Find Somewhere to Hide

The wind felt like it had been raised by a wicked stepmother, lashing his face until it stung.

Chu Hang could no longer feel the pain at all. Or rather, he had no time to care about how his face felt. His entire focus was on just two things: first, keep his legs moving; second, don't fall.

His lungs were like a bellows full of holes, every breath accompanied by a strange wheezing rasp. The air he inhaled was cold and hard, like countless ice needles piercing his windpipe all the way into his lungs, bringing searing pain.

The Healing Factor had indeed given him endurance and recovery far beyond that of an ordinary person, but it didn't come with after-sales service. It only repaired his body; it didn't care whether he was suffering.

If it had been the Chu Hang from his previous life, the one who had sat in a cubicle until calluses formed on his ass, he would probably already be foaming at the mouth and lying spread-eagled in the snow, waiting for the big dogs behind him to come feast.

But now, he couldn't stop. And he didn't dare stop.

The barking behind him was like the drums of the King of Hell calling for his life, each bark louder and closer than the last. "Woof! Woof woof woof!" The sound carried the excitement of dogs spotting a meaty bone, piercing through the silent snowy forest and traveling far into the distance.

Damn it, what a pack of beasts! Chu Hang cursed inwardly, unsure whether he was cursing the dogs or the Hydra soldiers holding their leashes. Using dogs to track him was practically cheating. No sense of fair play at all.

He didn't dare run in a straight line. That would be nothing but making himself into a live target. He could only rely on his vague memory of the map and deliberately force his way through difficult terrain.

A patch of waist-high shrubs appeared ahead, buried under thick snow. Without thinking, he plunged straight into it. Sharp dead branches snapped and whipped against his military coat, even tearing his trousers and leaving bloody cuts across his legs.

The Healing Factor immediately went to work. A tingling itch rose from his wounds, and they healed in an instant.

After bursting out of the shrubs, he stepped into a deep pit concealed by snow. He lost his balance at once and crashed face-first into the ground, getting a mouthful of icy snow.

"Pah! Pah!" He spat out the snow, not bothering to check whether he was hurt. Scrambling up with both hands and feet, he continued sprinting forward.

He could feel his strength draining away at an alarming rate. His limbs were growing heavier and heavier, as though filled with lead.

He couldn't keep running like this. A man couldn't outrun dogs, especially not across snowy ground this complicated. He had to find a way to shake them off completely.

What could he do?

His mind raced. Climb a tree? No, his target would be too obvious, and the dogs would keep barking beneath it. Then he would be a sitting duck.

The only way was to find somewhere that could completely cut off his scent and tracks.

A river, or... a cave!

A river! His eyes lit up. There seemed to be a small stream covered by thin ice not far away. He immediately changed direction, rushed to the bank, and stepped straight in without hesitation. With a crack, the thin ice shattered, and the freezing stream water instantly submerged his calves.

The cold felt as if it were drilling through the gaps in his bones and into his marrow. Gritting his teeth, he endured the numbing chill and ran downstream through the water for over a hundred meters.

This should throw off those dogs' noses for a while.

He climbed out of the stream, dripping wet. His pant legs had frozen stiff, crackling with every step. He knew he had to find somewhere to hide before his body froze completely.

As he ran, his eyes frantically scanned the surrounding terrain. The moonlight and the snow's reflection allowed him to make out the outlines of most things even in the darkness.

Suddenly, his gaze was drawn to a black cliff face about two hundred meters ahead to the left.

Most of the cliff was bare, but an area near the ground looked unusual.

A particularly dense cluster of low shrubs grew there. The snow piled over them formed a slight outward bulge, making the cliff look as if it had grown a small belly.

In a natural environment, that shape was a little too unnatural.

There was something there!

A surge of hope rose in his heart. He no longer hesitated and used the last of his strength to charge toward the cliff.

The closer he got, the stronger his premonition became. When he finally reached the shrubs, panting heavily, he pushed aside the snow-bent branches and found a pitch-black narrow gap, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways.

The entrance was perfectly concealed by shrubs and snow. If he had not observed so carefully, he would never have discovered this secret entrance even if he had passed by it a hundred times.

He didn't crawl in immediately. Who knew whether some hibernating bear or a family of wolves lived inside? He pressed his ear against the cold rock wall, held his breath, and listened carefully for any movement within.

Everything was silent.

Other than a few droplets falling from the rock wall somewhere inside with soft drips, there was no sound at all.

He leaned close to the entrance and sniffed. The smell of damp soil and stone washed over him, without the distinctive rank stench of wild animals.

It should be safe.

He didn't delay any longer. The barking behind him seemed to have drawn closer again. Clutching the MP40 tightly to his chest, he turned sideways and squeezed laboriously through the narrow gap inch by inch like a stranded loach.

The moment his body fully entered the cave, air completely different from the outside enveloped him. The temperature inside was noticeably higher, and the bone-deep chill outside instantly faded by more than half.

Chu Hang had just begun to sigh in relief when his foot slipped. He tumbled uncontrollably deeper inside. With a bang, he hit the ground hard, nearly losing his grip on the submachine gun in his arms.

Only then did he realize that the ground at the entrance was a smooth slope. Seeping water had frozen into a thin layer of ice over it, making it wet and slippery—a perfect natural trap.

Ignoring the pain in his rear, he struggled to his feet and carefully moved more than ten meters inward with one hand on the rock wall. After rounding a bend, the space before him suddenly opened up.

