7: Chapter 7 Pain Cannot Be Cured

Jack stared at that young, smiling face covered in bloody scabs, his breath hitching.

"It doesn't hurt."

These three words fell softly onto the snow, yet they felt heavier than the crisp sound of bone snapping just moments ago.

The wind continued to blow, whipping up snow dust from the ground that stung as it hit their faces.

Jack's fingers hovered in mid-air, only centimeters away from that snapped, skinless ankle.

He didn't dare touch it again. The sensation of skin sloughing off just now had seared through his nerve endings all the way to his brain.

He was a professional gamer who had played countless war masterpieces.

In those games, severed limbs would spray bright red blood, characters would let out heart-wrenching screams, the screen would turn red, and the controller would vibrate violently.

Back then, he only found it exciting and satisfying, thinking the rendering was top-notch.

But there was no blood here.

The minus-forty-degree temperature was the most efficient hemostat.

Blood vessels froze the instant they ruptured, and nerves were anesthetized by the cold before they could even necrotize.

Seeing Jack dazed, Little Shandong exerted himself to pull his injured leg back, trying to hide it inside his pitifully thin cotton trousers.

His movements were slow, as if he were moving a wooden post that didn't belong to him.

"Brother, I'm really fine," Little Shandong said, his voice raspy like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

"Just now... I had no feeling in it. I must have scared you."

Jack snapped back to his senses.

He grabbed Little Shandong's restless hand with a bit of roughness, but then, as if struck by an electric shock, he softened his grip and held it gently instead.

"Don't move," Jack's voice trembled.

"Let me see your hand."

With that grab, he felt a strange, eerie stiffness on the back of Little Shandong's hand.

Little Shandong felt a bit embarrassed and tried to tuck his hand into his chest. "My hands are dirty..."

Ignoring his evasion, Jack forcibly pulled the left hand over.

By the faint light reflected off the snow, Jack saw it clearly.

The glove was tattered beyond recognition, the fingertips worn through to reveal the fingers inside. Those weren't human fingers.

The five digits were thick and swollen, as if they had been soaked in a bucket of purplish-black paint.

This purplish-black color spread from the fingernails all the way to the back of the hand; the skin was stretched tight, possessing a plastic-like sheen.

Large blisters had formed in some places; where they had burst, the oozing pus and necrotic flesh had frozen together, forming a yellowish-brown crust.

Jack took off his own tactical gloves.

His hands were well-maintained—long and fair—and because he had been wearing constant-temperature gloves, they were still radiating warmth.

The two hands were placed side by side.

The sharp contrast made Jack's eyes sting.

He tentatively touched Little Shandong's index finger with the pad of his own.

It was hard.

There was no elasticity whatsoever, like touching an iron bar that had been frozen in a freezer for two years.

"This is frostbite... this is necrosis..." Jack muttered to himself.

He hadn't studied medicine in reality, but common sense told him that if this hand wasn't treated immediately, even if they returned to a warm place, amputation would be the only option.

"System! Medkit!"

Jack roared in his mind.

The inventory in the bottom right corner of his vision lit up.

He remembered he had a [Field First Aid Kit], a piece of basic equipment the system had provided upon entering the dungeon.

In ordinary shooting games, no matter how severe the injury, this thing would fully restore the health bar after a five-second progress bar.

He frantically tore the canvas bag with the Red Cross symbol from the tactical belt on his lower back.

The zipper was frozen shut and wouldn't budge.

Sweating with anxiety, Jack gripped the zipper tab with his teeth and gave it a hard yank.

With a rip, the fabric tore open.

The contents scattered onto the snow.

There was no magical healing spray, no instant-effect morphine, and no nano-bandages that could heal wounds in an instant.

There were only two rolls of yellowed gauze, a small bottle of mercurochrome that had frozen and cracked, and a pair of rusty scissors.

Jack grabbed a roll of gauze.

In the low temperature, the gauze was frozen like a brick and couldn't be unrolled at all.

