by N. Heller
Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment and queried again, "Did it not notice anything in particular? How about a broken jar or a toppled sample?"
Standing across the mountain of snacks, the goose's head bobbed from side to side.
"What does it mean by that?" Lin Sanjiu asked, perplexed by the goose's reaction.
"Send the goose to recheck the store." Lin Sanjiu smiled bitterly. Even with Ji Shanqing's brilliant brain, Lin Sanjiu was still having a hard time deciphering the situation. "I want every detail covered! I must know even if there's the slightest crack on the wall."
The goose rolled its eyes at Lin Sanjiu, then went on to do its bidding. Ironically, Puppeteer destroyed a person's soul to turn them into one of his puppets, but each of his Special Items was more human than the other.
Lin Sanjiu looked on as the goose disappeared from her sight. Then, its master asked, "Why?"
She pondered for a moment before answering, "The Veda has infiltrated the entire Pocket Dimension. Now, it's like we are writing a questionless paper. We are hand-tied, and since we don't know the rules of the game, we'll step right into the trap. However, no matter how overpowered the Veda is, there's something they can't change, and that is the fundamental nature of Pocket Dimension. For example, though it doesn't have any questions, they still have to give us the test paper. Without the paper, there would be no examination. They cannot alter basic operational rules like this."
"So, are you saying that this 'test paper' is the hidden information that must exist in this Pocket Dimension?"
"Exactly. Like the announcement earlier on." Lin Sanjiu felt her ability to speak waning as she struggled to make her words as clear as possible. "I have been skeptical about this; since the Veda have altered the entire Pocket Dimension to their liking, why don't they just delete the announcement as well? If they voided every clue and deleted every way out, they could trap us here for however long they want, and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it. But once I thought about it further, I realized something. If the thing is related to the operational core of the Pocket Dimension, perhaps they may be able to do something to it, but they can't. If they delete or change something, the Pocket Dimension might crash."
"It seems that the 'bright guy' you asked for help from lives up to the title. So, what now?" Puppeteer asked indifferently.
"We wait." Lin Sanjiu sighed.
"Wait? We are going to wait while we lose our ability to talk?"
"Even so, we have to wait. The only way to shatter this dilemma is to depend on how much information we can squeeze out of the Veda while they block out most of the parts."
Puppeteer turned silent. Just when Lin Sanjiu wondered what was he doing, he began to speak again, "I don't think you can squeeze anything bigger than a nut from them. Since they came prepared, they won't let us go so easily." This speech from Puppeteer sounded forlorn, but he did not say it out of depression or to discourage Lin Sanjiu. To him, this was normal. It was as if things were supposed to be like this.
"We still have to give it a shot," Lin Sanjiu said, sounding positive. "I won't give up until the last second. Even if I die and become a ghost, I'd do anything to drag my body out of here!"
Another hour passed. The hands showed no signs of going back to the dark, and worst of all, the effect of turning into ch.i.p.s was destroying them. Lin Sanjiu had long turned off the Higher Consciousness Mimicry. She felt that she was losing control over her body, and her sensation towards her surroundings was getting numb with every passing second. Since things had developed to this point, the Veda might already have obtained the information about her Higher Consciousness. The reason she turned off mimicry was to conserve her energy.
One hour had passed, and the second announcement rang out once more. "Mrs. Cleveland, I heard your handbag's zipper is broken, isn't it? I can give you a new one as compensation. Please don't sue me because you slipped in my store."
"Zipper?"
Lin Sanjiu returned from her stupefied pause only after the broadcast was gone. She felt her consciousness fading, and she found it harder to maintain her concentration. She tried roughly five times before she could resume the mimicry. The silver lining was that the Higher Consciousness had not wholly cut off from her. And once she had activated the Higher Consciousness Mimicry, the fog in her brain lifted.
'This is the second time the broadcast mentioned about falling on the floor,' Lin Sanjiu thought inwardly. Since the announcement mentioned Mrs. Cleveland falling on the floor twice, this should be the clue. Though Lin Sanjiu did not have the faintest idea about the connection between the falling and solving the catch-22 situation, starting there should not be wrong.
