Knights of the Wasteland Fortress

Chapter 57 Trial Begins

"You understand? Her last move."

After praising Hena's climbing speed, Sun Simiao turned his gaze to Jiatu, looked at him playfully and said:
"She could do it with both feet, but she only used her right foot. That should be..."

"Well... it was for me to see..."

Kato nodded.

Although Hena didn't want him to take risks, she still helped him when she realized his determination.

While Jiatu was moved by this, he was also a little disturbed:

"But... I can't do that movement..."

Sun Simiao nodded with a "sure enough" expression on his face:
"That movement, even for me, is a bit difficult to do... It's normal if you can't do it... But she is your companion, right? Doesn't she know?"

He pointed to Jiatu's right foot, and seemed to have realized through Jiatu's usual actions that his right foot was far less flexible than Hena.

"Because she's an idiot..."

Jiatu sighed, and replied somewhat helplessly.

It is true that Hena learns things quickly by herself, but compared to "teaching people", she is not even worthy of carrying Jiatu's shoes.

Heda's homework is so good now, all thanks to Jiatu's hard work.

So from this point of view, Hena felt that she was relying on him, and she was not wrong.

When Sun Simiao heard Jiatu's answer, he couldn't help but fell silent.

A few seconds later, he recovered from his sluggishness, looked at Jiatu curiously and asked:
"So what do you decide to do? You can't learn from the actions of the three of them, right?"

Jiatu didn't reply, but looked up at the stone tablet in front of him.

"It's only 400 meters away...do you really want to give up?"

Jiatu thought silently in his heart.

He already had some ideas about whether he could reach the summit, but the problem was that he knew too much about the stele, far beyond Sun Simiao's imagination, and there was still a full six-hour time limit. It is possible to complete the climbing of more than 400 meters of the entire stele in such a short period of time.

"I can only gamble..."

Jiatu looked at the brain-scaring battery in his hand, thought for a while, and put it in Sun Simiao's hand:
"Examiner Sun, help me charge the battery."

"Okay, do you still want to challenge... Wait, where are you going?!"

Just as Sun Simiao wanted to tease Jiatu, he saw that the young man was already walking towards the bottom of the stele with his back on his back.

"Make some preparations."

Jiatu waved to him, then walked to the bottom of the stele, searched around the tiankeng, and found several blood-stained pockets.

These are the relics of the fallen, and no one has collected them.

He dug out two coils of paracord, some ration sticks, and a water jug.

There was only half of the water in the kettle, so after he poured it out, he washed it in the water from the pool and filled it with his own kettle.

"Twelve hours... almost enough."

Jiatu estimated the time it would take him to climb to the top, and then he heard Sun Simiao shouting loudly in front of the observation platform——

"There is still half an hour! Those who want to try again for the last time, be prepared!"

Jiatu knew he was reminding himself.

Looking at the clear water pool with pale blue forget-me-nots blooming in front of him, Jiatu took a deep breath and stood up.

Insert a new battery, put on the closed mask, and start the host computer.

Accompanied by Heiyin's system welcome, the dark night in front of him shed its mysterious veil and became clear at a glance.

"Oh...the integrated photoelectric system...it's so handsome."

Watching the heavily armed Jiatu walking towards him, Sun Simiao said jokingly.

However, his gaze was a step behind, and he glanced at the two coils of parachute rope and the two water bottles on Jiatu's body.

His expression became serious:

"...you know what you're doing, don't you?"

"An extra 'load' means an extra 'external force'..."

Jiatu nodded, knowing exactly what Sun Simiao was referring to: "From clothes, shoes, water bottles to dry food items, all these 'equipment' are not produced by ourselves, so under the rules of the "Life Stele", these belong to 'By external force'."

"The more things you carry, the greater the 'burden' you bear on the stele... In the end, the 'burden' itself will become a barrier that you cannot cross..."

Sun Simiao looked at Jiatu with a serious expression and said——

"Do you want to die?"

"Dead...I don't know."

Jiatu took a deep breath: "But if there is a chance, I will always give it a try."

"Don't worry, I won't do anything reckless."

Leaving the invigilator a firm back, Jiatu pressed his hands against the white stone wall.

He looked up at the towering white stone tablet with no end in sight. Only then did he feel again what an exaggerated figure the so-called "400 meters" was.

"Would you like to challenge the Dongzhu TV Tower... just give it a try..."

Putting on the tactical gloves with his ten fingers exposed, Jiatu put his hand into the waist bag on his back, and forcefully tore open the seal of the chalk powder bag, allowing the white dry powder to cover his entire palm.

Jiatu swept across the I-beam above his head.

