Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  After four days of digging and blasting, this area of almost a kilometer radius had completed changed.

  The spot where Lin Sanjiu first started digging was now an entrance which could fit two people. Past the entrance, the path sloped downward steeply.

  If someone were to walk down this path for a few hundred meters, the person would suddenly feel as though he or she was in a forest. Perhaps, the word 'forest' wasn’t the right description. Until today, no human has coined a term to describe a forest created by large intertwining snake-like roots. Looking up, a network of large roots blocked a large portion of the sky. Thus, the path was always dark. Both sides of the path were covered by roots which had not been destroyed. Each of these roots had the girth of approximately the circ.u.mference of ten people in a group hug. They crisscrossed and intertwined. Once they sensed any movement, the ‘walls’ of roots would start vibrating rapidly, sprouting waves after waves of long thin probing roots, eager to engulf any surrounding living creatures.

  In such an underground mine-like environment, there was barely any natural light. To solve this, Lin Sanjiu hung her [Ability Polishing Agent] on a slender tree root, letting it serve as a lamp. Though that root was thinner than the rest, its girth was almost her size.

  Under the [Ability Polishing Agent]’s dim silvery light, both the huge robot doll and the piece of grey cloud floating mid-air sunk into silence as they faced Lin Sanjiu’s dejection.

  "But-but..." Bai Xiaoke hesitated for a while, not knowing if what she was about to say would encourage or discourage Lin Sanjiu, "we really can’t do anything else now..."

  The two men sitting on the robot doll’s shoulders exchange glances, also feeling rather disheartened.

  "Have you guys ever considered how much effort we use?" Lin Sanjiu suddenly questioned them, "Every day, we can only dig about 100 meters or so in one direction, right?"

  The grey cloud shook a little as Xiao Baike nodded.

  "Right now, we have only been putting those 100 meters downward, ignoring roots that go in other directions. Well, also because we don’t have the manpower for that." Perhaps, the few days of repetitive physical activity actually helped Lin Sanjiu clear her mind. Her anxiety over the missing companions gradually ebbed as her rationality slowly took charge again.

  "But, what if the roots aren’t transporting their ‘prey’ downward? Three of you were in a life or death situation at that time; it isn’t surprising that you guys might have made a mistake in the direction that you were heading in." She raised her brow and continued, "Logically speaking, it shouldn’t head downward. Nutrients from the roots are usually transported to the phloem. Even though we don’t see the tree trunks yet, shouldn’t it go upward?"

  Her logic made sense, yet Qian Zhengguan felt that something wasn’t quite right. He opened his mouth, wanting to retort, but after hemming and hawing for quite a bit, he couldn’t find the words. In the end, his far-fetched thinking gained the upper hand, and he uttered, "If the tree truck is growing somewhere else, does that mean we have to run around this entire planet?" Now, he was totally stumped.

  Green Melon rolled his eyes. Being more quick-witted, he smiled after he thought for a while, "Sister Lin, do you have an idea?"

  Lin Sanjiu narrowed her eyes without replying. She tilted her head and looked at all of them. Suddenly, she gestured for Qian Zhengguan, "Come here."

  "Wh-why?" the small-faced young male replied as alarm bells in his head started ringing inexplicably. "Sister Lin, what do you want? I can’t go down."

  The reason was almost sigh-inducing. To launch the explosions while Lin Sanjiu slept, they made quite a few tall makeshift platforms so that they could move around within a certain perimeter.

  "Are you coming?" Lin Sanjiu asked bluntly.

  Although his answer was a definite "no", Qian Zhengguan realized that he was slipping from the robot doll. With a fretful expression, he asked cautiously, "Sister Lin, what are you planning?"

  "I have a question. How much time do you need to activate your [Great Reversal Technique]... Quick, answer me. I’m waiting. Apart from the requirement regarding ‘Jin Yong’, are there any other prerequisites? Oh god, why are you so slow?"