When she was thinking, she heard the pit-a-pat once again wafting from afar. She raised her eyes with some difficulty and met with the glance of the two beady eyes behind the mountain of snacks. The goose had returned!
"Puppeteer, can you still speak?" It was tough for Lin Sanjiu to speak now. The words that escaped her lips were dry and slow.
She waited fretfully for a moment, but there was no sound from her counterpart. As her heart plunged deeper and deeper into her stomach, she received a reply from Puppeteer. But like her, Puppeteer was not in good shape either. His voice was intermittent as if he was talking with a lisp. "The goose found something."
Truth to be told, the thing the goose found was nothing more than a trivial discovery. Since Lin Sanjiu said it must tell her everything that it had seen when it returned, the goose just did what it was asked. Each piece of information the goose brought back was of little to no consequence.
Even though Puppeteer could hardly talk smoothly now, he still could not mask the annoyance in his words. "There's a blurred-out price tag in the fourth department; the hotdog roaster on top of the cash register is emitting some weird smell; the Coke Zero is out of stock; there's a stain on the floor of the fresh and cold area, but nobody is cleaning it; some of the cookies have passed the expiry date, but they're still on the shelves…"
"Hold on." Lin Sanjiu suddenly stopped Puppeteer. "A stain in the cold and fresh area? Can you ask the goose to elaborate more on it?"
The goose cast Lin Sanjiu a strange glance.
"There is a yellowish stain on the floor next to the freezer. It's about the size of two palms put together. It seems like somebody spilled something on the floor, and it dried up. Anything more you want to know?"
"Yellowish… How does it smell? Was it sticky?"
"Who'd go and smell it? That's what the goose said. By the way, the goose said it looks sticky because there is a strand of hair on the stain." Puppeteer was already having a hard time talking, and he still needed to waste his energy to describe a patch of stain. Lin Sanjiu could sense that his anger was building up once again.
However, it wasn't the time to concern herself about Puppeteer's feelings. She spoke anxiously, "Send the goose back to the cold and fresh area. It'd be great if it can lick the stain... Why is it opening its beak?"
"The goose wants to bite you."
"This is very important." Lin Sanjiu was panic-stricken, but her tongue felt heavy. The words that escaped her lips almost clumped together. "Tell the goose if the stain is sweet and sticky, search the perimeter around the freezer. There must be something that doesn't belong to the store!"
Like father like son, the goose glared at Lin Sanjiu menacingly. However, it still left to do its bidding, nonetheless. After the goose was gone, Puppeteer asked, shocking Lin Sanjiu, "What is your plan? Mind telling me?"
"Both of the announcements mentioned that Mrs. Cleveland tripped on the floor, so this must be the clue," Lin Sanjiu said. Though she sounded confident, she was merely taking a guess. "The likelihood of the first announcement being fake is fifty-fifty, but that isn't the case for the second one. In the second announcement, it said that the zipper on Mrs. Cleveland's satchel is broken. And the most important thing is that it broke before the falling down incident."
Puppeteer was quick with his mind, as h
e soon grasped what Lin Sanjiu was trying to say. "Do you suspect that when Mrs. Cleveland fell on the floor, she dropped something?"
"Exactly! The Pocket Dimension must be trying to tell us something through the announcement. Otherwise, it wouldn't repeat the same thing again and again. Now, based on my speculation, Mrs. Cleveland dropped something. If we want to know what it is, we first have to find out where she fell. And according to the information the goose brought back to us, there might be a good chance that the stain in the cold and fresh area was what caused the incident."
"Then, you want it to taste whether it is sweet or not…"
"It's just a wild guess." Lin Sanjiu smiled meekly. She was still under the influence of the grand prize; if she were her usual self, she would never have offered such a smile to Puppeteer. "How could there possibly be a yellow stain that would appear out of nowhere on the floor of a successful convenience store? I suspect that it must be a drink from the chilled department. Not only is the stain sticky, but the affected area is also small, and it looks like something has been spilled."
