45: Chapter 46 Still Frozen Potatoes

"Ah—!"

Someone in the water couldn't help but cry out.

"Don't yell! Save your strength!" Brother Bao stood next to Jack, his face purple, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.

"Bring... bring the planks... up..."

Several wide wooden planks were laid across everyone's shoulders.

That was tens of tons of pressure.

"Convoy! Pass!"

The Engineer Company Commander stood at the very front, his voice unrecognizable, like a roar.

The first truck slowly drove onto the bridgehead.

The wheels rolled over the wooden planks, making creaking sounds.

Jack felt a heavy weight on his shoulders, as if a mountain had pressed down.

His knees instantly buckled, almost making him kneel in the mud at the riverbed.

"Hold it!" he squeezed out a roar from deep in his throat.

It wasn't just the weight.

There was also that intense cold.

The truck drove very slowly, fearing it would crush this fragile "bridge."

Every second felt like a century to the people underwater.

Jack saw a player to his front left whose HP bar was visibly dropping at an alarming rate.

That was the double HP drain buff of [Extreme Hypothermia] and [Heavy Pressure].

That player's face had turned completely ashen, and his eyes began to lose focus.

But he still desperately held up the wooden plank, even trying to use his hand to support a sinking corner.

Suddenly, that player's figure flickered.

Turning into a white light, he dissipated into the cold river water.

But the wooden plank on his shoulder didn't collapse.

Because another player nearby quickly moved his shoulder over, filling the void.

[Farewell, brother, leave the rest to us.]

A line of text flashed across the public chat.

The second truck.

The third truck.

The crowd underwater grew smaller and smaller.

Every truck that passed came at the cost of several lives.

This wasn't crossing a bridge; this was a sacrifice.

Jack felt that his lower body had lost all sensation.

He no longer felt cold; instead, he felt a warmth rising from his dantian.

He knew this was a hallucination of advanced hypothermia, meaning death was not far off.

Dai Dai was not far from him.

This girl, usually the most delicate, now only had her head exposed above the water.

Her hair was frozen, like stiff thorns.

Her lips were bitten raw, and blood flowed down her chin into the river.

She didn't cry.

She watched the wheels slowly passing overhead, and there was an almost sacred light in her eyes.

"Just... the last... one..."

Brother Bao's voice was as faint as a mosquito's hum. His HP bar was down to its last sliver.

That was a truck loaded with fried noodles.

Just as the wheels were about to pass over Brother Bao's shoulders, Brother Bao

suddenly looked up, grinned at Jack, and showed a smile uglier than crying.

Jack didn't know how much time had passed.

Perhaps ten minutes, perhaps a century.

His consciousness began to blur, and the red warning bar in his vision became a double image.

He only remembered that they had to send these supplies up; the front line had no food, no bullets.

The taillights of the last truck disappeared behind the hillside on the opposite bank.

"They passed... they all passed..."

Brother Bao's weak voice came through.

Jack wanted to laugh, but he found he couldn't move.

His legs felt as if they had grown into the mud at the bottom of the river.

"Pull... pull them up..." Dai Dai cried out from the bank, rushing down with a group of Medics.

Jack felt someone grab his collar, desperately dragging him ashore.

The moment he left the water, the cold wind blew, and that was the real hell.

His soaked clothes instantly froze, locking his body like armor.

Around the bonfire on the bank, players lay scattered everywhere.

Some were trembling, others were motionless, logging off in a flash of white light.

"It was worth it."

Brother Bao huddled in a blanket, his glasses fogged up, giggling foolishly.

"This operation, I can brag about it for a year."

Just then, the jeep responsible for the rear guard stopped.

Several logistics NPCs moved some wooden crates, saying they were supplies left for the Engineer Battalion.

"Food!"

That shout made the eyes of all the surviving players turn green.

After half a night of struggle, everyone was on the verge of starvation, and Su Yun finally decided to reward them.

Even those who were just crying out in pain now struggled to get up, gathering around the wooden crates.

"Quick, open them and see! Is it canned meat?"

"I want to eat spam, even a pack of compressed biscuits would be fine!"

"Don't push, don't push! There's enough for everyone!"

Jack also moved closer, swallowing hard.

He hadn't had a proper meal in the game for almost three days.

The pain of his stomach walls rubbing together was too real.

The Engineer Company Commander took a bayonet, inserted it into a gap in the wooden crate, and pried it open with force.

"Crack."

The lid was lifted.

The surroundings instantly fell silent.

No spam.

