Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  When he said this, he seemed to remember something and started giggling like a little girl. The elderly man lifted one of his hands and picked his long gray fingernails, "Of course, your wish was to leave your previous lifestyle and be with the prince. Don’t worry. I don’t break my promises. Though there might be some twists and turns, your wish will come true very soon."

  "Thank you. Thank you!" Cinderella was finally relieved after she heard such a direct promise from the man and gave a heavy sigh of relief as if a heavy burden had been lifted off her c.h.e.s.t. "The current events are too strange, so it scared me a little. Oh. That’s right. Did you come to the palace to look for me?"

  The old man giggled again. "There is a pathetic young man who wants an incredible amount of wealth. I’m here to make a deal with him."

  "Is he a person from this palace?"

  When she heard how cautious Cinderella was when she spoke, Lin Sanjiu took a step backward. Lin Sanjiu didn’t care if she was seen as a person who judged a book by its cover, but she couldn’t bring herself to trust that Old Man Fairy. If she wanted to know why the head steward and that stranger kidnapped Cinderella, couldn’t she just ask them herself?

  Almost soundless, she moved away quickly and nimbly. In a short time, Lin Sanjiu had turned around the corner and was some distance away from the room. Thus, when she heard the Old Man Fairy speaking again, she didn’t catch what he said clearly, "Oh! That’s not it, dearie. It’s because of the color of his… weird, so he works in the circus entertaining people. He is way more pitiful than you…"

  Lin Sanjiu stopped.

  [What weird color?]

  Her heart raced when a vague thought formed in her mind. Cinderella’s slightly surprised voice seemed to ascertain her doubt, "Huh? So there is really a person with a natural beard of that color?"

  [Bluebeard! It must be him!]

  She heard the Old Man Fairy muttering something like "Wife... a few". Lin Sanjiu suddenly felt enlightened. She felt that she finally found some sort of logic in this pocket dimension. Bluebeard must have made some sort of deal with the Old Man Fairy in this palace where Cinderella was. After that, he became a wealthy man and then married Lila, which leads to that story...

  He must have killed Lila and offered the King her mirror. Therefore, in Cinderella’s story, something should also affect the future. If she managed to find Bluebeard and kill him, then Lila would be saved! Once Lin Sanjiu came up with this logic, she felt very relieved. The conversation in the room continued when she spotted a flicker of light nearby. She quickly picked up the soldier who was still asleep and hid with him in a corner. Two female attendants walked past her in a single file. One of them was carrying a plate and the other a candlelight. When they stopped at the door, Cinderella’s room suddenly became quiet. After a few seconds, Cinderella uncertain voice came out from the room, "Who... who is outside?"

  "We were ordered by the head steward to bring your dinner, Miss Ella," one of the attendants replied cordially.

  Cinderella’s real name was Ella. To mock her, her stepsisters gave her a nickname called Cinderella, which also meant cinder girl. Cinderella sounded emotional when she heard her name after such a long time. She sniffed as she said, "Okay. Thank you."

  When they pushed open the door, Lin Sanjiu peeked in and saw that Cinderella was alone. If she looked for Bluebeard now, she might meet the Old Man Fairy. Even if her combat skills had improved significantly, she did not want to take the risk of fighting against magic. If she was turned into a mouse, it would be too late for any regrets. After considering her options, she decided to target the head steward.

  A stern sounding voice, which Lin Sanjiu had heard once in Cinderella’s house, came from behind the two large doors. Although the voice was barely audible, it definitely belonged to the head steward. Lin Sanjiu rendered the guards at the door unconscious and walked softly to the doors. She lifted the curtains and pressed her ears against the door.

  "Prince Cedric, we are all sorry for your loss." The head steward voice was deep and sonorous as if he was also in deep sorrow and was controlling his emotions, "But now that the crown prince is dead, the future of our kingdom depends on you…"

  "But my brother didn’t deserve to die like that!" a young man spoke in a forceful intensity, which broke the heavy silence. It was a voice that would make anyone retreat. After he said that, he seemed to be unable to continue. The head steward quickly comforted him with a few words.

