The rescuers, on the other hand, were curious. “Shouldn’t you guys be at the top of the mountain? How come you’re at this place?”
If they hadn’t been looking out for possible tourists in the area, they might have missed the students altogether. Not that their predicament was any more hopeful than before.
Now that the helicopter had crashed, they had lost their only means to bring these people out of the mountain. The only thing they could do now was to contact their headquarters.
Still, it didn’t seem like these people need much rescuing.
According to the information passed on to them, they should be at the peak for some ceremony or something.
It was a weekday, so no one thought that there would be tourists in the area. It was for this reason that the headquarters had only sent out one rescue team.
Imagine their confusion, then, when they reached the peak and saw nobody there.
The teachers hurriedly recounted everything that had happened to them.
The pilot listened intently, and he couldn’t help the admiration that blossomed in his heart.
“Little lady,” one of the rescuers said to Yao Tang. “Your courage is very commendable, but I’m afraid you lacked consideration.”
Another one was shaking his head at Principal Kongand the teachers in disapproval. “How can you pass on the responsibility to a student? If something bad happens, do you expect her to bear the consequences all by herself? You should have stayed put and waited for rescue to arrive.”
Principal Kong squared his shoulders and replied, “The place where we were staying at has already collapsed. Who knows what would have happened to us if we didn’t evacuate that spot?”
That effectively shut the rescuers up.
In any case, their priority was to get everyone to safety. They had no time to point fingers at each other.
They had no way of predicting the eventual aftershocks. They could continue bickering once they were out of here.
Thinking of this, the pilot took out his communication device.
Although the signals were cut, they had their own dedicated communication line made especially for emergency crises like this one.
To his dismay, he found that he couldn’t get through to headquarters.
The pilot didn’t think much of it at first and thought that his device was defective.
He turned to one of his men and said, “My equipment seems to have malfunctioned. You guys contact the base and relay our situation.”
The other rescuer nodded and did as he was told.
A few seconds later, he looked back at the pilot with a sheepish expression.
“What’s wrong?” the pilot asked, an ominous feeling creeping into his chest.
“Mine is not working, either.”
His heart sank. Without their communication lines, they were as good as trapped in this place.
“That was one hell of an earthquake!” the pilot grumbled.
The earthquake had struck so suddenly that even the geological authorities hadn’t seen it coming.
Their helicopter, too, had crashed without so much as a warning.
“Yeah,” Principal Kongseconded, his mouth dry. “Who would have thought that something like this would happen atLingyun Peak?”
He had done a lot of preparations for today’s activity, which included some research on the area.
He didn’t recall reading anything about Lingyun Peakbeing prone to geological disasters.
The man had even checked the weather reports in the last 15 days.
While constantly shrouded in mist, not a single storm had even passed through the mountain in the past couple of weeks.
Who would have expected to experience an earthquake now, of all days?
‘If I had known that this would happen, I would have lobbied with the people at Fengyue Peakand insisted that we hike there instead.’
But the rescuer’s next words quickly doused Principal Kong’s thoughts.
“You’re still lucky to have changed your venue. If you had been at Lingyun Peak, the casualties would have been far greater.”
Principal Kong’s head shot up, and his heart thundered inside his chest.
“Something happened there, too?” Yao Tangasked with a quizzical look in her eye.
