Trembling At A High Altitude

Under Aila's persuasion, Richard gradually calmed down, and Gemma promised to continue working overtime through the night to revise the project until the boss was satisfied.

"Honey, you've worked so hard. Have some bird's nest porridge to replenish your strength," Aila said as she took out the bird's nest porridge and placed it on Richard's desk.

"Thank you, wife. You're too good to me," Richard said tenderly.

"It's only right to treat you well when you work so hard... Don't be so harsh on your subordinates in the future; it's not easy for everyone who comes out to work," Aila continued to speak well of Gemma.

"I'll pay attention to that. Today is just not like any other day; tomorrow's client is too important," Richard said as he followed Aila's gaze and then discovered the drawer was open, revealing the limited edition Sendoff watch gift box, which Aila had noticed.

"Oh right, when we talked about your cousin's wedding a week ago, I specifically went to buy this watch, planning to send it on the wedding day! But these past few days, I've been so busy with this case that while the gift was ready, I completely forgot about the wedding, sigh..." Richard quickly took out the watch and handed it to Aila.

"You're so thoughtful, husband!" Aila immediately recognized the value of the watch and was very moved at that moment.

"Your sister is my sister too; it's only proper," Richard said as he picked up a document from the table to read.

"You keep busy, I'll head back first. Eat the bird's nest porridge, okay? And take care of your health!" Aila said to Richard as she prepared to leave.

"I'll walk you out," Richard stood up.

"No need, no need! Don't let me delay you; your time is precious right now!" Aila hurriedly declined and briskly left the office and the company.

The scene cuts back to the office.

"That dead woman is so annoying! She interrupted at the worst possible time!" Gemma expressed her displeasure.

"She won't live much longer anyway," Richard consoled Gemma.

"I've asked Jessica to take care of JOHNNY too; you don't mind, do you? You won't hate me for it, right? After all, he's your flesh and blood," Gemma confirmed with Richard.

"Let him keep his mother company so she won't be lonely," Richard smiled.

"JOHNNY must be dealt with! Otherwise, he's too much of an eyesore!" Gemma muttered to herself again.

Watching the video, Emma's heart gradually grew colder.

When Gemma mentioned getting rid of JOHNNY, anger surged in Emma's chest like a volcano ready to erupt.

The scene switches again.

The events of that fateful day are revisited.

JOHNNY was playing video games in his room, while Emma squatted on the living room floor, listening to the news on TV and snipping the pointed ends of edamame pods for the nanny, Jessica, with a pair of scissors.

Richard had come back in the afternoon and said he would return very late that evening.

He enjoyed eating edamame and drinking a little liquor as a late-night snack.

Now that edamame was in season, Emma was personally snipping them, her mind filled with the satisfied expression on Richard's face when he ate them.

In the kitchen, Jessica, who was cutting the spiced beef with a kitchen knife, glanced several times towards the living room.

Seeing Emma squatting intently on the living room floor, snipping the edamame without often raising her head.

Jessica swapped the kitchen knife for a bone chopping knife, tiptoed behind Emma with it hidden, and was about to raise it when, unexpectedly, Emma turned her head and smiled at her.

"Oh! I've been looking everywhere for the scissors; they're with you!" Jessica also smiled.

"Yes, yes, I just told you that I was going to snip the edamame," Emma said.

"Ah! Silly me..." Jessica feigned forgetfulness.

"Do you need the scissors now? I can let you use them first?" Emma offered.

"No need, no need; I'm not in a hurry to use them. You keep snipping," Jessica replied.

"Alright."

Emma bent her head down once more.

Jessica raised the bone chopping knife high...

She hadn't died from the initial cut, and the follow-up stabs continued...

Until her death, Emma didn't understand why Jessica suddenly went crazy and stabbed her with a knife...

Now she finally understood.

But this scene only filled her with some indignation and some sorrow.

The next scene, however, made her fly into a rage, her eyes filled with the light of hatred.

After Jessica had killed Emma, she went to JOHNNY's room.

"Jessica, what are you going to do?" JOHNNY seemed to sense something was off about Jessica and showed a fearful expression in his small eyes.

"I'm sorry, I have to use you to secure my son's future," Jessica raised the knife in her hand.

