88: Chapter 89 Whose child is this?

Scene loading complete.

No gunshots. No snow. No forty degrees below zero.

When Jack opened his eyes, he was standing on a bridge.

In Dandong during April, the ice on the Yalu River had long since melted, and the sunlight shattered into pieces upon the river's surface.

The mountains on the opposite bank were green; trucks lined up on the new bridge, driving north, the sound of diesel engines carrying across the water.

The HUD had vanished. Health bars, maps, taskbars, ammo counters, pain synchronization—all gone.

Only a single line of text remained in the upper-left corner of his vision, so small he had to lean in to see it clearly:

"His time in this World: 24:00:00."

The numbers were ticking.

Jack looked down at his hands. They were clean and whole, all ten fingers present. He was wearing the same gray hoodie he had on before entering the game.

He turned his head.

Three steps away, a youth stood on the bridge with his back to him.

A patched cotton coat. So thin that the outline of his shoulder blades was visible.

A buzz cut at the back of his head that wasn't quite even, with a few stray hairs caught in the stubble.

The youth was bowing his head, reaching out to touch a bronze plaque embedded in the bridge's railing.

"Yalu River Broken Bridge—Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level."

His finger traced over the words one by one. It stopped at the words "Broken Bridge."

He turned his face.

Jack's breath hitched.

He had seen that face in the snows of Chosin Lake. Sixteen years old; the dark red marks from frostbite on his cheekbones had faded away completely, and his lips were no longer bluish-purple, but flushed with color.

Little Shandong.

That same Little Shandong who had died curled up in a snow pit at forty degrees below zero, clutching a frozen potato.

His lips were moving.

Jack took a step forward, his ear almost pressed against the side of the boy's face.

There was no sound. The system had completely shut down the NPC's voice channel.

But Jack could clearly see the shape of his mouth.

Two words.

"Did we win?"

Jack's nose suddenly stung. He nodded vigorously.

Little Shandong stared at him for two seconds, the corners of his mouth curling up—the exact same curve as when he had frozen to death in the Ice Sculpture Company, but this time, his eyes were alive.

Then he turned and walked along the Broken Bridge toward the shore.

Jack followed behind, three steps away.

Little Shandong walked very slowly.

He stood at the entrance of a tourist souvenir shop at the bridgehead for three minutes, tilting his head to look at the miniature model of the Yalu River Broken Bridge displayed in the window.

His face was reflected in the glass, and he tilted his head to look at himself, as if looking in a mirror for the first time.

He stopped under a cherry blossom tree for five minutes. The April cherry blossoms were falling, pinkish-white petals swirling down.

He reached out to catch one, flipped it over to look at the back, flipped it again to see the front, and brought it to his nose to sniff it.

Then he carefully tucked it into the inner pocket of his cotton coat, right next to the frozen potato.

Jack's eyes were already red, but he gritted his teeth and didn't let himself make a sound.

Little Shandong passed a kindergarten. The iron fence was painted in rainbow colors, and the children inside were playing on the slides.

A girl with pigtails screamed as she slid down from the top, landing on her bottom with a thud, only to scramble up giggling and run back to join the line.

Little Shandong placed his hands on the fence, his ten fingers threading through the gaps between the iron bars.

He watched for ten minutes.

The expression on his face made Jack's heart twist into a knot.

It wasn't sadness, nor was it being moved; it was something deeper—contentment. Pure, unadulterated contentment.

Like a man who had finished a war and finally saw what he had protected.

Little Shandong let go of the fence and continued walking forward.

He walked into a supermarket.

The automatic door slid open with a hiss; Little Shandong jumped, taking a half-step back, his shoulders hunching as his left hand instinctively reached for his waist—where an ammo pouch should have been.

He grasped at nothing.

After a two-second pause, his shoulders slowly relaxed, and he walked inside with steps so light it was as if he were afraid of crushing something.

A wave of warmth hit him. He froze.

Something inside him was thawing. He pulled his neck in, like a man who had just been fished out of an ice hole, desperately trying to wrap this heat into his body.

He walked up to a refrigerated display case, leaned down, and looked at the items through the glass door. Yogurt, fresh milk, jelly, pudding, coconut milk—colorful packages lined up in rows.

He pressed his face against the glass. The heat from his breath caused a layer of mist to form on the surface.

Then he extended his right index finger and wrote on the mist.

A horizontal stroke, a vertical stroke, a downward-left stroke...

Jack stood on his tiptoes, looking over the boy's shoulder.

"Mother."

Jack's knees went weak. He squatted on the floor next to the refrigerated case, hands propped on his knees, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

He opened his mouth to shout—"What do you want to eat? I'll buy it for you, you can have whatever you want"—

But his voice was swallowed by the system.

The bullet chat in the livestream room vanished at the same second.

It wasn't that no one was sending messages. Jack only found out later that the moderators, operators, and technical directors of every platform worldwide had simultaneously disabled the bullet chat function during that same minute.

No one had notified anyone else. No one had issued an order.

---

Dai Dai woke up on the playground of a rural primary school.

Standing before her was a man in military uniform. He was in his thirties, with a square jaw, high brow bones, and a back as straight as a wall.

The Company Commander of Pine Bone Peak.

The Company Commander who had charged as a Pyro.

There were no flames on him, no scorch marks. His uniform was new, and his collar was buttoned up neatly.

He was looking up.

The red flag on the flagpole snapped loudly in the wind. His gaze was fixed on the flag, unmoving.

Music for the between-class exercises flowed from the loudspeakers as hundreds of primary school students swung their arms and kicked their legs on the playground, their movements uneven and their laughter a chaotic mess.

