by N. Heller
"Yeah, I did," Ji Shanqing said after he glanced into the distance, his face drawn. An idea popped up in his mind and he stretched his arm towards the distance where the dark figures were grouped. He closed his eyes as if he was feeling something. Then, after a few seconds, he opened them and said hesitantly, "It seems like someone has activated a certain part of data in the database, and now…they are coming for us."
"Activated?" Lin Sanjih frowned. She hastily activated [No Coincidence, No Story] and armed herself with the [Tornado Whip] although she had no idea whether these Special Items could harm them or not.
"Are they the same as me?"
"Yes. I think the Veda activated them." The grand prize sighed. "They must have found out about us, and are trying to chase us out from the database.'
Since the Veda already knew they were in the database, they would not send Puppeteer and Soulsqn in anymore.
Raising her head to look at the dark figure on the horizon, Lin Sanjiu instinctively touched the back of her head. It was empty.
'Is the Veda going to use the data in the database to eliminate us?'
"Could they not have any other better ways to get rid of us?" Lin Sanjiu said uncertainly.
"Sis!" The grand prize could not help laughing. He glanced at the oncoming dark shadows in the fog and felt his nervousness dissipate a little. He chuckled at Lin Sanjiu as he said, "Are you suggesting that they should deploy a more effective way to get rid of us?"
"No…that is not what I mean." Lin Sanjiu did not know what was stirring in her heart as well, but she laughed bitterly. "So, what do we do now?"
"Don't worry, sis," comforted the grand prize as he gripped her wrist. He offered her a warm smile and looked at her as if he were a dog waiting for his owner to compliment him. "From the data I read just now, I already know how to get out of here. However, while I'm opening a gateway to get out, these guys…"
He tilted his chin into the distance, looking like an elegant great white swan stretching its snow-white neck. "You have to keep them away from me."
Lin Sanjiu followed the direction he indicated and looked. The lead shadow had already come out from the fog, and its appearance was getting clearer and clearer in Lin Sanjiu's sight. She initially thought it would be an otherworldly creature that she had never met before, but frankly, the incomer was surprisingly ordinary.
"Understood." She grabbed the grand prize's palm back, feeling the chill that slowly seeped from his lily-white hand into her skin. "Leave them to me. I can still use my abilities and Special Items, can't I?"
The grand prize nodded. He retreated half a step from her side, pitched his voice low and said, "Be careful, sis. I'll be staying here. Your [Notebook] is in my hand, so just give me a sign if you need it."
With the [Notebook] combined with her [Battle Item], she could access a limitless amount of Special Items.
She then examined the incomer again. He looked no different from a middle-aged man that she used to see daily before the apocalypse arrived. He was wearing a loose t-shirt and had a rotund belly. His cheeks were thick and baggy as they dangled and framed his lower jaw, giving him the impression of a catfish. It seemed that no man could not escape the fate of developing such an appearance around this age.
He was holding a briefcase in his hand and was looking vacantly into Lin Sanjiu's eyes. "Where…" He studied his surroundings. "Where…is this?"
Perhaps his brain function stopped the moment he was turned into a set of data, so he could not come to his senses right away after being reactivated.
Staring at the middle-aged man, Lin Sanjiu activated her [Mosaic Censorship].
"Why am I here?" The man spun in a half-circle, seemingly unaware of the fate awaiting him ahead. "What the hell are those things? Anyway, can you show me the way to this address?"
When he unlocked his briefcase with a click, Lin Sanjiu felt a chill creep down her spine. Just as she lunged at the man, he raised his head. His jowls piled up on his two cheeks as a wide, eerie grin blossomed across his face.
"Yes, it's here." He pried his briefcase open and the thing inside instantly pounced at Lin Sanjiu. At the same time that her grand prize shouted out a warning, a legion of the middle-aged man's faces emerged from the deepest part of the briefcase. Each and every one of them was screaming as they stretched their arms out, trying to reach out for her.
'What the f*ck are these?!'
