by N. Heller
This time, the people outside could no longer neglect it.
"Inform the control room to switch off the High Energy Deflector Barrier. Team three, Team four, go in there are find out the source of that noise. Remember to release the safety locks on your weapons."
[So it’s called High Energy Deflector Barrier…] Lin Sanjiu watched as the electric net grew faint and vanished instantly. A total of twenty soldiers from the two teams carried their heavy weapons and stepped into the capsule containment area cautiously. As the light from their headlamps flashed across the capsules, they found nothing wrong. All the women were resting quietly in their capsules. They walked around the containment area twice and finally shouted that there was no problem. After that, the twenty guards walked out of the containment area and the High Energy Deflector Barrier was once again erected.
The two teams returned to their guarding positions and continued watching the capsule containment area.
"That’s weird. What made that noise…" the sergeant mumbled to himself. After contemplating, he returned to his chair and activated the screen on his wristband and decided to report the incident to his superior. However, before he could send out his message, he suddenly felt someone touching his shoulder. Following which, he heard a soft cold female voice from behind, "Have you seen me in the tournament?"
The sergeant, Nanders, froze, and goosebumps instantly appeared on his skin.
"Don’t move. Let me introduce myself. I am Contestant 97, Lin Sanjiu." When he felt her breath on his neck, it was as if Death was leaning on his shoulders, "Right now, both my hands are on you."
Nanders could not remember the number of duoluozhongs that had exploded into pieces in a blood mist once Contestant 97 touched them. He opened his mouth dryly but didn’t say a word.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
Even though the place was quite dim, other guards noticed the odd behavior of the particular guard who was standing way too close to the sergeant and one of them shouted, "Go back to your post!"
When Nanders felt the hands exerted more force on his shoulders, he hurriedly replied with cold sweat pouring, "I... I told him to give me a massage. Mind your own business!"
The person who spoke quickly kept quiet, while other laughed, "Sergeant, if you like this. Why don’t you buy some male mutates back…"
Nanders did not process any of those teasing words or laughter, he could only hear the voice by his ear whispering, "How obedient…"
"I... I will do whatever you want…" It was difficult for him to control his volume when his voice was quivering so much. He had to stop a couple of times as he continued, "Don’t kill me. I never killed any mutates…"
"Alright, I need you to switch off that High Energy Deflector Barrier."
Nanders felt as though there was a large black hole behind him. If he was not careful, he would be s.u.c.k.e.d in and he wouldn’t even have an intact corpse… He gave a dry cough and contacted the people in the control room. Even the other party was rather annoyed, he managed to convince the person that they had to recheck the containment area just to be on the safe side.
After a minute, the electric net surrounding the capsule containment area vanished.
Noticing this abnormality, many of the guards stood up and someone even asked, "Sir, why did you switch off the barrier? Do we have to check one more time?"
Nanders paused and but did not receive additional orders from the person behind him. He gritted his teeth and laughed wryly, "It is almost dawn. I just received orders from the head, you all can go back now…"
"The sergeant has been taken hostage!" one of the men yelled.
Nanders exploded in his chair and became a mixture of torn clothes and splattered flesh the next second. Multiple laser beams were immediately fired at the chair and the small area where both persons were.
[Such firepower should have killed the target, right?] while that was what everyone thought, the yellow light above them went dim for a second. This was when they realized that someone had flipped over their heads. However, before they could take aim again, cries filled the air as a snake-like shadow swept across the men’s necks. Blood erupted from their necks as several heads, still in their hazmat helmets, flew to the far end of the arena and fell noisily on the floor.
The guards who were still alive quickly aimed their guns at the fleeting shadow above their heads but they were all too nervous after watching their colleagues being killed. Besides, Lin Sanjiu’s speed far exceeded any normal person's. When she finally landed on her feet, none of the men were left standing.
Her arm had been grazed by one of the laser beams, so she applied pressure to her wound and sneered. [That sergeant was smarter than he looked. But if he didn’t try to make some sort of signal, he and those guards wouldn’t need to die so quickly…]
"Ah, what a massacre."
