Jack lay prone in a snowdrift, tightly gripping his type 38 rifle, the bolt handle marred with scratches.

He looked around. Brother Bao was crawling out from behind a pile of burning sleepers, covered in dust and grime. Dai Dai clutched the first-aid kit, terrified, burying her head in the snow, trembling like a sieve.

In the rented room, Su Yun stared at the screen expressionlessly. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, then he heavily hit the Enter key.

[Global Announcement: Phase One Mission Activated.]

[Mission Objective: Hŭichŏn.]

[Distance: One Hundred Li.]

[Time Limit: Before Dawn.]

[Failure Penalty: Annihilation.]

It wasn't 'Mission Failed'; it was Annihilation. In this virtual world, that meant account reset, meaning all previous efforts would be wiped clean.

"Assemble! First Battalion, First Company, Assemble!"

The bugle call shattered in the wind.

It left no time for the players to catch their breath or mourn.

The commander glanced at the circling planes overhead. Those iron birds seemed to have lost their targets and were ascending to return.

"The train is unusable," the regimental commander stood on a small rise, his military greatcoat peppered with holes burned by sparks, his face covered in black ash.

He didn't use a loudspeaker; his voice relied entirely on shouting. White vapor jetted from his mouth, instantly dispersed by the cold wind.

"The place we are going is Hŭichŏn! That's the front line! Comrades, if there is no train, we walk with our two legs! Everyone carries thirty catties, one hundred li of mountain road, and we must arrive before dawn!"

One hundred li?

In the live broadcast room, the viewers who hadn't entered the game were still posting comments: "One hundred li is only fifty kilometers. A marathon is only forty-plus kilometers. What's so hard about that?"

"Yeah, it's not tiring in the game."

But at this moment, Jack only wanted to curse his mother.

As the commander's words fell, a brand new UI interface appeared in the lower right corner of his retina.

Two bright red value bars.

[Stamina Value]

[Core Body Temperature]

The "Extreme March" physics engine, specially developed by Su Yun for this game, revealed its fangs at this moment.

The team began to move.

For the first kilometer or two, Jack felt he could endure it.

Although his single rubber boots slipped on the snow, and the four grenades and ration bag on his back were somewhat abrasive, it was still a virtual world, and the physical fatigue seemed to be within a controllable range.

But as the team left the railway line and entered the winding, rugged mountain path, the situation changed.

The wind picked up.

The wind here wasn't like a natural phenomenon on Earth; it was more like a conscious weapon.

It drilled in through his collar, cuffs, and trouser legs. That cold wasn't coolness; it was pain.

Every inch of exposed skin felt like it was being violently polished by fine sandpaper.

Jack opened his mouth wide to breathe, trying to relieve the tightness in his chest.

This was the first mistake he made.

The sub-zero cold air rushed directly into his lungs.

In that instant, he felt like he had swallowed a mouthful of shattered glass shards.

"Cough, cough, cough, cough—"