Jessica's hand was clearly trembling.

JOHNNY yelled for his mom and agilely dodged Jessica, rushing into the living room.

There, he found Emma lying on the floor.

"Mom! Mom! Wake up!" JOHNNY pushed Emma hard.

Jessica chased after him.

"Dad! Help!" JOHNNY glanced back and then ran toward the door.

The little boy had already learned to open the coded door by himself; he entered the correct password, but the door did not open.

Richard had changed the code on the password lock when he came back in the afternoon.

Jessica caught up...

"You bunch of animals!"

Emma, watching the video, had eyes blood red with anger.

No mother could bear such a sight.

She had always fantasized about returning alive to the real world, reuniting with her husband Richard and son JOHNNY.

What's the point now, even if she could go back alive?

Her son JOHNNY was already brutally killed, and her husband Richard had meticulously arranged all of this.

Her heart was dead as ashes.

...

"You'd better not go back and investigate the truth. Knowing the truth might be too much for you to bear."

"Why?"

"Have you ever considered? Your death could have been him hiring someone to kill you."

"How could that be? You really don't understand my husband at all; he's such a good man, handsome and kind, a rare good man in this world; don't slander him like that!"

...

Aila remembered the conversation she had with Li Teng earlier.

It was too ironic.

Li Teng had only listened to her briefly describe her situation and then deduced that Richard had hired someone to kill her.

Yet, there she was, love-struck, still defending him.

This was like being sold out and still counting the money for the seller, dying without knowing how one died.

How could she be such a foolish woman?

This foolishness hadn't only resulted in her death, but it also cost the life of JOHNNY, the most important person in her life.

Richard and Gemma had been together for so long, and she hadn't known a thing.

When they had been acting and deceiving her, she even spoke well of Gemma and pleaded for her.

How ironic!

The video hadn't ended; it was still ongoing.

In the video, Richard's face was covered in stubble as he wept bitterly in interviews with the media.

He swore to seek justice for his family, and his misfortunes, his complaints, his rage, his passion, and even his attractiveness won over a massive following.

His company's business surged, supported by these fans, with sales quickly passing ten million, then a billion...

The man who was so tragically sorrowful in public presented a completely different image in front of Gemma.

They even sneaked off to bungee jump and skydive abroad, enjoying themselves tremendously.

All his sorrow was just an act.

Aila had never imagined that his acting was so good; it was truly a pity he hadn't pursued a career as an actor.

The more passionately she had loved Richard before, the more fiercely Emma hated him now.

Now aware of the truth, she let out a hysterical wail inside the spaceship. She frantically tore at her hair and beat her chest, yet felt not a shred of pain.

It wasn't until she collapsed backward and 'bang!' hit the cold water that she finally snapped out of it.

Someone had pulled her out of the water.

It was Li Teng.

When Li Teng and Yang Shunli had finished their ride on the carousel, they found Emma asleep on it.

Li Teng had no choice but to carry her down, trying various methods to wake her, but none succeeded.

In the end, Li Teng, desperate for a solution, decided to try a method from Inception. He helped Emma to the fountain, and then let her fall back into the cold water of the fountain.

To see if it would work.

Unexpectedly, the method did have an effect, and it woke Emma up.

"Ah!!"

As Emma awoke, she let out an extremely piercing wail, still unable to walk away from the intense anger and hatred she had just experienced.

"What...what's wrong with you?" Yang Shunli asked Emma.

Emma continued to cry, unable to stop.

Li Teng sat by quietly without saying a word, silently waiting for Emma to finish crying.

...

"Everything you said was right, he really did hire someone to kill."

After crying for more than ten minutes, Emma finally calmed down a bit and spoke to Li Teng beside her.

Because of Li Teng's words before, she had harbored resentment towards him and didn't even want to speak to him anymore, finding Li Teng annoying on sight.

Now she realized that Li Teng's insight was extraordinary, that of a surpassing sage who could deduce the truth of matters just from a few words of hers and had tried to tell her.

She clearly owed him an apology for misunderstanding his good intentions.

