The speed of the hanging chair is slowing down.
Su Wei's right hand had already gripped the metal crossbeam of the safety bar.
The Cotton Candy, hanging from her chest bag, curled up into a ball.
The pink nose retracted silently from the zipper gap.
The wind picked up.
The dark gray cumulus clouds along the ridgeline of Pyramid Mountain have now merged into one.
The clouds were churning at their base, as if something was brewing.
The cable car is still slowing down.
Chapter 214 Forecasting Red Alert, High-Altitude Hovering
The cable car's drive shaft made a sharp, metallic scraping sound.
That wasn't the low-frequency hum that a gearbox should make when it's slowing down; it was the sound of steel teeth clashing against each other, like iron blades scraping against sheet metal, piercing through the wind and drilling straight into your eardrums.
The hanging chair suddenly stopped.
The entire metal frame swayed violently in mid-air, and the hinges of the safety bar made a series of sharp, clicking noises.
Su Wei's right hand gripped the crossbeam the moment the hanging chair trembled.
The steel cable stretched taut in the wind, then suddenly slackened, emitting a low hum.
The drive motor has stopped.
It's completely stopped.
The hanging chair was suspended about twenty meters above the ground, completely still.
Beneath my feet lay a thick, untouched powdery snow slope, and in the distance, the wooden platform of the cable car station.
A crosswind swept by, and the hanging chair began to swing in a small pendulum motion.
It swayed from side to side, the frequency of the metal coupled with the wind, each swing being larger than the last.
Su Wei glanced down at the ground.
Twenty meters.
Powder can absorb some of the impact force, but if the landing point is off, hitting the rocks or ice beneath the snow, a comminuted fracture of the leg bone is the best-case scenario.
" Su Wei."
Emily's voice came from the left.
She gripped the safety beam with both hands, her knuckles turning white from gripping so tightly.
The wind tugged at her golden hair from under her hat brim, whipping it against her cheek, but she didn't bother to brush it away.
She turned to look at Su Wei.
There was no panic in her blue eyes, only a focus that Su Wei was familiar with.
That's the instinctive reaction that beats out the emotions when encountering an unexpected situation in the wild.
"They cut off the power system."
Her voice had been smoothed by the wind, but every word was pronounced clearly.
"This is not a mechanical failure, Su Wei. It's a severe weather red alert."
Su Wei did not answer immediately.
He looked up at the ridgeline of Pyramid Mountain.
Just three minutes ago, they were only a few scattered dark clouds, but now they have merged into a whole lead-gray curtain wall.
The bottom of the clouds was churning with vortexes, and the edges were torn into flakes by the high-altitude jet stream, cascading down the mountainside at a speed visible to the naked eye.
That wasn't an ordinary snowfall cloud system.
There is a dark dividing line visible to the naked eye at the leading edge of the clouds; the upper part is grayish-white, and the lower part is almost black.
Su Wei had seen slides with this structure in Black's advanced open course.
Arc-shaped clouds, the precursor to polar blizzards.
The metal weathervane above the ridgeline was no longer rotating, but vibrating at a high frequency, the friction sound from the bearings so sharp that it drowned out all the ambient noise.
The loudspeaker blared a piercing electrical roar.
The feedback lasted for two seconds before being suppressed, and a male voice burst out from the speaker, clearly panting, his words shattered by the wind.
"All... tourists... evacuate immediately..."
" National Weather Service... Blizzard... Red Alert..."
"Wind speeds are expected to exceed 120 kilometers per hour within 30 minutes..."
Su Wei mentally filled in the missing words that had been swallowed by the wind.
At a speed of 120 kilometers per hour and a wind force of level 12, the perceived temperature can drop directly to below minus 40 degrees Celsius.
"... The cable car system has entered emergency braking..."
"Please, all passengers stranded in the cable car... remain calm... the backup unit... is starting up..."
The broadcast's ending was completely ripped apart by an even stronger crosswind.
The pendulum swing of the hanging chair has increased even further.
The safety bar hinges were stuck at their limit, and the sound of twisting metal was piercingly sharp.
Su Wei could sense that the tension distribution in the steel cable was off; the left side was looser than the right.
Crosswinds exerted an asymmetrical load.
A slight commotion arose inside the temperature-controlled compartment on my chest.
The Cotton Candy was jolted awake.
It writhed in the narrow compartment, its four claws scratching at Su Wei's chest through the fabric.
A faint whistle escaped from the zipper gap, then was carried away by the wind.
Su Wei released the crossbeam with his left hand.
He slipped his hand inside the collar of his jacket, and the fingertips of his glove touched a tightly huddled clump of white fur.
He slowly rubbed the back of the Cotton Candy's neck with the back of his thumb.
The pressure was very light, and the frequency was steady, just like when he usually lulled it to sleep.
The Animal Affinity passive ability of the [ Beast Taming Module ] is active.
The Cotton Candy's struggles gradually subsided.
It buried its head in Su Wei's palm, its nose touching the seam of the glove.
Its body was still trembling, but its claws had stopped scratching randomly.
Su Wei withdrew his hand and gripped the crossbeam again.
"This cable car has a backup diesel generator set."
His voice wasn't loud, but his enunciation was deeper than the sound of the wind, and each syllable landed steadily in Emily's ears.
"They will gradually release us."
Emily turned and glanced at him.
The windproof mask was blown askew, revealing half of his chin, which was red and frostbitten.
She opened her mouth.
The words "I wasn't afraid" lingered on her tongue, but she swallowed them back down.
At an altitude of 20 meters, with a level 6 crosswind and an impending blizzard, trying to be brave at this time is a pure waste of energy.
She shut her mouth, straightened her windproof mask, and fastened it again.
The hanging chair continued to sway in the wind, each swing of the metal frame accompanied by the dull thud of steel cables striking pulleys.
The load-bearing points of the overhead crane boom emitted a continuous creaking sound, which grew sharper with each increase in wind.
After settling the Cotton Candy in, Su Wei's gaze immediately fell to the ground.
He wasn't focused on the altitude; he was looking at the surface of the snow.
The originally uniform powder snow layer was thinned by the wind on the windward side, while a distinct bulge formed on the leeward side.
The persistent crosswinds are constantly transporting snow particles from the windward side to the leeward side, where they accumulate.
He remembers the feel of the board's underside while gliding.
Beneath the forty-centimeter layer of powdery snow lies a layer of ice that has melted and then refreezed.
There is almost no adhesion between the powder snow and the ice shell.
Now, the leeward side has borne at least 15 centimeters of additional load within ten minutes, all pressing down on that layer of ice.
Su Wei's gaze swept down the slope, which was between thirty and forty degrees, with a vertical drop of no more than sixty meters.