Trembling in the Skies

Chapter 28: The Consequences of Drinking Too Much Coffee

Due to severe oxygen deprivation, Li Teng’s consciousness hovered between semi-awareness and semi-unconsciousness. Seizing the last shred of clarity, Li Teng quickly recalled the relative position of his body to the ventilation hole before he fell asleep and pinpointed its location. The opening was buried under fresh snow; relatively speaking, only the snow in that spot was still loose and soft, while everywhere else had been packed down by Li Teng until it was almost as hard as ice. Li Teng felt around with his hands, digging vigorously in that direction. He soon found a spot where the snow was relatively soft. After digging furiously to deepen the hole, he pounded at it with his fists until he finally broke through. Fresh, cold air rushed in through the hole, and as Li Teng breathed in oxygen again, his mind cleared completely in an instant. He hurriedly dug the opening a little wider. It was just as pitch-black outside the snow cave as it was inside, but he could sense that the snowfall had intensified; from time to time, large snowflakes were blown into the opening, threatening to slowly block it up again. Li Teng dared not fall asleep again; he kept clearing the snow from the entrance to prevent his breathing passage from becoming blocked once more. Having narrowly escaped the peril of suffocation, another urgent problem now loomed before Li Teng. He had to pee. Li Teng regretted drinking so much coffee earlier that day; now, even climbing out to relieve himself was a real hassle. With such fierce wind and snow, the slightest lapse in concentration could send him sliding off the top of the rock pillar. From a height of over a thousand meters, a fall would surely shatter his body to pieces. Come to think of it, drinking so much coffee that day wasn’t entirely without its benefits… Thankfully, all that coffee had kept him awake. If he hadn’t been woken up by the urge to pee, he would have simply slept to his death right here in this snow cave, trapped as it was. Better take care of the bathroom issue first. With this much snow, digging a hole big enough to crawl through to relieve himself would be too much of a hassle. If the hole was too small, he wouldn’t be able to squeeze through; if it was too big, he might accidentally knock down the walls, leaving him with nowhere to shelter from the wind in the early hours of the night. With a blizzard this fierce, he’d quickly freeze into an ice pop. After thinking for a moment, the resourceful Li Teng quickly came up with a solution. A way to take care of business without having to leave the cave. He used his hands to carefully hollow out a slanted downward hole in the snow wall at the midpoint of his body. The frozen snow was hard to dig through, and it took him quite a while just to create a hole the size of a fist. Soon, Li Teng’s hands were numb with cold, making it very difficult to continue digging. Li Teng couldn’t wait any longer. Lying on his side, he took out the drain pipe, aimed it at the hole in the snow, and carefully let some hot water flow out. The heat and pressure expanded the hole he’d dug a little further. However, the smell inside the snow hole wasn’t very pleasant. Fortunately, cold air blew in through the ventilation hole from time to time, dispersing the odor. Although he really wanted to relieve himself thoroughly, Li Teng couldn’t do that—if the flow was too strong, backflow might occur, and flooding the snow cave would be a disaster. But controlling the flow was frustrating—it was like reading a serialized online novel; going through it chapter by chapter just didn’t feel right. He had no choice but to strike a balance between the two. A dozen or so minutes later, Li Teng suddenly felt another gust of wind coming from the middle of his body. No way… “Water wears away stone”… no, “Water melts ice”? Since it had already broken through, Li Teng had no more reservations and immediately began releasing it in full force. It wasn’t until a full half-minute later that he stopped. What a rush! So satisfying! Then Li Teng reached out and scooped up a snowball from outside the ventilation hole, plugging up the drainage hole to keep the smell from escaping. “I’m so damn clever!” Li Teng couldn’t help but praise himself. It was still snowing heavily outside. Li Teng didn’t dare fall asleep again. He struggled to stay awake, keeping watch over the ventilation hole to make sure it didn’t get blocked by snow again. If only he had a plastic pipe—he could bury it in the snow wall and extend it outside, and the vent would never get blocked. It was a grueling struggle to hold out in the darkness. Li Teng recalled some of the online novels he had read, remembering how the positive, uplifting protagonists had overcome countless obstacles to reach victory, and drew strength and encouragement from the positive energy he had absorbed from those stories. Several hours passed. The drainage hole was dug open and blocked up several times. He persevered until the wee hours of the morning, when the snow finally stopped. Li Teng was quite sleepy and could hold on no longer. After thinking it over, he enlarged the ventilation hole a bit more before lying back down. If the ventilation hole was too small, it would easily get blocked; if it was too large, the cold wind would blow in. He had no choice but to find a balance between the two. When Li Teng woke up again, it was already light outside. It was a gray, hazy kind of light. It was snowing again—very lightly. He could feel how cold it was outside. Although it was as cold as an ice cave inside the snow shelter, it still felt slightly better than outside. Under the circumstances, there was no point in going out. No food, nothing to do, and not even a girlfriend to discuss human reproduction and evolution with. So, I’ll just keep hiding in the cave. I don’t know when this hard life will end. Figuring out a way to earn more points and lower the height of the stone pillar is Li Teng’s only hope right now. But points are really hard to come by. After all that hard work, he only earned a few points—so the next time he goes to the film studio, he’ll still have to make do with congee and steamed buns. Just thinking about the rice porridge and steamed buns made Li Teng start swallowing hard again. All the food he’d eaten at the film studio yesterday had been completely digested. Even the coffee he’d drunk had all turned into urine. Now Li Teng was ravenous again. When you’re hungry, you feel the cold even more. Fortunately, since it was cold, he wasn’t very thirsty. While in the cave, Li Teng stretches his arms and legs from time to time to prevent them from getting frostbitten from the prolonged cold. He had originally planned to stay hidden in the snow cave like this for the whole day, but… Li Teng has run into a new problem. Since he’d been fortunate enough to eat quite a bit yesterday, his bowels were now producing a fair amount of waste. There was no way to take care of that in the snow cave. He had no choice but to leave the cave. In this kind of weather, he really didn’t want to go out. But given the current situation, it’s not as if he can simply choose not to go out. Even if there were lightning and thunder outside, and the place was swarming with viruses, he’d have to go out. The bed Li Teng slept in was a large wooden bed passed down from his parents. It was a double bed, two meters long and nearly two meters wide. Although a corner of his bed had been knocked off by a commercial airliner, the remaining part was still perfectly fine for one person to sleep on. Losing a corner actually had one advantage. That is, Li Teng now had a small triangular platform in the corner at the top of the stone pillar. After clearing away some of the accumulated snow, he had a place to stand and take care of business. After crawling out of the snow cave, Li Teng took several large clumps of snow from the bed, packed them down into a bowl-shaped mound, and squatted on the small platform to relieve himself. Afterward, he pinched a few triangular snow chunks to clean himself up. Then he kicked the snow basin he’d just made off the ledge with his foot, saving himself the trouble of flushing. I wonder if there are any residents in this town. If there are, they probably wouldn’t go out in such cold weather, right? It’s not like it would land right on someone’s head, is it? Li Teng didn’t want to pin the blame on anyone else, but he had no other choice right now. He certainly didn’t want to be stink-to-death.