After all, this wasn't the first time he had died.
He figured heaven wouldn't give him a second chance!
It would be far too foolish to lose his life just to get home a few hours earlier.
He had to spend another night here.
He would set out as soon as day broke tomorrow.
Having made his decision, Su Wei calmed down instead.
He rolled his aching shoulders and was about to start a fire and cook, treating himself and Cotton Candy, who was already drooling beside him.
Just then.
A blinding red light tore across the distant horizon without warning.
The flare shot upward, tracing a fleeting arc across the gray-white sky.
Then came a muffled bang.
A cloud of red smoke burst open at its highest point.
A distress flare.
Su Wei froze in the middle of everything he was doing.
He stood rooted to the spot, still clutching the venison tenderloin he had been about to put in the pot, his mind blank.
The red smoke quickly dispersed in the icy wind, but that flash of red remained etched in his mind.
Deep in this wilderness, where he had thought there were only wild beasts and himself.
There was someone else.
And that person had run into potentially deadly trouble.
Chapter 23: Reuniting with Emily, His Childhood Sweetheart from His Memories
"Whoosh!"
A piercing sound came from the distant mountain forest.
Red smoke burst open against the gray-white sky. After a brief, dazzling flash, it was swiftly scattered by the icy wind.
Silence returned to the surroundings.
Su Wei stopped what he was doing.
He was still clutching the venison tenderloin he had meant to treat himself to.
Ice crystals on the meat stung his fingertips, and cold spread along his skin, but he couldn't spare it a thought now.
Someone.
Was calling for help!
He had thought this trip into the wilderness would be nothing more than an initial exploration.
He hadn't expected that, not only would he harvest Devil's Claw and hunt a black-tailed deer,
he would even encounter someone calling for help!
And that person had already resorted to their last means of calling for help.
A signal flare.
The red smoke meant they had run into serious trouble.
They urgently needed rescue.
That meant deadly trouble.
Should he go or not?
A voice roared in his head.
Don't go!
This was the Alaskan wilderness, not a park.
Everyone had to take responsibility for their own actions.
Interfering in someone else's trouble without a second thought would only get him killed too.
In the wilderness, the first rule a lone traveler had to follow
was not to get involved in other people's trouble without good reason.
Because it could very well cost him his own life.
This was the wilderness, not a city.
No internet, no people.
Only himself.
Besides.
The spoils he had just sorted were supplies worth nearly ten thousand dollars, his hope of keeping his house.
An avalanche? A fall off a cliff? Or an encounter with a brown bear?
Whatever it was, it wasn't something a beginner with an old-fashioned rifle could handle.
Save someone?
Don't end up becoming the second fool who needs rescuing.
That was the rational choice.
But...
He couldn't get that fading flash of red out of his head.
He remembered the despair of waking up in the wilderness when he had first transmigrated.
Without the system, he would have been a corpse buried beneath a blizzard.
He had experienced the helplessness of being just one step away from death.
"Fuck."
Su Wei cursed under his breath and tossed the venison tenderloin back onto the sled.
He couldn't turn a blind eye.
That flash of red had reminded him that, in this place where the weak were meat for the strong, he was still human.
In this world where only the law of the jungle remained, he didn't want to become a beast concerned only with his own survival.
Of course, he wasn't going to gamble with his own life, either.
He would scout it out.
Take a look, then decide.
Su Wei narrowed his eyes and quickly retraced the flare's trajectory and angle in his mind.
It had been fired straight up and burst at its highest point.
Not too far away.
At his speed, if he traveled as fast as he could, it would take about thirty or forty minutes.
An acceptable distance.
If the person was merely lost or lightly injured, he could lend a hand.
But if the situation was beyond his abilities, like facing an enraged brown bear...
Then he would turn around and leave immediately.
Staying alive was the guiding principle behind everything he did.
With his mind made up, Su Wei immediately moved faster.
Leaving the pile of spoils alone, he covered the entire sled with a waterproof tarp, then piled a ring of snow blocks around it to hide it.
Next, he quickly poured all the freshly boiled water from the pot into his insulated flask.
In an environment of minus twenty degrees, hot water was life.
He dug a spare set of woolen underwear and a down liner out of his hiking pack and stuffed them into a waterproof bag.
Hypothermia was the greatest enemy in a wilderness rescue amid wind and snow.
A medical kit, high-calorie chocolate, beef jerky, spare ammunition.
Finally, he coiled the twenty-odd meters of nylon rope left over from making the sled and slung it over himself.
"Cotton Candy."
He called sharply to the little fox, who was circling anxiously at his feet.
The little one immediately looked up, ice-blue eyes full of confusion.
"Come on, time to work."