Plans Never Survive Contact with Reality

Chu Hang looked at Gabe Jones, who was leaning against the rock wall beside him, his face pale as paper. His feelings were a tangled mess. It was not that he thought Gabe was a burden. They were comrades, after all. They had been sharing chocolate on the plane just moments ago. He was not the kind of person who could leave a man to die.

What bothered him was that this had completely turned his already shaky plan into a complete mess.

"Chu... you..." Gabe Jones clearly had not recovered from the shock. As he looked at Chu Hang, his eyes held not only gratitude, but also the astonishment and confusion one might feel upon seeing a monster.

"Your strength... what the hell is going on with it? I swear, I put everything I had into that crowbar just now, and that thing did not budge at all."

There it was. Of course he had to ask.

Chu Hang sighed inwardly, though his expression did not change. He could hardly tell him, Buddy, I got a cheat code. I copied a Healing Factor, and it made me stronger too.

As he packed up the first-aid kit, he casually said in a tone that was half-joking and half-serious, "I do not know either.

"Maybe I got blown up by too many shells back on the battlefield, and something in my head got wired wrong. Anyway, sometimes it feels like I have endless strength, but other times I am just like anyone else. It works when it works. Depends on my luck."

That vague explanation was the best excuse he could think of for now. It explained his abnormal strength while leaving him plenty of room to maneuver.

If he failed to perform as impressively someday, he could always say, "Bad luck today. It was not working."

Gabe Jones nodded as if he understood, though he clearly did not. The explanation sounded a little far-fetched, but war was a place where every impossibility could become possible.

He had seen people survive after a bullet passed through their hearts, and he had seen hardened men scared out of their minds and turned into idiots for life.

Compared to those things, a man suddenly becoming stronger did not seem so impossible to accept.

He struggled to stand, but the instant he put weight on his left leg, a piercing pain made him grunt and drop heavily back down. A fresh layer of cold sweat instantly formed on his forehead.

"Do not move!" Chu Hang quickly pressed him down. "Your wound is too deep. It did not hit the bone, but the muscles and blood vessels are torn.

"If you keep moving, the bleeding we just stopped will break loose again."

"But we cannot stay here forever." Gabe panted, his face full of anxiety. "Hydra patrols could come back at any time, and... the Captain and the others are still waiting for us."

He was right. This cave was safe for the moment, but it was definitely not somewhere they could stay for long. The bear trap was proof enough. This place was likely a trap zone set up by some hunter or the Germans.

Chu Hang spread the captured map back out on the ground and studied it carefully beneath the dim yellow light of the kerosene lamp.

"Look." He pointed to a spot on the map. "We are probably here. This is where several patrol routes intersect. We avoided one wave just now, but once daylight comes, they will definitely conduct a more thorough sweep. It is only a matter of time before they find us."

Gabe leaned over to look as well, and his expression grew even grimmer. The dense dashed lines on the map resembled an enormous spiderweb, while they were two tiny flies already trapped within it.

"Then what do we do?"

"We have to leave, and we have to get as far away from this area as possible before dawn." Chu Hang's tone allowed no argument.

His finger moved slowly across the map while his mind raced.

What he needed was to find the safest route through this web of death, one that would lead them to the factory's outskirts.

His finger finally stopped at an area in the northeastern corner of the map. A crude icon of a small wooden cabin had been drawn there, labeled in German: "Jägerhütte," meaning Hunter's Hut.

"Here." Chu Hang pointed at the cabin. "Look, this place is far from all the main patrol routes, and the terrain around it is complicated. It is an ideal place to hide. We will go there first, let you recover, and keep an eye on the factory. Then we can decide what to do next."

The plan sounded reasonable, but Gabe looked at his useless leg and gave a bitter smile. "It is a good plan, but Chu, like this... I will only slow you down.

"How about you hide me here, leave me some food and water, and go alone? You are stronger than I am. You have a better chance."

Chu Hang looked up at him. His gaze was calm, but it carried an unshakable resolve.

"Do not talk that bullshit. I do not abandon my teammates."

In his previous life, he had been a selfish office drone who always prioritized maximizing his own interests.

But for some reason, after coming to this damned world, enduring artillery fire, and seeing death firsthand, certain cold things in his heart seemed to be slowly melting away.

Maybe it was because Logan had said, "Kid, I like you." Maybe it was because Dugan had said, "Welcome aboard." Or maybe it was because he had witnessed Captain America's almost naive determination.

He realized he was beginning to think like a real soldier.

Gabe Jones stared into Chu Hang's eyes and froze. In those black pupils, he saw something very familiar—something he had only ever seen in Captain Steve Rogers's eyes.

He nodded heavily and said nothing more, only clutching his M1 Carbine tightly to his chest.

"Fine. Then let's go!"

Saying they would leave was easy. Figuring out how to leave was another problem.

