Chapter 1: Emergency Start, What the Hell?

The brilliance of the stars has faded, leaving everything dimly lit in the eve of dawn, and all is eerily quiet.

A soft yet somewhat emotionless voice echoed in Feng Xue's ears. He blinked in confusion, then recognized the fishbone diagram formed from various rectangles. Having been playing the meat pigeon game before bed, he recognized the layout, though the colors were different. This looked just like last night's round car, but with some discrepancies in the details.

Focusing slightly, Feng Xue quickly noticed the difference as he saw three numbers at the top of the screen.

Centrally located was the number 100, but unlike the familiar illumination value or anti-interference index he knew, this one had three fancy letters below it:

SAN.

"Crap, SAN values are not something to mess with!"

Seeing these letters, Feng Xue jolted awake, feeling a strong sense of discordance. He shifted his gaze to the values on either side of the SAN. Although both were zeros, their details differed slightly.

The number on the left was preceded by a book icon, and the one on the right by a circle with geometric lines. If not for the clear circular outline, he might have thought it was a spider web.

Feng Xue found the design somewhat familiar and, after a moment, recalled something called a "dream catcher" from his memories as a failed writer.

"Related to dreams?" he thought, his gaze naturally moving downward. Sure enough, at the bottom of the screen, there was a display bar labeled [Collectibles], but it was empty.

"A new meat pigeon?" Feng Xue wanted to scratch his head but realized he couldn't, then discovered that he apparently didn't even have a body!

"I knew it was too soon for the fourth ending of the snow plains meat pigeon to come out… Turns out it's just a dream! Playing meat pigeon in reality and dreaming of it too—daytime thoughts become dreams at night…"

Feng Xue suddenly understood everything in front of him. He had dreamt something like this before. Although realizing he was dreaming was novel, it was just the same old story.

Perhaps due to the dream's inherent patch of rationality, or maybe just his curiosity as a player of integrated strategies, Feng Xue quickly refocused on the screen. Although it differed slightly from the layouts of existing strategy games, the deja vu was unmistakable.

Better than those knock-off versions that copied without hiring decent artists and still dared to mimic the night round car.

Hmm, how should he start?

Feng Xue looked towards the leftmost block of the fishbone diagram. Just as the thought occurred to him, a button popped up, but he hardly glanced at it because just below the block, there were four words that made his vision go dark—

"'Emergency Operation'? Who starts with an emergency? I haven't even picked my operators! Wait, where are my operators?"

Feng Xue's gaze moved to the bottom right, expecting to see an option for selecting operators, but there was only a button labeled [Depart].

Faced with this situation, Feng Xue internally cursed, but staying stuck wasn't an option. Although there was an exit button in the top left corner, dreaming of meat pigeon and not playing seemed like a waste. Unaware of the seriousness of the situation, he steeled his heart and chose to start—

"Survival or death, that is the question."

As the thought arose, a line of text flashed before his eyes too quickly to read, and the rectangular entry rapidly expanded. In the next moment, it turned dim, with only four small words in the center confirming that Feng Xue was not unconscious.

"'Orphan of the Snowy Night'? Is that the name of the level? Seems like it might have ice attributes… I hope it doesn't start with a monstrous enemy…"

As his thought concluded, the loading bar also finished, but to Feng Xue's surprise…

"I have a body now?"

Almost instantly, Feng Xue jolted as an intense cold surged from all directions. The previous disorientation from the dream and its patch of rationalization broke in an instant, and he finally realized something was wrong.

"Crap! Did I just get transported? Was that meat pigeon interface actually a selection for transmigration? Are transmigrations packaged like this now?" Feng Xue wanted to struggle, but he frustratingly found that he seemed to have become an infant, facing the biting cold with nothing more to do than cry out.

What's worse, he could distinctly feel that the thin swaddling was inadequate against the chill.

His body was gradually cooling down, and with the sensation of slowly stiffening, it felt like he could almost hear the footsteps of death.

"[Expletive in native dialect]!" Feng Xue internally unleashed a string of curses that would never pass censorship, trying to attract passersby with his cries. However, it seemed this place was not a busy path, and his blurry infant eyes couldn't catch any clear sights, nor were there sounds of passing vehicles.

"I'm not about to die just after transmigrating, am I? Where's the golden finger? Save me!"

Feng Xue stopped his futile and energy-draining cries, continuously trying different methods to summon the golden finger in his mind, but to no avail. As time passed, he suddenly noticed, through his blurry vision, the distinctly clear interface of meat pigeon, though in the screen, the once full SAN value of 100 had now dropped to 97.

"What the hell? My golden finger is a meat pigeon panel? Or am I playing some sort of meat pigeon game where my own life is the currency?" Feng Xue stared at the interface, trying to touch each option with his will, but no feedback came.

Well, there was some feedback. In the corner, he found a twenty-sided die, but despite tapping on it for ages, the die just spun idly, with no clue on how to make it work.

As Feng Xue frantically pondered, the SAN value dropped another point. He paid no attention to this, however, convinced that at this rate, he would freeze to death before SAN reached zero.

"So cold! What kind of cursed parents are these, abandoning a baby in the winter? Why not at least drop me off at a hospital or orphanage, or even wait for summer? In the middle of winter, what kind of grudge is this? Why not just drown me in the toilet?"

Feng Xue was full of complaints, but as the SAN value slipped further, his body became even more rigid.

"They say frostbite feels like burning, huh, maybe because of the dilation of blood vessels and increased blood flow, leading to a temperature rise… Well, at least it won't be too uncomfortable…" Having frozen to the point of delirium, Feng Xue sneezed, but his body suddenly felt warmer.

"Is it coming?" Feng Xue felt this terminal warmth, lamenting his miserable transmigration, but gradually, he began to sense something was off.

Because…

"This doesn't seem like frostbite; I'm actually starting to feel warm!"

Feng Xue felt his fingertips, previously numb, slowly regaining sensation and was surprised. But at that moment, the previous warmth disappeared without a trace.

"Wait! What's happening? That warmth was definitely not an illusion!"

Frostbitten, Feng Xue wrapped himself tighter in the thin swaddle, trying to recall everything that had happened, then thought uncertainly:

"Maybe, it was because I imagined the sensation of someone dying of frostbite feeling intensely hot? So, was it… due to imagination?"