6: Chapter 6 Death Penalty Under the Ice Field

The convoy stopped.

The roar of the engine of the 'Sherman' tank died down, and the snow churned up by the tracks slowly settled.

Immediately after, the tailgate of the ten-wheel truck was lowered, and a group of American soldiers jumped out.

They weren't in a hurry to set up a defensive line; their movements were loose, as if they were on an outing.

Some began unloading wooden crates, while others took out simple folding tables. Soon, an orange bonfire rose up from the snow.

Jack was lying on a hillside only three hundred meters away from them, with the wind blowing up from below.

This gust of wind carried something more terrifying than the cold.

First came a rich, scorched aroma of grease, followed by the smell of roasted meat mixed with spices, and finally, a wisp of sweet, rich coffee fragrance.

The virtual engine's olfactory simulation system displayed a despair-inducing precision at that moment.

The smell was like tangible tentacles, forcefully drilling into Jack's nasal cavity, crawling down his throat, and firmly hooking his stomach, which was already shriveled and plastered against his spine.

"Grumble..."

Jack's stomach let out an uncontrollable thunderous sound.

Down the slope, several US soldiers sat around the bonfire, having taken off their heavy snow coats to reveal the wool sweaters underneath.

They held steaming aluminum mess kits, and someone was tearing at a golden-brown, greasy chicken leg.

Grease ran down the corner of his mouth. The man casually wiped it with the back of his hand, then laughed and clapped his companion on the shoulder with his dirty hand.

"Hey, Joe, this damn place is cold, but this instant coffee mixed with whiskey is absolutely amazing."

"That's the Thanksgiving special air-dropped this week, even if it's two days late."

Their laughter was harsh, drifting up with the wind.

Jack stared intently at the half-eaten chicken leg. In the real world, he wouldn't even glance at such greasy food.

But at this moment, his salivary glands secreted wildly, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down, and the motion of swallowing saliva pulled at his frozen throat, causing a needle-like stinging pain.

Was this the so-called 'Hell difficulty'? Not a hail of bullets, but watching others eat meat by a warm stove while he had to lie in a forty-below-zero ice cellar waiting to die?

"This is too real... so real it makes you want to vomit," Jack cursed internally.

He wanted to move, even just to shift his knee slightly.

It had been about an hour since he lay down in this snow nest.

The initial bone-piercing, intense pain had disappeared, replaced by a more terrifying numbness.

It was a signal that his lower body was slowly being stripped away from his body's perception.

If he didn't move his blood soon, his legs would be ruined.

Jack tried to send a command to his brain to bend his left leg.

No response.

He tried his right leg again. Below the knee, it felt like it was filled with lead, too heavy to belong to him.

Panic instantly exploded. This feeling of losing control over his own body was more terrifying than facing a muzzle.

"No, I have to move, even just rub my legs..."

Jack gritted his teeth, propping himself up with his right elbow, trying to lift his upper body slightly to reach for his own thigh.

In that instant, the snow emitted a faint 'crack' sound.

This sound, on the silent, wind-swept snowfield, sounded like thunder.

Before Jack could complete the movement, a large hand covered in black ice and rotten sores reached out from the side without warning, gripping his shoulder tightly.

The force was astonishingly strong, like a rusty pair of pliers, slamming Jack back down into the snow nest.

Jack's head hit the ice surface, the pain making his vision swim.

He angrily twisted his head and met a pair of bloodshot eyes.

It was the Squad Leader. The Squad Leader who had turned himself into a human wrench to repair the bridge in the prologue was alive in this instance.

But his current appearance was even more chilling than before.

The Squad Leader's eyebrows and beard were covered in thick white frost. Only the area around his eyes showed his original skin tone on his entire face.

His lips were tightly pursed into a purplish-blue straight line, and the cracks at the corners of his mouth oozed blood, but the blood froze as soon as it emerged.

He just stared at Jack.

He didn't curse, didn't gesture, and there wasn't even the slightest fluctuation in his gaze.

What kind of look was that?

Not anger, not a warning.

It was a deathly stillness.

It was like a piece of granite that hadn't melted for ten thousand years, coldly watching a grain of sand trying to roll.

Under the gaze of those eyes, Jack's anger, wanting to resist, was extinguished as if doused by a basin of ice water.

The hand pressing on his shoulder was stiff, unlike the limb of a living person.

Jack could even feel the Squad Leader's finger bones digging through his padded coat and firmly wedged into the gap of his shoulder blade.

