Flexible lifting equipment? Lao Mo's tongue worked better than imported gear

There was no time!

Lao Li plummeted straight toward the ground, his safety rope and loose rocks falling with him!

At that moment, the muscles in Mortimer's legs suddenly swelled beneath his camouflage uniform.

His pant legs stretched tight, and his knees bent to their limit.

He shot off the ground with a whoosh, his vertical leap putting him directly in Lao Li's path.

In midair, he tore off his sun mask.

The edge of the cheap mask caught on his nose and hurt as he pulled it free.

But he had no time to worry about that.

Lao Li was falling in despair, the wind howling in his ears and forcing his eyes shut.

He opened them in a daze and suddenly saw a strange face with everted lips looming in front of him.

Its eyes were set far apart, its yellow pupils narrowed to pinpoints, and rough bumps covered its skin.

Lao Li's mind went blank.

Before he could cry out, Mortimer opened his mouth.

A tongue shot out, passing through the gap between Lao Li's armpit and waist.

Then it tightened.

Lao Li felt something tighten around his waist.

His fall was forcibly yanked to a stop, and his body bounced in midair. The clasp on his safety rope knocked against his knee, making him grimace in pain.

Immediately afterward, Mortimer twisted in midair.

He turned his waist, spread his limbs, and stuck himself to a protruding section of the nearby rock face.

The skin touching the rock all secreted mucus at once, sticking him to the vertical cliff.

From jumping to rescuing Lao Li to clinging to the rock face, he performed the entire sequence in one smooth motion.

It happened so fast that the people present had yet to react.

His tongue stretched taut, Lao Li hung suspended three meters below Toad, swaying back and forth.

All the workers stood rooted to the spot, looking up.

They stared at the long pink tongue, with a living, breathing man wrapped in it.

Hmm... not enough detail...

No one had ever seen someone rescue a person like that.

Sing Sing stood where he was, pulled out his phone, and took a photo.

He captioned it: "Special equipment test successful. Requesting an increase in hazardous duty pay. One on-site photo attached."

A few seconds later, Director Wang replied.

"No safety harness? Write me a self-criticism when you get back."

Sing Sing tucked his phone back into his pocket and pretended he hadn't seen it.

On the rock face, Mortimer began retracting his tongue.

His tongue muscles were astonishingly strong, lifting Lao Li steadily.

At the same time, he moved his limbs in turn, crawling down the cliff face.

Before long, Toad set Lao Li safely on level ground.

Lao Li's legs went weak as soon as they touched the ground, and he collapsed into a sitting position, gasping for air.

He was covered in mucus.

It smelled a little fishy and damp, not exactly pleasant.

But he paid it no mind. Looking at that toad face, his lips trembled for a long while, and he couldn't get a coherent word out.

The workers finally reacted and rushed over, crowding around them.

In America, Toad was often greeted at times like this with screams, stones, and gun barrels.

Last time in Brooklyn, Mortimer had pulled a drunk off the subway tracks to save him. When the drunk opened his eyes and saw his face, his first reaction was to pull a switchblade from his pocket and stab him in the collarbone.

Toad hadn't even fought back.

He was afraid that if he did, the next day's newspaper headlines would read "Mutant monster attacks innocent citizen."

Toad instinctively shrank back and assumed a defensive posture, letting out a muffled croak.

He knew all too well what would happen next.

They would curse him out, throw things at him, and stare at him as if he were a monster.

"Holy shit! Brother, your core strength is incredible!"

Hearing that, Mortimer paused and peeked through his fingers.

The speaker was a young laborer with mud all over his face, staring straight at him.

"Did you train in acrobatics or martial arts? I've seen those Shaolin Temple guys spit needles on TV, but you're even more amazing than them!"

Another, older worker squeezed over and slapped Mortimer twice on the shoulder blade with a heavily callused hand.

"Those muscles! I was wondering why you didn't need a rope on the job. Turns out you've got real skills! You sure kept that hidden, kid!"

Someone stared at the tongue that had just retracted and couldn't help giving him a thumbs-up.

"That thing works way better than an imported safety rope."

