Chapter 205
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Fu Xuezhou was buried under a half-meter-thick ice layer, his upper body naked. His eyes were tightly closed, as if sleeping, and his remaining right arm hugged the black down jacket tightly, like embracing a lover.
His skin had a deathly pale color, with patches of blue and purple frostbite visible from his face to his waist. Fu Xuezhou’s body also had several holes pierced by the tendrils of the Anomaly Lord, revealing bones and internal organs. These were the injuries Fu Xuezhou suffered before being pushed into the extreme cold h*ll.
Lou Yan had never seen Fu Xuezhou in such a miserable state before. He called out tentatively, “….Fu Xuezhou?”
Fu Xuezhou laid calmly in the ice, his silver hair spread out behind him, clearly visible. The whole person seemed like a lifelike, exquisite, and lifeless oil painting buried under the ice surface.
It looked as though he was already dead.
Lou Yan reached out towards Fu Xuezhou’s hand, which extended out from the ice layer and held onto the backpack, wanting to try if Fu Xuezhou still had a pulse. However, as soon as his hand touched Fu Xuezhou’s fingers, there was a “crack,” and Fu Xuezhou’s fingers were unexpectedly broken by his touch.
Lou Yan was startled and quickly pulled back his hand, his face changing color as he raised his voice, “Sanxin!”
“Coming, coming!” Li Sanxin hurried over, panting, and then exclaimed in shock, “Lou Yan, is this… Fu… Fu Xuezhou?!”
He stared at the silver-haired man in the ice, almost speechless with disbelief, “How… how could Fu Xuezhou be frozen in the ice?!”
Could he still be saved?
“I accidentally touched his hand and his fingers broke off!” Lou Yan exclaimed, “What’s going on?!”
“Keep calm, keep calm,” Li Sanxin surveyed Fu Xuezhou from head to toe, his heart sinking, but he tried to stay calm and said, “He’s already frozen stiff. When we dig him out of the ice, we have to be careful, or we might accidentally break both the ice and him, then it will be really hard to save him.”
In reality, Li Sanxin was drumming up his courage. He already felt that Fu Xuezhou couldn’t be saved.
Fu Xuezhou had even taken off his down jacket and was frozen bare-chested. This was the hallucinatory heat sensation that appears before a person freezes to death. Only when it’s extremely cold would such “abnormal undressing” occur.
Looking at the wounds, frostbite, and the motionless chest of Fu Xuezhou… even if Li Sanxin wasn’t a doctor, he could judge from a normal person’s perspective that Fu Xuezhou had stopped breathing.
A living person couldn’t be frozen in the ice and still survive. Not to mention being frozen to death, just the lack of oxygen would suffocate him to death.
But Li Sanxin didn’t voice his speculation. He knew Lou Yan understood these principles. Yet, Lou Yan still called him over, a veterinarian who wasn’t a professional doctor, for one reason only.
That reason was, when one holds onto the hope that the other person is still alive, they urgently call for a doctor, hoping to get a professional and positive answer from the doctor’s mouth.
Li Sanxin sighed inwardly, barely keeping a glimmer of hope in his heart. What if Fu Xuezhou wasn’t a normal person and still had hope of being alive?
Li Sanxin put down his belongings, placed the snow candle near Fu Xuezhou’s head, and then took out a small file from his backpack. “Yanzi, stop daydreaming, let’s quickly dig him out. Remember, we have to be careful!”
Lou Yan nodded silently, put down his things, and pulled Li Sanxin’s collar, pulling him back. “You step back, I’ll break the ice above first.”
He knelt down on one knee on the ice, bone spurs emerging from his palms. Lou Yan gripped the bone spurs and pierced into the ice, quickly breaking it apart.
Li Sanxin helped move the broken ice aside. After a few minutes, the ice above Fu Xuezhou had been cleared by the two of them, leaving only a five-centimeter thick layer of ice encasing Fu Xuezhou.
Lou Yan and Li Sanxin carefully lifted Fu Xuezhou along with the ice and began to clear the remaining ice fragments, slowly melting the residual ice with the candlelight from the snow candle.
With their efforts, the ice soon melted into water. To make it easier to rescue him, both of them removed their thick gloves. Li Sanxin carefully wiped away the water marks and ice fragments. Finally, he was able to touch Fu Xuezhou. The moment he touched Fu Xuezhou, Li Sanxin shivered from the cold.
Fu Xuezhou’s body was really cold, stiff like a thousand-year-old ice block. Touching him sent chills from Li Sanxin’s palms to his entire body.
Li Sanxin began to doubt once again. Could Fu Xuezhou really be revived?
He glanced secretly at Lou Yan, who was cleaning the ice around Fu Xuezhou’s upper body. Lou Yan’s movements were steady, but his expression was unreadable.
Sigh.
Li Sanxin continued to clear the ice around Fu Xuezhou’s lower body. Gradually, Fu Xuezhou’s body softened under the candlelight and began to secrete a lot of water, wetting his lower body clothes.
When Li Sanxin and Lou Yan came to rescue him, they had already anticipated this issue with the clothes, so they had prepared dry clothing for Fu Xuezhou in advance. Li Sanxin carefully rolled up Fu Xuezhou’s trousers, took off his shoes, but his movements became slower and his expression became more sympathetic and hesitant.
Although he didn’t have much interaction with Fu Xuezhou, from the few times they met, Fu Xuezhou had left an impression of being an absolute powerhouse, a predator standing at the top of the food chain, and even a terrifying and vigilant image of a world-destroying demon. But now, Fu Xuezhou’s toes were frostbitten, and his legs had various degrees of localized frostbite, mostly severe, with some moderate, and even had blisters and blood blisters formed by frostbite.
