CH 60

(Avalanche)

Edited by Silver Wind 

Zhou Wenyan routed around the four tents and moved in the direction of where the fire was located, and Shen Dongqing stepped on the footprints he left behind as he followed cautiously.

The fire had obviously been extinguished a while ago but it had been lit up again.

The flames were jumping and they shone on the unconscious Braided Pigtails’ face, who looked a little horrifying.

It was unknown who had lit the fire, but their purpose was definitely not to warm Braided Pigtails up. 

Zhou Wenyan stopped in his tracks. Caught unprepared, Shen Dongqing bumped into him before he promptly decided to paste himself onto Zhou Wenyan’s back and look around his arm to gaze at where Braided Pigtails was laying.

The pair waited for a brief while before they heard the sound of accumulated snow being kicked around from the hazy darkness.

The NPCs were akin to spirits as they walked over to Braided Pigtails’ side and surrounded her completely.

Under the firelight, Lisa, Borg and Leo did not have their full and energetic states from daytime, rather, their cheeks were sunken and concaved, their lips pale and cracking, and they looked like they had been starving for a very long time.

Braided Pigtails remained unaware of the dangers as she lay on the snow with her head raised, seemingly in the depths of a beautiful dream.

Lisa stopped over and spoke with a hoarse throat: “Soup….. Such a good soup…..”

Borg seized Braided Pigtails’ arm and licked his lips: “We can roast the meat here.”

Leo held up two of her legs: “I’m hungry, what about you guys?” 

The other two NPCs nodded simultaneously and lifted Braided Pigtails together before slowly making their way over.

They seemed to be lacking in strength, for they were staggering from side to side as they walked which only made their shadows on the snowy ground more distorted, and it was as if they had become hungry ghosts with their skeletal frames and protruding bellies.

Zhou Wenyan: “Follow them.”

The NPCs walking in front did not know that two people were tailing them. 

As they carried Braided Pigtails, they were crooning a song under their breaths. An unnatural red flush emerged on their pallid cheeks and their eyes were brimming with a frenzied heat.

Hungry, so hungry……

However, it did not matter, they would have something to eat very soon.

Peng— 

The NPCs finally came to a stop. There was no moonlight overheard here, just ashen darkness. And even though they proceeded to throw Braided Pigtails on the ground, the little lady did not wake.

Lisa glanced left and right in a frenetic manner: “Fire, fire…..”

Accompanying her mutters, a cluster of flames surged up abruptly. A full firepit materialised from nothingness and on top of it hung a small pot, and it was precisely the soup pot that Lisa had used to make her soup.

Once she saw the soup pot, Lisa cackled out loud, revealing teeth that had been dyed brown from old blood. 

Leo complained: “Lisa, your kitchen skills are not worthy of complimenting at all, you don’t even know how to properly deal with food.”

Borg bent down, wanting to pull off Braided Pigtails’ clothes. “Hurry up and deal with her, we can have a complete meal once we’re done cleaning up.”

They did not treat Braided Pigtails as a person at all; she was only food in their eyes.

They did not have the revulsion that humans would have to “cannibalism”. 

Borg had honestly been starving for too long and his limbs were without strength. His head drooped and he exerted great efforts to undo a single button on Braided Pigtails’ body and he did not manage to take off a single article despite spending a long time at it.

“Leo, Lisa, come and help, the two of you…” Borg raised his head as he scolded but he did not see the figures of his companions.

Famished to the point where his head was dizzy, Borg was naturally slow to react. “Where, Where are you?”

Then, Borg felt his own shoulder being patted once. 

Borg turned his head back and he did not see a single person before he was struck with a punch and he fell to the ground.

Shen Dongqing wiped his hand on the ground disdainfully as he muttered: “Why can’t they take a beating at all?”

Not a single one of them could fight.

Zhou Wenyan sauntered up to the soup pot and lifted the lid, allowing a smell that was beyond description to float out. 

The soup water inside the pot seethed with excitement and a human finger and strands of hair could be seen as it boiled.

He placed the lid back on and drew out a wooden stick that was in the process of burning before he searched their vicinity.

