Mind your own business~ Mind your own business, Li Pu muttered softly as he walked past the edge of the swimming pool, refusing to look inside.
Yet just as he walked past this outdoor independent dressing room...
Clang~
Li Pu suddenly heard the sound of a heavy object hitting the floor from inside!
Chapter 5: A Man Lasts Five Minutes
The sound of the heavy object hitting the floor was extremely loud, loud enough to give Li Pu a start.
It was a sound coming from inside the dressing room.
Looking over at the door of the dressing room, it was ajar. From his current vantage point, looking through the gap in the door that was neither too big nor too small, he seemed to be able to catch a glimpse of the scene inside. It looked like a very messy place, and at the same time, there was a faint, hazy figure that might be lying on the white tile floor.
Had someone collapsed inside the dressing room?
This situation also seemed a bit ominous; there was only the sound of a heavy object falling and nothing else. Through the crack in the door, he could barely see a single figure, with no other people and no other sounds. So someone in there seemed to need help! This... what, what, what, what should he do?
Li Pu only felt a sense of helplessness.
He desperately wanted to walk away, pretending nothing had happened and he had seen nothing at all.
This seemed like the best of all options; anyway, it had nothing to do with him, and even if something happened later and they questioned him, he could just say he knew nothing at all.
Yet a tiny shred of a sense of justice deep within his heart made him unwilling to just walk away like this.
It seemed someone really did need help, and from the time the heavy object hit the floor until now, there had been nothing else. This indicated there was only one person inside.
It was possible someone had fainted in the dressing room.
This...
This was tricky!
Li Pu grew a bit anxious. Should he call for help, he wondered? But if he called people over and others asked questions, would he end up with the bad reputation of a "peeping Tom"? Yet if he just left it alone, Li Pu felt his conscience would be uneasy.
There was someone fainted inside, and this situation could turn out very badly.
Of course, if everything was fine, nothing would happen, but if there was a problem, it would definitely be a big one.
It might even be a human life!
A human life was at stake!
A human life was at stake!
Forget it! I'm going for it! Li Pu put down the bucket and mop in his hand and ran all the way to the door of the dressing room. Before he even got close and opened the door, he could see the few important scenes inside clearly through the crack.
Someone had indeed collapsed!
It wasn't just a person who had fallen, but a wardrobe as well!
In other words, had the wardrobe actually fallen over and crushed someone?
Wasn't this even worse?
If the wardrobe was very heavy, prolonged pressure on the chest cavity would hinder the human body's normal cardiopulmonary function. If it wasn't moved away in time, it really could endanger a life.
At the sight of this, Li Pu couldn't care about much else.
A human life was at stake! A human life was at stake!
Saving someone took priority.
Li Pu yanked the door open, lunged forward in three strides, grabbed the fallen wardrobe, and tried to lift it up.
Ow, ow, ow! Why is this thing so heavy?! Li Pu never expected this wardrobe to be so heavy. The most he could do was lift the thing up; actually wanting to stand it back up completely seemed like something he truly couldn't manage.
Still, being able to lift it was already pretty good. Li Pu racked his brains to lift the cabinet off the ground. He couldn't lift it very high, just enough to reach his midsection.
Then he half-knelled down bit by bit, trying hard to hoist the cabinet over his head.
He inched his way in bit by bit, changing from holding it up to shouldering the entire cabinet.
Yet...
Yet how on earth was he supposed to do this?
Li Pu was truly out of options. Shouldering the cabinet, he tried to push the young woman pinned beneath it toward the outside, but no matter how hard he pushed, it was completely useless.
All his physical strength was already being used to prop up the cabinet so it wouldn't crush the young woman again.
Yet to get her out of there, if he didn't have a helper...
Li Pu really was out of luck.
"Hey! Is anyone there?!"
In the end, Li Pu strained his voice and shouted at the top of his lungs. No! Even if I get branded with the reputation of a peeping Tom, I'll take it; human life comes first.
A heavy object crashing onto a person wasn't just about the pressure on the chest cavity preventing normal cardiopulmonary function.
In case she suffered internal injuries and wasn't rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment, there would still be trouble.
"Is anyone there?!" Li Pu shouted anxiously at the top of his lungs. "Is anyone there?! Help! Save a life, hey!"
There was no response. It felt as if there wasn't a single soul within a radius of several miles; here, aside from the echo of his own shout just now, there was only silence.
Frighteningly quiet!
Damn it, why is this thing so heavy? Li Pu felt his physical strength draining away at high speed.
This locker was indeed very heavy!
As if to flaunt wealth, or perhaps to flaunt high quality, this locker was actually made of solid wood! Most of the cabinet doors were also locked.
The clothes and personal items stored inside might not have been heavy, but all that volume clearly added a lot of weight.
In just two or three minutes, his back began to ache slightly, and his calves and feet also began to ache with obvious soreness. He could no longer stand steadily, and could only half-kneel while relying on the strength in his arms to prop up the locker.
"Phone... Right! Right, the phone!" Seeing no one respond to him, Li Pu grew so anxious he was out of options. In his desperation, he suddenly remembered—couldn't he make a phone call at a time like this?
"Phone... The phone is in my upper pocket!" Li Pu freed one hand and quickly groped around, wanting to take out his phone before his strength ran out.
Yet as he fumbled, a moderately difficult problem presented itself: his mobile phone was in his upper chest pocket.
And that exact pocket was being firmly pressed against his chest by his knee, which also happened to clamp the phone right in the middle.
If he didn't clear out a little space, it would be quite difficult to take it out.
Ahhhhh!
This doesn't count as a difficulty! Up with you! Up with you! Li Pu mustered all his strength to prop up his body. If shouting couldn't summon anyone, this phone might truly be his last hope.
