Top Warzone Analyst Chapter 65

The only good news tonight was that the heat-resistant material on the outer layer of the roast had held up against this sudden downpour.

Tearing open the tight packaging, the meat inside was still clean.

Cheng Feng sprinkled a pinch of salt, tore off the outermost layer of meat – braised until soft and tender – chewed a couple of times, and swallowed it whole.

The taste was a bit hard to describe – mostly gamey and rank. But then again, for this kind of untreated meat, Cheng Feng hadn’t held out much hope to begin with. In a place as harsh and desolate as this, being able to eat cooked meat already felt like a gift from nature.

…No, it was a gift from San Yao.

Cheng Feng took the sour fruits and wild sour grasses she had picked earlier and ate them together with the meat in large mouthfuls. The random mix of ingredients strangely neutralized some of the gamey tang, making it less unpalatable.

She suddenly felt that the entire day’s bad luck had been redeemed in that bite of meat. Shivering from the cold as she ate, she wrinkled her nose and pulled the thick fur outer layer tighter around herself.

The rain showed no sign of letting up.

The patter against the tarpaulin – now urgent, now slow, now heavy, now light -surrounded the cramped tent with uneven rhythms. It was clear that the thick clouds above were capricious, with no telling when they might drift away with the wind.

Cheng Feng still had most of her mandatory 4-hour rest period left. With a full stomach, she grew drowsy, and the sleepiness she had just shaken off began to creep back over her.

She packed up all the leftover food, stuffed it into her bag, and checked every corner of the tent to make sure there were no signs of leaks. Then she simply rested her head on her backpack and fell asleep again.

Though no one had expected a downpour to strike in the middle of the night, Cheng Feng had been especially cautious in choosing her sleeping spot.

It was relatively dry and on higher ground, so there was little risk of serious flooding. It also kept her away from deceptively harmless but actually dangerous insect gathering spots.

More importantly, the open view made it easier to detect distant threats, allowing for a timely retreat.

This was why she had pushed herself to the brink of exhaustion despite her injuries – just to find a suitable place to spend the night.

Cheng Feng had also used ropes to tie the corners of the tent to nearby tree trunks. Even if the tent pegs were to loosen from the rain-soaked, softened soil and pull out of the ground, the tent wouldn’t be blown away by the wind – unless the waterproof fabric itself got torn.

But with Alliance materials, that probably wasn’t something she needed to worry about.

In terms of hardware, Cheng Feng was likely among the better-off candidates.

Others had to make do with mud, leaves, or thin scraps of fabric to keep warm. Cheng Feng at least had a thick fur pelt she had hunted that noon.

Still, even that couldn’t fully block out the damp, chilly cold rising from the ground.

Cheng Feng curled up into a ball, her breath puffing out in white mist, and fell asleep shivering.

Meanwhile, Jiang Linxia, Xin Kuang, and a few others were frantically trying to get their camp in order.

Some were preparing to distill rainwater for drinking the next day, while others were exercising to fend off the bitter cold.

Among them, Jiang Linxia’s feed was the most entertaining.

His hands were busy, but his mouth never stopped. The scorching midday heat had already left his lips dry and peeling, yet that still couldn’t curb his urge to complain – he had turned what should have been a solo survival game into a one-man crosstalk show.

The audience in the comment section was quick to speak up for him.

For a uniquely gifted talent like Jiang Linxia, his starting gear absolutely deserved four bottles of water! Anything less would be a total loss!

Netizens hopped between various livestreams and couldn’t help but feel that Cheng Feng’s survival style was particularly strange. No matter what kind of predicament she faced, there was always this unreal sense of ease about her.

When the sky was about to fall, she’d stubbornly roll up her sleeves and prop it up. If it didn’t fall, then it was just a wilderness hiking trip.

No anxiety, no fear, no anger – and the most outrageous part was, she didn’t even curse.

Was that really appropriate? This was a serious blow to the proud tradition of foul-mouthed military university students.

“Cheng Feng has such a strong heart. She woke up, ate a bit, and went back to sleep. Does she even remember this is an unhabitable zone? Will I ever get to see her make an exaggerated anime face in my lifetime?”

“In this kind of low temperature, it’d be even worse if your clothes got soaked by the rain. You think other players don’t want to just hole up and sleep in a tent? But if they picked the wrong spot, they simply can’t.”

“I want a home~ a place that won’t get blown away by the wind~”

“This cold snap is probably going to take out thirty percent of the students outright. I see a lot of people have caught a cold status on their stat panels. The unlucky ones even got heatstroke at noon. Dragging those kinds of broken bodies, can they even last the next two days? I doubt it.”

“As long as they can hold onto their last breath, they’ll pass the level and graduate with honors! I believe they definitely brought a giant bottle of fast-acting heart pills!”

“Xiang Yunjian’s teammates really are all lone wolves. Students from the other military universities changed their strategy ages ago – they rendezvous as soon as they enter the instance. Now they’re huddling together for warmth.”

Since the players’ sleeping hours were just too boring, the livestream moderators, in order to keep viewers around, simply switched to corresponding livestreams based on what people were chatting about – hitchhiking on their traffic.

And so, in the next moment, several images of players huddled together for warmth flashed briefly across the screen. The comment section fell silent.

“Uh… two grown men hugging each other for warmth… feels kind of weird.”

“The girls from the command department next door are also hugging each other for warmth, and even cheek-to-cheek. Why aren’t you calling them weird?”