Chu Hang tried slinging one of Gabe's arms around his neck and having him hop on one foot. After only two steps, Gabe was drenched in sweat from the pain and nearly passed out on the spot. His leg wound was too severe. Every jolt from hopping felt as if someone were carving flesh from his body with a knife.

"No. We will not get far this way. Your wound will become infected again." Chu Hang stopped, his brow tightly furrowed.

Carrying him was not an option either. The mountain path was rugged, the snow slick, and Gabe was a big man weighing close to two hundred pounds. Even Chu Hang could not carry him very far, and they would make far too obvious a target.

He had to think of something.

Chu Hang's gaze swept back and forth across the cave before finally settling on the thicket of bushes he had pushed aside near the entrance.

His eyes lit up. He had it!

He walked to the entrance and selected two of the thickest, toughest main branches from the bushes. He cut them down with his military knife, then took all the spare rope and bandages from his pack and got to work.

Gabe watched curiously, unable to guess what he was doing.

Chu Hang laid the two thick branches parallel on the ground, then used shorter branches as crossbars and tied them firmly together with rope to form a simple frame. Next, he took off his own military coat, spread it over the frame, and secured it with rope.

A crude but fairly sturdy snow sled took shape.

"My God..." Gabe stared at it in astonishment. "Chu, how is your brain even wired?"

"Enough nonsense. Get on and lie down." Chu Hang wiped the sweat from his forehead and urged him on.

Gabe carefully lay down on it. It was a little uncomfortable, but compared to hopping on one foot, it was practically heaven.

Chu Hang wrapped the rope at the front of the sled around himself several times and gave it an experimental pull. It was heavy, but with his monstrous strength, the sled began gliding steadily over the snow.

"Done. Let's move!"

Just as they were about to leave this temporary shelter, Chu Hang's nose suddenly twitched.

He caught the faint scent of a pungent herb.

He stopped and searched carefully through the cracks in the rock wall near the cave entrance by the light of the kerosene lamp. Soon, amid a patch of unremarkable weeds, he found several green plants with thick leaves and serrated edges.

"This is..." He picked a leaf, sniffed it, then chewed it. A bitter, spicy flavor burst across his tongue, followed by a spreading sensation of coolness.

He remembered! In his previous life, he had watched a wilderness survival documentary that mentioned a plant growing in the Alps called Arnica. Local hunters used it to treat bruises and injuries. It promoted blood circulation, dispersed bruising, reduced inflammation, and relieved pain.

This plant looked exactly like the Arnica from that documentary!

There really was no way heaven would leave him stranded!

He immediately gathered a large handful, returned to the cave, and crushed them into a dark green medicinal paste between two stones.

"What are you doing?" Gabe looked warily at the sticky, foul-smelling stuff.

"Good medicine. Bear with it." Without another word, Chu Hang untied the bandages around Gabe's leg and spread the cool paste thickly over his mangled wound.

"Ah—!"

An indescribable, spicy-cold sensation instantly surged through Gabe's body. The pain made him cry out and jerk upright.

"Do not move!" Chu Hang held him down firmly. "Good medicine tastes bitter. If you do not want to lose that leg, stay still!"

Strangely, the intense stinging pain lasted less than a minute before it was swiftly replaced by a cool, comfortable sensation. Gabe could clearly feel the burning pain in his wound weakening at an astonishing speed, replaced by a tingling itch as though countless tiny ants were crawling over it.

He tried moving his toes and discovered that the agonizing pain had already faded by seventy or eighty percent.

"God..." Gabe looked at the lump of green paste on his leg, then at Chu Hang. His eyes no longer held mere awe. He looked at him as if he were an all-powerful wizard. "Chu, how many other things can you do that we do not know about?"

Chu Hang smiled, rewrapped the wound with clean bandages, and said, "A qualified soldier should know a few tricks to stay alive, should he not?"

Knowledge is power. That really is one hell of a truth.

Once everything was ready, Chu Hang blew out the kerosene lamp, settled Gabe onto the sled, then took hold of the rope and slowly dragged his comrade out of the cave, disappearing into the vast darkness of the night.

They had been walking for more than an hour, and Chu Hang's strength was nearly spent. He stopped beside a large tree, leaned against it, and panted heavily.

Just as he was about to take out his canteen for a drink, his attention was suddenly drawn to a point of light on the distant horizon.

It was a continuous hazy yellow glow that turned the sky above that area indistinct.

At the center of that glow, he could vaguely make out several towering silhouettes, like enormous black spires reaching into the clouds.

Chu Hang's heart suddenly clenched.

He took out the map, looked again at the distant light, and confirmed the direction several times.

That was right. That direction was exactly where the factory was marked on the map!

They... had somehow gotten so close already!

But then an even more unsettling thought surfaced. According to the map, they should have needed at least most of the night to reach it. Why could they see it already?

Unless...

Chu Hang's pupils contracted sharply as he thought of the only possibility—and the most terrifying one.

Unless the map was wrong!