by N. Heller
Lin Sanjiu shifted her feet and realized that there was still droplets of sea water on the carpet. Nevertheless, it was now clear that the sea had turned into cement even without them noticing. The cement floor was ashen gray under the silver light. Lin Sanjiu wasn't even a tad bit surprised by this when she considered the possibility that the entire world was truly 'coded' by the highest god.
"Run!"Maxin shouted suddenly.
Startled, the silver light in her hand quivered. Without turning her head, she grabbed Polva and sprinted. Half-stumbling, they ran down the carpet. The sound of a loud explosion quickly rang out from the spot they previously stood. Pieces of unknown matter fell down violently from the sky. After a series of tremors, the cement floor shattered. Following which, the highest god suddenly appeared behind the dust and concrete pieces.
Apparently, he traversed several meters with a single jump and broke the cement floor with his b.a.r.e feet.
"You're quick." The highest god revealed a smile that danced between the light and shadows. "Why don't we try one more time?"
"Let's escape!" Polva and Soulsqn yelled in unison. They couldn't care less about the sudden changes in their surroundings as they dashed out, fats and all wobbling. Lin Sanjiu failed to catch them in time so she stomped her feet agitatedly. "Get back here!" She raised her [Ability Polishing Agent], and the silver light flooded forward. The light fell not only on the human and grub in front of her but also the darkness ahead.
Once they saw what was in front of them, they were all stunned.
"Oh, you just found out?" The highest god chuckled heartily behind them. With each chuckle, he grew closer. "That girl asked for my permission to leave because she saw this."
Lin Sanjiu gulped.
It was like a forest of furniture. It was almost as if the furniture, with its vague outlines in the dark, was waiting for Lin Sanjiu and her party.
"How's this?"
When Lin Sanjiu heard those two words closely behind her, she felt goosebumps all over her skin. Without turning around, she flung a tornado behind her and rolled to one side while holding onto Maxin's arm. She thought she heard a clunk. She didn't take the time to look down and check but instead shouted at the human and grub running ahead of her. "Come here!" When she had the time to look behind her, she realized that the highest god had nimbly dodged the wind attack and was now crouching.
He was crouching like he was readying himself to sprint in a race.
"This is Plan B of the God's Ordeal." Under the darkness, an unpredictable smile crept across the highest god's face. "Why didn't I think of this earlier? If I face all of you alone, it will take too much of my time to deal with your bothersome attacks. However, my second arena is different. It is specifically prepared for a group of people like you all."
Lin Sanjiu looked at him. She couldn't spit a single word from her dry mouth.
Lin Sanjiu's [Ability Polishing Agent] was now on the floor where she previously stood. As it rocked from left to right, the wavering light from the bottle seemed to make the furniture look alive.
Even though it was a short distraction, the group had inadvertently rushed into the forest of furniture when they tried to evade the highest god. However, this wasn't due to Lin Sanjiu's negligence. The fact was that there was too much furniture around them. It filled their fields of vision and every corner they could see. At first glance, one would even suspect that this 'forest' was expanding.
"Oh dear, you've dropped your flashlight." The highest god shot a glance at the little bottle on the floor. His smile grew wider. As the light wavered unsteadily, his eyes seemed like two cavernous holes in his skull. "I'm going to enter and play with you guys, one…"
A few drops of sweat appeared on Lin Sanjiu's forehead.
That was her only item that could produce light. As it was too convenient, Lin Sanjiu had forgotten to collect flashlights and candles over time.
She was just about to open her mouth to say something when they all heard a piercing laugh. "Three!" Shocked, all of them looked up. In the dim light, they saw a figure above them.
"Come over to my side!" Lin Sanjiu shouted with frustration. However, she was too late. Their group had scattered apart like a nest of ants scurrying apart to avoid a falling pebble. Worried, she ran in the same direction as the fair-skinned fatty. She watched as the fat figure rushed toward a closet and bellowed, "I'm here! Come to me! We have to stay together!"
