Free Web NovelChapter 339: Chapter 338: Safe Landing
"The cabin door is about to come off completely!" The flight purser’s voice came through the captain’s headset. "The wind pressure is getting stronger and stronger! The passengers near the door can’t hold on much longer!"
The co-pilot looked at the captain. "We’ve already lowered our altitude and speed to the absolute minimum. If we descend any further, we risk stalling the plane and going into a nosedive."
Twenty minutes earlier, a flight attendant had noticed a strange noise coming from the cabin door. When she went to check, she found the door was actually shaking during high-speed flight. Thinking it hadn’t been closed properly before takeoff, she rushed over to inspect it and try to fix the problem.
But the aircraft’s door-closing procedure involved multiple checks. She inspected it all over again but found nothing wrong, yet the door’s shaking was only getting more violent.
The flight attendant quickly reported it, but by the time the purser and an air marshal arrived at the door, they heard a loud CRACK as the violently shaking door broke loose!
It didn’t detach from the fuselage completely, but it was jammed in the doorway, leaving a gap. The cold air from outside instantly flooded the cabin, causing a drastic change in internal pressure and sending the plane into a violent shudder!
The captain performed an emergency descent, deployed the passenger oxygen masks, notified air traffic control of the plane’s status, and began searching for the nearest place to land.
The cabin was in chaos. The terrified passengers clutched their oxygen masks. Although the flight attendants’ attempts to calm them prevented any outright panic, the scene was still a mess. Some were silent, some were praying, some were crying, and some were even writing their last wills...
...
Just as the captain discovered the wing was damaged, an engine had flamed out, and the landing gear was malfunctioning—his heart sinking to rock bottom as he prepared for a forced landing—he received a message from air traffic control.
"Maintain minimum altitude and speed. Circle over the unpopulated area outside the airport and await rescue!"
The captain was completely baffled. If not for his rigorous training, he would have started screaming into the microphone.
’Buddy! We’re in the sky! What the hell kind of rescue are we waiting for?’
"The airport has been evacuated. Fire and rescue teams are all in position. Await further instructions. If you absolutely cannot hold on, report to the tower and initiate the airport’s emergency landing procedure."
"Roger that!" The captain could only reply before circling in the airspace near the airport.
...
Twenty minutes later, the captain heard the news that the cabin door was about to detach completely.
"If the door comes off entirely, the wind pressure will spike instantly. The subsequent chain reaction is unpredictable," the co-pilot said nervously to the captain. "We have to land before it breaks off completely!"
The captain nodded and contacted his liaison at air traffic control. "The cabin door is about to detach completely. The flight cannot hold on any longer. Requesting an emergency landing!"
Inside the air traffic control center, the controller looked at his supervisor. The supervisor adjusted his headset and glanced at a cell phone on the desk in front of him. The person on the other end could hear everything happening on their side.
"Can they get here in time? And if they do, can they even handle this situation?" the supervisor asked in a low voice. "The airliner is at its breaking point. If we miss the optimal landing window and it crashes, the consequences will be enormous!"
In the Taoist Office, Zheng Hongsheng watched the GPS dot from the security captain’s phone reach the airport’s edge on a large screen. He replied calmly into his own phone, "They’ve already arrived."
"What?" The supervisor looked up.
...
BANG!
At the sound of the massive bang, the purser and the air marshal both whipped their heads around to see the cabin door had broken away completely.
But just as they braced for a sudden surge in wind pressure and chaos in the cabin, they realized that even the cold wind that had been whistling through the gap had abruptly vanished.
The next moment, the captain, who was waiting for a response from ATC, heard a voice in his mind. "Shut down all the plane’s engines."
Captain: ???
The captain turned to look at the co-pilot. "Were you talking to me?"
The co-pilot shook his head. "No!"
The captain contacted ATC again. "Did you just tell me to shut down all engines?"
ATC responded immediately, "Negative!"
"Then..."
"Look to your right," the voice echoed in the captain’s ear again.
The captain instinctively looked over and saw, floating outside the plane, an old Daoist, a young man, and a... security guard?
He saw the young man wave at him, and then his voice continued inside his head, "I’m going to set the plane down safely, but if you keep the engines running, it’ll be more dangerous on the ground."
"I... you... what the..." The captain was dumbfounded.
The co-pilot also saw Gu Zhao and Taoist Qingyuan, and his entire worldview shattered. "Captain, Captain, that’s..."
"So, can you turn off the engines?" Gu Zhao asked again, but this time, the voice rang out in both the captain’s and the co-pilot’s minds simultaneously.
"I’ll shut them down right now!" the captain replied decisively and immediately killed the engines. The co-pilot didn’t stop him.
Just then, the purser’s voice came through their headsets. "The cabin door has completely detached! But the pressure inside has returned to normal levels, as if... as if the door is closed properly!"
They couldn’t help but look back and see the three of them floating with the aircraft’s cabin door at their feet. Then they heard the same voice say, "I’ll bring it back for you. Maybe you can even fix it up and use it again."
The captain’s face contorted. He wanted nothing more than to send this entire plane to the scrapyard. ’Fix it? My ass!’
"You can hear me speaking?" The captain thought about his earlier conversation with the purser.
"Yes," Gu Zhao nodded, saying no more. Instead, he looked at Taoist Qingyuan. "We made it in time. Looks like it wasn’t too dangerous after all. I’ll have to trouble you, Martial Uncle. I’ll treat you to hot pot when we’re done."
Taoist Qingyuan smiled and nodded repeatedly. "A trivial matter. Leave it to me."
As soon as he finished speaking, Taoist Qingyuan flicked his sleeve, and a Tai Chi Qi Flow, circulating with Yin Yang Qi, appeared beneath the plane, simultaneously slowing it down and guiding it toward the ground.
"The plane is stalling! We’re losing altitude rapidly!" the co-pilot shouted, looking at the instrument panel.
"Don’t worry, I’m holding up the plane," an old, good-natured voice entered his mind. "This old Daoist just removed the panel that was jamming the landing gear. You should lower it now. Otherwise, if I just set the plane down, I might damage it."
"Huh?" The co-pilot’s mind went blank.
But the captain was more experienced. Hearing this, he immediately operated the landing gear controls. Sure enough, the landing gear deployed normally, lowering slowly.
"My God!" The co-pilot was completely stunned, feeling the plane’s utter lack of turbulence, seeing the landing gear deploy normally, and hearing the purser report that everything was fine.
And so, held aloft by Taoist Qingyuan’s Tai Chi Qi Group, the plane glided slowly down to the airport below. To avoid causing a major commotion, the three of them turned invisible as they descended.
However, even though they didn’t show themselves...
The cabin door had fallen off, yet not only did the cabin pressure not change, it actually returned to normal. Despite the massive hole in the fuselage, there was no cold wind inside.
The airliner’s gliding speed was extremely slow. It landed on the runway as lightly as a feather. Although the landing gear was down, it merely served as a support; the plane didn’t even skid along the runway.
The cabin door had descended with the plane and was placed under the wing upon landing, without damaging the runway—the goal being to save on potential maintenance costs.
In the Taoist Office, Zheng Hongsheng watched the live feed sent back by the staff, unable to stop himself from covering his forehead. ’Is this for real?’
