Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  "Who?"

  The kuchisake-onna gave her a glance. "Does it have anything to do with the matter we are discussing right now? One word. Are you gonna hire me, or not?"

  Both of them stared at each other in dismay. Then, Lin Sanjiu spoke, "The concept of 'good' doesn't exist to you duoluozhongs , does it?"

  "I can show you the good in me if you want, but you don't seem like one who needs somebody's almsgiving," countered Naga-ashi snarkily.

  Lin Sanjiu was stumped by her reply. She suddenly let out a peal of laughter as she pointed at the tray next to the iron griddle. "Give me the buns. I want to have a taste."

  Naga-ashi stretched its hand out from its baggy sleeve which contained its web. It took the tray and handed it to Lin Sanjiu. The light bulb continued to glow weakly.

  The buns were getting a little cold just like the night of Black's Market.

  Chapter 720 - Lin Sanjiu’s Shopping Day (2)

  After the roller shutter slammed to the ground with a loud smash, Naga-ashi crouched down and locked it. Aside from telling the patron of the shop that they were closed for the day, it could do little to stop the burglar from entering. Lin Sanjiu was certain that she could lay waste to the roller shutter with a single punch.

  "The money is with me, and there are only several pieces of equipment that I can't take away inside the shop, so don't worry," Naga-ashi said after it noticed Lin Sanjiu's gaze, "It's very safe here in the day, but it seems that no matter where you are, you posthumans always think there's something lurking around when night arrives."

  The night was getting dark and most of the shops were closed. As they walked along the street, Lin Sanjiu saw a shop owner fold his wooden hut into a stack and carry it away. The flashing lights from the shops that remained open throughout the night cast flitting shadows against the walkway. A disc-shaped streetlight, which rose from nowhere, was hanging high in the sky. The orange blob cast its warm light on the pedestrians on the street. Their shadows were long behind them. It stretched to the end of the horizon without touching anything midway.

  Living up to its reputation, the kuchisake-onna was indeed a guide who performed its duty well. As they strolled down the street, it explained, "This street might not look like it, but it will soon turn into a bustling area. Well, it is different from the kind of busyness you saw in the day."

  "Why's that?"

  "The only thing you can't find in here is lacking itself." Naga-ashi shrugged as it continued, "Although Black's Market has everything you need, there is a quantum of things that aren't suitable to be placed under the eyes of the public but in a corner shop in the middle of the night."

  "But I am looking for houses…" Lin Sanjiu could not help interrupting.

  "Yeah, you already said that before," Naga-ashi replied apathetically, "It's better to buy houses secretly in the wee hours of the night. Wasn't that the reason you came to me at closing time?"

  'What kind of logic is that?'

  It was quarter past one in the middle of the night. Lin Sanjiu was trailing a duoluozhong , her head filled with questions. They soon crossed half of Black's Market and stepped onto a street filled with a kaleidoscope of lights.

  There were fewer streetlights here. The fusion of the psychedelic lights from the neon lamp and the rivulet of lights fashioned in a geometrical latticework chased the darkness away, lighting up the dust particles in the air as they leaped through the entire night sky, filling the upper region to the seam in with fervor.

  "It has to put the skin on before the sun rises and it goes to sleep," the kuchisake-onna explained when it saw that Lin Sanjiu had stopped to look at the building, "It will then take the skin down at night. This building is popular amongst the younger generation. You'll be able to see its revelry on your way back."

  The flow of people thickened as they went further down the street and groups of women and men dressed in different attire began to show up. Some of them were leaning against the wall while the others crouched by the roadside. A gang of youngsters made a V.i.r.g.i.nia fence, walking past Lin Sanjiu's side. They passed a roll of paper around among themselves, and an occasional peal of laughter would erupt amidst the clanking of bottles.

  It was a rare sight to see a woman of Lin Sanjiu's height strolling around. Everybody was staring at her, and even though Naga-ashi was walking by her side, none of them spared it a glance. It was as if the mask it wore had made it invisible, and those youngsters' eyes slipped past it as though it was air.

  "You mentioned that this building is popular amongst youngsters?" Lin Sanjiu asked as she observed the back of the kuchisake-onna . It had a head of shoulder-length deep-brown hair, and Lin Sanjiu found that it looked just like a woman from this angle.

  "Yes, what's wrong?"

  "I've been wondering," Lin Sanjiu asked hesitantly, "You should be very young too, aren't you?"

  The kuchisake-onna did not answer the question promptly. It continued to walk forward. Just as Lin Sanjiu thought it was going to remain silent for the rest of the journey, its muffled voice slid into her ears, "Yeah."

  "How old are you?"

  Naga-ashi suddenly stopped walking. It pointed to a door that looked like a tavern. "Do you see those tightly shut red doors? That's one of the more famous florists on this street. When you visit a florist, you must pick one with a reliable reputation. Not only are their flowers domesticated, but they also regularly prune the flowers' liquid glands and fangs, so the flowers are rather safe compared to others."

  Lin Sanjiu glanced at Naga-ashi. Although she knew it was trying to sidetrack her, she went along and asked, "What's in that place? I don't see the man holding any flowers in his hands."