Lin Sanjiu heard a brisk male voice coming from a dark spot in the arena. Lin Sanjiu tensed her body and pulled out her mouthpart weapon once more.
"Don’t worry. I am not your enemy. I am also a Posthuman."
The gentle voice gradually grew closer and a person in a hooded cloak emerged from the darkness. The person stopped when he was still some distance away from Lin Sanjiu. He took off his hood, revealing his fair face.
"Hi, let me introduce myself. I am Gong Daoyi. I am a smuggler and your number one fan." The man chuckled, "Don’t look at me so warily… You might not be aware, but we have both helped each other albeit unintentionally."
That sentence had no effect, Lin Sanjiu continued staring icily at him.
"You have thirty seconds to prove that you’re a Posthuman."
"Oh my! How prudent." Gong Daoyi seemed delighted. He waved his left hand and a large black shadow suddenly appeared from behind him. It appeared from nowhere and though Lin Sanjiu could not see it clearly, it seemed to be some large beast.
"Is that enough? I’m here to help you. I know those capsules are hard to open." Gong Daoyi waved his hands again and the large apparition quickly disappeared like smoke. "Thanks to you, there is a large commotion about radiation sickness now. I guessed that you would attempt to escape tonight, otherwise, it would be a wasted opportunity.
"You know it was me?" Lin Sanjiu frowned slightly but did not pursue the question. The man was right. Even though she could try using her [Mosaic Censorship], she did not have the confidence to open the capsules without hurting the women inside. She nodded at Gong Daoyi and gestured for him to follow her. She turned and walked toward the capsule containment area, but she placed her full attention behind her, tightening every inch of her muscles so she could react immediately if anything happened.
Gong Daoyi narrowed his eyes and grinned and followed her into the capsule containment area casually. The female contestants stood up one after the other, pushing the walls of their capsules, looking at them with brightened eyes. After being trapped for so long, they couldn’t wait to regain their freedom. While the women looked at them with teary eyes, Lin Sanjiu led Gong Daoyi to one of the capsules, "You can try to open this capsule."
Xu Wei bit her lips as she stared at the two people outside her capsule without blinking her eyes even once. Gong Daoyi laughed a little and took out a little bird from nowhere. The little bird had very bright feathers and its eyes moved around in a lively manner. Once it was in Gong Daoyi’s hand, it began to chirp, "I want to sing."
"If you eat this door, you won’t need to sing, right?" Gong Daoyi stroked the little bird gently. The little bird replied with a "yes". Lin Sanjiu watched with amazement as the bird opened its small yellow beak, then in a scientifically impossible manner, it swallowed half the door in one mouth.
"Is this a Special Item?" Lin Sanjiu stammered while she held Xu Wei who rushed out of the capsule and hugged her. She patted the woman’s back a few times to comfort her.
"You’re right." Gong Daoyi nodded and when the bird announced that it wanted to sing again, he brought it to the next capsule, "Anyway, it needs to ea
t so that it would shut up and not sing."
The little bird ate quickly, and within a few minutes, they had freed over twenty women. But when the little bird ate the next door, a black shadow rushed out from the capsule aiming a direct attack at Gong Daoyi—
The latter leaped out of the attack range as if he had already expected it. The black shadow stopped. It was a green snake-like cuc.u.mber.
"Xueqin, what are you doing?" Lin Sanjiu was shocked and carried Xueqin out from her capsule.
One of the female contestants in the afternoon match knew how to set broken bones, so she managed to help Xueqin set her bones back. However, the woman still could not move and had to lean against Lin Sanjiu’s arm as she panted, "It’s him! He betrayed me! He called the Military and Police Department!"
The atmosphere suddenly became tense. Gong Daoyi acted surprised and clasped his hands. "Oh, it’s you… I didn’t expect that you would be caught. Well, you must have gotten the wrong guy."