He rubbed it vigorously, trying to soften it, but the stiff fabric only made a "creak-creak" sound in his hands.

He looked at the items on the ground in despair.

This was a "first aid kit" from that era?

How could he treat this hand with these things?

"Is there a fire? Or... or a hot water bottle?"

Jack asked incoherently, even though he knew how stupid the question was.

Looking at the gauze on the ground, a hint of envy flashed in Little Shandong's eyes instead. "Brother, you've got quite a few good things. This gauze is so white, even better than what our company commander uses."

Jack didn't say anything; he tossed the gauze aside, grabbed Little Shandong's cold hand, and shoved it directly into his own chest.

It was the only heat source he could think of.

The inner layer of his Haptic Suit was constant-temperature, and his skin was warm.

"Don't!" Little Shandong was startled and tried to pull his hand back.

"Brother, your clothes are clean, don't get them dirty..."

"Shut up!"

Jack growled, his hands firmly pressing the block of ice in his chest as he wrapped his clothes tight.

A bone-chilling cold instantly pressed against his chest through his thin underwear.

It didn't feel like holding a hand; it felt like holding a piece of pig iron just pulled out of liquid nitrogen.

The extreme cold transformed into a burning sensation the moment it touched his skin; Jack felt as if the skin on his chest was being seared with pain.

In his livestream, he always bragged about how strong his willpower was.

But now, just warming a comrade's hand, that soul-piercing chill made him unable to stop shivering.

Yet Little Shandong lived in such temperatures every single day.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Jack held the hand, hoping to feel a hint of warming, even the slightest sign of softening.

But he was disappointed.

The hand in his chest remained hard and cold, like a greedy black hole continuously sucking the heat from his body without giving back even a shred of warmth.

That purplish-black was the color of death. Dead tissue could not be warmed back to life.

Jack felt his own body temperature dropping rapidly. System warning windows flashed frantically before his eyes: [Warning: Core body temperature too low] [Warning: Continuous contact with extremely cold objects will lead to a frostbite check for the player].

He gritted his teeth and didn't let go.

"Do you feel anything?" Jack asked, his voice trembling.

"Is there any warmth yet?"

Little Shandong lay there, half his face buried in the snow, looking at Jack's pale lips.

At his age, he should have been studying in a schoolhouse or helping his family herd cattle on the ridges of the fields.

He should have had nimble hands that could weave straw sandals or shoot birds with a slingshot.

But now, that hand was slowly dying.

Little Shandong blinked, the white frost falling from his eyelashes.

"It's warm," Little Shandong said.

Jack's eyes lit up. "Really? Which finger has feeling?"

Little Shandong didn't say which finger. He looked at Jack, his eyes as clear as the stars above this snowy plain.

"Brother, I know you're doing this for my own good."

Little Shandong gently twitched the arm Jack was holding tight.

"But really, there's no need. I have experience."

"Experience my ass! How old are you even?"

"Sixteen," Little Shandong grinned, revealing a row of white teeth.

"This is my second time Entering Korea. Last time on the Eastern Front, that's how Old Zhao lost his hand. It started out black, then it didn't hurt, and then..."

He paused, his tone as flat as if he were talking about someone else. "And then, with just a slight touch, the fingers fell off. Old Zhao was trying to pull the artillery bolt; his hand was stuck to the iron, and when he pulled, all the flesh stayed on it."

Jack felt a wave of nausea churn in his stomach.

"Then you need treatment even more!" Jack increased the pressure of his grip.

"It can't be cured," Little Shandong's voice was soft yet certain.

"Brother, save your warmth. Keep that heat in your body for the battle. When the charge bugle sounds in a bit, you'll need that heat to pull the trigger."

As he spoke, with a sudden burst of strength from somewhere, he forcibly pulled his hand out of Jack's chest.

The moment the hand left the warm embrace and was exposed to the minus-forty-degree air, a puff of white steam quickly rose from it.

Little Shandong put that purplish-black hand to his mouth and breathed a puff of warm air onto it.

