Trembling At A High Altitude

"If he were still alive, he certainly wouldn't want you to be like this; he would want you to bravely face the rest of your life. If you continue like this, he would rest in peace!" the rescue worker continued to persuade Zhang Mengdi.

"No, he's not dead! He won't die! We've been through a lot together, and he's never let me down! He's definitely going to come back alive! He will come back with Nana!" Zhang Mengdi hoarsely argued back, her voice loud.

The two rescue workers glanced at each other.

It was clear that they knew they could no longer persuade this stubborn woman to leave.

Forcing her to go was not an option.

The water below was deep; unless she cooperated, it was simply impossible to forcibly take her away.

There were many others in need of their rescue, and they could not afford to stay here any longer.

Every minute they delayed, a life waiting for their rescue was possibly put at risk.

"Do you have a cell phone?" one rescue worker asked Zhang Mengdi.

"No," Zhang Mengdi shook her head; she didn't know when she had lost it.

"This is my phone; I just unlocked it. If you come to your senses, call for help anytime, and someone will come to take you back," the rescue worker handed his phone to Zhang Mengdi.

"No need." Zhang Mengdi clearly had no intention of leaving this place.

She knew that her two most beloved people were right below her in the train car.

Once the two rescue workers left, she would go to find them and stay with them forever.

The rescue workers placed the phone next to Zhang Mengdi, glanced at each other, sighed, and then prepared to wade through the water to leave.

Just then, from the car, which had been quiet, suddenly came a splashing noise from the water.

The two rescue workers quickly took out flashlights and shined them into the car.

To their surprise, they saw a man holding a girl, swimming from the depths of the car towards a broken window!

"Husband! Nana!"

Zhang Mengdi, who was lying on top of the car, also peered into the car, recognized that it was Li Teng and Nana, and couldn't help but shout loudly.

The two rescue workers quickly threw a rope to Li Teng.

After grabbing the rope, the rescue workers helped pull him to the window, handed over Nana to Zhang Mengdi on the roof, and then pulled out the exhausted and severely fatigued Li Teng as well.

"Husband! I always said you've never let me down!"

Zhang Mengdi threw herself into Li Teng's arms.

Li Teng gently patted her back.

This time he had almost let her down.

Thankfully.

"How did you... It's been such a long time? How did you..." the two rescue workers, looking at the last train car submerged by the water and the second car half submerged, displayed an incredulous expression.

"Between the two cars, there was a slight bulge, just with a small crack... Nana was very brave, and also very smart..." Li Teng narrated what had happened to everyone.

"It's simply a miracle! So touching!" the two rescue workers exclaimed in admiration.

...

After Li Teng recovered a bit, the family of three, with the help of the two rescue workers, swam across nearly two meters of still water, then walked through a half-meter deep save passage out of the tunnel back to the surface.

The rain outside the subway station had lessened somewhat, but the floodwater still had not receded.

The entire city was completely transformed into a swamp, a complete mess.

But they were not far from home now.

Probably just a little more than one station's distance.

Having lived here for many years, Li Teng was very familiar with the streets nearby; even submerged, he could still recall the layout of the streets.

After weighing the options, Li Teng decided to take his wife and daughter home.

Otherwise, they would always be in danger.

Also, his current condition was not good; he needed to go home and rest properly.

Struggling on.

Although staggering along the way, half an hour later, the family safely made it back home.

There was no water, electricity, or gas at home.

Fortunately, Zhang Mengdi had bought plenty of snacks at home, allowing Li Teng to quickly replenish his energy.

As long as he had enough food, no matter how exhausted, Li Teng could fully revive.

However, today he was truly exhausted.

His body was covered in injuries.

Especially the wounds on his palms, which pained Zhang Mengdi so much that she was in tears.

The wounds, soaked and swollen from the water, were thankfully treatable with iodine and other medicines stored in the medicine cabinet at home for disinfection and anti-inflammation. Otherwise, wounds drenched in standing water could become seriously troublesome if infected.

"I need to go out," Li Teng said, standing up after resting for an hour.