This was the place where the plane crashed.

Half of the plane cabin was still lying on the snowy ground and it had been covered by a layer of snow. 

Why did they have to come here to cook their soup?

Zhou Wenyan circled around the area, makeshift torch raised, before he suddenly discovered that there was a pile of accumulated snow that was not right. Thus, he lifted his foot and kicked at it, causing a bone to roll out and there seemed to be even more buried underneath.

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Zhou Wenyan turned his head back to eye the soup pot that was still smoking steam.

It was apparent that this was where the NPCs deposited their kitchen waste.

The players were forcibly woken by the cold wind. When they came to, they noticed that the zipper to their tents had been pulled wide open and the NPCs that were camping with them had disappeared without a trace. Initially, they had thought nothing of it, but when they saw the NPCs being tied up tightly by the fireside, they realised the gravity of the situation. 

The Businessman jogged towards the fireside but he did not dare to sit down and he chose to maintain a distance instead. With great caution, he asked: “What happened?”

Shen Dongqing used a wooden stick to poke at the firepit as he thought about it. Then, he said: “We stopped a crime that was about to be committed.”

Businessman: “?”

Shen Dongqing: “ For example, human meat BBQ.” 

The Businessman’s gaze landed on the prone, still unconscious Braided Pigtails before he glanced towards the bone-thin and rugged NPCs. No matter how stupid he could be, he inevitably understood what had transpired.

“Fuck!” The Businessman cursed out a word, “These three NPCs want to eat us?”

Just as his voice landed, a cry tinged with fear rang out.

Owing to the fact that he had lost too much blood last night, the Doctor’s entire person was muddled and drowsy and he was the last one to wake up. His complexion was as white as sheet and he looked like his vigour had been sucked out of him. As he stumbled out of his tent in a trance-like state, his brain was swirling with only one word— Hungry. 

“I’m so hungry ah.” The Doctor mumbled.

His cheeks had sunken in and his visage was an image of greyness and withering, the only speech tumbling out from his mouth were: “Hungry, I’m so hungry…”

However, the NPCs who could make the soup were tied up firmly and there was no food to fill his stomach.

Rigidly, the Doctor looked left and right before he abruptly caught a whiff of a fishy smell. His pupils roved and landed on his bandaged neck. 

Meanwhile, the Internet Celebrity had just left her tent when she encountered the dazed Doctor. Before she had the time to greet him, she saw the Doctor removing the bandage on his neck with one hand and tore open his already scabbing wound with a violence.

“AH—”

Internet Celebrity stood there stunned, covering her mouth subconsciously.

Under such circumstances, she could not even manage a reaction, and she could only watch on with wide eyes. 

Fortunately, the Doctor was restrained by the people who had rushed over after hearing the commotion and stopped the tragic case of self-cannibalism from happening.

The Businessman wiped away his sweat and peeked at the tied up but still writhing Doctor. With a face cast in a miserable scowl,  he said, “What on earth is going on?”

He did not want to become a hungry ghost.

Shen Dongqing made a noncommittal hum before he said: “Ask the NPCs ah.” 

Businessman asked with much suspicion: “Can we?”

Shen Dongqing said: “Didn’t they make soup for us? They’re quite nice, we can try asking.”

It was fine when he hadn’t mentioned the soup, but now that he thought about it, the Businessman could not help but say: “But that soup is made out of human flesh…”

Fortunately, the smell was relatively odd, or he would have drank it. 

Shen Dongqing blinked with his eyes: “Is there a correlation between the two factors?”

It seemed like there was no correlation oh.

The Businessman was almost won over but when he glanced at the presently unconscious Braided Pigtails and the mad Doctor, he immediately came back to himself and laughed dryly. “Why don’t you do it then?”

At this moment, the NPCs woke up slowly. 

They were somewhat confused as if they did not understand how they became tied up.

Lisa said in panic: “What do you want to do?”

Leo’s visage darkened. “Hurry up and let us go!”

Borg was the calmest amongst them and his lips were lined with ridicule. “Since we can eat others, others can eat us as well.” 