Lin Sanjiu made a quick somersault backward to evade the storm of hands. As she landed on the ground, she brandished her Tornado Whip and sent a small gust of wind towards the middle-aged man. The latter stretched his arms and pulled his briefcase even wider, as if he was trying to suck the tornado into his briefcase, but it was a waste of effort. The cyclone soon devoured his figure, leaving only a whistling sound and the grayish cyclonic air.
Before Lin Sanji could relax, she felt something had snuck behind her back. It felt slithery and cold.
"Don't move!" the grand prize shouted.
Lin Sanjiu froze and remained standing in her half-turned pose. From the corner of her eye, she saw a green shadow. It took her almost half a second before she finally realized it was a humongous frog head.
Its pair of round yellowish eyeballs rolled around and stopped on Lin Sanjiu for a split second before rolling away. The frog was standing at roughly two meters tall. It stood behind Lin Sanjiu and shrouded her under its shadow.
"Sis," the grand prize's voice slid into her ears, "Don't move. A frog's eyes can only capture moving objects. If you stop moving, it won't see you."
Even though the frog could not see her, those dark shadows in the fog could see her just fine. A fetid smell tainted the air and assaulted her nostrils. A layer of perspiration was forming on her forehead. More and more shadows were emerging from the fog, each one even more bizarre and weirder than the last.
She was very certain that one of the figures holding an umbrella was a woman, but when the figure lifted the umbrella, it turned out that instead of a woman, it was a segmented mushroom stalk. Standing next to the mushroom was an inflatable man from the negative car dealer. It had the same plastic texture as she saw from the television, and air was constantly being pumped into it from God-knows-where, causing it to dance and flail its arms madly in the air. There were a few more shadows that Lin Sanjiu found no words to describe.
'Are these creatures all real? What world do they come from? And where did the Veda collect their data from?'
A myriad of thoughts flitted across Lin Sanjiu's mind as she stared at the incoming wall consisting of a plenitude of weird creatures. Much to Lin Sanjiu's surprise, the tornado was losing its momentum as it was getting s.u.c.k.e.d into the briefcase. She stared fixedly at those monstrosities and shouted, "Is the gateway ready yet?"
The grand prize replied, his tone laced with hesitancy, "Erm…You will need to hold them off for a little longer."
"How long do you need?"
"Erm…A few seconds will do."
Lin Sanjiu almost fainted. 'A lot of things can happen within a few seconds.'
When a firework boomed in the air, Lin Sanjiu felt she should not dilly-dally anymore, so she leaped into action. The frog darted its tongue out to catch her. The only thing she could do right then was bite the bullet and brave through all the attacks. She could not let them get near to the grand prize. Perhaps evading and parrying those ambushes diverted her concentration away from the time. Earlier on, she felt that 1.7 seconds was excruciatingly slow, but now she felt that time was passing very fast. Just as she jumped to avoid another attack, she heard her grand prize's exultant shout.
"Sis! The gateway is open!"
Lin Sanjiu's eyes glowed. She brandished her Tornado Whip to open a path. Braving the onslaught of the monsters behind, the grand prize grasped her wrist with a quick motion and shouted, "Over here!"
Lin Sanjiu could not see anything in the next half a second. She rolled across the floor by instinct, and when her vision returned, she realized that she had ret
urned to the cord once more.
Soulsqn and Puppeteer were nowhere to be found. There were only several Veda hovering in mid-air, silently waiting for them.
Lin Sanjiu turned to look around. Colors were being washed away from her face, leaving only a pale shade of white behind.
"Where are they?" she asked, staring straight at the Veda.
The Veda responded to her question simply, "We have deleted them."
Chapter 707 - A Comeback
A numbing buzz was spreading across Lin Sanjiu's brain. Her blood turned cold as tumultuous emotions rose from her heart and deprived her tongue of speech. There was a lot of noise. Her blood and her organs were screaming, but her mind was blank.
She felt like laughing. Logically speaking, both Puppeteer and Soulsqn could not be considered her comrades. Besides spelling trouble, they were also her enemies. Even though their deaths did not bring her delight, she could not fathom why there was a sense of losing clutching at her heart.