  Controlling her impatient nature, Lin Sanjiu waited a little longer. Prince Cedric seemed to regain his composure and spoke again, "Is his coffin ready?"

  "It is almost done. We didn’t think that the lady would be so petite. The first version was too large so they had to make some adjustments…"

  "Aren’t you a little over conscientious! The size of such things don’t matter—"

  Prince Cedric, with his reddened eyes, had not even finished his sentence when he was interrupted by a sudden clash. Before he could even see what had happened, he had been knocked over by a force. Suddenly, he felt someone grabbing his neck tightly and didn't even have time to cry out in surprise before finding himself unable to even breathe.

  It took a few seconds before the head steward realized the sequence of events which unfolded before him. He backed away nervously and pulled out a decorative saber on the wall. Before he shouted, the weird woman who had pounced on the prince warned in a cold voice, "Don’t you dare make a sound! If you do, I will strangle him to death."

  The head steward nodded, half stunned.

  "In your conversation, you said that you were preparing a coffin for a petite woman. Who is she? Is she dead?" Lin Sanjiu used her arms to keep the struggling prince down. He was a tall young man with thin hair. Half his face was covered by bulging veins now, but his stubborn expression showed that he would rather die than let the woman strangling him get her way.

  "Please be gentler," the head steward said quite a few time before he held the saber in his hand tighter and replied. "The coffin is for Cinderella!"

  Though she had already roughly guessed his answer, Lin Sanjiu’s expression changed slightly as she was still shocked by it.

  "That woman is a great sinner in our kingdom!" The head steward seemed to have forgotten Prince Cedric, whose face was now fully red, and tears poured down his eyes as if he had remembered something, "Prince Peter, the crown prince who would soon take over the kingdom, spent all his time thinking of that woman once he met her... He even set off on a journey throughout the kingdom to look for her himself. In the end, in the end, he met with a terrible fate…"

  Lin Sanjiu was drawn to what he said and accidentally loosened her grip. Once Cedric felt air gushing to his lungs, he hollered, "My brother traveled in the rain at night just so he could see her sooner. In the end, he was bitten to death by a beast! I will have you buried with him, no matter what!" Cedric face flushed red with fury, accompanied by a slight greenish tinge. The temporary lack of oxygen also caused his eyes to bulge slightly, making him look even more deranged.

  [A rainy night… a beast…]

  "Give me the full details…" Lin Sanjiu’s had a terrible expression on her face as she tightened her grip and Cedric let out a muffled groan. The head steward quickly responded, "Prince Peter saw an injured man at the roadside. He was ambushed when he tried to help the man! There was another disemboweled dead hunter by the side of his corpse…"

  [It must be—]

  She could finally connect the three stories. Lin Sanjiu thought through her experience. If that was the case, Red Riding Hood’s story came first, after that it was Cinderella’s story and lastly, it was Lila's...

  "I have a second question. Who brought that mirror here?" Lin Sanjiu asked drily. She had no doubt, that was Lila’s mirror.

  Chapter 141 - It Isn't Easy to Kill Three Birds With One Stone

  The atmosphere seemed to freeze with silence once she stated that question.

  "Well, that is…" the head steward swallowed
his saliva nervously. He didn’t know why she would suddenly ask about that mirror. "A gentleman who had been recently knighted presented that mirror to the king… It is worth quite a bit but you can take it if you want. Just let the prince go!"

  Lin Sanjiu stared motionlessly at the mirror for a few seconds before she let out a long sigh.

  "Does that gentleman have a blue beard?" Her tone revealed that she really hoped that it was just a fluke and that the head steward would shake his head.

  Unfortunately, a hint of surprise fleeted across the man’s face as he wondered why she asked him the question if she already knew the answer. After that, he nodded and said something but Lin Sanjiu couldn’t hear his words. This illogical matter had overwhelmed all her thinking capacity. From the previous conversation, the person from the circus who was about to make a deal with the Old Man Fairy was definitely Bluebeard. At the same time, he was also the person who presented the mirror. [If there was so, how could he exist in the past and the future?]

