Bab 7: Chapter 7: You Can't Be a Hungry Ghost
Editor: Atlas Studios
Although Li Teng felt he might never wake up again,
when the sky brightened once more, he somehow awoke.
Dawn was barely breaking.
To be more accurate, Li Teng was awakened by the freezing cold.
His hands and feet were numb with frost.
His entire body was icy.
That he wasn't dead yet, Li Teng considered a miracle.
Rescue? Why hadn't it come?
A drone had surely come by, so why hadn't they sent a rescue helicopter?
Could it be that the department in charge of rescue couldn't afford a helicopter?
Li Teng felt that in his current state, being rescued wouldn't constitute a waste of national resources.
After all, he wasn't a reckless traveler who had gotten stranded while on an aimless jaunt.
He had been abducted.
But why was there no rescue?
There was a moment when Li Teng even felt a sense of injustice.
Opening his eyes, his weak body slowly regained vision.
Looking up at the bleak sky, feeling everything around him, Li Teng wanted to curse again.
It was snowing...!
And not just any snow— it was a heavy snowfall!
Was this some kind of mistake?
Isn't it only April?
A thin layer of snow had already covered Li Teng's tattered quilt.
His head and face were now adorned with several icy crumbs.
Li Teng no longer had the energy to comment.
"Why has no one come to rescue me?"
"Just die already!"
"Damn it all! Just let me die!"
Li Teng shouted in despair and anger.
But his mouth uncooperatively licked the tiny ice pieces off the edge of his lips.
After a while, Li Teng suddenly sat up, gathered the snow on the blanket in front of him into a snowball, and shoved it fiercely into his mouth.
His frozen mouth couldn't melt the snowball, forcing Li Teng to chew it with his teeth. Despite his roots aching from the cold, he persisted and swallowed the snowball.
So cold.
The chill traveled from his mouth down to his stomach.
An acutely agonizing pleasure.
His stomach convulsed again.
He felt like his guts were churning.
The snowball did nothing to stave off hunger; it only made his stomach more uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable to the point where Li Teng doubled over, pressing his fist against his stomach.
At this moment, Li Teng wanted to cry again.
It's not a crime for a man to cry...
The issue was that he didn't even have the energy to cry anymore.
After eating a snowball, the cold and hungry Li Teng no longer had the courage to eat another.
The cold inside and out was making his body increasingly stiff, almost beyond control.
Li Teng slowly moved to the edge of the bed and looked down at the base of the pillar.
The snowfall obscured anything beneath the pillar.
With such a heavy snowstorm, he guessed that even if there were a rescue, it wouldn't come.
It was over.
"Jump down then."
"Jump, and it all ends."
"Maybe this is just a dream."
"Just a terrible dream, that's all."
Li Teng kept trying to persuade himself, to muster the courage to jump from here and end it all.
To end everything.
Even if he didn't jump now, he reckoned he wouldn't last much longer.
If he jumped, at least people would know how he died.
It would give his life some kind of meaning.
Jump down...
Just as Li Teng was repeatedly hesitating whether to end it all, a rumbling noise came from afar.
It grew louder, closer...
The noise grew louder and louder.
It sounded different from the civilian airliner that had approached last time.
In the dim distance, a small dot appeared.
A tiny black dot.
Through the veil of snow, the tiny black dot gradually grew larger and larger.
The rumbling sound became clearer and clearer.
It grew deafening.
It even brought a tremendous gust of wind that made Li Teng shiver all over.
It was a helicopter! The strong wind caused by the helicopter's rotor blades!
He could finally see clearly!
It was indeed a helicopter!
A helicopter that was all black.
So black that even the cockpit glass was dark, and Li Teng couldn't make out the pilot inside.
Approaching from below, it gradually ascended, and finally hovered above Li Teng's head.
"Is it a rescue?"
"The drone from yesterday called it?"
"In such a heavy snowstorm, there would still be a rescue?"
"Has the rescue really arrived?"
"Or... is it just my 'illusion'?"
Li Teng sat on the edge of the bed, looking up, somewhat dazed as he watched the helicopter above his head, even forgetting that he should stand up and shout for help.
But there was no need to rush; the helicopter was clearly here for him.
After hovering, the helicopter let down a rescue rope ladder.
"It's really here to save me!"
"Thank you, nation! Thank you, government!"
"Thank you, rescue team!"
"I just knew you wouldn't leave me here!"
In an instant, tears streamed down Li Teng's face.
As long as he could survive and return, he could figure out who had abducted him here.
This was something that Li Teng would not let go easily.
Of course, subconsciously, Li Teng also harbored some doubts about the origin of this helicopter.
He suspected that it did not belong to a rescue organization, but was sent by the people who had abducted him.
Was the helicopter now here to take him to an even more dangerous place?
But... no matter who the helicopter belonged to, or what it was here for, even if it were taking him to his execution, he would climb aboard without any hesitation.
Already unafraid of death, what was there left to fear?
Li Teng reached out with both hands and grabbed the rope ladder, pulling himself up two rungs with his last bit of strength until his feet finally rested on the ladder.
But he no longer had the energy to continue climbing.
Luckily, the helicopter crew also realized this and retracted the rope ladder into the cabin, taking Li Teng up with it.
After a strenuous climb at the cabin door, Li Teng finally made it into the helicopter's cabin.
The helicopter retracted its rope ladder, closed the cabin door, and tore through the snow curtain, speeding away into the distance.
The stone pillar below, as well as Li Teng's bed, quickly disappeared into the vast snowy curtain.
Only after climbing into the helicopter's cabin did Li Teng discover it was empty, with not a single person inside.
And once the cabin door was shut, the black glass blocked all incoming light, turning the cabin pitch-black, so dark he couldn't see his hand in front of him, let alone anything else.
Of course, this also meant he couldn't see the outside situation.
The front cockpit and the rear cabin were separated, divided by a metal bulkhead, blocking Li Teng from accessing the cockpit, seeing the helicopter pilot, or even talking to them.
Li Teng didn't know where the helicopter was flying to or where it was taking him.
But, whatever it was, it had to be better than staying on top of the stone pillar, right?
Li Teng remembered seeing a box in the cabin when he first got on board.
Now, even though he couldn't see it, he could still feel around with his hands.
He quickly found the box.
An unlocked box.
After opening it, Li Teng groped inside and found several bags of plastic-wrapped food.
There were drinks too!
He tore open one bag, sniffed it, took a bite, and found it to be bread, while the other two were biscuits.
Then came several bottles of drink.
Li Teng first opened a drink and took a few sips, moistening his throat and stomach, before tearing open the bread and biscuit packaging, voraciously devouring their contents.
Then he downed the bottles of drink one after another.
To him, any sort of food was the most delicious treat in the world at this moment.
Even if the food had been poisoned.
Even if it meant death, he wouldn't become a "Hungry Ghost".
Hadiah
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