  His sluggish movements could drive anyone mad. In the end, Lin Sanjiu stood up and grabbed him by his collar. Qian Zhengguan did treasure the shirt that Green Melon gave him, so he quickly acknowledged what Lin Sanjiu said and panicked as he stabilized himself on the makeshift platform. After that, he touched his collar and answered, "Umm… The activation time is quite short. Just a thought will do. Other than that ‘Jin Yong’ requirement, the target has to be around my size, and the person or item shouldn’t be too heavy…"

  She might be imagining things, but recently, Lin Sanjiu felt that she had grown taller. Standing beside Qian Zhengguan, who was 1.73 meters tall, she seemed almost his height.

  [How could I be growing taller at my age? Even if I have evolved, I don’t have a height increment ability...] Lin Sanjiu sneered at herself inwardly and asked, "Is my height alright?"

  The young man with a small face looked at her and considered for a second before nodding quickly, "Yes. Tall women are popular now. Look at those mistresses…"

  "I’m talking about your [Great Reversal Technique] ability! What are you thinking?"

  "Oh oh, yes!"

  Lin Sanjiu felt more irritable than usual when she had to deal with a scatterbrained slowcoach like Qian Zhengguan. She massaged her temples and placed one hand on Qian Zhengguan’s back. Then, she instructed softly, "On a count of three, I’ll push you toward that tree root, are you ready?"

  "How can I be ready!" Pale-faced, Qian Zhengguan waved his hand randomly around in a panic, "Sister Lin, what exactly are you trying to do?!"

  Lin Sanjiu whispered, "Listen, I will stand on this platform. The second you’re completely swallowed by the tree root, you are going to swap places with me.

  The idea to let herself be swallowed by those roots sounded too risky so she knew that Bai Xiaoke and Green Melon would never agree with her on doing so. Thus, she never even thought of mentioning it to them. Qian Zhengguan was different. They only got acquainted with each other days ago, and considering his slow and pliable personality, he would probably follow her instructions.

  "So, you want to get in there…"

  "Yes, as you know, somehow, these tree roots just refuse to pull me in. So, we can’t swap places early. You have to swap the very second their epidermis close…" Lin Sanjiu stared into his eyes, a little nervously. Yet, her tone was resolute, giving him little leeway to refuse.

  Their conversation was very soft, so Green Melon could barely hear what they were saying. Bai Xiaoke and Green Melon were still in the dark about the situation. They waited for Lin Sanjiu to say something but they only saw her pushing Qian Zhengguan violently toward a nearby root—

  Before both of them could cry out, many thin probing roots flew out from the ground and caught Qian Zhengguan. He let out a shriek before he was s.u.c.k.e.d into the roots entirely. Everything happened quicker than a blink of an eye.

  "Now!" Lin Sanjiu bellowed. His screams came to a spontaneous end before the tough epidermis closed. His vision blurred and Qian Zhengguan gasped. He had swapped places with her. He stood on the platform, grabbing his knees for support.

  Green Melon and Bai Xiaoke looked over in a daze, just in time to watch Lin Sanjiu’s shadow disappear into the closing thick white epidermis.

  Chapter 169 - A Bitter Journey Through Culture

  [Green Melon and Bai Xiaoke must be anxious and angry now...] Lin Sanjiu thought to herself. The only sound she could hear from within the tree roots was a constant gurgling sound. When Lin Sanjiu opened her eyes, she realized that it wasn't pitch-dark like she imagined. Instead, everything was foggy white. Occasionally, a large mass of thin roots would pass by quickly.

  Although she felt a little guilty for making her companions worried, Lin Sanjiu couldn’t resist her hunger and started searching for the ha
lf-eaten cup noodles from her card inventory. The items which she converted into cards would be preserved in the very state before they were converted. As a result, when she converted the cup noodles back to its original steaming hot form, the fragrance of seafood wafted into her nose. Before she left, Lin Sanjiu hung a backpack full of food, enough for half a month, on the waist of the robot doll so she wasn’t worried that the three people outside would starve.

  Judging from her body condition, another day had passed since she entered the network of tree roots. When she was first s.u.c.k.e.d into the root, Lin Sanjiu had the same awful experiences that the others described. Sticky, viscous slime mixed with numerous uncuttable tiny roots assaulted her face, like thick sheets of wet paper. She felt a slight itchy feeling in her ears, eyes, and nose and knew that the roots were trying to burrow into her body.

