Trembling in the Skies

Chapter 11: The Dungeon

Li Teng silently turned away and continued looking at the paintings hanging on the wall. Although the scene just now had been quite terrifying, for Li Teng—who had felt as if he’d already died once atop that stone pillar—nothing short of a life-or-death threat was enough to send him into a panic. The paintings on the wall were exquisitely crafted—all framed works covered with glass, their metal frames polished to a mirror-like shine. After carefully examining the last few paintings, Li Teng suddenly turned around again. Sure enough, all the wax figures behind him turned to look at him at once. Li Teng slowly walked toward one of the wax figures standing farther back. He then scrutinized the wax figure closely. A few seconds later, Li Teng suddenly swung his fist at a male “wax figure” standing next to the one he had been examining. The male “wax figure” was clearly caught off guard; he hadn’t expected Li Teng to have spotted him, and it was already too late to dodge. With a dull “thud,” Li Teng’s powerful punch slammed hard into the “wax figure’s” face. “Ouch!” The “wax figure” clutched its face, let out a agonized scream, and collapsed to the ground. Li Teng immediately stepped forward, pinned the “wax figure” down with his knee, and raised his fist high once more. “Bro! Stop hitting me! I was wrong!” The “wax figure” spoke up, begging Li Teng for mercy. This “wax figure” was clearly a living person in disguise, and Li Teng had just figured it out by using his wits. “Don’t want to get beaten up? Then tell me the truth! What’s going on here?” Li Teng pressed his forearm against the man’s chest, preventing him from struggling to his feet. “I didn’t mean any harm—I was just playing a joke on you, trying to have some fun! Don’t get mad… Calm down…” the man continued to beg for mercy. “A joke? Just messing with me? What the hell kind of joke is this? If you don’t explain yourself clearly, I’ll twist your head off right now and kick it around like a soccer ball!” Li Teng’s face was contorted with rage. Being trapped atop that stone pillar for so long, subjected to all kinds of torture, had nearly robbed Li Teng of the will to live. He couldn’t believe the man standing before him was responsible for all this… If this man really was behind it, he shouldn’t be so weak—but at the very least, this man must know something. “Ahem… I was just as confused and angry when I first arrived. I understand how you feel right now, brother. Don’t lay a hand on me—just ask me whatever you want to know, and I promise I’ll tell you everything I know.” The man showed no sign of resistance or struggle, merely smiling broadly. “All right, first question: what’s the story with that stone pillar?” Li Teng, of course, asked the most important question first. In the movies and novels I’ve read before, when the protagonist encounters all sorts of strange occurrences and finally gets the chance to question a witness, they often miss the point and start by asking a bunch of trivial questions. By the time they finally got to the crucial question, either the witness in the movie had been silenced, or the author of the novel had abruptly cut off the story. So Li Teng didn’t beat around the bush; he got straight to the point as soon as he had the chance. “That thousand-meter-tall stone pillar?” The man clearly knew about the pillar as well. “Yes.” Li Teng suppressed his excitement; he was eager to know the answer. “As for exactly who built those stone pillars and who took you up to the top of one, I don’t know the answers either,” the man shook his head. Li Teng remained silent, raising his fist high once more. “Don’t hit my handsome face… I’m on a stone pillar right now too, and I’m not much better off than you. This is your first time here, right? With so many questions, it looks like you haven’t been up here as long as I have.” The man quickly spoke up again. Li Teng remained silent, his gaze fixed intently on the man. From the sound of it, was there more than one stone pillar in this world? And was there a person trapped at the top of each one? “Although I don’t know how these stone pillars came to be or who put them there, I do know how to lower their height. As long as we find a way to gradually lower the pillar from a thousand meters until it’s only a few meters tall, we’ll be able to get back to the ground,” the man continued. “Aren’t we already on the ground?” Li Teng interrupted the man. “Haha… only temporarily. We’re just out for a breather. See that countdown? The stone pillars are like prisons, and their height represents our sentences. This countdown is our ‘recess’ time. Once it ends, we have to go back to work. After we finish, we’ll be sent back up to the pillars, where we’ll struggle to survive until the next ‘recess’…” A look of utter despair spread across the man’s face. “We have to be sent back?” Li Teng’s heart sank; he’d rather die than go back to those stone pillars. “Yes. What’s your name, brother? My surname is Gao, and my name is Gao Fei. You can call me Old Gao. Let’s sit up and talk—lying down isn’t very comfortable, is it?” “How do I lower the height of the stone pillar?” Li Teng didn’t let up on the man named Gao Fei. “You just signed up for a membership card, right? There are points on the card. Once you’ve participated in a photo shoot, you can redeem those points to adjust the height of the stone pillar—one point equals one meter. If you save up a thousand points, you can use the terminal to reduce the pillar’s height by a thousand meters. Only then will you truly be back on the ground and truly free.” Gao Fei answered Li Teng honestly. “How do I earn points? By finding a job here?” Li Teng didn’t care whether the man’s words were true or not; he decided to let him finish speaking first. “Did you see those posters on the walls?” Gao Fei gestured toward the surrounding walls. “I see them.” Li Teng didn’t turn around, worried the man might be trying to trick him. There might be accomplices lurking nearby, but right now Li Teng couldn’t worry about ambushes or traps—he had to keep a tight grip on this man first. “This is a massive island with a huge film studio on it. We unlucky souls who’ve been chosen will participate in the filming of various scenes here. Of course, at first we’re just extras—we’ll only be running around as background characters. For every scene we complete, we’ll earn some points as a reward. These points can be used for purchases here, or they can be exchanged for the height of the stone pillar… well, actually, they’ll be subtracted from the stone pillar’s height.” Gao Fei explained in detail. “Participate in the filming of various scenes? What’s the deal with the people on the poster who look exactly like wax figures?” Li Teng asked another question. “Being an actor here isn’t quite the same as being an actor in our old world. Here, if the character you’re playing dies in the script, you die too. Just like them—they’ve turned into wax figures on display here,” Gao Fei replied to Li Teng. “Did all these people die while filming?” “Yes.” “Then I’m not going to do the shoot,” Li Teng frowned. “Then you’ll just stay stuck on top of that stone pillar, waiting to starve to death slowly! By the way, when you first got here, you ate some food from the restaurant and took some clothes from the clothing store, right?” Gao Fei asked Li Teng a few questions. “So what?” “Heh heh, then your points are definitely in the red right now. You’ll have to take part in the 12 o’clock scene to earn enough points so you don’t have a negative balance when you leave. Otherwise, you won’t even be able to get back to the stone pillar—you’ll just end up like them, striking a pose before being sent to the wax museum.” Gao Fei chuckled with schadenfreude.