Trembling At A High Altitude

After rushing up to the second floor, Li Teng took out the key with trembling hands and tried a few times before he finally inserted it into the keyhole.

Twist.

The lock on the iron gate was opened!

Pushing the iron gate open, Li Teng, carrying a gun and bending over, entered the corridor behind the gate.

After a few steps, he vaguely saw a switch on the corridor wall.

He switched it on, and a faint light above the corridor came on.

There was only one wall to the right of the corridor.

At the end, to the left, an alloy door stood in front of Li Teng.

Luckily, the door was not locked, and it opened as he turned the doorknob.

After pushing the door open, he found himself in a very large room.

The room was pitch black.

After fumbling around the wall near the door for a long time, he finally found the switch.

He turned on the light.

The room was furnished with a small amount of old furniture.

Couches, tables, chairs, and the like.

They were no different from the couches in the lobby downstairs and the tables and chairs in the bedroom.

Dust covered the floor and the furniture, and cobwebs were everywhere on the walls.

After making a round, Li Teng furrowed his brows.

Was this really the end?

Was there really nothing else?

He picked up the pistol and, with anger, pulled the trigger on the sofas and tables and chairs, quickly emptying a magazine.

Something seemed off.

Just now, he thought he heard a 'clang!'

It seemed the bullet had hit a metal object.

Was it inside the sofa?

Li Teng took out a knife and started hacking at the sofa, and in no time, he had completely sliced it open.

He was covered in dust from head to toe.

Under the sofa cushions, there indeed was a small metal box.

A very small metal box.

It had been dented by a bullet.

The small metal box was not locked and opened with a press.

Inside, there was a piece of paper.

It seemed to have something wrapped inside it.

Upon opening the paper, inside was a key!

There were also words written on the paper.

Handwritten.

"I don't believe anyone could find this box."

Relieved, Li Teng held the key and pressed the teleportation on his wristwatch.

He teleported himself to the small room behind the tenth scene of the gunfight training ground.

Then he rushed to the side of the alloy door and tried to fit the key into the lock.

Twist.

The alloy door was opened.

The scene inside looked similar to the tenth scene of the gunfight training ground, only it was slightly larger.

Only this time, something different indeed appeared.

The Grim Reaper was floating mid-air in the training ground.

Seeing Li Teng enter, it floated towards him.

"This is the eleventh scene of the gunfight training ground. The area of the scene has doubled, and there is one more enemy. Are you sure you want to continue?" the Grim Reaper asked in a deep voice.

Li Teng didn't respond to him and entered the scene with a gun in hand, bending over.

A month later, Li Teng completed the eleventh scene, and the alloy door at the end automatically opened, leading him to enter the twelfth scene.

"From now on, each scene will simply increase in area and add one more enemy; there is not much difference from the previous training scenarios," the Grim Reaper said to Li Teng in a deep voice.

Li Teng still didn't respond and continued to bend over and rush into the scene.

One and a half months later, Li Teng had conquered the twelfth scene.

The thirteenth scene was somewhat larger, and the number of enemies had increased by one.

...

The fourteenth.

The fifteenth.

The sixteenth…

...

The ninety-ninth.

The hundredth.

The hundred and first.

...

The two hundred and twentieth.

...

The two hundred and thirtieth.

...

I don't know how many years have passed.

Unconsciously, Li Teng's hair had turned white.

Then, his beard also turned white.

...

"Are you prepared to waste your entire life on this meaningless endeavor?"

"You spend half of each day enduring various torments, and the other half here in the training arena. What exactly are you trying to achieve?"

The Grim Reaper would occasionally pose these soul-searching questions to Li Teng.

But Li Teng still didn't pay him any attention.

He remembered that back in college, he had become addicted to a mobile game.

So many years had gone by that he no longer remembered the name of that game.

It was a magic swords themed mobile game.

In the beginning, the character was very weak, wandering around a small village looking for NPCs to give him quests.

Then he would go into the wild to kill monsters, return to the village after completing tasks to receive Gold Coin rewards, and use the Gold Coins to learn skills, level up and gain Attribute Points to improve his basic attributes.

After a certain stage, he left Novice Village and entered the towns on the map.

He then continued to converse with various NPCs, accept quests, and go out to kill monsters.

He really liked that game and even made a first purchase, bought a monthly pass and the like. But due to economic reasons, his overall investment was not very large; it was mainly his time that he was spending.

His character slowly became stronger.

Perhaps due to the game's design, there were too many aspects requiring player control, and leveling up in the later stages became very slow. The mobile game's popularity declined, and in the once bustling Novice Village and towns, the figure of players became increasingly scarce.

New servers were no longer opened, and existing servers were merged time and again.

But the number of players continued to dwindle.

Li Teng kept persisting.

Because he liked the game, and besides, he still hadn't explored the entire map.

Finally, one day, he had explored every region on the map, cleared all the dungeons, and triggered all the secret events.

In the entire map, only one arena remained.

The arena was designed so that after each wave of monsters was killed, a new wave would appear, with each new monster growing stronger and stronger, endlessly.

And there was no upper limit to the players' levels, one could continue to level up and acquire more Attribute Points.

So, whenever Li Teng had time, he would log in to grind in the arena, continuously pushing his level higher.

Until one day, when he reached over Three Hundred Levels, after he killed a wave of monsters, no new wave appeared.

Instead, an NPC appeared.

Li Teng thought he had triggered a new hidden quest and hurriedly went to talk to the NPC.

The NPC's words, however, were displayed coming out of the player's input box.

"I'm the operator of this game. Thank you for your love and support for our game, but we really have to close the server, and we are very, very sorry."

"Closing the server? What about all the players?" Li Teng expressed his discontent.

"There are no more players left. It's been just you for over a month," the NPC answered Li Teng.

"Alright then," Li Teng could only log off.

"Wait a minute," the NPC called out to Li Teng again.

"The server will close in an hour. Let me give you a set of top-notch gear that was prepared for release but never went out." The NPC initiated a trade with Li Teng, giving him a set of weapons and equipment with extremely high attributes.

Li Teng played joyfully for another hour inside the game.

Then, the server closed.

"There's nothing left, why do you continue? Log out! Stop wasting your life," the Grim Reaper's voice pulled Li Teng back from his memories.