  By then, she had been cut off from the air outside. To get oxygen, she had to inhale deeply to snatch the pockets of oxygen within the slime. Inadvertently, this action also created an unimpeded path for the thin roots. Soon, she felt an intense, burning pain in her lungs. She wondered if something had already burrowed into them.

  Thankfully, those things lost interest in her immediately.

  As the uncomfortable sensations—the suffocation, burning pain, dampness and odd itchiness— gradually ebbed, she moved her eyes and watched as a thin, long white root peeked out from her nostril. This was accompanied by an unbearable itch before the white root finally swam out from her nose and disappeared into the surrounding white slime.

  Noting her ability to suck hot noodles into her mouth calmly after personally witnessing her body on that condition, Lin Sanjiu felt that she grew psychologically stronger once again.

  The reason she could eat her noodles leisurely was all thanks to the capsule she kept during the Lunar New Year Tournament.

  She converted her capsule into a card to escape from the match back then. As the various events unfolded, she stored more and more items, so she nearly forgot that she had the capsule with her.

  If it wasn’t for that thought—"It’d be nice if I could place myself in a box"—that drifted into her hazy mind when she was having difficulties breathing, Lin Sanjiu would still be suffering right now.

  Maybe, the roots felt that this capsule with Lin Sanjiu had no nutritional value. As she drifted through the slime, Lin Sanjiu noticed that the slime attempted to push her capsule outward two to three times.

  It wasn’t easy getting inside, so she wasn’t about to let the tree roots ‘vomit’ her out. Once she realized that her capsule was shaking, she would store her capsule back in her body before taking out her saber. Each time, she would stab her saber into the thick white epidermis to secure her position. After doing that for a few times, perhaps being able to sense pain, the roots seemed to acknowledge that it could not remove that foreign object so it had no choice but to accept it into the slime again and transport it with the other ‘nutrients’ toward an unknown direction.

  Putting down the empty noodle cup, Lin Sanjiu looked at the rope she tied outside through the capsule’s walls. She got that idea not long ago. Observing the movement of the rope, she could judge the direction she was heading. At that moment, the rope was swaying in the slime. Lin Sanjiu looked at it for a while before she caught a hint of its upward movement.

  [Does this mean I’m heading downward?]

  She looked up with uncertainty. Waves of viscous slime swept past her eyes like a white fog. Although the flow speed wasn’t that fast, Lin Sanjiu had already been in the root for an entire day. If the flow speed was 2 kilometers per hour, she was probably 50 to 60 kilometers deep.

  However, the white interior of the roots remained unchanged. The slime kept moving downward as if it was heading to the very core of the planet.

  In such depths, Lin Sanjiu could do nothing but wait in her capsule. The tree root that accommodated her had become her lifeline: if this tree root was suddenly disappeared, or accidentally pushed her out, Lin Sanjiu would be trapped under the deep dark layers of soil and would be killed by the surrounding pressure before she died of suffocation.

  Once she was reminded about that, the little bit of leisure she had while eating that cup noodle disappeared completely. Lin Sanjiu fixated her gaze on the bottom of the capsule and gradually grew neurotic that she might suddenly be pushed outward by the roots if she missed even a slight abnormal movement.

  As the fluid flowed, she could only hear the monotonous and repetitive rustling sound outside the capsule. It was as if the view in front of her was the only thing left in this world. The capsule swayed gently and rhythmically along with the flow. If it wasn’t for the strange situation she found herself in, it would be a considerably quiet time for her.

  With that, she fell asleep unknowingly.

  Didn’t she warn herself not to sleep just a second ago? Yet, Lin Sanjiu woke up abruptly when the capsule started shaking. She did not know how long she had been asleep. The capsule quickly stabilized. Apparently, it was just a bit of ‘turbulence’. She looked at the empty noodle cup and found that the leftover soup had dried up. Due to her bad sleeping posture, her legs had also gone numb.