It was a fairly spacious natural cavern, perhaps half the size of a basketball court. The ceiling was high, with bizarre stalactites hanging down. In the faint light filtering in from the entrance, they bared their fangs and claws like the skeletons of ancient beasts.

He could finally stop.

Chu Hang dropped onto the ground, his back against a huge, icy rock. It was as though every bone had been pulled from his body, and he went completely limp. He gulped down the cave's damp, stale air as the relief of surviving disaster washed over him like a warm sea.

He pulled out the high-energy compressed biscuit he had taken from the Hydra captain, its scent rich with meat, and bit down hard with all his strength.

The biscuit was dry and hard, making his gums ache, but its rich aroma of grain and meat made it feel like the most delicious thing he had ever eaten.

He wolfed down more than half of it, then unscrewed his canteen and took several huge gulps of icy snow water. Only then did the fire burning in his chest gradually subside, and his depleted strength began slowly returning.

Several abrasions and branch cuts on his body had stopped bleeding under the Healing Factor's effects and were beginning to scab over, leaving only an irritating itch.

He pulled out a lighter from his pocket. With a click, a small orange flame flickered to life in the darkness, driving back a patch of the unsettling blackness and bringing a trace of warmth and security.

By the weak firelight, he eagerly pulled out that precious map from his coat and carefully spread it across a dry patch of ground.

The map was crudely drawn, but it lacked none of the crucial information. At its center, "Fabrik" was marked with a huge red-pencil X, like a venomous spider lurking at the center of a web. More than a dozen densely packed dotted lines extended from it, blanketing the entire mountain region. Each was labeled with German words and times.

This was clearly Hydra's patrol network in the area. Chu Hang carefully identified the route he had just taken and realized that he had passed through the largest gap between two patrol routes.

"Damn, fate really was on my side." Looking at the map, Chu Hang broke out in another cold sweat. Only now did he understand how lucky he had been. It was like a precise game of chess, and he, an uninvited piece, had stumbled onto the only path to survival. If he had veered even slightly off course, he would have been like an insect flying into a web, crashing straight into another patrol.

From another pocket, he carefully took out the deep-blue cube.

In the flickering firelight, the fist-sized Energy Block looked even more mysterious. The flowing radiance within it seemed to grow livelier and deeper in response to the flames.

He could clearly sense an incomparably pure, powerful force within it, as though it had existed since the birth of the universe, confined inside this tiny cube.

How was he supposed to use this thing?

Chu Hang turned it over and over several times. He even tried pressing an imaginary switch on it as though he were turning on a television, but naturally, it did absolutely nothing.

He tried focusing his mind as well, hoping to establish some kind of mental connection with it like in the novels. The only result was making himself dizzy; the Energy Block could not even be bothered to react.

"Damn high-tech product, and it doesn't even come with a manual. One-star review!" he muttered, shaking his head helplessly. It seemed he would have to slowly figure out how to use it later.

He carefully wrapped both the Energy Block and the map in oilcloth, then tucked them into the pocket closest to his body. They were his greatest assets for survival now, far more valuable than the MP40.

Just then, faint shouts and barking drifted in from outside the cave. He immediately moved to the gap at the entrance and secretly peered out.

In the distant forest, several flashlight beams swung back and forth. The sounds had become much more distant, and they were moving in the opposite direction from him.

It seemed the stream tactic had worked. They had lost his trail.

Chu Hang let out a long breath and finally relaxed completely.

He was safe. At least for the moment.

An indescribable exhaustion surged through his body like floodwaters bursting through a dam.

His eyelids felt as though two iron blocks hung from them. All he wanted was to lie down and sleep for three days and three nights.

No. He absolutely could not sleep!

He pinched his thigh hard, and the sharp pain instantly cleared his head a little. Falling asleep in this godforsaken place, miles from anywhere, was no different from sticking out his neck and waiting for someone to chop it off.

The pursuers outside could turn back at any moment, and who knew whether unknown dangers lurked deeper inside the cave.

His fierce desire to survive overcame his exhaustion. He forced himself to stand, deciding to thoroughly search the cave before resting and make sure it was completely safe.

He held the loaded MP40 in one hand and the tiny lighter in the other. By its bean-sized flame, which could go out at any moment, he carefully headed deeper into the cave.

The cave was deep, and the ground grew increasingly uneven, littered everywhere with Shatterstone fallen from the ceiling. The air became ever damper and colder. The clear dripping of water echoed through the cavern, amplified into an eerie rhythm that tapped against his tense nerves.

After walking some fifty or sixty meters, he came upon a corner blocking his path. He stopped and pressed himself tightly against the cold rock wall. Like a gecko, he slowly, inch by inch, leaned his head around the corner.

Beyond it, the cave opened into an even broader space, like a vast underground hall. The darkness in the distance was bottomless.

Just as he was about to step forward, his ears suddenly caught an extremely unusual sound.

It was very soft, very faint, almost entirely drowned out by the drip, drip of water.

But Chu Hang's body stiffened in an instant. He was one hundred percent certain that it was neither wind nor water.

It was the scraping sound of some heavy metal object being dragged across a rough stone floor.

"Hiss... scrape..."

The sound came and went, carrying a teeth-grating quality, as though someone were dragging an incredibly heavy rusted iron chain through the darkness of the underground hall ahead.

Chu Hang's body became rigid as stone in an instant. The lighter slipped from his hand with a snap and was extinguished by a droplet falling from above, taking the last trace of light with it.

The surroundings instantly sank into suffocating, absolute darkness.

His heart began pounding wildly again beyond his control, each beat like a heavy hammer smashing into his chest.

There was... someone else in this cave!