Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  Despite that, there weren't many options for Lin Sanjiu. This was by far the most feasible method they could come up with.

  Since they had met not long ago, they chit-chatted for a while before parting ways after they had settled on the plan. Since Ji Shanqing had previously walked through the right path, he picked the left path this time whereas Lin Sanjiu went to discover the second mirror chamber on the right track.

  "What a cautious guy," Lin Sanjiu murmured as she warped out from the mirror chamber on the right.

  Ji Shanqing's motive for swapping with her was probably because he couldn't believe in her just yet. He had to take a look at all the mirror chambers behind both sides himself.

  Just like Ji Shanqing had ill.u.s.trated, this mirror chamber was with a flat heart shape. Lin Sanjiu found the exit mirror opposite of her with a single glance. After she left a mark she paced toward the mirror in her gasoline barrel-like body.

  Although the shape was simple, the area was so freaking small that she couldn't even turn her body around.

  The mirror she was heading toward formed a slit with another mirror. Just as she stretched her hand to touch the mirror, her second sight kicked-in, and she froze.

  From the slit between two mirrors, something was dripping down slowly. After Lin Sanjiu narrowed her eyes to take a better look, she found out that it was gooey and slimy, exhibiting a soft flesh pink color. It seemed like a piece of brain tissue.

  Probably due to the vibration sent forth by her steps, the brain tissue fell to the mirror on the ground, releasing a subtle "plop" sound.

  "Somebody died here?"

  After looking at it for quite some time, Lin Sanjiu decided she shouldn't waste her time on something like this and went through the mirror.

  Be that as it may, she still felt dubious as she had never encountered any emergencies while traversing through the other mirror chambers. She couldn't think of any other better reasoning aside from attributing the owner of the brain tissue as a hapless victim of a fight between posthumans.

  There was nothing worth mentioning in the next mirror chambers. After she had jotted down the shape and surface area of the five mirror chambers on a piece of paper, she felt it was almost time to return to the triangular mirror chamber. Since she had never drawn a floor plan before—not even in her days before the apocalypse—she had to cross check her drawing with the mirror chamber a few times before moving forward into the next mirror chamber, so she might've taken up more time than she should. On the other hand, Ji Shanqing had more experience in drawing floor plans had probably returned to the triangular mirror chamber already.

  After she'd run the final check on the drawing she put away the paper and pen and prepared to turn around. At that moment, her hyper-sensory sensed something in the air, and before she could do anything, an object fell on the ground with a bang.

  Startled, Lin Sanjiu quickly turned her head, and her gaze met the eyes of the man.

  "H-How…" The man had yellowish black cheeks, and he looked unfamiliar to Lin Sanjiu. However, the way he looked, with his eyes filled with bewilderment at Lin Sanjiu, had made her wonder whether or not she had come across him somewhere else. He stumbled, "W-W-Why are you here?"

  "I've met you before?" Lin Sanjiu replied a question of her own. Narrowing her eyes, she realized that the man did seem somehow familiar.

  The man didn't reply to her. Instead, he turned his head which surprised Lin Sanjiu. He extended his hand to touch the mirror from which he came.

  He was much nearer to the mirror than Lin Sanjiu, so even after she'd finally came to her senses, she did not have enough time to pin him down. Just as she made her first step, surprisingly, what awaited her was not that man but a shower of blood. She was drenched wet in the crimson liquid from her head to her toes, even her hair and her newly bought battle shirt hadn't escaped their fate.

  There was even blood in her mouth. She couldn't care less about the pieces of innards on her body and quickly raised her head to look ahead. She was stunned and saw that the man had exploded into a pile of meat pulp.

  Until now, only she realized who the man was—she almost couldn't recognize him after his horse face had turned back to normal.

  "W-W-What is this?" She asked Mrs. Manas as her brain had gone blank.

  "Hold on a sec, let me take a look first." Mrs. Manas responded very quickly and went ahead to check it out. Then, she returned, very soon, with some information, "I've taken a deep look into the condition of the particles when you go through the mirror transmitter. It seems that these mirrors are programmed to be unidirectional."

  "Unidirectional? What do you mean?"