It was an unspoken iron law:

If you don't move, you might freeze to death.

If you move, the entire company will die.

Jack understood that look.

He stopped struggling, pressed himself back against the ice, and tried to suppress his breathing until it was so low that almost only he could hear it.

The Squad Leader's hand did not release immediately.

That large hand remained on Jack's shoulder for a few seconds before slowly, extremely slowly, withdrawing, and raising that old-fashioned rifle with only five rounds left.

During the withdrawal, Jack heard a crisp 'kacha' sound from the Squad Leader's wrist joint.

That was definitely not the sound of a normal joint moving; it was the sound of frozen cartilage rubbing against each other.

The bonfire down the hill was still flickering.

The soldier eating the chicken leg seemed to sense something and glanced over in confusion.

"What's wrong?" his companion pouring coffee asked.

"Nothing, I thought I saw something move over there."

"Don't be jumpy. In this godforsaken weather, nothing but the wind blowing from that direction could survive, not even a rabbit."

The companion pointed at the thermometer.

"Minus forty-two degrees. This is the North Pole, for Christ's sake."

The soldier shrugged, tossed the bone in his hand, and turned back to the bonfire.

Jack lay still. Cold sweat ran down his spine, instantly turning icy as soon as it dampened his inner layer.

That was close.

If he had truly sat up just now, the heavy machine guns and tank cannons down the hill would have turned this snow slope, which offered no cover, into a slaughterhouse.

The hunger was still tearing at his stomach lining, but Jack no longer dared to think about that chicken leg.

Because he discovered a more serious problem.

After the Squad Leader pressed him down just now, he felt a new chill spreading upwards from his legs.

This chill wasn't coming from the outside in; it was seeping out from his bone marrow.

It was the precursor to necrosis.

Just then, a light blue system box suddenly popped up in the center of his vision.

Unlike the previous red warnings, this was a special job mission prompt:

[Trigger Hidden Mission: Medic]

[Objective: Examine and treat the frostbite on the leg of comrade 'Little Shandong' beside you.]

[Hint: Due to the extreme low temperature, any violent movement could lead to irreversible tissue fragmentation. Please operate with caution.]

Little Shandong?

Jack froze for a moment.

He was right next to his left hand, less than a meter away.

Jack slightly turned his head.

Little Shandong was lying there, his head resting on his arm, looking very relaxed, even cozy.

If it weren't for the rifle still wedged firmly into his armpit, Jack would have thought he was asleep.

"Little Shandong?" Jack called out in an extremely low voice.

No response.

Jack extended his left hand, his movement as gentle as if he were disarming an imminent bomb.

His fingertips touched Little Shandong's trouser leg.

It was hard.

Not the hardness of frozen fabric, but like touching a solid wooden stake.

Jack's heart clenched suddenly.

He traced down the trouser leg until he reached the ankle. Where there should have been a foot wearing canvas shoes, there was only a mound covered by snow.

The system prompt flashed again: [Examine specific injury.]

Jack took a deep breath and tremblingly used his fingers to brush away the layer of snow.

That scene was like a heavy hammer smashing into the top of his skull.

The canvas shoe was long worn through, exposing the heel.

But there was no skin there, no flesh.

There wasn't even any blood.

The skin there had completely turned a grayish-black necrotic color, like burnt charcoal.

And at the connection point between the shoe upper and the ankle, it had been frozen together due to the long prone posture.

The most terrifying thing was that when Jack's finger accidentally touched that exposed section of the ankle,

"Kacha."

An extremely faint crisp sound.

A piece of grayish-black skin, still attached to the sock, fell off the ankle like brittle cookie crumbs, dropping onto the pure white snow.

Jack's hand froze mid-air.

His pupils instantly dilated to their maximum.

Just then, Little Shandong, who had been motionless, suddenly turned his head extremely slowly.

His face was frozen white like paper, his eyelashes covered in ice shards, only his eyes retained a trace of youthful spirit.

He looked at Jack's frozen hand, then at the section of his own ankle where the skin had flaked off.

Then, this sixteen-year-old boy parted his chapped, bleeding lips and showed Jack a carefree smile.

The smile pulled at the cracked chilblains on his face, oozing blood, but he seemed to feel no pain at all.

He opened his mouth but made no sound, yet he mouthed a sentence to Jack.

Jack understood.

The shape of the mouth was:

"It's okay, Brother, it doesn't hurt."