When her voice reached the furniture around them, it was as if the furniture was sound-absorbent. Her voice could not travel very far.
She went over to the wardrobe in a rush and almost rammed herself into a coffee table. Then she suddenly froze in her tracks.
She could not see Polva anymore, as his figure had disappeared into the shadow of the furniture ahead. The footfalls were gone as well, and for a moment, she could only hear her own labored breathing.
She no longer got any response from them.
In the distance, the silver beam from the [Ability Polishing Agent] finally stopped wavering. Its silvery beam lit up the spot. She had merely walked a few steps away, yet countless of furniture had appeared and blocked her path to the [Ability Polishing Agent]. There were TV cabinets, wardrobes, c.h.e.s.ts of drawers, shoe cabinets, couches… It was as if this place was a cemetery for furniture, and every piece of paraphernalia that was buried here was staring at her from the dark.
'Why furniture?'
The highest god might appear at any place and at any seconds. If she wanted to get to her friends in this labyrinthine furniture maze, she needed her [Ability Polishing Agent]. Besides, there might be a chance that they were walking towards the light as well.
The sloshing of her blood became the only noise in her ears. The area was filled with different kind of furniture to the brim, leaving her very little space to navigate herself. After she went around a coffee table, her back bumped into the side of a wardrobe. Her clothes rustled as it grated against the rough surface of the wardrobe. After she got past the wardrobe, she found herself blocked by a bed. She had never seen this bed before.
"Where are you? Where are you?" The highest god's voice slashed across the night sky, making Lin Sanjiu's heart do somersaults. His voice spread out in all directions, so nobody could tell where was he right now. "Every posthuman that I sent here would go into hiding the second they stepped into this arena. Why do you guys have to be so afraid of me? I just want to play a game with you all, is that so hard?"
Though the highest god seemed to be ranting, he sounded rather happy.
Lin Sanjiu held her breath as she looked to her left and right. A high stack of tables blocked her on the left while her right was filled with a row of cupboards. She found that she had no other way to get around the bed other than stepping over it.
The highest god's melodic hum filled the air. He seemed to be enjoying this game of chase very much. Suddenly, he stopped humming and began speaking. "I hope you guys did not lose yourself in this furniture cemetery while finding a place to hide. If I recall correctly, the previous batch of posthumans that came in last year still haven't found their way even until now."
'All of them died here?'
Lin Sanjiu shooed the thought away as she jerked her head up. She had no idea when, but the silver beam from the [Ability Polishing Agent] had gotten even further away from her. She shuddered instinctively and raised her leg. Just as her feet almost landed on the bed, she froze.
It was an old-school wooden bed. Even without any help from the light, she could see the slits between each plank.
After weighing the pros and cons, Lin Sanjiu decided not to take the risk. She lowered her body as quiet as possible. Using her elbows to support herself, she inched under the bed.
Chapter 669 - A Cowherd Point At A Faraway Apricot Flower Village
As a child, Lin Sanjiu often had bedtime fears. There was perpetual darkness underneath the bed that could even absorb light. Her mother had stuffed many bags of junk and whatnots under her bed
, and those bags were always open and full of dust. She remembered this one night where she summoned her courage and laid on her stomach by the side of her bed. Then, with the help of a nightlight, she peered under the bed.
The space under the bed was filled with an impenetrable umbra to the brim. From the darkness, a red turtleneck sweater slowly wriggled its way out of a bag. The collar of the sweater meandered along the floor like a turtle's neck coming out of its shell.
Then, her recollection stopped there. Since she was merely a kid at that time, she barely had any memory of what happened after that. And right now when she recalled the incident, she found that her younger self probably did not care much about it. After all, a child's brain was often filled with a kaleidoscope of fantasy images, and it was very likely that the kid Lin Sanjiu regarded it as one of those wild and bizarre imaginations she had.