There are white handprints left by previous climbers everywhere. Even if he didn't remember Hena's route and saw the white handprints above his head, he wouldn't go wrong.

Taking a last look at the cane that had accompanied him for three years, Jiatu threw it on the ground.

Jumping up vigorously, grabbing the I-shaped steel above the head about two meters above the ground, Jiatu pulled it to his chest, and slowly but firmly climbed up.

The reinforced area on the first floor was more difficult than he had imagined.

I couldn’t feel it when I was on the observation platform, but the first layer of rock slabs of more than 130 meters is not like when I look up, there are clusters of steel bars everywhere.

In the sparsest place, the distance between steel bars exceeds five meters, and in the densest place, there may be four or five steel bars distributed within a range of one meter.

Too dense will not work, too sparse will not work.

Jiatu observed the place with the most white handprints, and found the way forward bit by bit.

【Which route are you going to choose? 】

After about four or ten minutes, Heiyin finally finished reading the work log during the cold start, learned about Jiatu's purpose and status from the black box, and asked aloud.

"Hena's."

Jiatu calmed down and looked at the "big eave rock crack" that Hena chose on the left side of the rock wall——

After the first day there, almost no one tried it. Except for a few white handprints, Hena's slender palms were clearly visible on the I-shaped steel beams.

"Although Warren uses my 'single-foot mode', he lost his balance several times, which shows that Noah's route is not suitable for me."

Jiatu and Heiyin explained their thoughts.

And there was a trace of sigh in Heiyin's voice:
【... Obviously he expended so much energy, but it turned out to be useless? 】

But Jiatu just replied silently:
"It is enough to prove that Noah's plan is a 'dead end'. In this regard, I am very grateful to Warren."

"Hena should have seen this too, so she helped me choose a more feasible plan—"

Otherwise, she would not have deliberately chosen a route different from the "balance beam" at the stage of the first rock wall.

Although that guy is a "stupid"...

But only on the point of "intuition", there is an accuracy that Jiatu can't imagine.

Jiatu silently praised in his heart.

Hena probably didn't think about what would happen if Jiatu couldn't complete the "big roof crack" climbing three meters with both hands hanging like her.

She just instinctively felt that what she could do, Jiatu would also be able to do.

"So...give me a little awareness of 'I'm excellent'!"

Jiatu tied the paracord around his waist to an I-shaped steel four or five meters below the rock crack.

Under the protection of the safety rope, he began to restore Hena's movements little by little.

For the first time, he hung about half a meter below the rock wall, because his hands were out of position, and he fell from the crack of the big eaves.

The strong impact almost deformed his waist and abdomen.

Fortunately, the suspension system of the gray shadow suit distributed all over the body helped him - with the lessons learned from the injured No. 1, he had already tightened the suspension system of the whole body firmly before the official start.

The strong sense of falling scared him enough, but after hanging in the air for more than a minute, Jiatu still came to his senses, climbed back under the big roof, and tried again.

If not once, then twice, if not twice, then three times.

Jiatu knew very well that he had nothing.

The only thing plentiful enough to squander at will is time.

No one expects from him, and no one expects from him.

Therefore, his time can be said to be too much to burst.

No matter what it is, other people must produce results in 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or within 10 minutes, otherwise they will lose to others and make people feel disappointed.

But Jiatu didn't care, anyway, his conditions were not as good as others from the beginning.

So for him, as long as it can be done——

As for timing and speed, to hell!

When Jiatu climbed over the rock crack of the big eaves and climbed onto the second rock wall, he took a breath and looked up at the courtyard with a faint white light above his head. Jiatu realized that it was only the first rock wall, He tried for a full six hours.

"Noah's eighteen times...it's really exaggerated..."

Jiatu grabbed a piece of I-shaped steel on the second rock wall, untied the protection rope around his waist, and let it fall downwards.

The number of protection ropes is -1, and there are 2 remaining.

Jiatu silently memorized the number and thanked its owner:

"Thank you...the unknown cliff faller..."

Sitting on the I-shaped steel beams of the rock wall on the second floor, Jiatu took a sip of water, feeling relieved.

On the first rock face, he passed more smoothly than expected.

No vomiting, no dizziness, nothing happened.

"Is it because of my disabled status that the "Stone of Life" has opened up?"

he thought somewhat optimistically.

But at this moment, Jiatu felt the heat under his nose, as if something was dripping down.

He subconsciously reached out and caught it.

Looking down, there was a drop of scarlet dotted on the tactical gloves dyed white by chalk.

　Yesterday I wasted 2 words, otherwise I actually wanted to write more.4 words a day is a bit less, as macho we can't pamper ourselves so much.This chapter is [-] words, and [-]-[-] thousand words will be updated at night.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)