No compressed biscuits.

Not even the unpalatable fried noodles.

The crates were packed full of potatoes.

These potatoes were all dark, hard as stones, and still covered with unwashed mud and ice shards.

The Company Commander pried open another crate nearby.

It was the same.

All frozen potatoes.

The third crate contained bags of flour.

But many of the bags were torn, and the flour inside was mixed with black grit and grass roots.

"This... what is this?"

Among the crowd, a player couldn't hold back, his voice filled with immense disappointment and anger.

"We risked our lives to fill the bridge, getting bombed and acting as bridge piers, just to eat this?"

"Exactly! Is Su Yun, this damn planner, sick? Why is it still a potato meeting after all this?"

"I'm not eating! What a crappy game! I've been fighting so bravely, and I can't even get a hot meal?"

"Yeah, why? We didn't desert, we've fought for so long, can't we enjoy ourselves a bit?"

Complaints spread like an epidemic.

The tragic atmosphere from just moments ago was instantly shattered by these crates of rotten potatoes.

The players felt wronged.

They felt that after paying so much, the system's reward should at least be a family bucket or braised pork, right?

What was the deal with giving them a pile of rotten potatoes?

Only Jack and Brother Bao remained silent.

Jack looked at the potatoes in the box, picked one up, and thought of Little Shandong.

Brother Bao also frowned.

"Everyone shut up!"

A furious roar interrupted all the noise.

The Engineer Company Commander, who had been silent until now, suddenly rushed out of the crowd.

He was still soaking wet, his clothes covered in icicles,

his lips frozen purple, clutching a frozen potato he had taken from a crate.

He rushed to the player who had complained the loudest, his eyes red as if about to bleed.

"You despise it?" The Company Commander's voice was hoarse, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

"You think this is pig feed?"

That player was intimidated by the NPC's imposing manner and shrank his neck: "It is, though... how can we eat this..."

"Do you know where these things came from?!"

The Company Commander suddenly raised the frozen potato above his head, his roar echoing across the riverbank.

"These were brought from two thousand li away in the rear, carried by villagers' pushcarts, and exchanged with the lives of countless truck drivers! You saw the convoy just now, didn't you?!"

The Company Commander pointed to the dark mountain road leading north, his finger trembling.

"There were a hundred trucks when we set out! By the time we got here, only eighteen were left! What about the others? They're all on the road! They were all bombed to ashes by American planes!"

The entire scene was dead silent. Only the sound of the river water lapping against the shore could be heard.

The Company Commander turned around, looking at the few bags of sand-mixed flour, tears mixed with ice water streaming down his face.

"The sand in this flour, when the truck was overturned while crossing the blockade line,

the driver picked it up from the ground little by little with his hands! That handful of flour might even be mixed with his blood!"

He walked to the crate, picked up a frozen potato, and without wiping it, shoved it directly into his mouth and bit down hard.

"Crunch!"

That was the sound of teeth colliding with the frozen potato. The Company Commander's cheeks bulged as he chewed forcefully, veins bulging on his neck.

"What's the situation at home now? They're tightening their belts to support us! The common people themselves are reluctant to eat fine grain, sending it all to us! You despise it? What right do you have to despise it?!"

The Company Commander swallowed the potato in his mouth, his eyes rolling back from choking, but he stubbornly thumped his chest to force it down.

"I'm telling you, anything that can fill your stomach is good stuff!

It's life-saving food! Do you know how many people die on the front lines just to get a bite of this?"

He forcefully shoved the remaining half of the potato into that player's hand.

"Eat! Even if it's dirt, if it's a stone! As long as it gives you the strength to pull the trigger, swallow it!"

That player stood there, holding the potato, at a loss.

Jack watched this scene, feeling as if something had violently struck his heart.

He thought of the real world, where it might be mealtime right now.

Delivery drivers brought hot fried chicken and cola, and trash cans were filled with half-eaten bentos.

But here, these few crates of potatoes, frozen hard as stones, were luxuries bought with dozens of lives.

He didn't speak, just rubbed the potato on his clothes, then opened his mouth and bit down hard.

Brother Bao also walked over and took one.

Dai Dai wiped away her tears and took one.

More and more players stepped forward, silently picking up the food they had once considered garbage.

On the riverbank, only the sounds of chewing could be heard, one after another.

"Crunch... crunch..."

Like countless shattered bones reassembling, or like a belief taking root and sprouting.

Jack swallowed the last bit of ice, his stomach cramping, but then a faint warmth rose within him.