Chapter 28 The Consequences of Drinking Too Much Coffee
Li Teng's consciousness was in a half-awake, half-comatose state due to extreme lack of oxygen.
Taking advantage of his last bits of lucidity, Li Teng quickly recalled the angle of his body relative to the ventilating snow cave before he fell asleep and locked in on the direction of the air hole.
The entrance was buried by freshly fallen snow, which meant that this area's snow was relatively soft; other parts had been compacted by Li Teng into almost ice-like hardness.
Feeling around with his hands, he furiously dug towards that direction and soon found the softer snow. After a fierce digging session, he punched through with his fist, finally creating a hole.
Fresh, cold air rushed in from outside, and Li Teng's mind cleared up instantly as he breathed in the oxygen.
He hurriedly made the hole a bit bigger.
It was pitch black both outside and inside the snow cave, but he could feel that the snowfall outside had increased, occasionally blowing large snowflakes into the cavity, slowly trying to block the hole again.
Li Teng dared not sleep anymore. He intermittently cleared the snow accumulating at the entrance to prevent the air passage from being blocked again.
Having escaped from a near-death experience due to suffocation, another pressing trouble now lay before Li Teng.
He needed to urinate.
Li Teng somewhat regretted drinking so much coffee during the day, as now crawling out to urinate was a troublesome matter.
In such severe snowstorms, he could easily slip off the top of the pillar.
Falling from a height of over a thousand meters would definitely mean certain death.
Thinking back, drinking all that coffee during the day wasn't without benefits... Fortunately, he had drunk so much coffee that it had awakened him.
If he hadn't been awoken by the urge to urinate, he might have simply slept to death in this sealed snow cave.
It was best to resolve the urination issue first.
In such heavy snow, making a hole big enough to crawl out and urinate was too much effort.
If the hole was too small he couldn't get out, but if it was too big he could accidentally knock down the wall of the hole, and without shelter in the latter part of the night, he would quickly freeze into an icicle in such ferocious snowstorms.
After thinking for a while, the clever Li Teng quickly thought of a solution.
A method that did not require leaving the cave to solve the issue.
He slowly dug a downward-angled hole in the snow wall at the level of his midsection, bit by bit with his hand.
The frozen hard snow was difficult to dig through, and after a great deal of effort, he managed to dig a fist-sized hole.
Soon Li Teng's hands were frozen stiff, making it extremely difficult to continue digging.
Impatient, Li Teng lay on his side, took out a drainpipe, and carefully controlled the release of some hot water into the snow cave.
The heat and force further expanded the hole.
However, the air inside the snow cave did not smell good.
Fortunately, cold air occasionally blew in through the vent, dispelling those odors.
Although he wanted to relieve himself thoroughly, Li Teng couldn't do so. If the flow was too great, there was a risk of backflow, which could flood the snow cave.
But controlling the flow made him very uncomfortable, like reading serialized novels online, chapter by chapter, which felt very unsatisfactory.
There was no choice but for Li Teng to find a balance between the two.
After several minutes, Li Teng suddenly felt another gust of wind pass by his midsection.
No way? Water dripping wears away a stone... no, water pouring melts through ice?
Since it had melted through, Li Teng had no more concerns and quickly discharged a large amount.
It took nearly half a minute to stop.
Refreshing!
Truly refreshing!
Afterwards, Li Teng reached out and dug a snowball from outside the vent, and used it to block the drain hole to keep the bad smell out.
"God Teng is just too talented!" Li Teng couldn't help but praise himself.
The snow outside continued to fall heavily.
Li Teng dared not fall asleep again, struggling to keep himself awake, guarding the air hole to prevent it from being blocked by the accumulating snow.
If he only had a plastic pipe to embed into the snow wall extending outside, the vent would never be blocked.
It was extremely tough enduring the darkness.
Li Teng recalled some online novels he had read, remembering how those positive characters overcame numerous difficulties to reach victory, and drew on the positive energy he absorbed from those online novels to support and encourage himself.
Hours passed.
The drainage hole was dug open several times and blocked several times.
Snow finally stopped after midnight.
Li Teng was very sleepy and couldn't hold on any longer. After thinking about it, he enlarged the ventilation hole a bit more before lying down again.
If the ventilation hole was too small, it could easily get blocked; if it was too big, the wind would blow in and be very cold.
He had to find a balance between the two.
...
When Li Teng woke up again, it was already light outside.
It was a gray kind of light.
The snow was falling again, very lightly.
He could feel that it was very cold outside.
Although it was as cold as an ice cave inside the snow cave, it still felt a bit better than outside.
Given the situation, there was no point in going out.
No food, nothing to do, and no girlfriend with whom to discuss the matters of human reproduction and evolution.
So, he continued to hide in the cave.
He didn't know when these hard days would end.
The only hope for Li Teng now was to try to earn more points to lower the height of the stone pillar.
But earning points was really difficult.
A lot of effort would only yield a few points, and the next time he went to Film and Television City, he could still only afford porridge and steamed buns.
Thinking about porridge and steamed buns made Li Teng drool again.
The food he had eaten yesterday in Film and Television City was completely digested.
The coffee he had drunk had all turned into urine.
Li Teng was ravenous once more.
After becoming hungry, one can feel even colder.
Fortunately, it was cold weather, so he was not very thirsty now.
Li Teng stretched his arms and legs from time to time in the cave to prevent the prolonged cold from damaging them.
He had originally planned to hide in the snow cave for the whole day, but...
Li Teng encountered a new problem.
Having been fortunate enough to eat a fair amount of food the day before, his intestines now produced a fair amount of waste as well.
He couldn't deal with it inside the snow cave.
He had to leave the cave.
He really didn't want to leave the cave in this weather.
But under the circumstances, it wasn't a matter of whether he wanted to go out or not.
Even if the outside had flashing lightning, thunder, and was full of viruses, he still had to go out.
The bed where Li Teng slept was an ancestral large wooden bed left to him by his parents.
It was a double bed nearly two meters long and two meters wide.
Although one corner of his bed was knocked off by a civil airliner, the remaining part was still fine for one person to sleep on.
Having the corner knocked off actually had a benefit.
It was that Li Teng had a small triangular platform at the corner on top of the stone pillar.
After slightly clearing the snow, he had a place where he could stand to conduct his business.
After crawling out of the snow cave, Li Teng took several large clumps of snow from the bed, packed them into a basin shape, and squatted on the small platform to relieve himself.
After he was done, he shaped a few triangular snow blocks and used them to clean his backside.
Then he kicked away the snow basin he had just made, thus avoiding the problem of flushing.
He didn't know if there were any residents in the small town, but even if there were, they wouldn't go out in such cold weather, right?
It couldn't possibly land precisely on someone's head, right?
Li Teng didn't want to literally dump it on someone else's head, but he had no choice right now.
He certainly didn't want to be stunk to death.