"Safety rope? That's flexible lifting equipment!"

"And it's the biological version, green and eco-friendly."

"Next time our site picks its outstanding equipment, does Lao Mo have to go onstage to accept the award?"

"What would the award say? Outstanding tongue worker?"

The group all talked at once, their comments all over the place.

But none of them meant any harm.

Lao Li finally recovered.

He scrambled over, grabbed Mortimer's dirt-covered hand, and wept, tears and snot streaming down his face.

"Brother! You're my real dad!"

Lao Li clutched Toad's hand tightly and refused to let go.

The mucus on Mortimer's palm hadn't dried, but Lao Li didn't care at all.

"If it weren't for that amazing... safety belt of yours, I'd have been done for down there today!"

"I've still got two kids in school. My wife called just before you came and said our younger one came first in the class..."

By the end, Lao Li was rambling incoherently, shaking Mortimer's hand back and forth.

No one there treated him like a monster, and no one moved away.

The dirt-covered construction workers simply patted his shoulders to thank him.

On a construction site, a life-saving skill was a gift from the grandmaster that put food on the table.

Whether you used your hands or your tongue, if you could bring someone down from a cliff alive, that was real skill.

In the distance, an older master craftsman stared at Toad's face for a few seconds and frowned.

He leaned close to Lao Liu's ear and muttered something. His voice was very low, but Sing Sing heard him.

"Lao Liu, this guy... isn't he too strange?"

Lao Liu turned to look at the older man.

"So what?"

"He saved one of our brothers. What do you care what he looks like?"

"Cangjie had a dragon's face and four eyes, King Wen had four nipples on his chest, Xiang Yu had double pupils, and Liu Bei's hands hung below his knees."

"Looking strange like that is a sign of an extraordinary birth!"

"His tongue's so damn impressive. What's the problem?"

Sing Sing thought Lao Liu's line of argument was excellent, far better than what those writers in the 749 Bureau's public relations office could come up with.

The older man paused, glanced at Lao Li, who was still wiping away tears, and fell silent for a few seconds. Then he turned, rummaged for a dry towel, and brought it back to Mortimer.

Mortimer accepted the towel, his yellow eyes wide.

Lao Liu squeezed in, pulled out the pack of Huazi cigarettes Sing Sing had slipped him earlier, and stuffed it into Mortimer's pocket.

"Lao Mo! No more words needed! You're a technical expert! Comrade Zhou was right, you're amazing!"

"Extra dishes for lunch! Slaughter two free-range chickens! Stew a big pig's trotter to build Lao Mo's strength back up!"

Toad plopped down on the ground, opened his enormous mouth, and burst into tears.

His cries were loud and unpleasant, mixed with snot, tears, and green mucus, accompanied by strange gurgling sounds from his throat.

In the midst of his wailing came unintelligible English and tangled pinyin.

"Thank... thank you... no, don't hit me... nobody's hitting me... Lao Li called, called me master..."

The workers patted Mortimer on the back.

Some offered him cigarettes and lit them, while a young laborer squatted down and thumped his back for him.

"All right, all right, it's all in the past. Let's have a drink tonight to settle our nerves."

Lao Li was still holding his hand.

"Lao Mo, brother, you saved my life! From now on, if anyone on this site says a bad word about you, I, Lao Li, will be the first to take it up with them!"

Mortimer cried even harder.

Sing Sing stood at the edge of the crowd, watching for a while before silently turning his head away.

He lit a cigarette, took a couple of drags, then pulled his old phone from his pocket and opened the wanted list of Mutants in his photo album.

The workers' laughter rang out behind him. Someone picked up a hard hat and settled it squarely on Mortimer's head.

Toad's face was smeared with tears and snot, but his mouth stretched in a grin from ear to ear, revealing two rows of crooked teeth.

His crying gradually turned into broken laughter.

The evening glow over Tiankeng Village turned the mountaintops red. Cooking smoke rose from the construction site, and the aroma of free-range chicken stewed with pig's trotters mingled with the smell of blasting smoke and drifted away on the wind.

That was the comforting smell of everyday life that Toad had smelled in his lifetime.