"Have you guys shut the database down?"
Although Ji Shanqing was very near her, he sounded far away. He did not have much connection to Puppeteer, so upon hearing his demise, he just gave a slight start and soon regained his usual taciturn self. "You guys should know that it's too late to close the database now, don't you?"
'Is he saying that because he's already gotten the data he wanted?'
Lin Sanjiu did not know what he meant, but to be honest, she was not in the condition to ponder about this kind of thing right now. After all, the grand prize had kept more than one secret from her, and she was used to it.
"It's never too late," a Veda replied matter-of-factly. It shone through the passage and dyed the surroundings with its mellow golden glow.
"I have no idea where you got that analysis ability from. Maybe it was from one of our subjects or maybe you have your own way, but it doesn't really matter. The thing is, regardless of how you got it or how well you have mastered that new-found ability of yours, it's impossible for you to retrieve any important or useful data from our database in a mere ten seconds."
Lin Sanjiu's eyes remained tightly shut. Her brain was in such a huge jumbled mess that it was difficult for her to think straight right now, so she could not point out which part of the Veda's speech was out of place.
The grand prize tilted his head while his jet-black hair cascaded down his shoulders.
"Are you certain? I have no idea why, but people always tend to make light of me."
"That's the truth," the Veda answered, "All the data in the database is in their most primitive form, so it's easy and fast to read. However, even with our reading rate of 100,000 dysprosium/milliseconds, each of us will need at least a thousand years to finish retrieving all the data. The capacity of 1 dysprosium is roughly equivalent to the total data of the meteorological activity of a planet. Hence, I'm very confident that you won't be able to get any useful information, given that you stayed there for just ten seconds."
'In other words, what the grand prize got just now was merely the tip of the iceberg?'
Lin Sanjiu bit her lower lip so hard that it turned white. She had been trying very hard to calm herself down and concentrate on the fight with the Veda. However, when she pried open her mouth, she still could not help asking, "Did you really delete Puppeteer and Soulsqn? Didn't you keep their data?"
Would the person still remain the same after being restructured from a set of data? It was a philosophical question that Lin Sanjiu did not want to consider. So long as she could make them walk the earth again, it did not really matter who they really were.
"Sis, they are gone. Forever," said the grand prize as he placed a comforting palm on his sister's shoulder. "Have you forgotten that we were in the database just now? If the Veda has registered their data, they would've beamed them into the database. However, we waited for so long, yet we still didn't see both their data. Do you understand what I mean now?"
Lin Sanjiu could not help but shudder.
"Honestly, I'm truly surprised that with your gluttonous appetite for data, you're willing to delete two complete sets of biological data." Ji Shanqing raised his head and grinned at the Veda.
Even without [A Light Bulb Moment], she had a sudden realization as a question that she had not thought about before flitted across her mind—"Why?" It was like a lightning bolt on a dark night showing the way one must go.
She stared menacingly at the Veda as she growled, "Why?" Her voice deepened with every word that escaped her lips after that. "Why did you guys delete them?"
The Veda was stumped by her question. Before it could respond, Ji Shanqing harrumphed. "Whatever the reason," he said while standing next to Lin Sanjiu, tainting the air with his soothing body fragrance, "The most important thing is that, sis, I finally can pay them back for harming you."
'What?'
"These Veda," he spat out as he spun around and looked into Lin Sanjiu's eyes. His eyes were full of tenderness, and it was only now that she realized how black his irises were. They looked like two black holes that would absorb even your soul if you stared at them long enough.
"For me, right now, they aren't really a threat anymore."
"What do you mean?" Lin Sanjiu was slightly taken aback.
The grand prize did not reply to her instantly. He averted his eyes away and glared at the Veda. Ever since they came out from the database, the Veda remained hovering in mid-air without making any move. It seemed like they were waiting for something. Ji Shanqing breathed out a sigh and patted his shoulders. Then, he said, "Sis, remember to hold on tight."
'Hold tight? Why?'
