5: Chapter 5 Extreme Cold Hell: Don't move, even if you're frozen to stone.

In the real world, the air conditioner in the luxury apartment was working hard to blow cold air, with the thermometer showing twenty-four degrees Celsius indoors.

Jack tilted his neck back, pouring a can of iced cola down his throat; the ice cubes clinked against the aluminum wall with a crisp sound.

He let out a burp and casually tossed the empty can into the trash bin behind him.

"Brothers, I was careless in the first chapter," Jack said into the microphone, twirling the VR headset in his hand.

"That Platoon Leader... he really had something. But who am I? I'm North America's Number One Gun God.

The first chapter was a scripted death, nothing I could do. This second chapter, 'The Bloody Battle of Chosin,' I've already figured it out—it's survival mode."

The livestream chat was scrolling rapidly; many were still spamming black-and-white screenshots of the 'human wrench,' but some viewers were swayed by Jack's confidence.

[Jack-ge, be steady this time, don't rush in.]

[I heard this chapter is called the Ice Sculpture Company; it sounds cold just from the name.]

[Even if it's survival mode, with Jack-ge's movement skills, it shouldn't be a problem to hide until the end and get the win, right?]

"Of course!" Jack lowered his gaming chair, sinking into the soft leather padding and finding the most comfortable "paralyzed" posture.

"This time, I'll be a Voldemort. As long as I stay low enough, no bullets can hit me.

As for the ice and snow, my haptic suit is set to constant temperature mode—even though this crappy game can force through pain sensations, cold is just a number as long as your willpower is strong."

He made a final adjustment to the straps of his haptic suit, which was the latest top-tier peripheral, claiming to simulate every sensation from a light breeze to a heavy punch.

"Just watch. This round, I'm going to show that black-bellied designer what a Tactical Master looks like."

Jack put on the helmet.

His field of vision quickly collapsed into a point of light, then exploded and reorganized in the darkness.

...

There was no gunfire.

There were no explosions.

Only the sound of wind was in his ears. This wind didn't howl like usual; it was a low, continuous whimpering, like a rusty saw blade pulling back and forth against his eardrums.

Jack opened his eyes.

What met his eyes was a bleak whiteness.

It wasn't a bright white, but a lifeless pallor mixed with the murky darkness of night.

Massive stretches of snowfields extended into the distance until they were swallowed by the black night sky.

"So quiet?" Jack muttered.

As soon as he spoke, his entire body shuddered violently.

This shudder was uncontrollable, originating from deep within his bone marrow.

Every temperature control node on the haptic suit was working frantically, trying to generate heat, but that highly penetrating chill ignored all barriers and pressed directly against his skin.

That feeling wasn't cold at all.

It was pain.

It felt like someone was taking tens of thousands of fine needles and stabbing them into every inch of his exposed skin simultaneously, even burrowing into his blood vessels through his pores.

Jack subconsciously wanted to hug his arms and rub them, but as soon as he raised them halfway, a stiff sense of resistance came from his joints.

Even though he was wearing a haptic suit in reality, the physical feedback within the game still made him feel like a rusty machine.

"Huuu—"

He exhaled.

Before the white mist could even leave his lips by two inches, it quickly condensed into tiny ice crystals, some of which hung from his eyelashes.

When his upper and lower eyelids touched, those tiny ice shards stuck together, threatening to seal his eyes shut.

Below his field of vision, a line of red system prompts was inconspicuous yet heart-pounding:

[Current Ambient Temperature: -40°C]

[Your body temperature is dropping rapidly. Please remain still to reduce heat loss.]

"Minus forty degrees?!" Jack cried out in the livestream, his voice trembling.

"Is this damn game treating me like an ingredient to be frozen in a fridge? Designer, come out! Is this really a place for humans?"

In the livestream feed, viewers could clearly see that Jack's face had already turned purple from the cold; although it was an in-game model,

The precision of this modeling was terrifyingly high, even showing a drop of nearly frozen clear snot hanging from the tip of his nose.

Jack didn't want to speak anymore.

Every time he opened his mouth to inhale, the icy air scraped his throat like a razor blade; his lungs even felt like they were being frozen brittle, hurting with every breath.

He had to find a place out of the wind.

Jack turned his stiff neck with difficulty, looking around.

The surroundings were a slightly undulating hillside covered in thick snow. There were no houses, no forests, not even a proper crater.

"Where's the cover? Where are the trenches?" Jack panicked. Based on past shooting game experience, there would inevitably be cover or supply crates near the spawn point.

His gaze swept over a snowdrift beside him.

