Chapter 9
A large SUV drove into the medium-sized service area. As soon as the door opened, a man dressed in black and white casual sportswear and wearing fingerless gloves got out of the driver's seat.
The SUV's fuel tank was already low on gas, but instead of refueling immediately, he strode into the supermarket, pushed a shopping cart inside, and started browsing.
He didn't take anything at first, until he found a notebook at the cashier on the second floor.
The notebook style is common in convenience stores, supermarkets, and shopping malls. The cover has a few words written in a flamboyant style, half of which are covered by his hand, and only words such as "request" and "book" can be seen.
The man took the notebook before starting to take water, food, and daily necessities from the shelves. He pushed three full shopping carts back to the SUV, loaded the items into the car, and then plugged the gas nozzle into the gas tank to refuel. While waiting, he casually flipped through the notebook he had taken, chuckled after reading two pages of handwritten content, and threw it into the instant noodle box in the passenger seat.
The notebook fell into the cardboard box and got mixed up with the other notebooks, making it impossible to tell which one came first and which one came later.
After filling up the tank, the man carried the oil can to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and paused when he saw the luggage bag inside. He seemed to realize that the bag was still there, so he casually moved it aside and put the oil can inside.
After making several trips back and forth, the trunk was quickly filled. Just as he was about to close it, he frowned, took out the luggage bag, and moved it to the passenger seat.
With everything prepared, the man chose an unused room in the service area to rest.
Two cars arrived the next day, exchanged glances, and then left without incident. Another car arrived on the third day; the driver was very outgoing, carrying a bottle of liquor and a glass, trying to strike up a conversation, but was awkwardly turned away by the man's cold face and indifferent attitude. On the fourth day, the man changed into a blue-green tracksuit and wore the same motorcycle gloves before driving away.
After leaving the service area and driving for a while, he saw a white sedan parked on the side of the road.
The driver of the white car was a young woman. She was carrying a stack of things and climbing up the stone steps. She was clumsy as she climbed, and she looked like an ordinary woman who rarely exercised and disliked self-discipline.
She hung one end of the rope ladder on the wall and threw the other end into the wall, unfolding it into a rope ladder.
The car owner was inexperienced; the upper anchor point wasn't properly secured, and the lower part was too heavy, causing the entire ladder to slide down. The ladder, which had taken a minute to painstakingly set up, slid completely onto the road surface in less than a few seconds.
Fang Xiaoyu: ...
The man who happened to witness this scene: ...
He raised an eyebrow. Since he hadn't had lunch yet, he simply parked his car in the middle of the road, grabbed a piece of bread, and ate while watching, treating it as a pastime.
Fang Xiaoyu, unaware that someone was using her for entertainment, ran down the rope ladder again, looking at it with some worry.
To secure one end of the rope ladder, she found some of the longest and strongest iron nails and hammered at them for a long time. Finally, she managed to drive in two nails, creating a perfect arc, and prepared to fix one end of the ladder in place.
Unexpectedly, after the rope end was put in and the knot was tied, before I even started trying to climb, the nail was "eaten" by the wall, and even the hole left by the nail disappeared.
Fortunately, the wall didn't eat the rope ladder along with it, otherwise all these days of work would have been for nothing.
She looked around and it seemed that the only option was to tie one end of the rope ladder to her car.
That means she can't test the sturdiness of the rope ladder inside the soundproof wall, nor can she use it to practice her skills and physical fitness in climbing suspended ladders.
Seeing that Fang Xiaoyu hadn't moved and was just staring blankly at the rope ladder, the man felt a little bored. He had finished his bread and was about to start his car and leave when he suddenly saw that she had made a move.
She carried the rope ladder around the white car, initially gesturing as if she wanted to tie one end to the seat, but perhaps feeling it wasn't sturdy enough, she went outside the car and searched around, eventually finding the tow hole on the front bumper.
Then she went back to the car, grabbed a bundle of safety rope, hung one end on the trailer hitch, tied the other end to her body, and also tied one end of the rope ladder to it, making a tight knot.
The man frowned deeply when he saw her struggling to tie the knot several times.
Fang Xiaoyu sensed someone watching her, looked around but saw no one. She was a little confused. Was it just her imagination?
She quickly put the incident out of her mind, bent over and sat on the ground, pedaled the handlebars, and pulled with all her might, somewhat satisfied with the result.
It's sturdy and should be able to support its own weight.
She ran up the stone steps with the remaining rope ladder, intending to put it over the wall.
