Trembling At A High Altitude

The bus took over an hour to reach its destination.

A building with a futuristic, technological exterior.

In front of the building, there was a huge abstract statue that seemed to be related to time.

The director led everyone inside the building.

After passing through the security gate, they walked down a long corridor and entered the elevator.

The elevator, however, went down.

It stopped at level negative twelve.

Exiting the elevator, they traversed another long corridor and entered a chamber labeled '206 Time Bubble.'

The chamber was square-shaped with pristine, ultrasmooth, pure white walls, and eight large display screens were hung on all sides.

On the floor of the chamber, there were eight contraptions that resembled Medical Pods, officially named 'Time Bubble Transport Devices' as indicated by the wall plaques.

The eight devices were paired up and arranged in a cross shape, connected to a control system in the middle.

Under the director's guidance, the eight actors, already paired up, lay down in the adjacent transport pods.

Inside the transport pods was a mysterious solid-liquid mixture, similar to that in the Medical Pods.

After lying down, their consciousness began to blur, feeling exhausted and wanting to sleep.

The staff adjusted various parameters on the control panel screens; the icons of the transport pods gradually turned green, the countdown numbers kept jumping until all of them reached zero.

Shadowy, blurry images appeared on the screen along the wall.

An old Western-style building, the creaking of iron gates, rusty chains, drifting figures…

And the roar of a Monster.

A soft electronic female voice rang in the ears of the people who were already in a trance.

Like a dream, surreal.

"Scanning…"

"Scan complete…"

"Matching identity…"

"Match successful…"

"Confirming plot character target bubble coordinates…"

"Confirmed…"

"Initiating body transmission program…"

"Initialization complete…"

"..."

The covers of the eight transport pods opened on their own.

There was nothing inside them.

...

When Li Teng awoke again, he found himself not in the transport device but in a bed in a bedroom.

The overall decor of the bedroom was dark, with similarly dark colors for the furniture and bedding, creating a very oppressive atmosphere.

On the bedroom wall, there were two rows of green digital countdown displays.

The top display showed 59 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 13 seconds.

It continuously ticked down.

It was a 60-day countdown.

The countdown display below showed 29 days, 24 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.

It appeared to be a 30-day countdown.

However, this lower countdown was not moving at all, stuck in a static state.

Below the two sets of countdowns were the characters for 'male' and 'female.'

Both the 'male' and 'female' characters were followed by a string of zeros.

This reminded Li Teng of the "Time Index" that Liu Shiyuan had mentioned.

Could this performance be related to the Time Index?

The Time Index following the word 'male' refers to Li Teng's Time Index, and the Time Index following the word 'female' must refer to the Bunny Girl's Time Index.

Li Teng was wearing a set of pajamas, ones he didn't recognize.

The medical technology at Film and Television City could repair their self-produced clothes, so changing clothes in the teleportation pod wasn't anything unusual.

Li Teng touched the bed next to him and the desk beside it, everything felt incredibly real.

A real person had been teleported!

Such advanced teleportation technology!

What place was this? The "Time Bubble" that Liu Shiyuan had spoken of?

Was this house the so-called "Time Prison"?

"Is anyone there?" came a panicked voice from the Bunny Girl outside.

"I'm here," Li Teng responded.

"Li Teng?"

"It's me."

"Can you come out? I'm scared!" the Bunny Girl's voice trembled a bit.

"Alright, I'll be right out." Li Teng looked down at the cotton slippers on the floor by the bed, perfectly fitting his feet. He wore the slippers and got off the bed, glancing at the mirror hanging on the wall above the desk as he passed by it.

The person inside the mirror was himself.

Only, for some reason, there was a weird sense about it.

The Bunny Girl shouted again from outside, prompting Li Teng not to think about it any further and to leave the bedroom.

"What place is this? Why are we here?" Bunny Girl, wearing the same style and pattern of pajamas as Li Teng, looked around fearfully.

Li Teng also took a look around.

Outside was a living room, like those typical ones in ordinary homes, with sofas and a coffee table, but the decor and furniture style, like those in the bedroom, were dark and gloomy, giving a very oppressive feeling everywhere.

The living room walls also had the same two rows of countdowns and the words 'male' and 'female.'

The two rows of countdowns were the same with the upper row of 60 days ticking away, and the lower of 30 days motionless.

"We've entered into the movie plot, this must be some highly advanced teleportation technology that has directly transported us to the set. Don't be scared, I'm with you," Li Teng reassured the Bunny Girl a few times.

"What about the others?" the Bunny Girl asked again.

In such moments, it felt like having more people around would be safer.

"I don't know, maybe they are in other rooms. Let's look around first." Li Teng decided to explore around a bit before proceeding.

"Don't leave me behind!" the Bunny Girl quickly clutched at Li Teng's hem.

"Follow me, I won't suddenly leave you behind, don't worry." Li Teng reassured the Bunny Girl a few more times, then headed towards the kitchen next to the living room.

Food is of paramount importance.

After staying too long on stone pillars, the first thing Li Teng always did was to ensure food safety.

Only after finding enough to eat was he able to boldly go about other matters.

The kitchen wall tiles were also in a dark tone, a hue almost never used in real-world kitchens as it was too oppressive, even someone as brave as Li Teng felt a bit creeped out in such room decor.

Despite feeling a bit unnerved, Li Teng still went over to the fridge.

The refrigerator door had an LCD screen displaying a variety of vegetables, meats, eggs, and other food materials comprehensively categorized. Clicking through the menus revealed almost all ingredients available in the market from the real world.

But, these needed to be exchanged using the Time Index.

The Time Index balance for both Li Teng and the Bunny Girl displayed zero at the bottom of the fridge's screen.

Upon opening the refrigerator door, inside it was completely empty.

They would likely need the Time Index to exchange for the food materials to appear in the refrigerator.

For Li Teng, food was very important, and it also required Time Indexes for exchange.

Hence, his primary task now was to figure out how to obtain Time Indexes.