The Trembling World

Chapter 12: The Night of No Rest

It was a good thing that Liu Gan had already adjusted to this kind of loneliness. Since over a month ago, when he had entered his villa, he had been living this type of isolated lifestyle.

Amidst this loneliness, the sky seemed to slowly dim. Liu Gan’s first night in the Trembling World was about to arrive.

This night, was destined to be a restless one.

After the helicopter exploded and burned for a while, the fire slowly went out. The surrounding air was filled with the smell of foul smoke and various charred materials. The smell was making Liu Gan teary eyed and light headed.

Luckily the thunderstorm had passed, but the wind hadn’t stopped. The wind’s strength was even stronger than before. It was enough to disperse the unpleasant odor. Because he was unable to leave the plaza, Liu Gan would have been suffocated by the toxic fumes if it weren’t for the strong winds – therefore the strong winds actually helped him.

The helicopter crashed into the billboard, and after the explosion from the helicopter it further damaged the billboard. Both these incidents nearly cost Liu Gan his life, but it also brought him an advantage. This was that the billboards support structure completely changed on impact – so much that one of the areas took the form of a small criss-crossed ledge.

(ED: There was a pun there. Instead of criss-crossed ledge, it was network shape. You know, because it’s a game? Ha ha.)

Liu Gan modified this criss-cross ledge by kicking it and managed to turn it into an area that he was able to lay down partially in. Even though this was a simple modification, it was more comfortable than before – when he had to sit in the cranny of the billboard.

Tonight, he shouldn’t expect to leave the plaza. Liu Gan was to accompany these thousands of zombies moans while falling into a slumber. This was good, at least he won’t have nightmares… there’s no nightmare that could be worse than his current situation, could there?

Liu Gan was indeed feeling tired, but he didn’t dare to fall completely asleep. He was really worried that once he fell completely asleep, he would accidentally fall from the structure to the zombies below. If he really fell from there, then there was really only one ending… This was to be gnawed on and torn apart, while being eaten alive and feeling all of the pain.

If it was more than a month ago, Liu Gan would never have imagined himself dying in this manner.

…

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The sky gradually darkened. Liu Gan was unsure of how long had passed – 2 hours? 3 hours? At this moment, Liu Gan’s consciousness was a bit blurry, and from afar, on the horizon, once again the constant sound of a helicopter echoed.

Liu Gan immediately sat straight up and looked toward that direction. Indeed, it was another helicopter, even though it was flying quickly toward the plaza’s edge, towards the hundreds buildings. It kept circling around. A searchlight was non-stop shining on the ground, as if searching for something.

This helicopter was the exact same shape and model as the previous destroyed helicopter – the helicopter exterior had the same type of 3 rings that represented the San Xing corporation logo.

It looked like they didn’t wait for the return of their partners, so they came for a search and rescue work.

Liu Gan quickly stood on top of the support structure and shouted at the helicopter as well as waving his hands toward it. However, the sky had already completely darkened. The people onboard the helicopter – if the search light didn’t reach him – would have a hard time seeing him. In addition, the helicopter produced sound, so it was difficult to hear Liu Gan’s cry for help.

The rescue helicopter circled the towering skyscrapers a few more times. Its searchlight was first aimed towards the rooftops of the buildings, before it was repositioned to search carefully towards the windows of the building. Lastly, the searchlight was aimed toward the plaza. The burning helicopter from before had already stopped burning and producing any smoke, so it was impossible for it to give them a signal of any kind.

Despite Liu Gan’s efforts of constantly waving his arms and shouting at the top of his lungs, the searchlight on the rescue helicopter never reached the area of the billboard. Not to mention that it didn’t even shine onto the remains of the previous helicopter which was close by the billboard, they couldn’t even hear Liu Gan in overwhelming darkness.

The rescue helicopter flew overhead right by him, the rescue crewmember shining the light into the densely packed plaza of zombies. They decided that it was impossible for their comrades to be there, so the pilot flew the helicopter straight to the outer edge. No matter what Liu Gan shouted, it never turned back.

“A bunch of idiots! Would searching a bit more carefully kill you?” Liu Gan watched on as the helicopter body with its searchlight disappeared from view into the darkness of the night, and he felt his heart turn cold. If the helicopter kept searching for their comrades, it was very possible it would not turn back to this area.

This meant that he once again had lost his chance to escape from the plaza’s billboard. This could possibly be his last chance to be rescued.

This was really disheartening!

Powerless, Liu Gan could only return to the simple metal criss-crossed bed, both eyes staring into the pitch black darkness of the night. Unsure of what to make of this situation, perhaps he shouldn’t think about it at all…

Shortly after the helicopter left, the thick clouds that had hovered above Liu Gan’s head gradually dispersed from the gale. The moonlight seeped through the thinned out cloud – it was as if wielding a pipa sheepishly revealing only half the face, cowering behind her shy appearance.

[TN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipa]

Tonight was a full moon. After another half an hour had passed, the dark clouds that had originally covered the sky had been blown away by the evening breeze. The moonlight cascaded down onto the ground, illuminating the entire plaza. However, the landscape’s scene wasn’t all that beautiful, so Liu Gan just vacantly lied down on the simple, metal-framed bed. As he stared off into the bright moonlight, he began to recall the past 20 or so years of his relatively short life so far.

When one grew old, or was about to die, their most common action was to recall their memories.

He was unsure if the rain in the real world had stopped, nor did he know the condition of his body in the villa sitting in front of his monitor. Did the body stay there? Did only the soul get teleported here? Or did both the physical body and the soul get transformed and then transferred to this world here?

Did this count as entering another dimension?

If it did, according to the theories in ReadNovelFulls, he should be the only one entering another dimension, and undoubtedly become the story’s protagonist. However, it was clear to see that he wasn’t the only one that had entered The Trembling World; there were still tens of thousands other people. That’s why it couldn’t count as entering another dimension.

Then what exactly had he just experienced?

The world was large, the universe was vast, time was eternal and endless – there were too many unknowns and mysteries. Today for Liu Gan, a lot had occurred. He experienced countless setbacks from time to time again within his world. It allowed him to experience his own weakness and insignificance.

However, weakness and insignificance weren’t supposed to become reasons for giving up and shrinking back. As a human with an extremely high IQ, Liu Gan felt that no matter what, he had to press on. One had to treasure their life; even if neither of the two helicopters could save him, there was still a chance that he could encounter another chance to leave this place alive, as long as he just persevered.

Just like how, when he had been trapped here in the beginning, he hadn’t thought that helicopters would ever pass by. Yet the helicopters had come, and even noticed him. If it weren’t for that damned lightning, he would’ve already safely left this place.