"Where are you going? We still have food at home, enough to last two days," Zhang Mengdi said, anxiously grabbing Li Teng.

"A once-in-a-century rainstorm and flood disaster has left many people still in danger; they need my help," Li Teng replied to Zhang Mengdi.

He wasn't that noble; he just had an intuition... that this mission was most likely a rescue mission.

The more people he saved, the greater the likelihood of completing the mission.

Staying home and slacking off was certainly not an option.

"You've already saved a lot of people, and besides, you're injured…" Zhang Mengdi was visibly upset.

"Our family is together now, but there are many other families, just like ours, who might be desperately searching for their loved ones. Many people might be in danger just like you and Nana were in the car, urgently waiting for rescue..."

"In terms of rescue, I consider myself somewhat of an expert. Perhaps my help could prevent many families from falling apart," Li Teng explained to Zhang Mengdi.

"It's too dangerous outside... I'm afraid... I'm really afraid you might not... Nana can't be without you..." Zhang Mengdi cried.

"When have I ever let you down? Don't worry, I will come back when the rain stops," Li Teng reassured her, patting her shoulder.

"Daddy! It's very dangerous outside! Don't go!" Nana, who was playing, ran over and clung to Li Teng's legs.

"Many kids just like you are trapped in the rain. They also want to go home, and they miss their parents. Don't you want to help them?" Li Teng crouched down and touched Nana's cheek.

"Yes..."

"Shall I go help them for you?"

"Alright..."

Li Teng kissed Nana's cheek, stood up, patted Zhang Mengdi's shoulder again, and then left the house without looking back, descending the stairs and disappearing into the vast curtain of rain.

...

Three days passed.

Li Teng couldn't remember how many people he had actually saved.

A hundred? Two hundred? Three hundred? Or even more?

Three days later, he was transported back to the prison.

Unfortunately, he hadn't managed to visit home and say goodbye to Zhang Mengdi and his daughter before being sent back to the prison.

Of the eight people who had left together, only he returned to the prison alive.

Clearly, his judgment was correct.

This storyline's mission was indeed to save people.

Li Teng suspected that the others might have had similar missions.

They either hadn't saved anyone, or hadn't saved as many as Li Teng had, or hadn't performed as well as Li Teng, which is why they were eliminated.

Li Teng wasn't surprised at all.

Because among the other seven people tasked with the same mission, some were Euro-Americans, others were black.

As a child, Li Teng had often been brainwashed by those public intellectuals, thinking how high the quality of those Euro-Americans was.

But as the internet era progressed, and information became more rapidly accessible, he realized how foolish and absurd those public intellectuals' brainwashing articles were. He learned the poor quality of those Euro-American robbers, no different from uncivilized barbarians.

And those poor blacks were discriminated against and bullied by whites, while being brainwashed by whites to irrationally hate overseas Chinese and Asians. They were even worse than the barbarians, perhaps not even as advanced as a partially evolved gorilla.

With such poor national quality, it was good enough not to loot during disasters, let alone expect them to save people?

That was wishful thinking.

Only the kind-hearted natives would help each other during a major disaster.

That is why a civilization of five thousand years has been able to survive and continue to this day.

...

Li Teng's sentence was reduced from seventeen years of fixed-term imprisonment to sixteen.

New members were added.

It was another new cycle of elimination.

The new mission had a name and specific rules.

The new mission was named "The Fog."

The specific rule was that one must uncover the truth.

Once the truth was ascertained and submitted, it could no longer be changed.

If the truth uncovered was not the ultimate truth, the mission failed.

One must uncover the real truth for the mission to be considered complete.

This time, accompanying Li Teng on the mission were one man and two women.

Including Li Teng, there were two men and two women.

Moreover, they were all from the same country.

It seemed that this configuration was always the initial setup of each elimination cycle.

The man was named Gao Feng, and the two women were named Yang Peishan and Liu Yanni.

The three did not know each other.

Unlike the previous two elimination cycles, where there were married couples or lovers.

...

Helicopter.

Sleep.

Woke up after a burst of cellphone alarm.

When he awoke, Li Teng found himself lying on that familiar wooden bed.