It was very miserable, very ugly, and enough to imagine how much pain Fu Xuezhou had endured before he fell into a coma.
But for Fu Xuezhou, perhaps the pain and misery on his body were the least of his concerns, and what he cared about the most, and what he wouldn’t let go of even if he died… Li Sanxin looked at the black down jacket and the tightly held backpack in Fu Xuezhou’s arms until now.
Fu Xuezhou had experienced hallucinatory heat due to being frozen, and indeed took off his clothes abnormally because of it. But he didn’t throw away the clothes as other frozen people did. Instead, he held them tightly in his arms, showing how important they were to him. Perhaps, before death, no, before falling into a coma, Fu Xuezhou still retained his clear rationality. In other words, this person was aware of everything he felt while being frozen.
Thinking of this, Li Sanxin, the sentimental soft-hearted person, couldn’t bear it anymore. His impression of Fu Xuezhou had lowered significantly due to sympathy. He finished dealing with these injuries in a hurry, sighed, and stood up, “Yanzi, you come and change Fu Xuezhou’s lower body clothes. I’ll clean up the wounds on his upper body.”
Lou Yan and Li Sanxin switched positions. Seeing Fu Xuezhou’s frostbitten toes and legs, Lou Yan pursed his lips, feeling somewhat depressed as he removed Fu Xuezhou’s lower body clothes and replaced them with dry and warm new ones, layer by layer.
Lou Yan had never been so careful and meticulous in dressing Fu Xuezhou, or it could be said that he had never dressed anyone like this before. His movements were awkward and clumsy, but very careful and cautious, never injuring Fu Xuezhou’s body even the slightest bit, like he did with the broken finger before.
After changing Fu Xuezhou’s lower body clothes, Lou Yan also changed his upper body clothes. The whole process was actually quite complicated, but Lou Yan, unusually patient, even tied Fu Xuezhou’s silver long hair, mixed with broken ice, into a hat.
After doing all this, the snow candle was only one-third left.
Lou Yan carefully took the backpack from Fu Xuezhou’s tightly clenched hand and then carried Fu Xuezhou on his back, gesturing for Li Sanxin to pick up the snow candle. “Let’s go, it’s time to go back.”
Li Sanxin hesitated.
While cleaning Fu Xuezhou’s wounds just now, he had taken the opportunity to feel Fu Xuezhou’s pulse and heartbeat and had confirmed that Fu Xuezhou had no physiological response… Fu Xuezhou was already dead. He looked at Lou Yan, who was still treating Fu Xuezhou as if he were alive, and felt a dull pain in his heart.
“Yanzi, Fu Xuezhou may not be saved—”
“Don’t say it, Li Sanxin.” Lou Yan interrupted him, already starting to walk out with Fu Xuezhou on his back. His voice sounded calm, but his pace was hurried, “Don’t say that.”
Li Sanxin opened his mouth but then closed it dejectedly, picking up the backpack and Fu Xuezhou’s tightly held down jacket from the ground and followed.
A long shadow fell from Lou Yan’s lowered eyelashes, and the person on his back had no warmth or movement, his hands hanging in front of his chest, swaying slightly, no different from a corpse. Lou Yan felt strange. Clearly, Fu Xuezhou’s weight wasn’t heavy, clearly, this weight wasn’t much for him, but he felt each step was heavy. It was as if an insurmountable mountain had been added to his back, making his breathing uncomfortable, his lungs deprived of air.
Was Fu Xuezhou dead?
It seemed like he was dead.
But he shouldn’t be.
How could he be dead?
Lou Yan didn’t know what kind of feeling he had. He clearly didn’t have such deep feelings for Fu Xuezhou, he clearly had been celebrating Fu Xuezhou’s death just ten days ago, but why did he feel so empty and lost now?
All other sounds faded away from him, and he could only hear the slow beating of his own heart and the sound of his feet stepping on the snow, quiet and lonely as if he were the only living person in the world.
Fu Xuezhou’s body was so cold, so cold that it penetrated through Lou Yan’s clothes, almost freezing his internal organs.
Lou Yan walked down the mountainside step by step with Fu Xuezhou on his back. Suddenly, he opened his mouth and asked, “…Have the food in Fu Xuezhou’s backpack been used?”
Lou Yan’s voice had become hoarse at some point. When this sentence reached Li Sanxin’s ears, it inexplicably brought tears to his eyes. He quickly lowered his head and rummaged through Fu Xuezhou’s backpack, finding a box of empty candies and a bottle of almost empty liquor.
Then Li Sanxin was surprised to find that the other compressed biscuits, chocolates, and some canned goods had not been opened at all. Fu Xuezhou had only eaten the candies.
Li Sanxin frowned, puzzled and somewhat exasperated. “Fu Xuezhou only ate a box of candies and drank a bottle of liquor. Why didn’t he eat anything else? What was he thinking? If he had eaten something, he could have endured a little longer!”
Lou Yan paused his steps. He looked at Fu Xuezhou’s frostbitten hands hanging in front of him and closed his eyes. He thought, he probably knew why.
“Because sweetness can make people happy.” Once, Lou Yan asked Fu Xuezhou why he loved eating candies so much. The silver-haired man lightly lifted Lou Yan’s chin and, with lips containing a piece of lychee-flavored candy, gently kissed Lou Yan’s lips, sighing softly between their lips, “To survive, people need a little sweetness to dilute the bitterness.”
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