If one was to rate his acting, the half-hearted attitude he showed deserved a negative score. Xueqin wanted to scold him but Lin Sanjiu pressed her arm lightly as if to signal something to her, so she kept quiet.
"Let’s free everyone first. We can talk about that later." Lin Sanjiu handed Xueqin to Bai Xiaoke’s escort before giving Gong Daoyi a bland look. The man continued smiling as if he was totally unaware that his trustworthiness had fallen to rock bottom.
"What should we do next? Should we escape this city?" One of the women asked.
These women probably never imagined that they would actually end up in a situation where they would rather face an apocalyptic landscape...
Lin Sanjiu looked at all of them. Before she spoke, she walked to the pile of corpses and removed the hazmat suit from a body. She held it in her hands and said calmly as she felt the eyes on her back, "If you want to get out of this snowglobe city, I won’t stop you. But, please also help the mentally unsound woman escape. As for me, I won’t run away."
"Where... do you want to go?" Li Tao couldn’t help asking. Lin Sanjiu straightened her back and smiled at them. "You know something. No matter where I go, I will leave that place in shambles before I leave. First, it was a supermarket, then another survivors’ settlement… I don’t see why Garden of Eden should be an exception"
After pausing for a moment, Lin Sanjiu finally announced softly, "I want to stay and destroy their glass dome."
Chapter 129 - The Hidden Oddities in the Garden of Eden
Strictly speaking, this was Lin Sanjiu’s first time on the street in the Garden of Eden. Just as what she had observed from outside the glass globe, the design of the city was vastly different from anything she had seen on Earth (she could only put it this way). As it was not yet dawn, the sky outside the glass globe was a hue of dark blue and dotted with bright twinkling stars. The yellow street lamps floating mid-air descended like birds as they sensed people’s footsteps. They cast a warm yellow light on the street, illuminating their path. An interplay of cool and warm colors against the background to the tranquil night sky was just like a piece of art.
Xueqin, who was in the male escort's arms, suddenly made a cold remark, "Don’t be fooled by these things. There is a surveillance camera in each of the street lamps." Dong Haohao, who just attempted to touch the lamps, quickly pulled back her hand after hearing that.
Lin Sanjiu turned to look at the few dozen people behind her and spoke quietly to Li Tao, "Even though everyone is wearing those military grade hazmat suits and thus our identities wouldn’t be exposed so quickly, we still have to be careful. Could you get them to talk and move less, we just have to hold our guns and move forward."
Li Tao nodded before turning and passing the message to the group.
Though it did not sound like a large number, when 43 people walked together, they covered almost half a street. Lin Sanjiu did not actually expect so many people to follow her. Of those who left, a few were concerned about their safety, but the rest were about to be sent to another world so they did not want to take any unnecessary risks...
After Gong Daoyi gave them the directions to escape the city, he did not leave. He followed behind the troop of female Posthumans. Although Lin Sanjiu wasn’t keen on him staying with them, she couldn’t bring herself to immediately chase him away. In the end, she kept Xueqin by her side so both people wouldn’t start a fight on the streets.
"Can you see that black tower in the distance? The residents here are absolutely forbidden to go there. Supposedly, that is a central component of the glass globe which provides the power required for the protective shield."
"Power?" Lin Sanjiu was a little confused. She looked up at the glass globe above them. No matter how she looked, it seemed like a physical infrastructure to her, and she couldn’t see how it would need an energy source. "How many people usually guard that place?"
Unexpectedly, Xueqin harrumphed and said, "There are no guards. No one knows why, but people who get close to the black tower always disappear without a trace. That includes the soldiers guarding the place. Basically, it is not necessary to guard it, as it guards itself."
After she finished her sentence in a matter-of-fact manner, she suddenly turned away her head, as if embarrassed, so Lin Sanjiu only saw the back of the woman’s head. She continued, "So if you wish to court death, you can go and try."
"Oh." Lin Sanjiu replied unconsciously as she was still puzzled by the conundrum about the power source.
