70: Chapter 71 Awakening of the God of War: The whole internet questions whether it's cheating, but it's a real miracle!

On the flank of Hill 597.9, Position Three.

Jack collapsed in the corner of the trench, which was full of fine dust, his chest heaving violently. Every breath carried the scorching smell of gunpowder.

Due to extreme dehydration, his throat was stuck together, and every swallow caused a sharp, burning pain.

"Hoo — — Hoo — —"

He glanced sideways at the person next to him. On this small hill, blackened purple by gunpowder, only one new recruit remained besides him.

The kid was named Hu Xiudao. He wasn't tall, his uniform was tattered, and he was huddled in a shell crater, gripping his rifle so tightly his knuckles were white.

The bullet comments in the livestream were scrolling frantically:

["It's over, Jack is going to be wiped out this time."]

["Two wounded soldiers defending a flank, and the enemy is a reinforced platoon from Eagle Country."]

["The difficulty of this game is broken. Su Yun never intended for the player to survive this chapter."]

Jack didn't have time to look at the comments. At the foot of the distant mountain, dark green steel helmets began to crawl—the US Infantrymen were advancing.

"Fire!"

Jack roared and pulled the trigger of his submachine gun.

Bullets trailed tracer fire toward the slope. The US rifles and machine guns opened fire simultaneously.

The dense storm of metal shaved off a layer of earth in front of Jack.

"Hu Xiudao! Throw grenades!" Jack shouted anxiously.

But the new recruit didn't move, keeping his head down, his body trembling slightly.

"Damn it, he's frozen with fear," Jack cursed inwardly. He switched to his last magazine and fired wildly.

Just as the US troops rushed within twenty meters of the position, and Jack was preparing to pull the pin on the 'Glorious Bullet' in his arms, the situation changed.

It was an explosion without any warning.

Hu Xiudao lifted his head.

His eyes were no longer evasive; they were covered with dense red blood vessels, his pupils constricted, locked onto the charging enemy mass.

["System Prompt: NPC Hu Xiudao has entered the 'Awakening' state."]

A line of golden characters flashed across Jack's vision.

The next second, Jack's livestream went silent, immediately followed by an unprecedented flood of comments.

"Holy crap? What just happened?"

"Did this NPC just teleport?"

"Su Yun! Come out and explain! Does this trajectory comply with the physics engine?"

Jack was stunned too.

He saw Hu Xiudao leap out of the shell crater.

It wasn't a sluggish climb, but an explosive lateral roll.

In the momentary pauses between the US machine gun fire, the youth was almost flying through the dirt.

Hu Xiudao held a grenade in each hand, flipping the fuses with his fingertips,

and precisely sent the iron lumps into the densest part of the US formation.

Flames erupted, and debris flew.

Hu Xiudao didn't stop.

He casually scooped up a Mosin-Nagant left behind by a fallen comrade, worked the bolt, chambered a round, and fired—the movements were so fluid there wasn't a single pause.

"Bang!"

The skull of a US machine gunner was blown away.

"Bang!"

The enemy commander, who was in the process of throwing a grenade, was shot in the chest.

"This is definitely cheating!"

"Su Yun, did you modify the data behind the scenes? How high is this NPC's agility set to?"

"I don't believe it! This action frequency clearly violates the game's hunger and fatigue settings! The streamer is about to collapse, how can this NPC fight like he has Infinite Blade Works?"

Jack stared at Hu Xiudao on the screen.

The youth darted back and forth between Position Three and the adjacent Position Two.

One moment he was throwing a satchel charge on the left hill, the next he appeared on the right ridge taking potshots.

The US forces descended into chaos.

From the enemy's perspective, it seemed as if a whole company was hidden on this position.

"Fuck! How are we supposed to fight this?"

Jack muttered to himself.

He watched as Hu Xiudao used the cover of a shell crater to

throw three consecutive grenades,

wiping out an entire squad of US troops attempting a flanking maneuver.

The popularity of the livestream was skyrocketing.

["Reported. The officials are openly cheating."]

["CEO Su, you're shameless just to make the player win. Is this NPC's stamina bar locked or something?"]

["Look at that trajectory. Did that grenade fly over fifty meters? Is that strength humanly possible?"]

In Su Yun's studio, he watched the public opinion monitoring spike wildly with a calm expression.

"Cheating?" Su Yun scoffed, his fingers sweeping across the control panel.

"Your understanding of willpower is too shallow."

In the game.

Jack had already given up fighting because he realized he couldn't keep up with Hu Xiudao's rhythm.

The only thing he could do was frantically gather the remaining ammunition on the position.

"Hu Xiudao! Catch!"

Jack pushed over a box of freshly pried-open grenades.

Hu Xiudao grabbed a grenade with his right hand without turning his head, and picked up a Bazooka rocket launcher dropped by a US soldier with his left.

He moved through the firelight covering the hillsides.

His uniform was shredded by shrapnel,

and a deep, visible gash was torn across his thigh, but he seemed not to feel the pain.

His eyes held only killing intent—the kind of intent that wanted to devour the enemy alive.

"These data points are wrong!" A big shot in the livestream started posting an analysis thread.

