The entire mountaintop was silent as death.
Apart from the old professor's voice echoing faintly, there were only the surrounding people's ragged gasps, long and short, as though they were about to run out of breath.
The old professor swayed on the verge of collapse, yet he gritted his teeth and refused to fall. He merely craned his head desperately upward, looking at the dazzling pillar of light in the sky:
"Won't you leave..."
"Where you are is Huaxia..."
"It is Huaxia!!!"
Shen Le watched him worriedly. With great care, he spread his arms and shuffled forward, scraping the ground with the soles of his feet one step at a time. Old sir, please don't collapse here...
There was a raging blizzard here! It was minus twenty degrees! The weather was extremely unfriendly to humans, even more so to the elderly, and doubly unfriendly to men in their fifties or sixties whose cardiovascular and cerebrovascular systems lacked estrogen's protection!
Fortunately, before Shen Le could shuffle over, the old professor recovered on his own. He took a deep breath, his Adam's apple bobbing once—Shen Le suspected he had swallowed a whole bag of tears—then suddenly strode forward and knelt on the ground.
"Can you come down the mountain with us? We won't take you away. We just want to do a little research at the foot of the mountain, and once we understand everything, we'll send you back. Is that alright?"
No response.
There was no response whatsoever.
The backpack lay quietly on the ground. It did not sway, did not shake, and was not blown rolling by the freezing wind. That, perhaps, was the greatest anomaly.
The beam of light neither brightened nor dimmed. It did not wobble, and naturally, it did not suddenly shoot out in all directions and