  "It means that for the same mirror, you can only either go in or come out and reentering the same mirror is strictly prohibited. This is due to the setting which caused the mirror to be unidirectional, so the atomized particle cannot re-enter the mirror in a reverse direction. I suspect that the particles are treated as impurities or invading substances. To put it in a nutshell, you can't go back now."

  Lin Sanjiu stayed blank for a few seconds before she took a deep breath as something suddenly crossed her mind, "Ji Shanqing! He might be in—wait, wait, wait, just wait for a sec. Didn't he say that he had retraced his way back to the triangular mirror chamber before?"

  "Impossible," Mrs. Manas refuted. She sounded confident, "Either he has gone the wrong way, or he was lying to you."

  Lin Sanjiu's furrowed her eyebrows, and her mind was all jumbled up, filling with fog. To iron out everything, she took out her paper and pen and began to scribble down whatever was in her mind.

  First of all, she had seen with her own eyes that Ji Shanqing had precisely described the heart-shaped mirror house, so there was nothing wrong with it. But since he couldn't go back, and he didn't seem like a clumsy person who would mix up entrance and exit, how did he know about the shape of that mirror chamber?

  Of course, considering that all of the mirrors on the two sides of the triangle are lined in a straight line, it was also viable that he could go out from the first mirror on the right side and return to the triangular mirror chamber through the mirror two. Be that as it may, he had no idea what the shape of the next mirror chamber was nor he was certain that he would be warped back to where he had started. He might be teleported to other mirror chambers; hence, this assumption was invalid.

  Heaving a sigh, the fog in her mind had dissipated a bit as the remnant pieces of brain tissue in the heart-shaped mirror chamber surfaced in her mind.

  Then, it clicked, "Unless—unless somebody and Ji Shanqing came into the triangular mirror chamber at the same time."

  That man must have told Ji Shanqing the next mirror chamber was a heart shape—no, perhaps he might even have filled him in with the contours of the following few mirror chambers; otherwise, there's no way Ji Shanqing could explain the heart-shaped mirror chamber so vividly.

  "So the brain tissue belonged to that poor fellow? What had happened between them? How did Ji Shanqing know that turning back could lead to death?"

  Although all of those were just assumptions, she had gotten a better picture of the whole maneuver by just imagination alone.

  "But it doesn't make any sense at all," Mrs. Manas sounded confused, "In the grand scheme of things, many hands make work lighter—He could have invited you to go on the same path with him. Why would he go so far as to lie to you?"

  "Of course, he wouldn't harm me if we cooperated just to look for the edge," Lin Sanjiu pursed her lips, and her complexion turned cold, "Ji Shanqing is different from that Horse-Face. He is smart, and as an intelligent person, he must know very well that getting an ally is much better than gaining a foe on the way to search for the grand prize. Since he had set me up, he must have fulfilled two criteria.

  "First, he must be sure that the grand prize doesn't exist on the right path. Maybe he got that information from the dead person, I don't know; perhaps, the person who has died might be Ji Shanqing's real companion. Secondly, I'm guessin
g he already knew the location of the grand prize, so he didn't want me to walk on the left path to eliminate the chances of me getting closer to the grand prize. He wanted the grand prize all to himself."

  "Not only has he pointed you in the wrong direction, he even planned to kill you," Mrs. Manas concluded. Then, she sighed, "Phew, she's such a beautiful girl, who could have expected her to be so black-hearted."

  "Girl? I thought he was a male," Lin Sanjiu scoffed. When the three minutes limit was almost up, she proceeded to the next mirror chamber.

  When she unglued her eyes in the next mirror chamber, she knew she had another three minutes.

  "Everything we said just now is only our speculation," Lin Sanjiu sighed, "If I want to know how close we are to the truth and locate the grand prize, I think I have only one option left."

  "Hey, stop. Don't—"

  Before Mrs. Manas could finish her sentence, Lin Sanjiu activated [Consciousness Mimicry].

  "Target: Nüwa."

  Chapter 390 - An Item’s Self-preservation

  Lin Sanjiu's hair was fully covered by a red viscous liquid. Her locks of wet hair were stuck to her scalp. Every now and then, she felt small pieces of flesh sinking deep into her hair. The splashed blood on her skin was already dried and the brown patches were itchy and uncomfortable.

