Chapter 3: Welcome to CrossFire

“Awooo—”
The blind giant wolf threw back its head and howled, as if summoning its nearby packmates. Then it shot a mocking glance at Xing Xiaolong, its wolfish eyes narrowing, as if ridiculing this human's ignorance.

Without warning, it lunged, biting and tearing with wild ferocity.

But its target was no longer the hiding Xing Xiaolong, nor the warped metal roof above him, but rather the two rows of seats that boxed him in on either side.

The passenger seats of the aircraft were mostly made of soft materials—plastic, fabric, and leather—with only a small portion of metal in their structure. The strength of a prairie wolf wasn’t enough to pry open the crevice, nor could it dismantle the deformed cabin walls, but if it could bite away all the soft parts of the seats, it would effectively widen the gap and grant access.

Three other prairie wolves, still feasting on blood nearby, heard the blind giant wolf’s howl. Sensing their companion’s rage, they dropped their meals at once and rushed over, joining in the frenzied destruction of the aircraft seats.

Though the two rows of seats looked sturdy, they could not withstand the combined assault of four furious giant wolves for more than a few minutes.

In the blink of an eye, most of the soft outer layers of the first row had been torn away. The wolves’ foul, stinking jaws, reeking so strongly it was nauseating, were now separated from Xing Xiaolong by less than fifty centimeters of the second row of seats.

Facing four gaping, bloodstained maws, with his left arm mangled to the bone and his right leg broken beneath a crushed seat during the crash, Xing Xiaolong had no way out. His face was ashen.

Even though he had once been a soldier, his willpower a notch above the ordinary, he still could not suppress the overwhelming terror that death brought.

All he could do was force his battered, exhausted, and wounded body deeper into the narrow gap, even though his back was already pressed hard against the unyielding cabin roof. Still, he did not stop the futile effort.

He only wished to put as much distance as possible between himself and those savage jaws, to live even a minute longer.

Perhaps a minute more would be enough for rescue to arrive. Perhaps he, Xing Xiaolong, could escape death abroad, could yet survive this disaster.

But hope is beautiful, and reality is cruel.

Three minutes passed.

The first row of seats, and the second row beside it, were now stripped down to their innermost steel frames. The gap, now thirty centimeters wide, was more than enough for most of a wolf’s body to slide through with ease.

In that final moment, as death loomed, what is the limit of human fear?

Xing Xiaolong had never known before, but now he understood.

Every muscle in his body trembled with terror, feeding him the inescapable knowledge of his impending fate.

He did not wet himself as characters do in movies, nor did he faint dead away.

He didn’t flail about like a madman, nor did he sob and scream in heart-wrenching agony.

Yet, somehow, all of these were present within him.

Xing Xiaolong’s mind was now blank, his ability to think vanished. He babbled whatever came to his lips, seeming more like a lunatic driven mad by terror.

“Damn it, is this really how it ends? Torn apart alive by wolves? That’s gotta hurt—haha—maybe I should stick my head out first, let them bite that right away, it’ll be over quick and the body won’t hurt as much.
Ah, what a pity, I’m still a virgin. If I’d known, I’d have been bolder last night, taken advantage of that rich lady Su after she got drunk, then… no, no, I couldn’t, not even then.
What a loss. I thought tagging along as her bodyguard would be easy money, enough to marry a gorgeous woman with big curls when I got back. Who’d have thought I’d end up as wolf food halfway there.
Wait, where is that rich woman Su anyway? Haven’t seen her the whole time. Maybe she’s already been eaten. Well, that’s better than being scared half to death before you die. Still, what a waste… her figure was really… tsk, tsk, tsk.”

Xing Xiaolong’s eyes were vacant. He alternated between laughter and curses, muttering to himself, and even grinned foolishly at some pleasant memory, as if he’d entirely forgotten the cause of his madness.

The bloodstained jaws were drawing ever closer.

Barring a miracle, within the next minute, with a crippled leg and a useless arm, Xing Xiaolong would be dragged out by the giant wolves.

Torn apart, devoured, and returned to the earth as fertilizer.

When less than ten centimeters separated him from the wolves, the hot, fetid breath of the giant wolf jolted Xing Xiaolong out of his delirium and back to grim reality.

And now, it seemed, he had accepted his fate completely.

No more babbling madness, no pitiful begging.

Instead, he found a strange calm.

Calmly, he faced the enormous wolf’s head, gazed into its eyes, watched its lips quiver, and the thick ropes of saliva stringing between its snapping teeth, listened to its guttural growls like a battered bellows, and simply waited for the final moment to come.

But just then—

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Two orbs of light suddenly appeared out of thin air.

One gold, one silver; the gold on the left, the silver on the right.

“Huh? What’s this… Is this that legendary clarity before death? Or is it the soul’s light they talk about in documentaries, only visible at the very brink of death?”

Xing Xiaolong, already resigned to dying, was not surprised or frightened by the appearance of the two glowing spheres. Instead, he peered at them with curiosity.

Perhaps because his attention was now fixed on the lights, he failed to notice that the wolf’s head, just ten centimeters away, had gone utterly still. The rasping growls had vanished.

Even the torrential rain and the lightning snaking across the sky were now frozen in place, as if someone had pressed pause on a movie.

Xing Xiaolong alone remained in motion within this still world, his curiosity prompting him to slowly reach out toward the golden orb.

A silent, soundless crash!

The instant his fingertip brushed the orb, the golden sphere shattered into a rain of gold, pushing the silver sphere aside into a small corner, and morphing into a single, hazy, pixelated square screen.

The screen itself was blurred, but a line of text stood out clearly along its edge:

[Welcome to Crossfire. Please enter a nickname below. You may use up to six Chinese characters, or twelve English letters. No special symbols allowed!]

“Crossfire? The game? ...”

Staring at these familiar words, Xing Xiaolong, who thought he was witnessing the world of the dying, was instantly dumbfounded.