HHH Chapter 69

Following the original path back, they first went through the spiraling upward cargo passage, passed through two fire doors with access control, the huge unloading area, then the dark back work area and the hotel’s underground parking lot, until they saw the brightly lit stairwell in the distance. The elevator then stopped on the fourth floor. Luo Zhe swiped a room card to open a door. The wooden door automatically closed behind him, with a “click” of the lock.

This was a standard room. Luo Zhe carefully laid Ningma down on the bed, pulled a blanket over him, and pressed the button to raise the central air conditioning temperature. Only then did he collapse on the floor, panting heavily, sounding like bellows pulling in his lungs.

From the cold storage to the room, it was at least two hundred meters, plus carrying an adult through the darkness, and constantly being wary of the surrounding noises. If they ran into Huang Caide and his gang, the consequences would be unimaginable!

Fortunately, they returned safely to the hotel. This room wasn’t Ningma’s or Luo Zhe’s room, but as long as they were in the hotel, finding someone out was actually very simple.

“Block the door with something!” Ningma was extremely anxious at the moment, staring at the door directly opposite, his heart almost jumping into his throat, wondering what they would do after returning to the cold storage and finding out he had escaped. They would definitely not let it go.

Luo Zhe’s back was soaked with sweat. After slightly regulating his breathing, he moved a table to jam it behind the door. Seeing that it wasn’t very secure, he added the only two chairs in the room.

“Not enough!” Ningma looked around. The only things in the room that could be moved were these few items. “The bed! Stand it up!”

Luo Zhe immediately understood what he meant. He ran a few steps to the other bed, used force with both hands to flip it on its side, pushed it across the carpet and pressed it against the table at the door. For the time being, that was all they could do.

“Where’s your phone?” Ningma asked anxiously, “Call the police!”

“You’ve got to turn it off,” Luo Zhe replied, “Where’s mine?”

“Mine was taken away,” Ningma was extremely anxious, “Is there any other way to contact the outside world?”

“Landline?” Luo Zhe took a step to the bedside table, grabbed the receiver, loosened it, and then gently tapped it. “Damn it! It’s cut off! Seek help from others?”

“Other people?” Ningma immediately denied, “Before, when I looked for you, I knocked on every door on the third and fourth floors. There was no one else at all. All the hotel guests seemed to have disappeared!”

“How could that be?” Luo Zhe paced back and forth in the room like a trapped beast. “As far as you know, there are at least twenty people trapped outside the hotel. Are you saying you didn’t find a single one?”

“Yes,” Ningma didn’t want to believe it either, “I rang every doorbell, but there was no one. I don’t know where they all went!”

“Damn it!” Luo Zhe slowly walked to the window. The scene outside the window was a patch of white. It was so dark that you couldn’t see your fingers. Even the outlines of the distant mountains were hidden in the white night. “It’s impossible for them all to be gone. If they’re not in their rooms, where could they be?”

“Let’s not worry about them for now!” Ningma also turned his gaze to outside the room, “If we stay here, we’ll be discovered sooner or later. If we run, my leg…”

“You’re worried that we won’t be able to run out at all,” Luo Zhe said worriedly and walked to the door again to listen for movements outside. “Those bastards will definitely seal off all the entrances and exits of the hotel. Do you have a car?”

“Car?” Ningma realized what he wanted to do. “No, I don’t have a car. I didn’t drive here. What about you?”

“Neither do I,” Luo Zhe sat down heavily on the edge of the bed opposite Ningma. “How’s your leg?”

“It’s broken,” Ningma looked at his blood-stained trouser leg. “It probably can’t be reattached.”

“Let me take a look,” Luo Zhe got up, opened the tattered cloth that he had tied up tightly in the cold storage, found a pair of scissors and cut it open along his calf, revealing that the tibia of his thigh was fractured at the 3/4 point, and there was also a laceration. A tourniquet was tied tightly at the knee vein. Although it was very professional, it could only be a simple treatment. “How do you feel in the rest of your body?”

From minus 20 degrees to an air-conditioned room, wearing a cotton coat was actually a bit hot. Apart from weakness and a dry mouth, what he didn’t expect was that in the midst of fleeing for his life, the thermos cup he was holding didn’t fall. “I’m okay. Help me twist the water cup open. I’ll take a few sips.”

Luo Zhe opened the cup and handed it over. “No, we have to go to the hospital. This will still cause bleeding to death,” he said, pointing to a patch of blood stains soaking the bed.

“We can’t escape, how can we go to the hospital?” Ningma collapsed into the Simmons mattress on the bed. Compared to the low temperature in the cold storage, his body temperature was rising at this moment, and the pain in his broken leg was getting worse and worse. Right now, he could only endure it.

“No, that won’t do,” Luo Zhe wrapped a thick stack of tissues under Ningma’s wound. It was quickly soaked through layer by layer. “If you keep going like this, you’ll die. You’re losing too much blood. At most, you won’t last until dawn.”

“Let’s just press it for now,” Ningma took a sip of pine tea from the thermos cup. “We finally escaped. Now you want to go out and walk right into their trap.”

“We can’t just sit here and wait for death,” Luo Zhe’s hands were stained with blood. “Do you want me to fight them?”

“How many can you beat?” Ningma said weakly, “There are at least six of them.”

“Then what do we do?” Luo Zhe was at a loss. “Staying is also death, leaving is also death,” he suddenly thought of something, “Let’s gamble! They might still be looking for the Heart Bead. I know there’s a trolley upstairs. You sit on the trolley and I’ll push you out!”

Ningma’s reaction was slow for a moment, but in the end, he admitted that Luo Zhe’s suggestion was the only feasible one. Just as he said, gambling was better than dying here!

“Can I still walk? Or do you want to carry me!” Luo Zhe quickly dismantled the bed and sofa in front of the door, first opened the door a crack, observed that there was not a single shadow inside, turned around and went back to carry Ningma.

Entering the elevator, Ningma thought that Luo Zhe would press “1” floor, but he hovered his finger over the elevator panel and turned his head to ask, “Where did you put your Gzi Bead? Is it in your room?”

“Heart Bead?” Ningma was extremely anxious at the moment. “Don’t worry about any Gzi Beads. Get out of the hotel quickly!”

“No way!” Luo Zhe still didn’t make the next move. “If we get the Gzi Bead, we’ll have a bargaining chip to exchange for our lives if they come after us!”

Ningma frowned slightly, and after two seconds he compromised, “It’s not in the hotel, it’s outside!”

“Outside?” Luo Zhe asked in confusion, “Which outside?”

“Do you still remember the tree where my fiancee left a mark?” Ningma guided, “The tree with the mark, I buried the Heart Bead on the tree.”

“Like this?” Luo Zhe held up the person on his back, “We’ll go get it now,” he said, pressing the “1” floor elevator.

The elevator then went down. Before stopping steadily on the first floor, Ningma was worried that he would directly encounter Huang Caide guarding the elevator, but fortunately, when the elevator door opened, it was empty inside. Not only was there no one, but even the lobby was not lit.

It was a mass of darkness. Fortunately, there were a few emergency indicator lights that barely allowed them to see the ground. The high ceiling of the hotel lobby was spacious and dim, like an underground palace exuding coldness. There was silence all around, only the sound of “huffing” breathing in his ears. Other than that, it was like a mausoleum.

Download Chapter as TXT