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At first, it was the smallest fragments of wreckage that began to rise—bits of cars, rocks, and debris. Then came larger objects.
If one could ignore the impending dangers, this was an extraordinary experience. The sight before them was nothing short of a marvel—they ascended slowly alongside stones and steel, carried aloft by increasingly fierce winds. Gravity still exerted its pull, but only faintly.
The tangled mass of crushed vehicles unraveled, scattering into the sky. Beneath him, Li Xingyuan felt the truck tremble, hearing parts creak and groan as they too succumbed to the upward pull.
The wind grew fiercer, making breathing increasingly difficult. Under these conditions, even thinking became a struggle akin to altitude sickness. Li Xingyuan abandoned further contemplation, focusing instead on lying flat in his seat for comfort. His ears no longer merely ached; a sharp ringing had taken over.
Ahead of them, the military jeep began to lift off the ground. Its rear end rose first since the engine’s weight was concentrated at the front, giving the vehicle a lighter backside. It looked as though an invisible child had grabbed it from behind. But being a four-wheel-drive vehicle, when Lin Song panicked and pressed the accelerator, the wheels briefly scraped against the ground, generating enough forward momentum to momentarily drag the car back down.
Lin Song attempted to turn the vehicle around—he wanted to flee. Watching this unfold, Li Xingyuan sighed softly. He understood Lin Song’s instincts, but it was futile. At best, it bought them less than half a minute. Before Lin Song could act further, gravity intensified, flipping the vehicle entirely.
Because Li Xingyuan had tied the tow rope from the rear seat of the truck while inside the cabin, and the military jeep’s rear lifted first, the entire assembly rotated mid-air. The jeep now pointed upward, with the taut rope yanking the truck’s front end skyward. The truck groaned and screeched as gravity seized the opportunity to drag its massive frame higher.
Li Xingyuan and Old Liu were pinned helplessly against their seats. In the face of such overwhelming force, humans seemed insignificant—mere ants moments away from being crushed into dust.
Soon, the truck fully levitated. Its components groaned and creaked, metal fatigued and bending once more. This vehicle, already subjected to one aerial journey, reluctantly dragged its cumbersome body skyward again.
Inside, Li Xingyuan endured immense discomfort. His body felt as though it might detach from the seat and float away, but the seatbelt kept him firmly anchored. His stomach compressed painfully, other organs pressing against his ribs and abdomen until they swelled. He felt stretched thin, flattened out. Darkness clouded his vision, relentless tinnitus roared in his ears, and his mind teetered on the brink of unconsciousness.
They continued rising—not too fast, not too slow. Wind howled past, explosive and chaotic.
Time lost meaning. Eventually, the crushing force pinning them began to dissipate. Li Xingyuan’s head throbbed violently, but he forced his eyes open, peering through the window at their surroundings—and gasped.
They had soared into the heavens. Below, the earth lay shrouded in darkness, devoid of light, making it impossible to gauge their altitude.
Above, the scene was stranger still.
Li Xingyuan had long anticipated that the gravitational anomaly wouldn’t carry them endlessly upward. At this height, gravity and centrifugal forces reached equilibrium. The vehicles no longer ascended uncontrollably but hovered suspended in midair—like traffic congestion on a celestial highway.
Higher still, the clouds parted, revealing an unseen source of gravity profoundly influencing the world above. The once-shadowed sky now bore a gaping hole, stripped of humanity’s pollution that once obscured the stars. The firmament gleamed pristine, resembling the dawn of creation. Beyond the void, the cosmos shimmered with countless stars embedded in its profound blackness—a presence neither benevolent nor cruel, simply existing.
The rain, which had surged skyward after falling from above, froze into tiny ice needles and prisms. They refracted light from distant galaxies millions of light-years away, transforming themselves into radiant, otherworldly stars hovering closer to this realm.
The wind persisted, the sole traveler yet to cease its ascent within this gravitational spectacle. It rushed gently toward the heavens, too weak to escape Earth’s grasp, destined to return in another form.
Li Xingyuan stared dumbfounded at the view beyond the window. Even knowing they might plummet to their deaths in the next instant, crushed amidst the wreckage of vehicles, rocks, and steel, he couldn’t deny the breathtaking beauty of this moment—it was almost worth dying for.
“Mr. Li!” Old Liu’s voice snapped Li Xingyuan out of his reverie.
“Hmm? Yes.” Li Xingyuan refocused. For better or worse, he had reasons to survive.
Turning to Old Liu, he was startled by the sight. Blood streamed from every orifice of Old Liu’s face, rendering him a ghastly figure reminiscent of vengeful spirits.
Judging from Old Liu’s gaze, Li Xingyuan suspected his own condition wasn’t much better. Sure enough, when he touched his face, his hand came away smeared crimson.
No wonder blinking felt laborious—his eyelashes were gummed together with blood.
For some inexplicable reason, Li Xingyuan felt an urge to laugh but stifled it, fearing Old Liu might mistake him for losing his mind.
Ascending had been the simplest part of the plan. Now came the hardest challenge: how to descend.
The tow rope connecting the truck to the military jeep remained taut, stretching directly toward the latter. Li Xingyuan glanced at the jeep—it hovered roughly twenty meters above them. Earlier, the jeep had pulled the truck upward; now, the truck restrained the jeep from climbing higher.
“Lin Song!” Li Xingyuan called out, unsure of the young man’s condition. Lin Song’s ascent had been faster and higher—he might have already passed out from decompression.
Thankfully, a response soon came.
“Mr. Li!” Lin Song’s voice quivered, partly from cold but also fear. “What do we do now?”
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