He casually turned on the bedside lamp...

The bedroom looked both familiar and strange.

Had he returned to the world of his last mission?

Could he see Zhang Mengdi and her daughter again?

Just right, he could make up for the regrets from the last mission.

After getting up from the bed, Li Teng went to the wooden cabinet.

It should be morning in the mission world now, he was wearing pajamas and needed to change his clothes before going out.

He opened the door of the wooden cabinet, an old-style wooden cabinet, and on the back of the cabinet door was a mirror.

Seeing his reflection in the mirror, Li Teng was slightly stunned.

This...was not his twenty-something appearance.

It seemed to be his forty-something appearance?

It looked like there was no connection with the previous mission, and more than twenty years had passed between the two worlds.

But, the cellphone on the table was still from that era, not looking like it was from over twenty years later.

He turned on the cellphone to check the date, but his vision was immediately blurred.

It seemed like his age had turned into his forties, but the era appeared barely changed.

Can't complain about bugs in the script.

Let it be.

The time on the cellphone wasn't blurred, it was five-thirty in the morning now.

It was still dark outside.

There was some noise outside.

Li Teng quickly changed his clothes and hurried out of the bedroom.

He bumped into a person who was brushing their teeth, and upon recognizing the person's face, Li Teng gasped in surprise.

"Anna?"

"Hmm? Dad? Why are you looking at me like that? Is there something wrong with me?" Anna replied to Li Teng unclearly.

Li Teng stared at the Anna in front of him, his mind went blank.

This...clearly wasn't Anna...but it was Anna, she seemed much more youthful compared to the Anna in his memory.

The teenage version of Anna?

The question was, why was she in his house? Why was she calling him dad?

Soon, a terrifying thought crossed Li Teng's mind.

Could she really be...Nana?

How could it be?

He had named Zhang Mengdi's daughter Li Anna because of Anna.

Now she had grown up, was she really going to become Anna?

It seemed unlikely.

Perhaps, just similar in appearance?

It looked more than just similar! It clearly was!

Which came first, Anna or Nana?

What kind of paradox was this? A grandmother paradox?

"Dad, what's wrong with you? You look like you've seen a ghost?" Anna came over and patted Li Teng's face with her free hand.

"Are you up?"

Zhang Mengdi came out from the kitchen, obviously preparing breakfast for the family.

She must also be around forty years old now?

Li Teng looked at Anna, then at Zhang Mengdi, and then tried to imagine his own appearance in his mind.

This Li Anna didn't look like him, nor like Zhang Mengdi; then whose child was she?

The scripts in Film and Television City were getting more and more nonsensical!

It looks like I need to find an opportunity to secretly check the DNA of the three of us.

But Li Teng soon gave up on this idea again.

With the style of those directors and screenwriters, even if the three had no blood relation, wouldn't the DNA test still force them to be a family?

It's all just movie making! Plot inconsistencies are the norm.

...

After washing and freshening up, the family sat at the dining table to start eating.

Listening to the conversation between mother and daughter, Li Teng occasionally inserted a few words, and he gradually grasped some context of the scripted world.

In this scripted world, he was a criminal investigation policeman.

Anna was eighteen years old this year, attending university, and was in her freshman year.

Zhang Mengdi was still a housewife.

Today was Monday.

Following the family's original plan, after breakfast, Li Teng would drive Anna to her university first, then head to his workplace.

Since he needed to drop Anna back at school, the family had woken up this early.

When they left home, the sky was just beginning to lighten, and there were still hardly any pedestrians on the streets.

Li Teng's car was downstairs.

After going downstairs, Li Teng didn't know which car was his own.

Fortunately, Anna walked up to a car, and when Li Teng pressed the key...indeed, the car door opened.

Judging from the car's quality, it was probably worth about fifty or sixty thousand.

In this mission world, it seemed Li Teng wasn't doing too well, still living in an old house and driving a very cheap car.

After settling into the passenger seat and fastening her seatbelt, Anna leaned back into the seat and dozed off.

Li Teng started the car, left the community, and merged into the city's traffic flow.