The moment she finished speaking, the sound the goose made when it was walking rang out again. The goose appeared sulky, and it was holding something in its beak.
Chapter 577 - The Wise Are All Lonely
When their eyes fell on the goose's bills, although they could hardly see it clearly, they still couldn't help but feel excited.
"Quick! Bring it to me!" Her anxiousness and zeal had gotten the best of her, causing her to talk so fast that the words clumped together in her throat in a log jam. However, the moment the words were spoken, Lin Sanjiu suddenly realized that the goose could not come into the lane. If the goose got caught by the hands, they would be as good as dead.
"The goose said it's a piece of folded note," Puppeteer said.
"A note?" Lin Sanjiu quickly asked, "What's on it?"
"Words."
"So? Hurry up and ask the goose to read it out!" Lin Sanjiu yelled. She almost fainted from the adrenaline rush and Puppeteer's nonchalant attitude. Even though she had an abundance of Higher Consciousness, it still put plenty of strain on her. If she continued like this, she might not have enough to move, let alone maintain the Higher Consciousness Mimicry.
"Have you ever seen a goose that can read?" Puppeteer asked matter of factly.
"It—I—" Lin Sanjiu stammered, "How did it know that Coke Zero is out of stock, then?"
"It heard about it from a voice near the register machine."
'What is so special about this Special Item if it's illiterate?' Lin Sanjiu did not speak out the thought in her mind. She forced down her exasperation and said, "Ask the goose to stay there. I'll go."
Moving through pile after pile of snacks seemed harder than Lin Sanjiu expected. The feeling was akin to being in the ball-pit she used to play in when she was a child. There was no place for her to grasp, not to mention she was now a packet of ch.i.p.s that was soon to lose her mobility. It was merely a short distance, yet it had consumed a large portion of her Higher Consciousness.
When Lin Sanjiu finally arrived in front of the goose, the bird's eyes lit up slightly. It opened its bills, and the note fluttered down. The next thing it did was peck Lin Sanjiu a few times. Lin Sanjiu did not mind the goose going ballistic on her since it did not hurt at all, and she went forward to spread the note out on the floor. At first, she blinked her eyes, thinking that her eyes were playing a trick on her. However, when she clearly saw the two large words on top of the note, she almost cried. For the first time, she could not articulate her mind properly into words. All she managed to force through her lips was a whimper of excitement.
"Puppeteer." When she finally found her voice, her tone had changed. "This is a shopping list!"
It appeared to her that the Pocket Dimension was not going to let them pass so easily. There were only four items listed, and Lin Sanjiu could understand none of them. She knew the meaning of every single word written on the list, but when they were all combined, it made no sense to her.
1.) Lactose Intolerance (What a bother!)
2.) I'm gonna give that brat Ralo some lessons!
3.) Don't buy any beer. Brown has put on quite some weight lately.
4.) A teenager is a bag full of walking hormones.
"What are these? Riddles?" Lin Sanjiu sighed after she had finished reading the list. "It seems like if we don't solve the riddle, we won't be able to know what to buy. I hope there'll be an extra clue when the next announcement comes."
After she had finished speaking, she fell quiet. There was no reply from Puppeteer.
The hundreds of thousands of hands on the shelves continued to thrash about in the air in the deadly silence. Only then did Lin Sanjiu realize that from the moment they found the shopping list, she had not heard from Puppeteer anymore. She felt a tingling crawl through her scalp as she asked softly, "Hey, Puppeteer. What are you doing? Why are you not talking?"
Puppeteer remained silent.
Lin Sanjiu's heart was getting colder. She tried to turn around and look at the goose standing next to her. Unbeknownst to her, the goose had lost the liveliness that it portrayed earlier on. It stood blankly on the spot, flapping its wings occasionally, just like an ordinary goose.
'Puppeteer... Has he been completely turned into a package of ch.i.p.s?'