"I calculated based on his movement distance and enemy elimination rate,

his reaction speed is under 0.1 seconds,

which shouldn't exist in 'Civilization Reenactment' with its 100% realistic pain simulation."

"Jack, go check his vitals! Hurry up and check his status bar!"

Jack also became curious.

During a brief moment when Hu Xiudao returned to the trench for supplies, he unleashed a system scan on him.

The next second, Jack froze in place.

The scan results were displayed to all the audience members:

["NPC: Hu Xiudao"]

["Status: Extremely Overdrawn, Multiple Bone Fractures, Severe Blood Loss, Willpower Burning."]

["Remaining Stamina: 3%."]

["Combat Buffs: None (Purely driven by mental strength)."]

"3% stamina?"

"He has bone fractures and is still performing tactical evasions on that slope?"

"With this amount of blood loss, a normal person would have gone into shock already!"

The direction of the comments began to waver.

Jack looked at Hu Xiudao before him.

The youth's hands were shaking—a sign that his muscles were spasming to their limit.

His fingertips were bleeding every time he picked up a grenade.

"Here," Hu Xiudao took the ammo box, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.

"Hold... the rear."

After saying those two words, he charged out of the position again.

This time, the US forces mobilized three platoons. Countless figures on the mountainside looked particularly terrifying under the glare of the flare.

Hu Xiudao stood alone before the breach.

He set up two machine guns facing different directions, firing a while and then moving.

He ran frantically in the trench, his clothes completely caked in mud, truly like a clay statue crawling out of hell.

Slaughter—pure, one-sided mental torture.

The US forces' morale collapsed under this terrifying fighting style of "one man is an entire army."

They frantically called out over the radio, claiming they had encountered the main force of the Volunteer Army.

"This isn't scientific..." Brother Bao also joined the livestream, leaving a message on the public screen.

"Su Yun, are you sure you didn't change the values? The enemy kill count is already over a hundred!"

["105, 118, 142..."]

The kill count data on the right side of the system interface was jumping wildly.

["NPC Hu Xiudao: Current Kills: 214."]

The entire internet fell silent.

The accusations disappeared, the curses vanished.

All that remained was a chilling shock that made one's scalp tingle.

When the 41st charge was repelled,

and the last ray of sunset fell upon Position Three, the battlefield entered a dreadful silence.

The hillside was piled high with dark green corpses.

Hu Xiudao sat by the edge of the trench—which had been half-shaved away—with his back to Jack.

The barrel of the Mosin-Nagant in his hand was glowing black-red, emitting a foul smell of burnt metal.

He kept his head down, motionless.

"Hu Xiudao?" Jack called out tentatively.

There was no response.

Jack's heart pounded. He pushed up his crippled leg and slowly crawled over.

He circled around to face Hu Xiudao.

The youth was clutching a grenade with the safety pin already pulled, his eyes tightly shut.

But on the system interface, his life bar had not yet hit zero.

He was sleeping.

In the very first second after the earth-shattering battle ended,

he had simply sat down and fallen asleep while still holding the last 'Glorious Bullet.'

All ten of his fingernails were worn down to the quick,

and blood mixed with dirt had formed dark red scabs.

["Battle settlement in progress..."]

["Position Three defense successful."]

["Battle statistics: NPC Hu Xiudao, 281 enemies eliminated."]

Thousands upon thousands of gifts suddenly flooded Jack's livestream.

But no one cheered; everyone was typing the same sentence:

"Su Yun, you won. I want to use this cheat too."

Just then, a link pre-set by Su Yun popped up in a corner of the livestream screen:

["Prototype Historical Record Retrieval: Battle of Triangle Hill, First-Class Combat Hero Hu Xiudao."]

Tens of millions of viewers clicked the link almost simultaneously.

In a yellowed, historically textured black-and-white photograph,

a young man with a youthful face wore a loosely fitting padded uniform, his eyes clear and bright.

The accompanying text description struck everyone's heart, word by word:

"...He was 19 years old at the time. At Position Three on Hill 597.9, relying on grenades, hand grenades, and satchel charges, he single-handedly repelled 41 enemy assaults.

He eliminated 281 enemies alone, setting a miracle in the history of warfare. Due to the extremely brutal nature of the battle,

he recalled afterward: 'At that moment, all I thought was, this ground is ours, and we cannot lose it even if we die.'"

On the livestream, Jack burst into loud sobs.

"That wasn't a cheat..."

Jack faced the camera, tears streaming down his face, his face covered in mud.

"Those weren't system-given stats. That was him, snatching back that ground from the King of Hell with his own strength."

"That's how he fought in reality."

At this moment, young people all over the world fell silent.

The shield of Captain Eagle Country felt so light at this moment.

That superhero who could lift a tank,

in front of that nineteen-year-old Chinese youth who slept guarding his position with ten broken fingernails,

seemed so pale, so ridiculous, so hypocritical.

Su Yun sat backstage, watching the surging emotion values on the monitoring panel.

The blue pillars representing 'Awe' and 'Reverence' had already broken through the limits of the instrument.

"This is just the beginning," Su Yun turned off the screen.

"Hu Xiudao held the position, but the grinding stone of the Battle of Triangle Hill hasn't stopped yet."