  Lin Sanjiu opened her mouth but words failed her. The head steward glued his eyes on her. Lin Sanjiu only remembered that she was strangling someone when she felt the movement of a throat under her hands. She quickly released the prince and leaped aside.

  When Prince Cedric could breathe properly again, his face turned as red as a tomato while he curled his body and coughed violent for some time. Although Lin Sanjiu was still a little bothered by her thoughts, she moved quickly. The moment the saber fell to the ground with a heavy crash, the head steward who was about to shout for backup was struck by a black shadow. He was flung to the wall and fainted after he hit the back of his head against a candle holder.

  Prince Cedric glared at Lin Sanjiu with a mix of fear and fury as he watched her pulling back her mouthpart weapon. When he saw what was in her hand, his face turned pale and he froze for a few seconds. He suddenly grabbed his own throat and laughed ruthlessly, "You witch! You demon! Even if you kill me today, you can’t save your compatriot…"

  Lin Sanjiu was just about to walk out when she stopped. "What do you mean?" She threw a sideway glance at the prince.

  "The dinner that was sent to Cinderella has been poisoned," the man’s arrogant tone remained unchanged despite being in a dangerous position. "She is probably dead by now!"

  [Damn it!]

  Even if it had been some time since Prince Cedric uttered those words, Lin Sanjiu could still hear it echoing through her mind. She cursed inwardly as she thrust forward, running as fast as she could. She could only hear the rushing wind filling her ears as she sprinted through the corridors and towards Cinderella’s room.

  She probably knocked down more than a dozen female attendants as she ran. She couldn’t care less about the noisy commotion she had stirred up behind her. She came to Cinderella’s door and kicked down the door. At the same moment, she saw that Cinderella was about to place a spoon of salad into her mouth.

  "Don’t eat—"

  Before Lin Sanjiu could spit out her full warning, she felt herself lose balance and she fell into… a patch of flower field. Her confusion only lasted half a second this round; Lin Sanjiu rolled to her side and stood up quickly.

  The sun hung in the azure sky as the flower field basked in the glorious sunshine. There was a scent of fresh grass all around. Lin Sanjiu had a feeling that she was back at the start, the place where she first met Red Riding Hood. She saw the same forest, the flower field and the clouds in the far distance. The only thing that was different was the stone tablet before her.

  Her heart suddenly pounded rapidly and adrenaline coursed through her body. Lin Sanjiu bit hard on her lips. She surveyed her surroundings and slowly walked to the stone tablet. She read the words on the newly added stone tablet:

  "No. 72 Pocket Dimension Quest:

  "The main character of the three stories are now in grave danger. You can only execute one action within this pocket dimension to save the lives of these three characters.

  "To better specify the definition of this "one action", you will be given five execution points. If the action you plan to take exceeds five points, it exceeds the definition of "one action", therefore you wouldn’t be able to execute it.

  "If you do not execute that one action within 30 minutes, you will automatically fail the quest. The countdown started the moment you saw this stone tablet.

  "PS: Trust me, you definitely want to keep them alive. You can only cross this stone tablet if you save all three main characters."

  The stone tablet ended with that ambiguous sentence. Lin Sanjiu was slightly perplexed by this until she spotted the small words on top of the stone tablet and instantly understood what the line "cross the stone tablet" meant.

  This stone tablet is a boundary line between this pocket dimension and the beautiful Garden of Eden.

  Lin Sanjiu couldn’t resist tilting her head to look at the scenery behind the stone tablet—well, she was still in the same flower field. Lin Sanjiu saw an unusually tall daisy among a bunch of daisies nearby which grew past the boundary but still appeared normal. She took a significant effort to curb the impulse to just walk over the stone tablet. She sat down and just stared at a patch of grass not far away. Her brows slowly furrowed together.

  Apparently, she was the 72nd person to enter this particular pocket dimension. [The quests were probably different for every single person who entered, thus the numbering…] Lin Sanjiu didn’t care if the previous people who had entered this pocket dimension were now dead or still alive. She was engrossed in her thoughts as she sat and forced herself to remember every single detail since she stepped into this pocket dimension.