Dragging it out for too long would exhaust his strength, and that would practically mean two people were pinned beneath this heavy cabinet.
He forced himself upward, propping himself up by just a tiny bit, but it was enough for him to fish out his phone.
Swish, smack—needless to say, knowing he couldn't hold on for much longer, Li Pu whipped out his phone and threw it onto the ground on the momentum. The next second, his entire body squatted back down.
His knee collided with his chest, bumping Li Pu so hard he could barely catch his breath.
Yet he couldn't care about any of that; he hurriedly turned on his phone and opened the contacts with trembling hands. The contacts list was almost completely blank, with not a single contact.
"110? 119? No, that's a bit too slow! Right! WeChat group! WeChat group."
Li Pu had originally thought of calling the police, but then he figured that was like distant water failing to put out a nearby fire. He wouldn't be able to hold on much longer, and if help didn't arrive in time, it would be terrible.
To find someone, the best thing to do at a time like this was to find someone nearby!
Li Pu quickly opened WeChat, tapped into his WeChat group, and then opened voice input to roar at the top of his lungs: "Human life is at stake."
"Within five minutes, I want to see someone come over!"
"In the dressing room of the outdoor swimming pool!"
Chapter 6: Your Reward Has Arrived
"There are no problems. Pay attention to rest."
An angel in white said gently: "You really are quite brave to be able to hold on for so long."
Li Pu naturally waited for rescue, only that this rescue didn't arrive as promptly as he had imagined. His direct supervisor and the work group hadn't taken this matter seriously at all.
The one who truly came to the rescue was this student's teacher, who had come over to check on the situation after seeing her student taking a long time to come out.
Upon coming over and discovering it was this kind of situation, she hurriedly organized a rescue.
"Speaking of which," the angel in white treating Li Pu's wounds asked, "how did you notice that situation?"
How did he notice it...
This question caught Li Pu completely off guard. He suddenly looked at the injuries on his hands with a hint of a guilty conscience. Actually, they weren't even serious injuries.
They were just scrapes, and compared to the girl who had already been sent to the hospital for emergency treatment, his injuries were so minor they were almost negligible.
Nor could Li Pu be blamed for his guilty conscience; it was just that the scene of the incident was indeed a little subtle.
If you did a righteous deed, but your motive was underhanded and sordid...
That really didn't make one feel much like a hero.
"I just heard the noise." Li Pu still raised his head to look at the angel in white before him. After much deliberation, he felt he had no need to have a guilty conscience over such a minor matter.
He, Li Pu, was an upright person performing an upright deed, so he ought to speak of it in an upright manner.
To this young woman, whose words seemed a little profound, or perhaps simply casual and off-the-cuff.
"I was a bit hungry and intended to head toward the cafeteria to scrounge up some food," Li Pu told another minor lie to conceal his true little motive: "Passing by there, I happened to hear a very loud noise, and then I happened to see that the dressing room door wasn't shut properly, and also happened to see a person lying on the ground."
"Then it was just as you saw."
"It really feels like it couldn't be a coincidence unless it's booked," the angel in white said with disbelief. "It looks like that girl really was a bit careless, oh."
"Not even closing the door when changing clothes."
"True." Li Pu spread his hands and said: "How should I put it? These girls' guard indeed seems to have been a little weak."
Guessing that this angel in white didn't quite believe him, there was no way to explain it anyway. It was fine to just leave it at that; the more he explained, the messier it would get. In any case, his body was straight and he didn't fear the shadow being crooked.
"Can I go to work now?" Li Pu asked, not too rushed yet still appearing a little bit in a rush, "If there are no problems."
"Please wait a moment." Seeing that Li Pu looked like he wanted to leave, the angel in white stood up and said, "Someone wants to see you."
Without waiting for Li Pu to refuse or accept, the angel in white resolutely walked out of the infirmary, leaving Li Pu alone here where leaving didn't feel right, and staying didn't feel right either.
Waiting for a short little while and seeing no one come, Li Pu closed his eyes and entered a certain peculiar space.
"System, was today's affair arranged by you?"
"Mission: If You're a Man, Last Five Minutes." The system's voice arrived almost instantaneously, with that flat tone saying: "You can enable 'Side Mission Custom Rewards'."
Fine... This seemed inextricably linked to his system.
Li Pu smacked his lips, having nothing to say. Having read countless books, he also knew some plot tropes that used to be anti-trope and were now tropes.
Today's systems were long past being those pure, calm, perhaps even slightly fresh and clean systems whose single-minded devotion was to make the transmigrator a god.
Today's systems watched transmigrators make fools of themselves, forced transmigrators to provide rescue, and trapping transmigrators into owing a hundred or eighty thousand in loans at any time and place was standard operating procedure.
Even though his system still seemed to have a faint lingering sense of past stealthy freshness, Li Pu never believed it!
His system must have looked fresh and clean on the surface, but deep down it was already an old veteran driver drifting under Mount Akina.
Nine turns and eighteen bends, with endless traps!
It seemed he really hadn't guessed wrong; this time it was definitely trapping him as well.
"Using a human life to throw a difficult problem at me," Li Pu said, feeling quite disgruntled in his heart. "Isn't this kind of approach a bit inhumane?"
"Not at all, you're overthinking it, impossible." The system immediately delivered a triple denial with an innocent posture, saying: "Aside from being able to interfere with reality when granting rewards, this system's ability to interfere with reality is strictly limited to the user himself."
"Which is you, future knowledgeable sir~ Aside from that, we cannot interfere with any reality."
"Then what is the meaning of this?" Li Pu said with displeasure. "Put it this way: I don't resent the system, and I have a tolerant heart toward your kind of behavior of imposing missions."
"But do you know what I resent? Lies! Telling lies! You loser!"
"Since you are my system and I am your user, I should have the right to know!"
Before you continue