Be that as it may, even after so many years had passed, Lin Sanjiu still got plagued by a surge of uneasiness whenever she crawled underneath a bed. She had used up every bit of her Higher Consciousness, as she could not use the Hypersensory here, and with the unfathomable darkness that filled every inch of the area under the bed, she felt as if she had returned to her younger self, unarmed and powerless.
Lin Sanjiu continued to advance forward for a longer while before she came to a stop. With an outstretched arm, she tried to reach into the darkness ahead.
She was a little worried that she might touch a face, the collar of a sweater, a corpse, or some other weird things. Fortunately, there was nothing but a cement floor in the darkness ahead.
Letting out a sigh, she resumed moving forward.
As she dragged herself forward, a dreadful, monotonous cycle of movement by scraping her elbows and knees against the floor again and again, her elbows and knees began to hurt, but the angst that snowballed in her heart offset the pain.
She had been crawling for a full minute.
A minute was not short, and regardless of how large a bed was, one minute was more than sufficient for her to worm her way out, not to mention that the bed was only the size of a normal double bed.
Lin Sanjiu turned around to see that the slim rectangle of light at the back entrance dimmed down and shrunk into a little glimmer of light. It gave her the wrong impression that she had entered a tunnel rather than crawled under a bed.
'Could it be that the size of this bed enlarges indefinitely like the other furniture?'
Lying prone on the floor, she raised her hand and knocked on the thing above her head. It still felt like a wooden bed to her.
'Should I try putting it into my card?'
The silence was affected only by the rustling of Lin Sanjiu's skin and clothes, which grated against the rough cement floor. After what seemed like ages, she stopped in her tracks and peered ahead through the narrow space below the bed. She realized that the coffee table and the feet of the giant wardrobe that she passed by just now had gotten clearer in the dark. She was washed by a wave of new-found relief as she let out a sigh.
Fortunately, the distance to the entrance did not increase in tandem with the size of the bed, for the increasing size of the rectangle of light that heralded the entrance got closer.
When she arrived at the side of the bed, she let out another sigh of relief, a longer one than the last. However, she did not go outside straight away but instead remained hidden underneath the bed, studying the surroundings with extra diligence.
Then, she froze.
Although she had stopped crawling, the rustling of clothes did not cease. It continued to tickle her ears.
At that moment, blood rushed up to her brain. She jerked her head around, but she saw nothing in the darkness. The face she had been anticipating did not come into her sight, and the air seemed to have stopped flowing as well.
The rustling suddenly stopped.
Her brain turned blank. She summoned a towel and brandished it, drawing a half arc in the air. Nevertheless, the towel did not hit anything in the dark. All she got in return was a snap as the end of the towel connected with the floor with a mighty smack.
There was nothing in the dark.
'But that voice was clearly very close…' Before Lin Sanjiu could get deeper into her thought, a gush of tepid, faint breathing blew over her head.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Lin Sanjiu raised her head. In the slit between two planks, she saw an eye, a pale globe that swiveled back and forth nervously.
'Was he following me all this time?'
With that thought in mind, Lin Sanjiu inched herself further away, but with the concrete floor against her back, a few centimeters was the furthest she could get away from the eye. She dared not to go through the entrance right now. She summoned her [Tornado Whip] and whipped up a powerful gale before sending it towards the white eye above her.
The powerful gale blasted the bedplate into a shrapnel of wood and elicited a pained howl from the figure. A blanket of darkness that was several tones lighter than the tenebrous underneath the bed then befell Lin Sanjiu as a gush of cold, musty air assaulted her nostrils. She jumped to her feet and growled, "Who is there?!"
"Stop, stop—"
A sharp and faltering voice rang out. At the same time, a tiny figure barreled headlong into a pile of tables on one side. However, as he had run too fast, the whole stack of tables was knocked down. The noise of the tables falling to the ground echoed loudly in the night.
"Ah!" The tiny figure was buried under the heap of tables. He brandished his legs madly in the air as he continued to shout, "Go away, go away… Please don't come near me, please don't come near me."