The shape of that snowdrift was a bit strange; it didn't look naturally piled up, but rather like...

Jack squinted, looking over by the faint light reflected off the snow.

The snowdrift moved.

That wasn't a snowdrift.

It was a person.

The person was lying prone in a snow hollow, covered by a thick layer of snow, revealing only half of the back of his head and a pair of eyes staring down the mountain.

Jack's pupils dilated. He saw clearly what the person was wearing.

That was... a cotton jacket?

If that thin layer of fabric could even be called a cotton jacket.

The shabby yellow fabric was unrecognizable, covered in patches.

In some places, the cotton batting was exposed, having long since frozen into hard, black lumps.

The person wore a cotton cap without earflaps; his ears were exposed to the air, swollen like two purplish-red rotten peaches.

The blood from the cracked frostbite on them had scabbed over, gluing the hat and skin together.

Jack looked down at himself.

He was wearing the same clothes.

Thin and drafty, that pathetic layer of cotton was no better than a sheet of paper against the minus forty-degree wind.

"Hey..." Jack wanted to greet his comrade-in-arms and ask if there were any items like hand warmers or strong liquor.

But the soldier didn't even turn his eyes; his whole body was like something carved out of stone, with even the rise and fall of his breathing being extremely faint.

Jack looked to the other side.

A second "snowdrift."

A third...

As far as the eye could see on this deathly silent snowy slope, there were actually hundreds of such "snowdrifts" lying prone.

They all maintained the same posture: lying prone on the snow, muzzles pointed toward the road down the mountain, bodies pressed as close to the ground as possible.

No one spoke, no one moved, and no one even slightly rubbed their hands for warmth.

These several hundred people looked as if they had been buried alive by the swirling snow; only those pairs of occasionally blinking eyes proved they were still alive.

"What are you all doing lying here?" The sound of Jack's teeth chattering was exceptionally piercing in the silence.

"You'll freeze to death... you'll really die..."

The cold was slowly eating away at his sanity. His toes had lost sensation, feeling like he was stepping on two blocks of ice. His fingers were so stiff he could hardly hold his gun.

He couldn't take it anymore.

Even if the mission failed, even if his emotion points were deducted, he had to move. Even if it was just standing up to run a couple of laps, as long as it generated a little heat.

To hell with Voldemorts and Tactical Masters in the face of this real Frozen Hell.

Jack pushed against the ground with both hands, trying to pull himself out of the snow hollow.

A hand suddenly pressed down on his shoulder.

The strength in that hand was terrifyingly large, forcibly pressing Jack's body, which had just risen slightly, back into the cold snow.

Jack turned his head in shock and anger.

The one holding him down was the Little Soldier next to him with the frostbitten ears.

The Little Soldier's face had frozen to a bluish-gray, and his lips were cracked with bloody fissures. But his eyes were frighteningly bright, containing no trace of pain or complaint, only a chilling focus.

The Little Soldier didn't speak; he only shook his head slowly but firmly, then pointed with his chin toward the road down the mountain.

Jack followed his gaze.

At the dark corner of the distant mountain pass, two beams of piercing white light split the night like swords.

Those were headlights.

Immediately after, a dull roar was transmitted through the ground, vibrating the snow into a rustle.

An American Willys Jeep was the first to drive out of the pass, followed by a ten-wheel truck with a canvas canopy.

Behind that was a tractor towing a large-caliber howitzer, and... a "Pershing" heavy tank with a long gun barrel.

That was the mechanized column the US military was so proud of.

The convoy was like a steel dragon, brazenly keeping its high beams on, illuminating the snowfield as bright as day.

Lying in the snow, the fear of wanting to move but not daring to, combined with the bone-chilling extreme cold, made even Jack's thoughts nearly freeze.

Those light beams swept across the hillside.

Even from several hundred meters away, Jack could feel the killing intent contained within those beams.

If anyone moved even slightly and exposed their position, the machine guns and howitzers on that tank would instantly turn this hillside upside down.

He finally understood why these hundreds of people wouldn't move even if they froze to death.

The Little Soldier's hand on his shoulder never let go. That hand was cold and stiff, like a pair of iron pincers, pinning him firmly in place and choking back the unuttered complaint into his stomach.

"Shh..."

In the wind, someone let out an extremely faint whisper.

Jack Lying there， The body's pain feedback is becoming weaker and weaker—— This is not a good thing.， This indicates that his nervous system is being frozen.。

He looked at those majestic tanks, then at the comrades beside him in their shabby, thin clothes, burying themselves in the snow.

At this moment, that immense sense of contrast was even more despair-inducing than the minus forty-degree temperature.