Chapter Twenty-One: The Snowy Ridge of the Forest Wolves

After scaling the cliff, the path ahead was almost entirely downhill. Upon reaching the forested area below, Qin Fei spotted a piece of airplane wreckage, which appeared to be part of the landing gear. Nearby, a deer was wandering.

The moment Qin Fei saw the deer, he reacted instinctively, pulling his hunting bow out of his pack, crouching low, and quietly moving forward. This deer, with its brown-black fur, was enormous. As he drew closer, Qin Fei stopped in his tracks. The more he looked, the more he realized something was off. Judging by its size, this wasn't an ordinary deer, but rather a moose—rare in the polar regions.

The moose stood over two meters tall, with a body length well exceeding three meters. Even from a distance, Qin Fei felt a chill—its sheer size was intimidating. To put it in perspective, a polar brown bear stands just over a meter tall, with a body length barely approaching three meters. This moose was at least half again as large as a brown bear.

If Qin Fei dared approach it with bow and arrow, it would be nothing short of suicide. Though moose are herbivores, even typically gentle creatures can become aggressive if you trespass into their territory or get too close. A single blow from this beast could leave Qin Fei crippled, if not dead.

He carefully skirted the moose, making a wide detour before continuing on his way. Ahead lay a frozen lake, and at the lake’s edge stood a somewhat dilapidated wooden cabin. Around the lake grew thick stands of cattails. As he walked, Qin Fei gathered stalks of these plants.

Suddenly, a dog bark echoed through the air. Qin Fei tensed, his hunting bow instantly in hand as he whirled toward the source of the sound. Not far from the lakeshore, a lone gray wolf was approaching.

Meat was finally in sight!

Elated, Qin Fei drew his bow and nocked an arrow, aiming at the wolf. The wolf, as if endowed with human cunning, charged straight at him the moment it saw the weapon raised. Yet Qin Fei was not flustered; after all, he had already killed two wolves, and had gained some experience.

He did not loose his arrow in haste, but waited for the wolf to draw closer before letting the bowstring fly. The wolf, head lowered as it charged, took the arrow directly to the skull, the shaft passing through its cheekbone.

With a pained howl, the wolf collapsed onto the ice. Its body convulsed for a moment, then lay still, dead within seconds. The shot had struck home more perfectly than Qin Fei anticipated. He had already drawn his knife, prepared for a close-quarters struggle, but the arrow proved fatal in a single stroke. It was, he admitted, a stroke of luck.

A single gray wolf was not particularly heavy; even a full-grown male weighed only sixty or seventy kilograms. Qin Fei dragged the wolf to the rundown cabin by the lake.

This cabin, known in the game as the Mountaineer’s Shelter, was the only building in the Wolfwood Snow Ridge. The four walls were drafty and cold, less hospitable than many mountain caves.

Beside the bed lay a coil of climbing rope. Opposite the bed stood a workbench, atop which sat a windproof lantern and a box of matches. Some firewood was stacked by the fireplace. Aside from fuel, the rest of the items in the cabin were of little use to Qin Fei.

After dragging the wolf’s corpse inside, he set to work with his knife. He no longer needed wolf pelts, so he butchered the animal carelessly, unconcerned about preserving the hide’s integrity. This rough method was much quicker. After three or four hours, as dusk settled, he had stripped all the meat from the wolf’s body.

There was a fireplace in the shelter. Qin Fei took wood and coal from his pack, kindled a fire, and, with the fuel already in the cabin, had enough to last through the night. If he wished to survive the night in this ramshackle hut, a fire was essential. Temperatures dropped much lower at night; should a cold snap hit while he slept, he could easily freeze to death in his dreams.

[You have survived: 143 days, 2 hours, 33 minutes.]

The night passed quietly.

In the morning, seeing embers still glowing in the hearth, Qin Fei placed the wolf meat by the fire to let it dry slowly in the residual heat.

He then took the wolf’s entrails and made his way to the ice-fishing hut at the center of the lake. In the wild, unless on the brink of starvation, animal organs are best avoided—not because they are poisonous, but because their taste is overwhelmingly pungent. Without spices to mask the flavor, they are nearly inedible; even if forced down, they would