Translator: Atlas Studios
Editor: Atlas Studios
“Am I going through a tribulation?” Li Teng wanted to cry. The downpour continued, dropping onto his face and making even his breathing a little bit difficult.
It didn’t help to even keep wiping his face with both hands.
The problem of thirst had been solved, but now he was getting drowned by the pouring rain!
Even more fatal was the cold.
The strong wind blew on his drenched body, sweeping away the little bit of heat left in Li Teng’s body, and his body was constantly trembling in the cold.
The blanket and bedding were all soaked wet and slumped heavily on the bed, impossible to bring him a trace of warmth.
With lightning bursts and the sound of thunderstorms, Li Teng, who was tortured by extreme fear and cold, no longer cared about the risk of falling from the top of the stone pillar. He turned and got into the bottom of the wooden bed, relying on the bedboard and the drenched bedding on it for shelter. He lay face-down between the top surface of the stone pillar and the bed, trembling.
The stone surface on top of the stone pillar was as cold as the drenched bed.
The wind could blow in just the same, and it was even more chilling.
The only difference was that the rain no longer poured directly on Li Teng’s body, but dripped from the gap between the bed boards, giving Li Teng room to breathe.
“What did I do wrong? Why am I punished like this?”
Li Teng wanted to cry.
There was water on his face, and he didn’t know whether it was rain or tears.
I really want to cry.
“Cry, man, it’s not a sin; taste the long-absent tears. Even raining is a kind of beauty, may as well take this chance to cry properly for once.”
Somehow, Li Teng, hiding beneath the bed, actually started singing.
After singing the song for a while, the fear and desperation in Li Teng’s heart actually got somehow dispelled.
At a certain moment, Li Teng seemed to have returned to the real world, back to some memories of the past.
Perhaps the deafening thunder, hunger, and the bone-deep cold had already made him hallucinate.
Lying on the top of the cold stone pillar, leaning against the shelter of the wooden bed, surrounded by violent storms, lightning and thunder…
Such heavy wind and rain actually didn’t blow this tiny little wooden bed away.
Li Teng was not in the mood to think about the principles here. He was just grateful in his heart that he could still have such a small shelter amidst such storms.
So lucky…
His drenched hands, feet, and body had long turned cold and numb.
Li Teng continued to sing to numb himself. Just like this, he fell asleep unconsciously. Or maybe he fainted.
Maybe I won’t wake up again ever?
Then may as well not.
This was the final thought in Li Teng’s mind before he fell unconscious.
In such hopeless situations, struggling was meaningless.
Though he thought he’d never wake up again… Li Teng still woke up.
When he woke up again, his surroundings were already bright—very bright.
His body was no longer so cold, and it seemed that…
The rain has stopped, the sun has come out!
His body ached all over, and it was very stiff. So stiff, it no longer felt like his own.
While lying on the stone surface, Li Teng struggled for a long while before he finally stretched his body.
Fortunately, he could still feel his hands and feet.
With the sunlight around him, Li Teng could see his surroundings very clearly.
The four legs of the wooden bed were all pinned to the top of the stone pillar by rivets—no wonder this wooden bed was not overturned and blown away in the storm last night.
Who did this? How idle does one have to be to do such a thing!?
After discovering that rivets pinned down the wooden bed, Li Teng was also much relieved. He climbed to the edge of the stone platform, turned over his body, grabbed the edge of the wooden bed and the bed rail, and carefully turned over onto the wooden bed.
The wooden bed handed down from my family’s ancestors is firm. Even if it had been another wooden bed, even if it’s pinned onto the stone pillar, I’m afraid it would have been blown away by the storm last night.
The blanket and beddings were all soaked in rainwater. Although the sun was scorching now, it couldn’t dry them so quickly.
Li Teng wrung them and then spread them out on the wooden pillars at the front and end of the bed for drying. Then he took off his halfi-dried pajamas to be dried under the sun.
There was not a soul there, so even if he was completely naked, he wouldn’t be accused of disrupting public order.
After finishing all this up, Li Teng lay down on the bed, which was also not yet dried, panting.
I’m hungry!
His whole body felt hungry to the extreme.
“I want to eat steamed buns.
“I want to eat baked flatbread.
“I want to eat roasted chicken.
“I want to drink rib soup.
“I want to eat hot, dry noodles.
“I…”
Li Teng fantasized wildly, while his stomach was constantly cramping.
In his more than 20 years of life, he had never been this hungry.
Is it hell here?
If it isn’t, why would there be such a tall stone pillar in the world?
There’s no difference between being trapped here and being tortured!
Unknowingly, extreme hunger and weakness made Li Teng fall asleep again under the sunlight.
He had a bunch of messy dreams.
All of them seemed to be him eating all kinds of delicious delicacies.
After he ate, he still wanted to eat more, never getting full.
When he woke up, Li Teng did not open his eyes and get up.
Instead, he first imagined that he had already gotten back to his own bedroom and resumed his life as an otaku.
“Calm and uneventful lives are a blessing!”
After opening his eyes, Li Teng still did not get up.
He looked at the sky, then tilted his head and looked at both sides…
“Sh*t!”
Obviously, he still hadn’t returned to his original life.
He was still staying on top of this damned thousand-meter-high stone pillar!
But when Li Teng wanted to sit up, he realized that something was finally a bit different this time that he woke up.
On top of the blanket laid out at the end of his bed, a bird had actually stopped!
Li Teng didn’t quite know what bird this was. It looked about the size of a pigeon, though not as fat as a domestic pigeon.
There has to be some meat on it, right?
Instantly, Li Teng’s eyes lit up, glowing with the light of hunger.
Any living thing, no matter what it was, would be categorized as food to anyone as hungry as him.
At this time, the bird was facing Li Teng with its back, not realizing that the naked man behind its back had his mind on it.
Naturally, Li Teng wouldn’t miss this heaven-sent opportunity—the only opportunity in the past two days to get him a little food to fill his belly.
He pressed against the bed with both hands, slowly moved his body and approached the bird, letting the bird into the range of his hands’ catch.
Although Li Teng was cautious, the creak of the bed still betrayed him. The bird was startled, turning back to look at Li Teng spontaneously.
Perhaps because it saw the green light in Li Teng’s eyes or the saliva beside Li Teng’s mouth, the bird instinctively recognized the danger. The next second it saw Li Teng, it opened its wings to leave this dangerous place.
It happened fast. How would Li Teng, who was almost mad from hunger, let it go so easily?
Li Teng almost used all the strength in his body to instantly lift his body from the bed, and his hand grabbed rapidly like an eagle’s claw toward the bird, as fast as a flash of lightning.
It was a pity that he missed by the slightest bit…
Li Teng was indignant, with his body already stood-up, his two legs instinctively exerted force together, and he suddenly stretched out his other hand to grab toward the bird, which had already flown past the edge of the bed.
Unfortunately, he again missed by the slightest bit.
The bird very easily dodged Li Teng’s pouncing attack. After it lifted into the air, it made a call, turned back to give Li Teng a very sympathetic look, before flipping its wings, flying rapidly toward the sky, and quickly disappearing into the air.
Li Teng didn’t manage to catch the bird, yet most of his body rushed out of the wooden bed. When he realized the danger and tried hard to maintain his body’s balance, everything was already too late.
Li Teng fell out of the bed rail with his head down. In a panic, he instinctively grabbed a bed rail so that his body would not immediately be thrown out by the pouncing and grabbing actions just now.
Unfortunately, this bed rail, being too thin, couldn’t stand the huge force of Li Teng’s body flying out and broke with a crack.
Li Teng’s body fell downward instantly.