  Lin Sanjiu actually had a hunch about the matter regarding saving the main characters much earlier. Since she was sent away at the very critical moment when the characters were in danger, it was just logically… But, she did not expect that there would be such a restriction.

  [What is the one thing I can do to save all three people? No. What if it’s something like a domino effect. If one thing happens, it will set off a chain of events that would alter the future...] Just when Lin Sanjiu thought that she saw the crux of the issue, she remembered how there were two Bluebeards existing at the same time in Cinderella’s palace and was stuck again.

  When Lin Sanjiu thought about the fact that she already spent five minutes of her 30-minute limit, she started feeling impatient. She took a pebble on the ground and tried to throw it far away from her. Unexpected, the pebble was stuck to her hand. When she looked down at the pebble, a line of words appeared on it: "Throw a pebble, 5 execution points. Proceed?"

  Lin Sanjiu was aghast as she quickly yelled, "No. Don’t proceed! Cancel! I don’t want to do that!" The pebble fell off her hand and into the grass.

  [That was close.] Lin Sanjiu wiped the cold sweat off her forehead. She stood up slowly and carefully. After that, she cautiously took one step forward. [If taking one step costs execution points, I might as well give up on this.]

  Luckily, no words appeared anywhere. "So, if I don’t interact with anything or anyone in the pocket dimension, I can go wherever I want?" With some confidence in her inference, she walked forward a few more steps. Sure enough, nothing happened.

  As a growth-type, she could sense that her body was gradually growing stronger. Running at full speed, Lin Sanjiu took less than a minute to reach a very small provincial town. The most conspicuous landmark in the town was a building with a weather vane. The brightly colored rooster at the top of the building was pointing west, wavering every now and then with the wind.

  This wasn’t Cinderella’s town…

  Lin Sanjiu walked and observed her surroundings while she carefully avoided touching anything. This wasn’t that easy as she seemed invisible to all the people around. They treated her like air and constantly headed in her direction. Two kids ran towards her as they teased each other, Lin Sanjiu barely dodged them but they didn’t seem to notice anything, instead they shouted, "I heard those people are all very beautiful!" Then, they ran
away.

  Lin Sanjiu watched them for a few seconds and suddenly had an idea. She chased after them. Perhaps it was luck, or already pre-arranged by the pocket dimension, but she spotted Emma. This Emma, with her beautiful sharp chin, was around nineteen years old, so Lin Sanjiu almost didn’t recognize her.

  "Please accept me. I can learn really fast." Instead of the m.a.t.u.r.e, elegant, streetwise eyes that Lin Sanjiu knew, Emma’s bright eyes were now filled with fear. "If I don’t have this job, my daughter and I won’t survive…"

  A dance troupe heading to the palace for a performance had stopped for a day in this little town and was staying in the building with the weather vane, ready to set off the next day. When this news erupted in the little town, Emma quickly approached them to seek an opportunity. The leader of the dance troupe was a very picky middle-aged lady. She circled Emma and examined her carefully. She didn’t see anything which displeased her so she asked, "What about your daughter?"

  Lin Sanjiu was standing in the middle of the room, but neither women gave her even a glance.

  "I could get my aunt to take care of her." Emma lowered her head as if to hide her conflicted expression, "If I send her the money I earn, my aunt would definitely take good care of her…" Lin Sanjiu crossed her arms as she listened to their conversation but was suddenly struck by a thought. If she stopped Emma from joining the dance troupe now, she would have to live with her daughter and wouldn’t become an e.r.o.t.i.c dancer. Therefore, she would stay with her granddaughter Red Riding Hood in the future. If they were staying together, they wouldn’t meet any werewolves, which meant Red Riding Hood would survive.

  Without Emma, the hunters wouldn’t surround the cottage. The werewolf wouldn’t have the chance to hide among the hunters, wouldn’t be able to ambush the prince, and Cinderella would be saved!