“People are freezing to death, and all you care about is whether they’re hugging?”

The moderator knew exactly how to keep people happy. The next moment, they cut to a scene of a candidate pointing at the sky and cursing furiously.

Purple lightning twisted and tore across the night sky. The booming thunder echoed layer upon layer through the forest, creating a cinematic xianxia-style spectacle – as if the lightning was about to strike down upon their heads and reduce mere mortals to ashes in a heavenly tribulation.

The camera whipped in for a close-up, capturing Song Zheng’s face – pale as a ghost.

The audience’s reaction instantly heated up.

Intrigued, the moderator switched to a few more unlucky candidates’ feeds to give the viewers a real treat.

For example, one student happily trotted off looking for shelter from the rain, only to turn a corner and come face-to-face with a large predator.

Another young man had been resting while hanging from a tree, but his rope slipped, sending him straight into a puddle and soaking him completely.

Then there was a once-in-a-generation prodigy who, trying to ward off the cold, decided to mimic hibernation and buried himself in dirt – only to nearly drown because he didn’t log back in on time after the rain started…

The dear viewers were satisfied.

Everyone’s nightlife turned out to be quite eventful.

Two hours later, after the diligent moderator had led the viewers on a full rounds inspection, Cheng Feng’s pre-set alarm went off right on time.

With that, she had successfully maxed out her mandatory rest period, giving her free rein for the next 24 hours.

The first thing Cheng Feng did upon waking was check her character panel.

Thankfully – no cold.

She rubbed her hands together, pulled up her collar, buried her face into it, then reached up and opened the tent flap.

Outside, the sky wasn’t yet fully bright, but the heavy rain had already stopped. The ground was littered with scattered twigs and fallen leaves, all of them soaked through – making it very inconvenient to start a fire.

When the rain first started, Cheng Feng had managed to grab some dry branches, but they had since absorbed moisture. She tried several times to light a fire but failed each time, only managing to produce thick smoke.

Cheng Feng decided to give up on the fire altogether. She packed up her things and set off while it was still night.

Tied to the back of her backpack were two bottles of collected rainwater. The tent’s waterproof sheet had also been crumpled up and used to hold a small amount of standing water, which she planned to distill and purify once the sky cleared.

The rain-soaked forest had become much gentler. The wind wasn’t as fierce as before, though it still blew bitterly cold.

After her sleep, Cheng Feng felt fully recharged. She turned on her light and broke into a steady jog. Once her body started warming up, the biting cold didn’t seem quite so unbearable anymore.

Traveling at night proved far more efficient than during the day. For one thing, her sweat output was much better controlled, and the drain on her character panel’s stats was significantly reduced.

After more than two hours of jogging with her load, the first rays of dawn spilled across the horizon, accompanied by a flock of fluttering birds.

Cheng Feng controlled her breathing as she walked, watching the blurry dark shapes on either side gradually reveal the veins of their leaves in the morning light. The shadowy, indistinct jungle began to show its true vitality.

Not until the view gradually opened up – when the scenery in the distance shifted from an overwhelming dominance of lush green to sparsely vegetated dirt mounds – did she know she was about to leave the dense forest terrain and step into a new leg of her journey.

The temperature rose again, and Cheng Feng couldn’t help but recall the agony of being scorched by the fierce sun the day before.

She stopped, deciding to solve the water issue before entering the new map.

At the border between the two maps, it seemed there had been no rain the previous night. Cheng Feng gathered some dry branches and built three makeshift stoves, placing every container she had on top of them.

For the sake of convenience, she would only boil the rainwater. As for the collected standing water, she covered it with a layer of absorbent cloth and waited for it to evaporate through boiling.

While she was sitting by the roadside watching the fire boil water, Cheng Feng’s communicator – which had been silent all day – suddenly crackled with static.

The unexpected red light indicator caught Cheng Feng off guard. She checked the signal several times to make sure she wasn’t imagining it.

“Hello?” Cheng Feng pressed her earpiece and called out loudly. “Who is this?”

The person on the other end didn’t answer. Instead, they sent her a location pin.

Less than two kilometers away from her.

“Wait for me. I’ll come find you as soon as I finish boiling the water.” Cheng Feng was visibly pleased, which manifested in an increase in unnecessary chatter. “Is this rainwater here drinkable? Will it give me a negative status effect if I drink it? If it’s fine, then I won’t bother boiling it.”

The person’s voice was hoarse. It took several seconds before they replied on the channel, and even then, they sounded utterly feeble.

“No idea. I’ve drunk a lot of it, anyway.”

“Yan Shen?”

That raspy, bellows-like voice – Cheng Feng almost didn’t recognize him.

She immediately threw two more handfuls of branches into the fire and decided to let it boil a while longer.

Short of acid rain, nothing else could have caused such severe consequences.

Five minutes later, seeing that the black dot on the locator had barely moved, Cheng Feng packed up her things and took the initiative to go meet Yan Shen.

From a distance, Cheng Feng spotted a tall figure, head lowered, making his way toward her.

His staggering, unsteady steps made Cheng Feng’s eyelids twitch with a sense of foreboding. She raised her arm in greeting, but before she could make a sound, the young man pitched forward and collapsed straight to the ground.

Cheng Feng frowned, jogged over, turned the young man’s face toward her, confirmed that he did indeed look exactly like Yan Shen, then stepped back in confusion.

…Was it too late to pretend she hadn’t seen anything?

Dropping a giant burden on her doorstep first thing in the morning – surely that wasn’t necessary?