This Map Is Definitely Wrong

Damn, I'd been played.

Those three words were like a bucket of ice water poured over Chu Hang's head, soaking him to the bone.

In that instant, Hydra, Captain America, the damn mission—everything vanished from his mind. All that remained was the cold fury of being fooled and toyed with, followed by an overwhelming fear that surged over him like a tide.

He wasn't an idiot.

In his previous life, he had spent years scraping his way through society. He had seen too many word games buried in contracts and heard too many empty promises from superiors. When it came to the word "trap," he possessed an almost animal instinct.

The distance shown on the map was far too different from the distance he could now see with his own eyes!

According to the map's scale, they should still have been at least seven or eight kilometers from the factory, with several mountains between them. On a snowy night like this, let alone seeing lights, even if the other side set off fireworks, all you would see was a faint glow on the horizon.

But now?

Not only could he see the endless stretch of lights, but he could even vaguely make out the outlines of the factory's towering buildings. That meant their straight-line distance from the factory was absolutely no more than two kilometers!

This was basically shoving their faces right in front of the enemy's surveillance cameras!

Why had this happened?

There was only one explanation: the map was fake! Or rather, from the very beginning, it had never been meant for their own people.

Cold sweat instantly soaked Chu Hang's back.

He remembered now. He had found this map on the Hydra squad leader he had taken down. At the time, he had been too thrilled, thinking he had struck gold, and hadn't thought any deeper about it.

Now that he considered it carefully, there were far too many suspicious details!

What unit's patrol map would be drawn so "artistically"? The lines were crooked, the scale was vague, and key locations were marked with crude doodles. This was not a military map meant for soldiers to use on a battlefield!

What was it more like? It was more like... deliberately leaked false intelligence meant to lure and mislead the enemy!

Those Hydra bastards had surely captured Allied prisoners or spies more than once. They could easily have deliberately allowed prisoners to "accidentally" see maps like this through various channels, or simply placed one on an officer who was bound to be discovered.

Then those unlucky fools who had finally escaped, or thought they had obtained critical intelligence, would be just like him—following this map and smugly taking what they believed was a "safe" route.

But they would never realize that this so-called "safe route" was precisely the death trap Hydra had carefully prepared for them!

That place marked "Hunter's Cabin" might not have been a shelter at all. It could have been an observation post packed with land mines and surveillance equipment! If they had really dragged Gabe straight there, they would probably already have become the brightest stars in the sky.

"Chu... what's wrong?" Gabe, lying on the sled, sensed that something was off as well. He saw Chu Hang frozen in place, staring fixedly at the distant factory, his face terrifyingly grim.

Chu Hang did not answer immediately. He suddenly crouched down and pulled the sled behind several thick spruce trees, whose dense branches and accumulated snow temporarily concealed them.

Only then did he lower his voice and say in a near whisper, "Gabe, we've been played. This map is fake."

Gabe Jones was also an experienced veteran. He froze for a moment, then followed Chu Hang's gaze toward the distant factory. After one glance, his face turned deathly pale.

As a soldier, he understood the relationship between distance and visibility better than Chu Hang did. At such close range, they had dragged the sled through open ground for so long. It had been no different from taking a stroll right under the enemy's noses.

"Those Nazi sons of bitches!" Gabe cursed under his breath, cold sweat beading on his forehead. He instinctively tightened his grip on his carbine and warily scanned the darkness around them.

"We weren't spotted earlier... were we?" he asked tensely.

"I don't know." Chu Hang shook his head, equally uncertain. "But we can't gamble on it. From now on, we have to assume a search party is already heading this way."

Fear, like an invisible hand, clenched tightly around both their hearts.

Only then did Chu Hang truly understand what war was. It was not a movie. It was not a game. There was no reloading a save. One wrong step, one insignificant lapse, could doom you beyond redemption. The pitiful foresight he had gained from movies was as fragile as paper in the face of brutal reality.

What now?

Go back? Return to that cave? No, it would be discovered sooner or later.

Keep heading toward Hunter's Cabin? That would be even more suicidal.

For a moment, they seemed trapped in a dead end.

"Chu, listen to me." Gabe's voice suddenly became exceptionally calm. He grabbed Chu Hang's arm, his eyes carrying the resolve unique to a soldier. "Leave me here. Find a place to hide me. Go alone. You'll be a smaller target and have a better chance of avoiding them. Find the captain and complete the mission. Don't worry about me. That's an order!"

This again.

Chu Hang looked at him, feeling both annoyed and amused, along with an indescribable warmth.

He patted Gabe's hand and shook his head. "Save it, Gabe. First, you're not my commanding officer, so you can't order me around. Second, the Howling Commandos don't abandon any teammate. I don't want to say that a third time."

He paused, took a deep breath, and forced his wildly pounding heart to settle.

The more dangerous things became, the calmer he needed to be. It was the only useful thing he had learned from countless overtime shifts and being pushed around by his boss.