  "It seems that six or seven hours have passed. Why isn’t there any change at all?" she mumbled before turning her head. She was caught off guard when she found herself staring at a deadly white face smiling back at her. Though she had been through a lot, Lin Sanjiu found her hairs standing on end. She suppressed the involuntary scream that nearly escaped from her mouth and stepped backward, only realizing after a second that the human’s face was outside her capsule.

  Lin Sanjiu stared at it for over ten seconds before she felt her heart calming down. She looked at that face carefully and felt her heart contract. There was only a few pieces of intact skin on the body of this unfamiliar man who was floating beside her capsule. He must have tried to protect his head, so his face was the only part of his body that retained some semblance of its original form. His thoracic and abdominal cavity had been ripped open. The edge of the wounds had been densely covered with tiny semicircles. Clearly, his skin split open after it had been perforated by many tiny holes. Meanwhile, a few fascia-like objects floated around the body.

  The space where his organs should originally be was empty. Lin Sanjiu could even see his backbone. His empty abdominal cavity was only filled with a white substance. She realized that she had mistaken his ‘smile’ on his face because of the blurred surface of her capsule. Upon closer inspection, the man had a twisted expression before he died.

  If B.Rabbit and the others were floating in the root’s fluid unprotected, they were probably in the same state as this man. The shock she received had driven away her drowsiness. Lin Sanjiu sat down worriedly, gazing down at her feet in a daze. She tried her best to recall if her companions had any abilities or special items that could serve as protection.

  [Huh?] Her train of thoughts stopped as she turned her head. The pale male corpse was still floating leisurely outside her capsule.

  [Something isn’t right...] Lin Sanjiu tilted her head trying to grasp the fleeting thought in her head. It wasn’t all that surprising to see a dead person floating in the roots. After all, these roots had s.u.c.k.e.d in many organisms. However, she couldn’t help noticing a fact...

  The dead man wasn’t here before.

  She inched forward and looked at the mutilated face once more. Her heart raced as she made a daring assumption. She forced herself to calm down. After waiting for a while, the capsule shook a few times in succession, as expected.

  It wasn’t caused by tree roots pushing her out. The jolts continued for quite some time. Sometimes, the jolt only lasted for a second. Lin Sanjiu discovered that the surroundings outside her capsule changed with each jolt. The ‘free-range chicken’ above her had already been washed away by the random waves to an unknown location. The number of organisms around her capsule began to increase rapidly. The faces that surrounded her capsules belonged to people she did not kn
ow. Some of the posthumans seemed alive as they used various methods to protect themselves. One of them had wrapped him or herself with a thick gold ribbon and was now like a mummy. Another person’s body was glowing with a black light, so she couldn’t see the person’s face. Despite that, their current circ.u.mstances were only slightly better than the corpses.

  Lin Sanjiu contemplated for a while and finally decided not to rescue or bring them into her capsule. The capsule could only hold two people at most, even if they stood together. She had no choice but to prioritize her companions.

  "Sorry, please persevere a bit longer." She murmured, it was almost as if she was comforting herself. "The organisms within the roots are converging… I am sure there is a way to get out."

  Chapter 170 - The World Called Garden of Eden

  "So, this really is the Garden of Eden!" Lin Sanjiu uttered as every inch of her body trembled while she looked at her surroundings.

  Due to the overwhelming shock, she looked around with a lifeless glaze in her eyes. She was in a daze. Unknowingly, a gigantic object approached her from behind, casting an enormous shadow over her. Sensing the peculiar presence, she turned behind and couldn’t help but curse softly.

  "What the hell?"

  Just half an hour ago, Lin Sanjiu was still sitting in the capsule, helplessly drifting along. She was right about the tree roots converging. As the flow speed of the fluid within the roots sped up, the currents within the roots grew stronger. She saw batches after batches of black figures being transported to the ‘river’ she was in. Not long after, her capsule was surrounded by a variety of corpses. Waves after waves of fluid, carrying various dead corpses, hit her capsule, causing it to spin uncontrollably. For a moment, Lin Sanjiu felt dizzy. She couldn’t see anything clearly. She could only feel the flow of the fluid accelerating downward.