The man sighed, made sure she wouldn't turn back, got out of his car, squatted down in front of the white car, and prepared to give her a more professional knot change.
Upon closer inspection, while the knots may look a bit ugly, they are all untie knots. Whether they are professional or not doesn't matter; the main thing is that they are effective and usable.
After confirming that nothing unexpected would happen, he looked up and saw that the other person was still facing away from him, so he quietly returned to the SUV and leaned over the steering wheel to look up.
Will this person really go down? Or will they come back shaking their leg at the end?
The rope ladder was lowered over the wall, and the rope in her hand tightened instantly. Fang Xiaoyu glanced down, swallowed hard, looked back down at the white car, tugged at the safety rope around her waist to make sure it was secure, gave herself a pep talk, squatted down and climbed down the rope ladder.
When the man saw her figure disappear over the wall, he sat up abruptly, his expression of anticipation vanishing.
The first section Fang Xiaoyu climbed was the outer wall of the soundproof wall. The rope ladder was not completely suspended in the air yet, with one side close to the outer wall, giving people a psychological buffer.
When holding the ladder, her hands would scrape against the wall, but luckily she was prepared and wrapped strips of cloth around her hands to avoid injury since she didn't have gloves.
A distance of three zhang (approximately 10 meters) used to be only twenty steps to walk, and climbing stairs would only take about a minute at the slowest. But once it's placed in mid-air, and people have to climb down a homemade soft ladder, the psychological pressure is enormous for ordinary people who haven't been trained.
Especially at higher elevations, the wind is strong, blowing in from behind. The lower section of the rope ladder is not strong enough to support the weight, so it keeps swaying underfoot, making the upper part unstable as well. My heart keeps going up and down with it.
Fang Xiaoyu counted the number of ladders, moving one step at a time. Occasionally, she would sway and swallow the gasp that was about to escape her throat, holding on tightly to the ladder ropes until she got used to it before continuing.
When she kept stepping until there was nothing blocking her way before her toes, and the ladder below had become like floating duckweed, making it even harder to get a foothold, she knew that she was about to finish the first section of the climb.
Her back was already soaked with sweat, and the sudden chill of late spring made her nose sting, her body tremble, and she couldn't help but sneeze loudly.
Achoo—
This sneeze came at a high price. First, Fang Xiaoyu's upper body leaned slightly outward, then she was pulled back by the rope and bumped lightly against the outer wall. Her right knee went numb, and her left foot, which wasn't firmly planted, slipped, causing her body to suddenly fall downward.
Fortunately, her arms were still wrapped around the ladder rope, and her hands were firmly gripping the rolling pin. Even the safety rope around her waist seemed to tighten for a moment.
—That's an illusion; the safety rope should actually be longer.
Fang Xiaoyu used her arms to exert force and her feet to find a footing, and soon regained her balance.
Excluding the section inside the wall, the rope ladder was only about 20 or 30 meters long, and there weren't enough sticks left. At this point, there were only a few steps left to take, and the first small goal set for oneself had been achieved.
I've gained courage and experience, and I'm quite satisfied with the sturdiness of the ladder.
She didn't dare to waste a second and climbed back up even faster than she had come down, all the way back to the top of the wall. Sitting on the stone steps, her trembling hands and feet seemed to have just returned to her body, giving her a sense of reality.
"Hahaha……"
Fang Xiaoyu leaned against the stone steps, panting and laughing. She was a little scared, her arms and legs were still trembling, but she was very excited and a little proud.
After sitting for a short while, she felt that the ground was too hard and uncomfortable to sit on, so she got up and started pulling the rope ladder back, all the way to the white car. It took her several times longer to untie the knot.
Then he walked to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and prepared to lower the rope ladder, when he exclaimed "Huh!"
At the previous service area, there were plenty of kitchen supplies, including a large pile of rolling pins. However, there wasn't much fuel left; the trunk only held five cans of oil, leaving plenty of space for the rolling pins.
But now there are ten oil drums in the trunk. If you pick up any one of them, it's full and very heavy.
Back in the car, I found two more boxes of water, a box of bread, a bag of commonly used medicines, and a pair of half-finger gloves.
Has someone been here?
It came during its own time of adventure.
She does good deeds without saying a word or leaving her name; she's like a fairy godmother.
Fang Xiaoyu couldn't contain her surprise and delight. She looked around to make sure she didn't see anyone, then cupped her hands into a megaphone and shouted, "Thank you, kind person—"
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