Lin Sanjiu was skeptical, but she still did what the grand prize asked her to. As she placed her palms on the grand prize's shoulders, at the same time, he jerked his head to the right and slapped the passage wall. The moment the grand prize's lily-white palm connected with the ardent wall, Lin Sanjiu felt a tremble spread over the passage and she nearly tripped on her feet. While her concentration slipped, her palm slid down the grand prize's shoulders as the trembling grew more intense, rocking her from side to side. For a moment, everything in her vision blurred out and she could only see stars.
"Sis!" Ji Shanqing turned his head, his face as pale as a sheet. "Quick, grab me—"
Be that as it may, his shout was drowned out by the Veda's blaring alarm.
"He has the reverse program." The sentence flitted across Lin Sanjiu's brain, followed by a large number of messages. "Leave the cord at once. Leave the cord at once—"
'What the hell is a reverse program?'
Alas, no Veda was kind enough to give her an answer in such a moment. The cord that appeared in the form of passage began to disintegrate in the blink of an eye. Right now, Lin Sanjiu could see the deep blue cosmos through the cracks, and the gale that ran amok in the passage was stronger and fiercer than the last. Worse still, each gale carried so much force that anything, including the planets, that was caught in it would be reduced into smithereens within a fraction of a second.
How on earth could a vacuum space stir up such a nightmarishly powerful gust of air?
Lin Sanjiu finally understood why her grand prize wanted her to grip his shoulder tightly. Right now, she was like a tiny ant caught in a typhoon. She was thrown head over heels, and there was nothing for her to grab on to. The flow of the gust was faster than the speed of her mind. By the time she regained her senses, the grand prize's figure had become so small as if he was a mirage in her eyes.
Whenever a crack appeared in the cord, it would stir up another eddy. She could not see or hear anything. The only thing she could do right now was to shield herself in her Defense Forcefield as she brandished her Tornado Whip madly and aimlessly around. She had never conjured up a tornado of such scale, yet the tornado dissipated sooner than she could ever imagine. With the combined effort of her Defense Forcefield and Tornado Whip, albeit the many difficulties, she had successfully steered herself away from being crushed by the gale.
"Sis!"
Ji Shanqing's quivering voice rang out in the relentless airstream. Laced with thick fear and apprehension, his voice was far away and sounded as sharp as a dying fawn. Lin Sanjiu wanted to yell for his help, yet she was in no condition to do so right now. Whenever she tried to open her eyes or mouth, the merciless gale would find its chance and rush into her orifices, attempting to rip her apart from inside.
"Sis, where are you?!" the grand prize shouted again, but the squall of wind dissipated his voice, so Lin Sanjiu had no idea where he was. Lin Sanjiu's heart lurched in her throat. She had a slip in her concentration, and the tornado she conjured up this time was slightly weaker. Seizing its chance, the wind rushed at her with a tremendous force and flung her away, knocking her out instantly.
Her [No Coincidence, No Story] was activated before she lost consciousness.
Chapter 708 - The Obsession Of Beautiful Attire
A loud and muffled thump echoed through the air.
Lying on the ground, Lin Sanjiu had a feeling that she had tripped and fallen over a balcony rather than falling from outer space. Aside from the throbbing pain that spread from her shoulders, she did not sustain any other injuries.
The relentless whirlwind had dissipated and silence had returned. An eddy of air blew across the vast salmon-red land, sounding lonely, hurried and strange.
It occurred to Lin Sanjiu that she had landed on a continent.
She angled her eyes to see a cringe-worthy black slit that sat in the center of the dawn-laced sky. The black slit cosseted behind the soft of the cloud and was closing. It seemed to her that somebody had torn the sky open and another person was trying to fix it. She had even seen such a peculiar phenomenon before—the wormhole that the highest god conjured when he sent Hegel away.
The wormhole was not far away from the ground, hovering at about the height of a two-story building. Judging from the angle, Lin Sanjiu was pretty certain that she had fallen from the wormhole.
The last memory she had before she fell unconscious was being flung away by the airstream when the cord began to fall apart. She did not know when the wormhole showed up and when she fell into it. 'Perhaps the highest god had come to her rescue in the nick of the time,' she thought.