"The map is fake, but our brains aren't." Chu Hang's gaze sharpened again. "Hydra wants to play us, then we'll play with them properly."

He crumpled that damned map into a ball and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he closed his eyes and focused all his attention on his hearing.

The Healing Factor was fundamentally an ability granted by the X-Gene. After copying it, aside from its greatest restorative power, it strengthened Chu Hang's body across the board. The improvement was not huge, but at the very least, his hearing was far sharper than an ordinary person's.

The wind, the soft rustle of snow falling onto leaves, the crack of distant branches snapping beneath the weight of snow... countless tiny sounds flowed into his ears like trickling streams, forming an invisible map of sound in his mind.

Gabe watched Chu Hang with his eyes closed, as though he were listening for something, and did not interrupt. From this young Eastern comrade, he sensed a calmness and reliability that far exceeded his age. That feeling gradually settled his own panicked heart.

Several minutes later, Chu Hang suddenly opened his eyes.

"Follow me!"

He hesitated no longer. He grabbed the sled and turned toward a direction completely opposite to their original plan.

It was a lower-lying depression with denser trees.

"Where are you going?" Gabe asked in confusion.

"To find somewhere truly safe." Chu Hang dragged the sled laboriously through the uneven snow as he explained, "Listen. Isn't there running water upwind from us?"

Gabe listened carefully. Sure enough, between gusts of wind, he could hear an extremely faint rushing sound.

"That river!" Gabe immediately understood. "The river we jumped into when we were hiding from the pursuers earlier!"

"Exactly!" The corner of Chu Hang's mouth lifted. "Hydra's map led us toward a high, open trap zone. And what does that tell us? It tells us that this lower area, closer to the water source, is instead a weak point in their defenses. Because in their eyes, nobody would be stupid enough to head for a river in winter."

"And where there's a river, there are riverbanks. Riverbanks are eroded by flowing water year-round, making them the most likely places for natural caves and rock crevices to form. That's much safer than some man-made Hunter's Cabin!"

Gabe was dumbstruck. He simply could not understand how, in just a few short minutes, Chu Hang's mind had taken so many turns and immediately devised an entirely new plan that sounded damned feasible.

He watched Chu Hang dragging the sled ahead of him. That back was not especially broad, yet at this moment, it appeared incomparably tall and dependable.

The road ahead was much harder than before.

The snow in the depression was deeper, and every step cost Chu Hang tremendous effort. The sled also got caught on roots or rocks from time to time, forcing him to stop and clear the way. His strength drained rapidly, and sweat streamed down his forehead, quickly freezing into a layer of white frost on his brows.

Yet his steps never stopped, nor did he show the slightest panic.

After walking for some time, they finally heard the clear sound of flowing water. Pushing aside the last patch of brush, they found a river roughly seven or eight meters wide before them, not yet completely frozen over.

White mist rose from the river in the frigid air. Along the riverbank, just as Chu Hang had expected, rocks and crevices of all sizes carved out by the current covered the area.

Chu Hang's gaze swept over the surroundings, and he quickly locked onto a target.

At an inconspicuous bend in the riverbank, beneath a massive boulder, was a pitch-black opening concealed by vines and dead grass. It was not large, just enough for a person to stoop and crawl through.

"That's it!"

He pulled the sled to the entrance, cautiously poked his head inside to check, and only called Gabe over after confirming there were no wild animals or other nasty surprises within.

Working together, they got Gabe into the narrow but remarkably dry and warm rock cave.

The cave was small, less than ten square meters, but to two fugitives desperately in need of shelter, it was practically a five-star presidential suite.

Chu Hang moved all their equipment inside, then gathered some dead branches and vines from outside and cleverly camouflaged the entrance. From the outside, no one would ever notice that a cave was hidden there.

Only after finishing all that did Chu Hang finally let out a breath. He slumped against the cold rock wall as though his body had fallen apart, not wanting to move even a finger.

He was exhausted.

Not merely physically, but from the intense strain and drain on his mind.

Gabe looked at his exhausted state, his eyes filled with gratitude and guilt. "Chu, thank you. If it hadn't been for you..."

"Enough, don't say that." Chu Hang waved him off. "We're safe for the moment. Get some proper rest and heal your leg. I need to... I need to figure out how much time we have left."

He closed his eyes, and his consciousness sank into his mind.

That cold countdown was still ticking away tirelessly.

[Superpower Copier] Cooldown Remaining: 2 days 19 hours.

There was not much time left.

He did not know how Captain America was doing, nor did he know where the rest of the Howling Commandos were. He only knew that he had to reach that damned factory within two days.

But now, he had not even figured out the factory's true location, and he still had a severely wounded man with him.

Chu Hang opened his eyes and looked through the cracks in the camouflage covering the cave entrance at the deep night sky beyond, as though dawn would never come. For the first time, he felt a trace of doubt about this mission.

Perhaps Gabe was right.

Perhaps he really should... go alone?