Lin Sanjiu relaxed when she realized the person was even more afraid of her. She looked around for any sign of the highest god. After she ascertained that the young deity was not around, she took a few quick steps towards the figure and tightly gripped his leg. She never knew a human leg could be this thin before she got ahold of the figure's ankle. It was so skinny, she felt that it was no thicker than a pair of chopsticks combined. The bone scr.a.p.ed against her palm, and she couldn't help but shudder at the weird sensation.
"Come out! Who are you!?"
"Don't, don't touch me!" the figure screamed again, its voice so sharp that she could not tell its gender. With a quick motion and a pull, Lin Sanjiu yanked it out of the mess of tables. Then, she froze, still as a statue.
The figure had an abnormally large head, supported by a thin, tiny neck. He was skinny to the point of being skeletal, with skin as pale as a dead man's, probably because he had not bathed under the sun for a prolonged period of time. Also, if it weren't for his pasty complexion, she might have thought he was one of those emaciated African children.
He looked like he was no more than six-years-old. His back arched like a bent bow, and his bones were twisted out of shape. As he stared at Lin Sanjiu with wide-eyed horror, the latter found that there was more white than black in his eyes. He pleaded, "Don't kill me, please don't kill me. It hurts, it hurts so much."
Lin Sanjiu slackened her grip a little bit. With a frown, she asked again, "Who are you?"
"I, I..." He seemed so frightened, tears welled up in his eyes, but they did not fall. "My mommy calls me Eggy…"
Lin Sanjiu was stunned.
"How old are you?"
"I… I don't know…" He answered haltingly. His entire body trembled in fear. "Before my mommy disappeared, she said I was five-years-old…"
"How long since your mom disappeared?"
"A very long time…" It seemed as if the question had triggered a certain spot in the boy's heart. More tears welled in his eyes, and the nasal tone in his voice thickened. "Mommy… she… gone…"
"How did you come here?" Lin Sanjiu completely released the boy's ankle. She held the boy up with extra care as if she was treating a porcelain doll. She dared not to stay here, as her pursuer might show up at any moment. Holding the boy in her embrace, she went around the maelstrom of wood chunks and tables and squeezed into a slit between two cupboards.
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"Mommy brought me here." Eggy seemed to be less frightened of Lin Sanjiu, as his voice became smoother. "My house, my neighborhood, everywhere was on fire. Mommy told me that we could leave that fire on my fifth birthday. Then, we came here."
Although the boy's voice was so low it was almost a whisper, he spoke in an orderly way. Hence, after a few bouts of questioning, Lin Sanjiu figured out the entire situation. After the apocalypse arrived in his original world, his mother had been brought him to roam around. Both of them managed to survive through 14 months, and they even got two visas. Then, both of them came to the Olympics.
But little did they expect that this was not a blessing but the beginning of a nightmare. Eventually, the mother died in the Olympics while her son, who she adored, was thrown into the furniture cemetery created by the highest god. He had been roaming inside the furniture cemetery for many years. Since he posed no threat to anybody, everyone who came into this furniture cemetery just treated him like he was invisible. However, Lin Sanjiu was confident that with his current body state, it would not be long before he succ.u.mbed to malnourishment and died.
"Have you eaten any food? Do you have water?" As Lin Sanjiu asked, she clutched the [Demae Iccho Beef Instant Noodles] in her palm.
"I have not eaten for a long time…" Eggy said powerlessly. "Sometimes when I follow behind somebody like you, they give me something to eat. Other times, I just eat some cotton and wood."
In an apocalyptic world where resources were everything, Lin Sanjiu was sure that there would not be many people who would be kind enough to spare him some food. Lin Sanjiu felt a pang of guilt when she realized that she almost killed the boy just now. She was not an expert in taking care of kids, so to make it up to him, not only did she treat him to a bowl of noodles, she even packed a bag of rations for him. The boy sobbed as he wolfed down the bowl of noodles, causing Lin Sanjiu to think of how many awful things he had gone through after coming to this world.