"What happened after you fell asleep?" Li Teng was clearly not concerned with the truth about Aila's husband hiring a murderer. He was more interested in what Aila experienced after falling asleep, as it could be helpful for completing the mission.

"Back then, I thought I had awakened, and you all were no longer on the carousel. There wasn't a single visitor in the whole amusement park, and suddenly I heard a wailing sound…" Aila began to recount her experience to Li Teng.

As she spoke, her emotions collapsed once again.

"So the amusement park showed you the truth about those incidents in a video after you fell asleep? What was the purpose of that?" Li Teng was lost in thought.

"It was to make me understand the meaning of my life, to motivate me to struggle on, to return to the Living World, for revenge! Revenge! I must have my revenge!" Aila yelled out several times.

She no longer dwelled on her own death.

But she couldn't tolerate that man killing her JOHNNY; she had to avenge JOHNNY!

As Aila was screaming, a giant demon shadow soared into the air, swinging its fists and causing wanton destruction in the amusement park, its massive fists exploding one of the large rides, with a thunderous boom that shook the heavens.

Still unsatisfied, it slammed its fists into the ground again, causing the earth to quake.

"What is that?" Yang Shunli was terrified, trembling and ready to run away at any moment.

"Calm down! Calm down! You need to stay calm to survive and get out of here, to complete your plan for revenge!" Li Teng quickly soothed Aila.

Aila's rage subsided a bit.

The massive demon turned into clusters of ferocious black mist and drifted in all directions.

Somewhat liquid dripped from some clumps of black mist onto the ground, like pools of fresh blood.

"How can I survive and leave this place to return to the real world? Can you help me? I'm willing to pay any price!" Aila looked up at Li Teng.

"Spread out your hand..." Li Teng instructed Aila.

Not quite understanding what Li Teng meant, Aila cooperated and spread out her hand.

"Imagine a Gold Coin appearing in your hand, focus very intensely on that coin, and channel the same tenacity you just had for hatred into it. You only have a chance to survive and leave this place, to complete your revenge, if you do exactly as I say," Li Teng spoke to Aila like a hypnotist.

Aila looked at her palm, then followed Li Teng's instructions, imagining a Gold Coin in her hand. With this Amusement Gold Coin, she would be able to survive in the amusement park, complete task after task, reduce all her sentences, and return to the real world to avenge JOHNNY.

A miracle happened...

A mass of golden light appeared in Aila's hand, gradually dissipating, and indeed, there was a Gold Coin in her hand!

"Exactly as I thought, this is the right way to acquire the Amusement Gold Coin," Li Teng nodded.

"This...this...what's happening?" Both Aila and Yang Shunli were dumbfounded.

"First tell me, did you both see that ghost in white?" Li Teng asked Aila and Yang Shunli.

"We did," they nodded.

"What did the ghost in white look like? Give me details," Li Teng asked Aila.

"She was rather plump, with red eyes and a white face..." Aila recalled.

"Is your nanny also rather plump?" Li Teng inquired further.

"Yes...yes! Now that you mention it, that ghost in white had a similar build to her!" Aila nodded quickly.

However, Yang Shunli was shaking his head slightly.

"What did the ghost in white look like to you?" Li Teng asked Yang Shunli.

Yang Shunli shook his head again, as if he didn't want to say.

"Was it the appearance of your girlfriend? Or was she similar in stature to your girlfriend?" Li Teng guessed a few times.

Yang Shunli shuddered as if he had been electrocuted.

"Anyhow, it was different from what she saw," Yang Shunli looked down, clutching his head with his hands.

"The ghost in white I saw was nondescript, similar to Sadako. The image of the ghost in white varies for everyone; I believe the version those from Europe and America see is even more different from ours," Li Teng continued.

"What does this mean?" both Aila and Yang Shunli were still confused.

"Do you know why the Amusement Gold Coin appeared in your hand just now? And when you fell asleep on the carousel, do you know why you experienced all that in the dream?" Li Teng asked Aila several questions in return.

"I...I..." Aila seemed on the verge of understanding, but there was still that final bit, like the paper on the window that hadn't been completely pierced through.

"And that demon just now..." Li Teng reminded again.

At the same time, he extended his palm, and with a flash of golden light, an Amusement Gold Coin appeared in his hand.