All of sudden, Leo became indignant. “What are you acting like a Virgin Mary for? You make it sound like you didn’t do it, you were the first one to act!”

Lisa started wailing out loud, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to be eaten.”

Shen Dongqing interrupted their words, “Hold on……” He raised his hand, “Who wants to eat you?”

The three NPCs looked at him in unison. 

Shen Dongqing pointed at himself, to which he earned all of their nods. Resentfully, he exclaimed: “Who wants to eat you guys, you don’t look tasty at all!”

The three NPCs added together could not even be compared to a single small biscuit. He gnashed his teeth unhappily.

Borg let out a strange laugh: “When you have nothing left, you have to eat even if you don’t want to.”

The Businessman did feel a pang of hunger but once his hunger went overboard, he found it tolerable again. He pressed down on his stomach and looked at the other players: “Are you not hungry?” 

Shen Dongqing licked his lips, “I’m alright.”

Before he left the tent, he had eaten to his heart’s content and it resolved some of the hunger.

Zhou Wenyan held his jaw with one hand and his finger would tap on his mouth occasionally as if he was contemplating something and he did not reply to the Businessman’s question.

The Businessman started talking to himself: “Starting from tonight’s dinner time, why don’t we vote for one person each day? Even a blind cat is bound to encounter a dead prey.” 

Zhou Wenyan raised his eyelids and said faintly: “Not enough.”

Businessman: “What’s not enough?”

“Time,” Zhou Wenyan replied.

The Businessman spoke subconsciously, “Don’t we have fifteen days? Today is just the third day, there’s still a lot of days…” 

“Third day?”

Lisa’s expression became slightly warped: “Third day, hahaha……”

The Businessman stilled, “Isn’t it the third day?”

Lisa collapsed and shouted wildly, “If it was the third day, would we have resorted to eating people?” 

The plane crashed on the snow-capped mountain.

On the first day, the attendants took their satellite phone to find a place with a signal to send a rescue message because there was no signal at the peak of the snow-capped mountain, and the survivors were full of hope.

The second day, the survivors realised that there was not much food remaining and they decided to gather all their food together, meticulously planning and rationing them strictly, wanting to hold out until the rescue team arrived. 

The third day, an argument broke out between the survivors, some people felt that they should leave the food for the people with greater hopes of survival and abandon the injured.

……

On the sixth day, all the food was completely exhausted.

On the tenth day, their gazes turned towards their companions who were on the last breaths. 

On the twelfth day, in the midst of their hunger and cold, they acted.

Lisa choked as she laughed: “The first day all of you appeared was the twelfth day, it has always been the twelfth day.”

Borg and Leo lowered their heads, not speaking.

After they assailed their companion, they were trapped on the twelfth day. 

There was no rescue team, there were no changes, only feeling the constant torment of hunger, unable to live and unable to die.

The trio entered a cycle: the airplane crashing, the arguments, the snatching for food, being forced to act against their companions… halted on the twelfth day forever.

Then, when the people that were similar to them had been exhausted too, a new group of people would inexplicably appear and they felt like they were the hallucinated product of staying in the snowy land for too long.

Since they were hallucinations then anything went; either way, they were fake, eating them was of no consequence. 

Thus, the first twelfth day, the second twelfth day…… skeleton remains were buried underneath the snow one by one, piling higher and higher.

The Businessman was frightened to the point where his goose bumps had risen: “Then who did you eat?”

That person was definitely the deceased.

The three NPCs froze, revealing a lost expression. 

Lisa opened her mouth first: “I allied with Leo and killed Borg.”

Borg said: “You remembered wrongly, you and I killed Leo.”

Leo refuted: “You and I obviously killed Lisa, I still remember how the meat we cooked was filled with fats, and my mouth was full of oil after I ate it.”

As he said that, he could not help but salivate. 

The scene from the first dinnertime was re-enacted; the three of them pointed at each other and it became a closed loop.

Which begged the question, who killed and who died?

“I obviously killed you.”

“We were the ones who killed!” 

“The dead person is Lisa!”

The three NPCs argued endlessly.

Shen Dongqing cut them off directly: “Shut up!”