Then he skillfully tucked it back into the tattered glove, found a spot in the snowdrift, and pressed his hand beneath his body.

"It doesn't hurt, really," Little Shandong repeated.

Looking at Jack's devastated expression, he seemed to feel a bit bad.

He added, "I really can't feel anything anymore. Look, when the skin on my ankle came off just now, I didn't feel a thing. This is a good thing; it won't get in the way when it's time to run."

A good thing?

Not being able to feel pain was a good thing?

Jack knelt on the snow, propping himself up with his hands, gasping for air.

The bullet chat in the livestream had stopped at some point. Those who were originally shouting "the streamer is such a noob" or...

..."this NPC model is too fake" had all vanished. The livestream with millions of viewers was as silent as death.

At this moment, Jack suddenly realized that the so-called "pain simulation" of this game was a joke.

The system could simulate the pain of a knife cut or the pain of being burned.

But the system could not simulate the despair of this "lack of pain."

Watching a comrade's limbs necrotize before your eyes, watching a living person turn into an ice sculpture, while you hold a so-called first aid kit and can do nothing.

This sense of helplessness was more piercing than the cold wind just now, stabbing directly into his heart.

"Brother, don't be sad," Little Shandong comforted him in turn.

"We've got it good. I just heard word from up front that Song Amao's company didn't move for three days for an ambush, and several people stopped breathing... We still have to fight."

Fight.

Fighting again.

This kid's hand was about to rot away, yet all he thought about was the battle.

"What's the point of fighting this damn war!" Jack couldn't help but curse.

"With this equipment, these clothes, how are we supposed to fight them? They eat roast chicken while we eat snow! They drive tanks while we lie here freezing!"

This wasn't just his complaint as a player; it was an extreme vent for his pent-up emotions in this very moment and scene.

Hearing this, Little Shandong's expression changed.

He put away his previous simple-minded smile, and his frostbitten eyelids lifted with effort, his gaze becoming exceptionally serious.

"Brother, you can't say that," Little Shandong lowered his voice.

"Our Political Instructor said that if we don't fight, our parents will have to, and our children will have to fight later! If we freeze here, our families can have a warm winter."

Jack opened his mouth, but the rest of his words got stuck in his throat, unable to come out.

He understood the reasoning. It was written in textbooks and portrayed in movies.

But those were just words and images.

Only when the sentence "If we don't fight, our parents will have to, and our children will have to fight later"...

...came from the mouth of a sixteen-year-old boy whose hands and feet were nearly rotted from the cold, did the true weight of it press down on his spine.

Jack felt his face flush with heat.

He lowered his head, not daring to look into Little Shandong's eyes.

To hide this embarrassment and the sting in his heart, and to suppress the urge to cry...

...Jack turned around and frantically grabbed the shriveled marching satchel on Little Shandong.

"I... I'll find you something to eat," Jack made a random excuse.

"You won't be cold once you're full."

He couldn't see Little Shandong's hunger bar on the game interface, but he could hear the kid's stomach growling continuously.

The satchel was light, having almost no weight.

The canvas fabric was stiff, covered in a mixture of grime and frost.

Jack reached his hand inside.

The bag was empty; he couldn't feel any soft ration bags or a canteen.

His fingers fumbled around the bottom of the bag and touched several objects.

They were hard.

Round.

Bone-chillingly cold.

Jack pulled the objects out.

By the reflection of the snow, he saw what was in his hand.

Not grenades, not sweet potatoes.

They were three potatoes, only the size of a fist.

Their skins were blackened—signs of frostbite. Still covered in dirt, each one was as hard as a river pebble.

This was Little Shandong's last ration? This was the energy source that sustained him through a whole night of ambush on a minus-forty-degree snowy plain?

Jack's hand holding the potatoes trembled slightly.

"Brother, those haven't been warmed up yet."

Little Shandong glanced at the potatoes in Jack's hand and swallowed with a bit of embarrassment, his voice soft.

"They need to be thawed in an armpit, otherwise they'll break your teeth."