Black suddenly gave the order.
Su Wei hesitated for a moment.
In this kind of weather, handling the cold metal of a gun without gloves carries a high risk of frostbite.
"Take it off."
Su Wei gritted his teeth and ripped off his tactical gloves.
"Close your eyes."
Su Wei closed his eyes as instructed.
When vision is cut off, other senses are amplified instantly in the darkness.
The biting cold wind cut directly into the backs of my bare hands and cheeks.
The fingers quickly lost warmth from the skin, becoming stiff and tingling.
Tell me, where is the wind blowing from?
Black's voice drifted in and out of sight on the wind.
"Left... left front."
Su Wei answered, his teeth chattering slightly.
"Wrong."
Suddenly, Black grabbed a handful of snow and threw it violently at Su Wei's face.
"Feel it with your skin. Don't try to guess with your brain. Feel the weight of the wind, feel its temperament."
The icy snowflakes mixed with the fierce wind lashed against my face, stinging painfully.
Su Wei forced himself not to think about the cold, but instead calmed his mind to discern that invisible force.
The wind is not uniform.
It is in pieces.
Some areas are heavy, pressing against the cheeks.
In some places, it's light, brushing past the earlobe.
The pressure on my left cheek fluctuated, not from a continuous breeze, but from wave after wave of impacts and tearing.
"Now, where is the wind?"
"The left side... is rotating."
Su Wei's voice trembled slightly, but he noticed it.
"It crashed into the corner of the cabin wall, rolled back, and formed a vortex."
"Very good."
Black's voice lowered slightly.
"This is what data can't tell you. The dead believe in dead data, the living believe in their own bodies. In the wilderness, you don't aim your gun with your eyes, you aim with every hair on your body, with your bones."
"Open your eyes."
Su Wei suddenly opened his eyes; a layer of white frost had formed on his eyelashes.
Black bent down and picked up a piece of birch bark about the size of his palm from the snow.
These are fragments that flew off when I was chopping firewood, and they've long since frozen solid like iron.
"Since you can't see the shape of the wind, then hit something that can be blown by the wind."
Black raised his hand and forcefully threw the birch bark into the air.
The light, fluttering bark was immediately taken over by the gale.
Instead of falling, it suddenly shot upwards, then was swept to the right by a crosswind, tumbling and darting erratically in the air.
Its trajectory is completely unpredictable, making it hundreds of times more difficult to predict than the stationary copper cartridge case.
"Smash it."
Su Wei raised their guns.
[Motion capture enabled]
[Trajectory calculation in progress... Correction... Correction... Correction...]
The golden trail reappeared.
But this time, the golden line pulsed wildly in my field of vision.
The system attempts to calculate the point where the bark lands, but each time the bark flips in the wind, it changes the area exposed to the wind, causing the trajectory to be drastically corrected every 0.1 seconds.
Seeing nothing but darting golden threads, Su Wei felt dizzy and nauseous.
It's impossible to aim.
If you follow the line, you'll always be a step behind.
Su Wei gritted his teeth, his gun barrel chasing after the dark figure dancing wildly in the wind and snow.
"Get out of here."
He roared inwardly, forcibly ignoring the wildly jumping golden lines, even as the data stream on his retina refreshed like a waterfall.
He focused all his attention on the sensations coming from his left cheek and fingers.
The wind suddenly picked up.
The stinging sensation on my left cheek intensified instantly.
A strong gust of wind was passing by, pressing down on us.
The bark is rising now.
Due to inertia, it will continue upwards.
But the wind that Su Wei sensed would soon catch up with it.
Once it catches up, the bark will be instantly crushed and violently flung to the right.
That was the prediction the wind told him.
Instead of aiming the gun at the tree bark, Su Wei suddenly swung it sharply to the lower right, aiming it at the empty expanse of snow and wind.
There was nothing there.
But he felt there might be something there.
Just as he pulled the trigger, the anticipated gust of wind arrived.
The tree bark in the air seemed to have been slapped hard, falling suddenly from its height and crashing right into the sights that Su Wei had set up.
"Bang."
Gunshots rang out amidst the storm.
The frozen bark exploded into a cloud of flying sawdust in mid-air, then was swept away by the wind and disappeared without a trace.
[Complete Advanced Dynamic Shooting (Instinctive Shooting)]
[ Hunting Module Experience +45]
Su Wei lowered the muzzle of his gun, panting heavily, white steam billowing from his mouth and nose.
That last shot took more mental effort than an hour of workout at the Fitness.
That's the brain's overload response after processing a massive amount of sensory information in a very short time.
That feeling was wonderful.
At the moment he fired, he seemed to reach a brief understanding with the wind; the system was no longer the master, but had become a supporting backdrop.
Black stood to the side, watching the direction where the sawdust disappeared. His cold, hard face showed no approval; he simply nodded slightly.
"I guessed right once."
Black turned around.
"But that's not enough. Bears don't float in the air like tree bark, but they're faster than tree bark in the forest, and they can kill."
"Also, you're firing while standing. What's your heart rate? Eighty? Ninety?"
Black glanced at Su Wei.
"On the north slope, you have to crawl for kilometers through snow that's above your knees. When you see that bear, your heart will be pounding over 150. Your lungs will feel like they're on fire. At that moment, can you still calmly feel the wind?"
Black didn't give Su Wei time to process the shot.
He pointed to the dark pine forest in the distance.
"Put on gloves. Even polar hunters aren't stupid enough to freeze their hands."
Su Wei quickly put on his gloves, which were already stiff from the cold. Sensation in his fingers was slowly returning, accompanied by a stinging pain.
"Go into the woods."
Black grabbed a handful of red strips of cloth from the wicker basket.