Trembling At A High Altitude

"Eh?"

Li Teng sat up from a deep sleep, about to get out of bed when suddenly he drew back his legs and let out a loud shout as he looked around.

"What's going on here?"

Li Teng looked around anxiously and carefully shifted his body to the edge of the bed to take a quick glance underneath it.

He remembered falling asleep on his bed at home last night, but when he woke up in the morning, he found that the bed he was lying on had somehow been placed at the edge of a cliff!

No, it wasn't the edge of a cliff...

After looking in the other three directions from the bed, Li Teng discovered with horrific shock that his bed was positioned at the top of a stone pillar!

The length and width of the stone pillar matched exactly those of his bed, and the pillar seemed to rise a thousand meters or more from the ground!

"This is a dream! It must be a dream!" Li Teng moved back to the center of the bed, hugged himself, and repeatedly comforted himself.

After closing his eyes for quite a while, Li Teng opened them again, hoping that this time when he opened his eyes, he would be back in his familiar bedroom.

Unfortunately, he wasn't.

He was still atop the pillar, thousands of meters high!

"Wake up! Wake up!" Li Teng slapped his own face, trying to awaken from this 'nightmare.'

Unfortunately, it was all in vain; doing so only made him more and more alert.

"I've been kidnapped! I need to call for help! My phone..." Li Teng searched under the pillow and the covers.

Usually, he played with his phone until its battery was dead at night, so he had the habit of placing it on a desk beside his bed to charge before going to sleep.

Therefore, it was impossible for him to find his phone on the bed.

Not giving up, Li Teng carefully crawled to the edge of the bed and inspected the area under the wooden bed.

Underneath the wooden bed was a smooth top of the stone pillar; his phone was not there either.

"Who did this?"

"Who brought me here?"

"You know this is illegal, right?"

"Let me down!"

Li Teng screamed into the sky.

There was no response.

Calming down slightly, Li Teng lay on the bed, sticking his head over the edge to carefully observe the pillar below, trying to figure out exactly where he was.

From the height of thousands of meters, it was difficult to make out the details below with the naked eye.

Fortunately, Li Teng had good eyesight. After forming a circle with his hand and looking carefully for a while, he could roughly make out that there seemed to be a small town below the pillar, with crisscrossing roads and some buildings. There was a mountain next to the town, and a large lake beside the mountain.

Is there such a town in the world?

A town with a stone pillar that reaches to the sky in the center of it?

It's a pity he didn't have his phone; otherwise, he could have gone online to check where this was.

"Help! Is anyone there?" Li Teng called out loudly to the area below the pillar once again.

There was no response.

All he could hear was the whistling of the wind by his ears.

Desperate, Li Teng lay back down on the bed.

Despite lying on his own bed, Li Teng's heart was not at peace at all.

This was a height of thousands of meters!

A careless move to the edge of the bed could result in a fatal fall!

Li Teng tried to keep himself in the dead center of the bed, so as not to accidentally fall over the side.

Lying on the bed, looking up at the sky, there was nothing he could do.

Li Teng soon realized a pressing problem that he urgently needed to confront.

His stomach started growling.

He usually ate breakfast around seven in the morning, and by now it must be nearly eight o'clock.

But he hadn't had breakfast yet, so being hungry was inevitable.

The problem was, where could he get breakfast under these circumstances?

If he continued without food, wouldn't he starve to death here?

And it wasn't just about starving; there was also the issue of drinking water.

It is said that a person can survive for about ten days without food, but without water, one couldn't last even three days.

Panic grew inside Li Teng.

"Who's playing this damned joke on me?"

"End it already! Stop playing!"

"Help!"

"Save me!"

Li Teng cupped his hands to form a megaphone and lay at the edge of the bed to cry for help towards the area beneath the pillar a few more times. After receiving no response, he had no choice but to give up temporarily and honestly lie back down in the middle of the bed.

Crying for help was utterly ineffective; it merely exhausted his strength for nothing and could even accelerate the loss of water from his body, which wasn't conducive to his survival on top of the stone pillar.

The best option now was to lie motionless, to extend his survival time as much as possible, and wait for the moment when somebody would discover and rescue him.

Would there be a rescue?

As Li Teng lay fuzzily contemplating in the middle of the bed, his consciousness slowly began to drift away.

At a certain moment, he suddenly realized it was extremely dangerous to fall asleep like this! What if he rolled off the bed in his sleep?

Having slept in a bed for so many years, he had never experienced rolling off while sleeping before. It probably wouldn't be so easy to roll off, right?

But this was over a thousand meters in the air!

He had never slept in such a high place before!

It's like when someone stands by their own bed in their bedroom, no matter what dangerous moves they make, they don't feel scared because falling won't hurt them, so they rarely fall off.

But if a person stands on the edge of a cliff without railings and continues such reckless antics, the consequences would likely be very different.

It's mainly because... the psychological feeling of standing beside the bed is different.

While he was lost in his jumbled thoughts, a faint rumbling sound came from the distant horizon.

Li Teng looked towards the horizon and saw an airplane!

It seemed to be a commercial airliner, flying over from the distant horizon towards this direction!

Li Teng quickly stood up on the bed and frantically waved his hands at the approaching airliner.

Unfortunately, the airliner was flying too high, and when it passed over his head without any pause, it was impossible for it to see Li Teng below, who was as tiny as a bacterium on a needle point.

"With commercial airliners passing by, at least it shows this place isn't uninhabited. Maybe other aircraft will appear. I have to struggle to survive. I will surely wait until the day of rescue comes!" Li Teng encouraged himself.

...

Lying on the bed, he made it to noon. Apart from the occasional commercial airliners flying high above, Li Teng didn't see any other aircraft.

The midday sun was quite harsh, and although it wasn't very hot so high up, it still made Li Teng feel parched. He wished he had a cup of iced, sweet drink in front of him at that moment.

He would have grabbed that drink and guzzled it down.

Unfortunately, there was nothing.

He was not only thirsty but also hungry.

There was absolutely no way to resolve this up in the high altitude!

Overcome by thirst and hunger, Li Teng fell asleep under the midday sun without realizing it.

He didn't know how long he had slept.

When he awoke, Li Teng found himself back in his own bedroom!

"Heavens! This nightmare has finally ended!"

Li Teng was overjoyed in his heart.

Thirsty.

He quickly reached out to the bedside table, grabbed the water cup, and poured the cool water into his stomach.

It still wasn't quenching his thirst.

There were chilled beers and soft drinks in the fridge.

He needed to find some food to eat as well.

Li Teng staggered out of bed and lurched out of his bedroom, intending to look for food and drinks in the refrigerator. But as he saw the bathroom next door, he thought it would be best to relieve himself first.

Lurching into the bathroom, he unzipped his pants to relieve himself in the toilet, when suddenly, Li Teng felt something was terribly wrong.

Where was the toilet?

Why had the view in front of him turned into a bottomless cliff?

Li Teng, on instinct, leaned over to glance down, only to find himself lurching forward, plummeting down the sheer cliff!

"Aaah!!!"

With a shrill scream, Li Teng finally truly woke up.

He found that he was not awake but still lying on his bed.

And this bed was still at the top of a pillar over a thousand meters high in the air!

The recent scene of being back in his bedroom was just a dream!

"Oh God! No!"

Li Teng cried out in utter despair.