"Second rule confirmed: If body temperature falls below thirty-four degrees, you will be classified as dead matter and subject to consumption."
The voice was flat, devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
Jiang Nuan felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.
Thirty-four degrees.
Normal human body temperature is between thirty-six and thirty-seven degrees.
But the temperature in this zone was still dropping. She could already feel her fingers going numb.
In other words, if she got cold enough, those things pressed against the car windows would treat her like a corpse waiting to be disposed of.
And then eat her.
Had the planner of this world been fired from a game company before coming up with these twisted rules?
First rule: don't be alone. Second rule: don't get cold.
You have to huddle together for warmth and maintain your body temperature? Why not just write, "All survivors please gather and do a group dance"?
She couldn't laugh.
The members of Zero Squad probably never dropped below thirty-four degrees.
Qinian radiated heat like a furnace. Jiang Ce looked completely unaffected.
But she was an ordinary person.
She got cold. She was getting cold.
This meant that the farther she stayed from them, the closer she got to death. The closer she stayed to them, the safer she was.
The rules of this zone felt like a cage tailor-made for her.
All it took was a steady drop in temperature, and she'd come running back to them on her own.
The voice on the communicator continued. The background noise had changed.
Bang—
A muffled gunshot cut through the static on the channel, followed by the shrill, piercing shriek of some creature, making Jiang Nuan's scalp crawl.
Then a second shot. A third.
The intervals were extremely short.
After the gunfire came the wet, slick sound of flesh being torn, the dull thud of something heavy hitting the ground, and the squelch of bursting mucus.
The cold comm channel had turned into a one-sided slaughterhouse.
The rhythm and frequency of those gunshots.
Ye Que.
The man who had saved her with a single shot and carried her out of the tunnel like a sack of potatoes.
He was on the other end now, using the same precision to clear out the monsters one by one.
That icy voice, unperturbed by the massacre happening in the background, continued.
"Qinian, warn the nearby survivors about the rule. Make sure everyone knows the critical temperature information. Clear the perimeter of the armored vehicle."
A pause.
"Jiang Ce, stay in the vehicle."
The communicator clicked off.
Jiang Nuan noticed that both Jiang Ce and Qinian had straightened their backs slightly, almost reflexively, when they received the transmission.
The cabin fell silent for two seconds.
Then Qinian spoke.
"Tch."
Just one word.
Jiang Nuan felt the arm wrapped around her waist shift. It didn't let go at first, but tightened one last time before pulling away.
"Don't run off."
His voice was close to the top of her head, his warm breath brushing through her hair.
"If you do, I'll come find you."
His tone had completely changed.
It was an order.
The next second, his arm withdrew.
The intense heat vanished instantly, and the cold air flooded back onto the small patch of skin he had warmed on her lower back, making her shiver.
Qinian pushed open the door, then closed it.
And then there was fire.
Crimson flames erupted outward from Qinian's body like a massive firework exploding in the dark.
The black tentacles plastered against the car windows contracted violently the moment the flames touched them, emitting a sizzling sound like something being fried.
The surface of the tentacles rapidly charred, curled, and carbonized.
The mucus evaporated in the high heat, sending up a nauseating white mist.
Jiang Nuan watched him through the window.
He moved slowly.
Strolling, even.
The flames surged from around him spontaneously, as if they were a part of his body.
When he passed a thick, muscular tentacle, he didn't even look at it directly. He just tilted his head slightly, and a whip of fire materialized out of thin air, snapping out with a crack to sever the tentacle.
The charred cross-section of the stump smoked. The other half of the tentacle writhed wildly on the ground for a few seconds before burning to ash.
He was taking a walk. And killing monsters on the side.
The temperature inside the vehicle had dropped several degrees since Qinian left. Jiang Nuan unconsciously hugged her arms.
The outside temperature was still falling.
She looked down at her hands. The tips of her fingers were already pale from the cold.
"Hiss—"
She sucked in a sharp breath.
Jiang Ce was rummaging through the front seat. He heard the sound, turned around, and his eyes landed on her pallid face. His brows furrowed.
"Your temperature is dropping fast."
Jiang Ce casually pulled off his black combat jacket and tossed it into the back seat.
"Put this on first."
Jiang Nuan hesitated for a second, then took it and wrapped it around herself.
The jacket had a faint smell of gunpowder. It was ridiculously oversized; she looked like she was stuffed into a cloth sack.
"Thanks."
Jiang Ce looked at her, his voice steady. "As long as you stay in the car and don't move, you'll be fine."
Jiang Nuan bit her lip and nodded.
Outside the window, Qinian's flames were still spreading.
In the distant darkness, she could occasionally see the silhouettes of a few survivors, huddled together in groups of three or five, stumbling toward the glow of the fire.
They were moving toward the heat source.
"Jiang Ce." Jiang Nuan finally couldn't hold back.
"Hm?"
"...Aren't we not supposed to be alone?"
She stared at Qinian, walking alone through the sea of fire outside.
"Him going out by himself—doesn't that count as being alone?"
Jiang Ce froze for a second, then laughed.
It was a frank laugh, filled with a kind of matter-of-fact confidence. He turned his head to look at Jiang Nuan, flashing a row of white teeth.
"You're right. Breaking the rules does attract monsters."
He paused.
"But what if those monsters aren't a threat to us?"
Jiang Nuan's thoughts came to a screeching halt.
Breaking the rules attracts monsters. Getting attacked by monsters means death.
That was the logic of the zone.
The logic everyone accepted. In the previous tunnel zone, she had seen with her own eyes how people who broke the rules died.
The screams, the sound of bones crunching, the sounds of being eaten alive...
Those sounds were still etched into her memory.
But Zero Squad's answer was:
Rules?
Whatever.
If monsters come, kill them.
Kill them all, and there are no more rules.
It was absurd.
But it made perfect sense.
Watching Qinian burn through everything with such a casual gait outside the window, Jiang Nuan suddenly realized something that sent a chill down her spine.
She had been thinking about how to use the rules to escape before.
The zone's rules restricted everyone's actions. That included Zero Squad.
She could find a moment when they were overwhelmed, slip through the cracks in the rules, and carve out an escape route.
But now she knew.
Rules are made for the weak.
For people as strong as them, rules don't apply.
Which also meant that all her plans to create chaos and escape using the rules?
Completely worthless.