  Lin Sanjiu tore off the bottom half of her singlet. She used the back part of the fabric, which was not soaked by blood, to clean her face and body. Lin Sanjiu only observed her surroundings after she felt a little better.

  —

  Wherever she looked, Lin Sanjiu could only see mirrors of all shapes and sizes. After walking through over a dozen mirror chambers, she finally stopped in another one of the nondescript mirror chambers. She exhaled deeply and plopped to the ground. She wasn't feeling exhausted but she was so despondent that she felt breathless.

  "So, this doesn't even work? What should we do now?" When Mrs. Manas spoke to her again, her voice was filled with anxiety and helplessness.

  Lin Sanjiu rubbed the corner of her eyes wearily and did not make a sound. As a matter of fact, she had already noticed that something was amiss when she used her Consciousness Mimicry at Haunted House Dare previously. Her Nüwa mimicry seemed to be getting weaker and less effective.

  When she was at Haunted House Dare, due to the specific circ.u.mstances, her main objective of using her Nüwa Consciousness Mimicry was to exploit Nüwa steel-like will so that she could stay sane. As a result, she only had a passing inkling. However, it was different this time. She did not expect that she would need to maintain her mimicry of Nüwu for up to five minutes before she could figure out the internal structure of the mirror maze. Furthermore, even after she deactivated her ability, she still had some energy and higher consciousness.

  After taking into her own walking speed as she searched the mirror maze, Lin Sanjiu managed to calculate the perimeter and the approximate area of the diamond building under her Nüwa's mindset. Creating a 3D model of the building in her mind, she added the "known" data-their shapes and area-that she got from the mirror chambers to infer the missing parts of her stereoscopic model. Based on her model, she moved to seven key areas within the mirror maze. After leaving from the ceiling a few times, Lin Sanjiu managed to get a clearer picture of the building's interior. It wasn't even a far-stretch to say that Lin Sanjiu had mastered the internal structure of the entire building.

  Unfortunately, that did not mean that she already found the location of the present.

  In contrary, LIn Sanjiu was at a loss as to what to do next once she had an almost perfect knowledge of the building's layout. All the mirror chambers within the building were different. In other words, there wasn't any particularly distinctive mirror chamber with an unusual shape or a special setup. The chambers were arranged in a haphazard manner and followed no particular patterns. The more mirror chambers she entered and exited, the more confused Lin Sanjiu felt.

  Lin Sanjiu was no longer in her Nüwa state. In honesty, even if she could activate it again, for once, she wasn't confident that it would be useful.

  "I think this is probably because the last time you met Nüwa was already more than two years ago. Your impression of her has probably faded. As your understanding of your target fades, naturally the ability wouldn't work as effectively. I think you might not even be able to successfully imitate Nüwa using your Consciousness Mimicry in the near future."

  After Lin Sanjiu heard what Mrs. Manas said, she didn't say a word. She sat on the floor without moving and stared at the mirror in front of her. Her reflection had no head but she had returned to her original lean muscular body. Her extended pairs of skeletal wings were behind her.

  "What's wrong?" Mrs. Manas sensed that Lin Sanjiu's wasn't quite right after waiting for a while, "Why aren't you talking?"

  Lin Sanjiu moved her flaky lips a few times before her voice finally came out.

  "If I can't find the grand prize, I think this round won't end," Lin Sanjiu said slowly. Her voice faltered, "This means that I, the cat doctor, Puppeteer and the others will be trapped here. We might even die, trapped. Maybe, it is too late, and there isn't any way to save Reno and Rena…"

  Mrs. Manas had no idea how to comfort Lin Sanjiu.

  "Ever since I was in Hyperthermal Hell, I had gotten to know many friends. Luther, Marcie, Hai Tianqing, and others… In the beginning, I thought I was fortunate. But, I'm not so sure of that now," Lin Sanjiu smiled bitterly and closed her eyes. "Look. Who is around me now? How would I know if the last time I saw them might be the final time I'll see them?