Perhaps because they still remembered the terror of being knocked out, they immediately shut their mouths after they were shouted at and they no longer spoke. 

Internet Celebrity’s expression was coloured with pleasant surprise. “You’ve figured it out?”

Decisively, Shen Dongqing said: “No.” His words went on another tangent: “But… I seem to hear some kind of noise?”

Zhou Wenyan lowered his head. The small stone by his feet was trembling ceaselessly.

Shen Dongqing looked around his surroundings before pointing in the distance: “It’s coming from there!” 

The other players looked in the direction he was pointing at.

Above the azure horizon was a long, horizontal snowline, and perhaps after staring at it for too long, their vision started producing an illusion and made it see like the snowline was inching closer and closer. It was like an ocean tide, rolling over violently.

The Businessman’s voice raised his volume, and because of the terror that swept over him, his voice became distorted: “It’s not an illusion!”

An avalanche.

The plane crashed on the first day, the food was exhausted on the sixth day, companions were eaten on the twelfth day, and on the fifteenth day… An avalanche occurred.

The game said: “…If you mutually help each other, you will definitely be able to endure through the next fifteen days and wait for the rescue team to arrive.”

But before the players could mutually help each other, the NPCs had started mutually butchering each other. 

No one expected that their three days in addition to the NPCs’ twelve days, that was their fifteen days!

Zhou Wenyan’s first reaction was to pull Shen Dongqing over and search for a place where they could hide from the avalanche.

But there was not enough time.

In an instant, the snow slide engulfed them, snow and ice biting cold, thus demanding their lives. 

Zhou Wenyan flipped his body and threw Shen Dongqing to the ground, back facing the pure white and ash-grey snow that was akin to the foam of breaking waves with the heights it rose to.

It did not matter if it was a ghost or monster, none of them could compare to nature’s reckoning.

To say nothing of humans.

Shen Dongqing was propping up Zhou Wenyan’s chest: “Your heart is beating faster.” 

Zhou Wenyan wrapped both his arms around Shen Dongqing tightly and said one sentence in a low voice: “It’s fine.”

The game would never kill off the players in such an oversimplified and crude manner, or else it would have forewent its ghosts and monsters all together and utilised earthquakes and floods because it would have done everyone in no matter what.

Outside of absolute endings, opportunities to live were necessary.

Shen Dongqing was not particularly scared, he said: “It’s okay, I have experience with regards to becoming a ghost…” 

Before he could finish speaking, the ice and snow – which had been accumulating power and waiting to act – slammed into them violently, drowning out all the sounds.

After the avalanche passed, the space reverted back to a vast expanse of whiteness.

Shen Dongqing’s fingers spasmed and he woke up from his dream abruptly. 

Zhou Wenyan opened his eyes and inquired in a low voice: “What’s the matter?”

Rubbing his arms, Shen Dongqing replied: “I’m a little cold.”

Zhou Wenyan touched his palm, and sure enough, it was cold to the touch. “Maybe the air conditioning is set too low.” He stood up, opened the small suitcase and took out an outer coat.

After donning the outer coat, Shen Dongqing felt his appendages brush against something cold. He lowered his head to look and he found a glittering and translucent snowflake lying on his fingertip. However, before he could show it to Zhou Wenyan, the snowflake melted into a drop of water. 

He stared at it for a while. The water drop slipped off his finger and disappeared without leaving a shadow or a trace in the next instant.

Still standing, Zhou Wenyan asked: “Do you want to eat some snacks?”

Shen Dongqing returned back to his reverie and said: “I want chocolate.”

Zhou Wenyan rifled through the suitcase but he did not find any, hence, he could only pass him a can of potato chips. 

“Maybe you didn’t bring it.”

Shen Dongqing slanted his head. “I brought it ah.”

No matter what he forgot, he would never forget his snacks.

At this moment, the attendant’s gentle and soft voice sounded over the broadcast. 

“The airplane will be going past a snowy mountain soon and there will be a period of turbulence. Passengers, please do not panic.”

Zhou Wenyan closed the suitcase, saying: “We’ll search again after we get off the plane.”