A high-pitched siren rang out from afar, piercing through the silent night. A couple of ambulances swooped past their heads leaving a draft of wind. It had only been 30 minutes since they had escaped the arena and this was the fifth fleet of ambulances that they had seen. Occasionally, they even heard some cries from the residential apartments. Apparently, the outbreak of radiation sickness was far worse than what Lin Sanjiu anticipated. Lin Sanjiu furrowed her brows and had a faint inkling that there was something wrong. However, she found the black tower so intriguing that she didn’t spare time for that fleeting thought.
They took a bend around the corner and found a white conch-shaped building, it stole all of Lin Sanjiu’s attention. The form of the building flowed well, giving it a clean and cute appearance. It was just like what she saw from outside the city. Lin Sanjiu stood in front of the building and took a deep breath. She pulled out her mouthpart weapon with lightning speed. With a few leaps, she destroyed five street lamps consecutively. After that, she pressed the illuminated doorbell and gestured to the escort. The escort placed Xueqin down and walked to the door with another woman who was wearing a hazmat helmet.
A projection appeared from the illuminated doorbell, it was an image of a middle-aged butler with an angry and sleepy face, "Who is it? This early in the morning?"
He saw the escort’s military hazmat suit and gradually looked up, "Why are you here, soldiers?"
As Bai Xiaoke opened her mouth from behind, her escort said plainly, "The female mutates will be put to death in two hours. Our chief ordered us to sent the female mutate that Mr. Guang liked here first."
After he said that, he took off the woman’s helmet, revealing a pitiful looking face—it was Hui Chuyan.
When the butler saw the most popular female contestant of the tournament in front of him, his eyes lit up and he let down his guard, "When did the master… Oh, alright. I will open the door for you. Wait a moment…"
When the two metal doors retracted upwards rapidly, the escort covered the illuminated doorbell and gestured for Lin Sanjiu and the others behind him. All of them rushed into the building.
Lin Sanjiu waved her mouthpart weapon, aiming it at a person that was nearby. Just then, someone switched on the light in the living room. Light flooded the room and Lin Sanjiu immediately stopped. That was not a person. It was a taxidermied female, and the look of fear had been immortalized on her young face.
In a small hall by the fireplace, probably a place where guests were served tea, there were more than ten other ‘specimens’
showing different kinds of expressions. The only commonality between them was the humiliating state of their corpses.
"Let's go up there and catch that rubbish called Guang Zhu!" Lin Sanjiu roared furiously, while the other women answered with the same level of fury. Lin Sanjiu led the group upstairs. The bodyguards they met along the way, though armed with small, low-caliber weapons, stood no chance against them. When Lin Sanjiu reached the top floor and kicked open a lavishly decorated bedroom door, she saw Guang Zhu. That fat man was busy packing his suitcase.
"Who sent you here? I will give you ten times—"
A loud female shriek made him shut his mouth. While the fat man was stunned, a person lunged at him and violently slapped his face over and over again. "You wanted to add me to your sick collection? And you killed my sister! Where is my sister? Where is she?" Hui Chuyan said with a heart-wrenching voice.
Hui Chuyan was not wearing her helmet. She glared at the fat man with her bloodshot eyes, while his face instantly turned white. But it didn’t remain white for long. Hui Chuyan’s wrath was accompanied by her posthuman strength. After more than ten slaps, the man’s messed up face became just a pile of mashed flesh which hung on to his broken skull. The man was already dead, but Hui Chuyan continued pounding at the dead man’s body with her full strength as if she was unaware. Lin Sanjiu sighed and went over to stop her. Hui Chuiyan stood in a daze for a moment before stopping, then she fell into Lin Sanjiu’s arms and started sobbing.
"My sister... arrived here before me... We have telepathic abilities. So, so I can feel whatever she is feeling. I’ve experienced all her emotions…" she stammered while she cried, causing the others to start sobbing as well.
[That was why she was so afraid then… If anyone found out that they would have to experience the same humiliation and torture after experiencing it once, they would definitely fall apart…]