  "An author once stated in a book I read a long time ago, 'The source of human suffering stems irrevocably from the anger at one's own incompetence.' I think I finally understood this sentence today." Lin Sanjiu sighed and held her face in her hands.

  "You—you don't have to be so depressed," Mrs. Manas only came up with a few comforting words after thinking for a long time, "Well, at least you have Meowie Hu with you. Um, you probably don't consider Puppeteer your friend, I guess. Cough. Nevertheless, since they can't exit after entering, so they must be somewhere here. In that case…"

  "Wait, what did you say?" Lin Sanjiu suddenly trembled, and sat upright.

  "I mean, since you have the map of this place. If you continue walking around, you will definitely meet them…"

  "No. That's not right," Lin Sanjiu interrupted. "You mentioned that once they enter the building, they can't exit?"

  "Yes," Mrs. Manas replied in a slightly perplexed tone, "You've known this for a long time, right?"

  That was true. Even if a player touched a mirror that was behind the outer surface of the building, the player would not be teleported outside. The player would actually be "tossed" to the other corresponding end of the building. Lin Sanjiu had tested this herself.

  "Why didn't I think of this earlier?"

  Lin Sanjiu slapped her head violently and quickly used her higher consciousness to record the 3D model in her mind. She knotted her eyebrows together but despite her perplexed expression, she showed a hint of excitement, "No, it's strange."

  "What is strange?"

  Lin Sanjiu leaped up from the floor. Her previous gloom had disappeared from her face. She paced around the mirror chamber while she muttered softly to herself.

  "If we compare both sides… the probability… Why… Could it be?" she mumbled for some time. The words she said did not make much sense. Before Mrs. Manas said anything to her, Lin Sanjiu suddenly stopped and turned around.

  Ji Shanqing had just come out from a mirror. He looked as if he was a crane on stilts. His legs were long and spindly. His torso was the only part of his body which seemed normal. He was still in his trench-coat and bamboo hat. For a second, he seemed fl.u.s.tered but quickly regained his collected demeanor. He looked at Lin Sanjiu and nodded his head, smiling, "We've met again."

  He acted as if he had never even agreed to anything with Lin Sanjiu.

  "Yes, we meet again," Lin Sanjiu walked to t
he middle of the mirror chamber. She trained her eyes on him as if a cat staring at its can food. "Isn't this a coincidence? I was planning to look for you and you just appeared."

  "That's right, what a coincidence." Ji Shanqing nodded his head firmly as if he had heard a very important message from her.

  "It isn't easy to meet someone here. We have an affinity, I'd say. Why don't we chat for a bit," Lin Sanjiu crooked her head and grinned. "Afterall, it is kind of tiring to look aimlessly for a present."

  Ji Shanqing pursed his lips. For some reason, he looked very uneasy. "What do you want to talk about?"

  "Why don't we start by discussing the issue of you trying to trick me to turn back?" she asked with some amus.e.m.e.nt. Noticing that his expression did not change and that he chose to be silent, she laughed, "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. Let's talk about that triangular mirror chamber."

  Ji Shanqing did not say a word and watched Lin Sanjiu silently. She took out a piece of paper and quickly scribbled a few shapes on it.

  "As it is a triangular pyramid, it is only connected to that previous mirror chamber in three ways. To make things simple, I will draw the previous mirror chamber into a square." Lin Sanjiu continued unhurriedly, "The first situation is that the pyramid is directly above the square. Under that assumption, due to the curvature of the building, the left mirror is angled in a way that it is closer to the outer wall. Whereas, the right mirror is closer to that square mirror chamber.

  "The second situation is that the base of the pyramid mirror chamber is close to the external wall. The left mirror points toward the middle of the building. Under this assumption, walking through the left mirror would allow a person to reach a mirror chamber closer to the external ring of the building and going through the right mirror brings a person further from the external ring.

  "The third situation is the opposite from the second. The base of the triangle is closer to the center of the building. The left mirror is close to the external wall, and the right mirror points toward the next mirror chamber. Even if the mirror is directly behind the external surface, a person will not be teleported outside. On the contrary, a person will be 'tossed' to the other end of the building. The outcome would be disastrous. Herein lies the problem."