The Company Commander watched for fifteen minutes.

Dai Dai stood beside him, a head shorter. She turned to look at his profile.

He was smiling.

His lips were pursed, the corners of his eyes crinkled, and there was a tan line on his cheekbones. It wasn't the face of a god of war. It was the face of a father waiting for his child to finish school at the gates.

Dai Dai covered her mouth with both hands. Tears gushed from between her fingers, trickling down her wrists.

She didn't dare make a sound. Not because of the system's silence.

She felt that if she made a sound, she would disturb those eyes that were watching the red flag.

The Company Commander turned to leave.

After taking two steps, a little girl ran past his right side, the corner of her Red Scarf brushing against his fingertips.

He turned his body slightly.

An instinctive movement. Light. Gentle. A reflex-like yielding of the way.

Dai Dai sank to her knees on the playground.

---

Brother Bao's NPC was the Little Soldier from Feihu Mountain who had been so hungry he broke his front teeth gnawing on rocks.

A night market.

Wires for lightbulbs were strung like spiderwebs, the charcoal in the grills glowed red-hot, droplets of oil sizzled as they hit the iron plates, and cumin powder swirled in the rising heat.

The Little Soldier walked from the entrance to the end. One hundred and fifty meters. Forty minutes.

He stopped at every stall.

Roasted lamb skewers. His Adam's apple bobbed.

Liangpi. It bobbed again.

Stinky tofu. Fried chicken cutlets. Bobo chicken. Teppanyaki. Crawfish.

With every pause, his Adam's apple would bob once, the veins on his neck bulging clearly.

But his hands remained behind his back at all times. His fingers were interlaced, gripped so tightly his knuckles turned white.

Brother Bao walked beside him, going slower and slower.

The Little Soldier finished his walk and turned back; when he passed the Roasted sweet potato stall for the second time, he stopped.

He squatted down.

His knees touched the ground. He leaned forward. His nose was almost touching the tin roaster that was emitting white steam.

He closed his eyes.

His whole body leaned forward slightly as he greedily and forcefully inhaled the scalding, sweet aroma of the sweet potatoes into his lungs.

Brother Bao's expression shifted from silence to distortion.

He rushed to the Roasted sweet potato stall and slammed both hands onto the table—

His hands passed through the tabletop.

He grabbed for the sweet potatoes on the roaster—

His hand passed through the sweet potato.

He turned and rushed toward the nearby lamb skewer stall, reaching for the bamboo skewers—

He passed right through them.

Brother Bao's mouth opened. He was roaring. His voice was crushed into thin air by the system.

The crowds at the night market passed through his body. They passed through the Little Soldier's body.

Footsteps, laughter, the clinking of glasses, phone ringtones—the bustle of the entire street continued, having nothing to do with them.

Brother Bao stood in the middle of the flow of people, his whole body trembling, his eyes bloodshot.

---

The countdown jumped to the final hour.

The Sun set.

No matter which city one was in, the sky was dyed a heavy shade of orange-red, then purple, then ink-blue.

Streetlights came on. Neon lights flickered to life.

In the windows of thousands of homes, one after another, warm yellow lights were lit.

Little Shandong walked to the base of an old residential building. It was a six-story red brick building with air conditioning units and clotheslines hanging on the exterior walls.

He stopped and looked up.

Through the window on the left of the first floor, a family of three was eating. The man picked up a piece of braised pork and put it in the child's bowl, while the woman beside him said something with a smile.

In the middle window of the third floor, the blue light of a TV flickered as someone curled up on the sofa, changing channels.

The window on the far right of the fifth floor lit up last. An old woman pulled the light cord and sat at the table with a bowl of noodles in front of her.

Little Shandong looked from window to window.

He stood there for forty minutes. Unmoving.

The light fell on his face. Orange, warm, safe light.

Jack stood behind him. Later, he spent a long time trying to describe Little Shandong's expression at that moment, but in the end, he could only manage five words.

"He looked so content."

The countdown hit zero.

Little Shandong looked down at his feet. His toes began to turn transparent, like morning mist being evaporated by the Sun.

The transparency spread upward from his ankles. Knees. Waist. Chest.

He didn't panic.

He raised his head and looked at those lit windows one last time. He took a breath. A very, very deep one. As if he wanted to pack all the warmth of this World into his lungs.

Then he smiled.

The exact same smile as when he had frozen to death at Chosin Lake.

The smile of a sixteen-year-old.

He was gone.

Jack stood alone beneath the empty building.

Above him, the people in those windows were still eating, changing channels, and picking up food. They didn't know that a sixteen-year-old boy soldier had just been standing below.

They would never know.

Jack's tears hit the concrete ground, silent.

Then everyone was teleported back to the pure white void.

No ground. No sky. Beneath their feet was an endless white.

Nine hundred million players were scattered in the void, invisible to one another.

It was as quiet as a grave.

Jack thought this was the end. His hand already reached for the edge of his helmet, preparing to log out.

The next second, a line of text popped up in Su Yun's VR helmet.

Only he could see it.

"Administrator-exclusive scene loading..."

"Filename: Grandpa.dat."

Su Yun's hand froze in mid-air.

Three meters away in the pure white void, a figure grew out of the light.

Straw sandals. Leg wrappings. A thin cotton coat. A type 38 rifle slung over his left shoulder.

That figure slowly turned around.

There was a faint scar on his forehead. His brow bones were high, and the corners of his mouth were slightly curled up.

Exactly the same as in the funeral portrait.

Su Zhenbang, twenty-one years old.

He frowned and sized up Su Yun for two seconds.

Then he grinned.

"Hey, whose child is this?"