When the thought barged into Lin Sanjiu's mind with crystal clear clarity, a sense of fear quickly welled up in her heart. She was alone in this convenience store now.
There would be no one to discuss and analyze the situation with her. The goose would not go and find clues under her command. In this horrifying, dark, spacious, and vacant convenience store, she only had her Higher Consciousness that was depleting with every ticking second and her body that was slowly losing itself to the paralysis.
Lin Sanjiu realized she was getting more nervous and that she could not calm herself down. She hastily turned off the Higher Consciousness Mimicry. Her usual self retook the stage. She let out a breath, and her fluttering heart began to calm down.
The grand prize was good at everything. The only flaw he had was that he could be easily frightened.
Lin Sanjiu took a break, but knowing that she was running short of time, she quickly restarted the mimicry again. However, this time, she forced herself to focus on figuring out a solution to keep the nervousness at bay.
Right now, it was known that she was pulled into the shelf because she walked through the lane. If she wanted to leave, she had to find the correct ch.i.p.s. Although the Veda might have already altered this requirement, in any case, the correct answer should be a package of snacks on this shelf.
So, now, the real question was, did she have to find the answer based on Mrs. Cleveland's shopping list, or did she have to repeat this again and again whenever she walked past a shelf? Was the shopping list the criterion for choosing the right answer?
If Puppeteer was still around, she could have made him walk outside the lane to see what would happen. However, now that he had completely turned into a package of ch.i.p.s, Lin Sanjiu suspected that nothing would happen even if she threw him outside with her Higher Consciousness.
Puppeteer entered the convenience store at the same time as her. Lin Sanjiu wondered why the stronger one would succ.u.mb faster than the weaker one. Time was running short, and she had to settle on a plan quickly.
'Should I find the answer by referring to the shopping list, or I should go and gather more clues before making a decision?'
Once she picked the wrong plan, she would be doomed and forever trapped in here.
As time passed by, the silence in the lane got heavier and darker. The sea of snacks looked like, one after another, pairs of soulless eyes. They were all staring woodenly at the ceiling and the crowd of hands that colonized the shelf.
Any sound would be amplified in a perfectly silent atmosphere. A tiny rustle rose into the air as a yellowish-green packet of chicken onion-flavored ch.i.p.s was flipped into the mountain of ch.i.p
.s by an invisible force.
After Lin Sanjiu had settled on a plan, the first thing she did was to pick Puppeteer out and hurl it next to the goose.
Then, it was all up to her luck.
Chapter 578 - The Love Of A Lovely Mother
After settling on a plan using Ji Shanqing's brilliant brain, Lin Sanjiu shut down the mimicry. After her adamant self took the stage once more, she shrugged off every doubt and fear she had and began to make her move.
The correct answer must be inside the mountain of snacks.
Although she was very clear that choosing the shopping list was the correct path, flipping through the mountain of ch.i.p.s one by one was too time-consuming. It would take too long, and she would end up following in Puppeteer's footsteps before she could go through more than half of the ch.i.p.s.
'Well, it's now or never. I've gotta do what I gotta do,' Lin Sanjiu thought to herself. She gathered every ounce of the Higher Consciousness in her body. Then, with a flick of her mind, she discharged the amassed Higher Consciousness into her surroundings.
As if it were a ravaging storm, the Higher Consciousness swept across the lane with a mighty force and rammed into the mountain of snacks, sending them into the air. Before the snacks could land on the floor, another wave of Higher Consciousness surged over and shoved them out of the lane.
Riding on the momentum, the snacks slid a long way across the floor, and only came to a halt when they hit the cash register. The entire floor of the convenience store was swamped with many kinds of snacks in different brands.
As the rustling of the packaged snacks clashing with each other disappeared into the air, the final hope in Lin Sanjiu's heart faded as well. As predicted by the grand prize, pushing the snacks out of the lane did not mean that she had gotten the correct answer.
"Oh, my good Lord!" The Indian accent rang out. He sounded shocked. "What the hell is going on here?!"