  "Flowers are a service tool," said Naga-ashi as she led Lin Sanjiu down a long alley, "As for its application, I've heard of it before, but I'm not so sure. This is mainly because I've never been to a florist before, and secondly, Black's Market has created tons of new d.e.s.i.r.es that have never existed for humans before and then developed several industrial chains to satisfy these d.e.s.i.r.es. I have no idea which d.e.s.i.r.es the man has fulfilled at the florist, but if you really want to know, you can go in and try it out."

  Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment and decided to flip a coin. After all, when one had too much money, she could do whatever she wanted.

  When the clock struck 2 in the morning, Lin Sanjiu realized that Naga-ashi was bringing her into the men's washroom.

  "Hold on," said Lin Sanjiu promptly. She began to wonder if she was getting a little too comfortable with the duoluozhong . "I want to buy houses. Why did you bring me here?"

  "I know. You've said that numerous times already." The kuchisake-onna glanced at her from behind its mask and moved to a cubicle. Then, she knocked it twice.

  "Who's out there?" A young man's voice, which was the embodiment of carefree and casual—wafted from the cubicle, "I'm sh*tting!"

  The kuchisake-onna was stunned. It angled the mask on its face. Then, after taking a deep breath, it rapped the door rapidly, releasing a long chain of rat-a-tats into the air. It was only now that Lin Sanjiu finally saw what this kind of duoluozhong could do. In less than a second, it struck the door at least a hundred times. Every knock landed on the same spot and ended up leaving a tiny cavity on the door.

  "Fine! Fine! Here I come!" the man growled as he pulled the door open. Naga-ashi took a step and retreated behind Lin Sanjiu in a swift motion.

  The man had rosy cheeks and a pointy nose. His eye bags were heavy and there were black rings around his eyes. Although Lin Sanjiu had no idea what kind of species he was, she was not perturbed. After all, there were too many humanoid species in the Twelve Worlds. Suddenly, Mrs. Manas mumbled something in her mind, but she did not hear it. Just as she took a step closer to the man, she was shocked. "You aren't a posthuman!"

  "Yeah, so?" asked Pointy-nose nonchalantly as he scratched his face. Like those pedestrians out there, he did not cast a glance toward Naga-ashi at all. "Who are you? Have you not seen ordin
ary people before?"

  Piqued by curiosity, Lin Sanjiu inspected the man from his feet up. "So, there are survivors in the Heaven Underworld…Hold on a sec, no, this doesn't feel right. You look too young."

  Seventy years had passed since the apocalypse arrived in this world, but the man in front of her looked no more than 30 years old. Besides, ordinary humans could not hop from world to world, so—

  "Tsk, what a naive woman." Pointy-nose rolled his eyes. He formed a circle in the air with one hand and brought up a finger. He thrust the finger into the circle as if he was imitating some kind of unsightly movement. "Don't you really have any idea? No matter when and no matter what the situation is, that's something humans will never cease doing. After that, kids will be born, and when kids are born…Hey, are you here to listen to my biology class?"

  Lin Sanjiu looked at Naga-ashi that had suddenly turned silent. She turned her head back to see the man and said, "I'm here to buy houses."

  It never occurred in Lin Sanjiu's wildest dreams that she would one day stand inside a men's washroom and engage conversation with an odd-looking man, saying that she wanted to buy houses. She even began to consider the possibility of her being caught in some kind of prank.

  Pointy-nose was stunned. He lowered his head, pitched his voice low and said, "Why didn't you say that earlier?" Then, when he lifted his head to face Lin Sanjiu, all the hostility he showed toward Lin Sanjiu melted away as a warm smile blossomed across his lips. "Come in, come in. Let's talk inside. You didn't talk to anybody on your way here, did you? Did you tell anybody that you want to buy a house?"

  'Is he going to ask me whether I was being followed or not?' Lin Sanjiu spun her head to look at Naga-ashi again. Sensing her gaze, the kuchisake-onna nodded. After a short bout of rumination, Lin Sanjiu decided to bite the bullet, so she stepped into the cubicle. After all, both the man and Naga-ashi looked weak, and she was certain that both of them could not best her in a fight.

  "What's wrong?"

  After Lin Sanjiu walked into the cubicle, Pointy-nose quickly went up and closed the door. He put his ear on the door and listened. Since Lin Sanjiu's hearing was much better than his, she knew that there was no one outside except for Naga-ashi, but it seemed that the man trusted his ear more than hers. After a while, he turned his face to her and began introducing himself, "My name is Timo. I'm the most famous real estate agent around here."

  Questions such as "Why is your office in a washroom?" and "Why do we have to be so secretive when buying houses?" plagued Lin Sanjiu's mind like a pest gnawing on wood.

  "Don't you worry. I have scouted this area and I'm certain it is safe," Timo said sternly, "I've just moved into this place, and I only sent out the location of my new office three days ago. Your guide is pretty good at its job. I won't ask for your name, and a pseudonym will do. So, now, what kind of house are you looking for?"

  Staring straight at the man, Lin Sanjiu wondered was "house" another name for drugs in the Twelve Worlds.

  Chapter 721 - The Life Of A Millionaire Start From A Male Washroom

  "I want to buy a batch of houses. If possible, I want them to be near to each other…"

  Lin Sanjiu had just started her sentence when she was interrupted by a loud noise. The contents of the toilet sloshed in the holding tank, making a noise so loud that it drowned out all other sounds. Baffled, Lin Sanjiu peered ahead to see that the young property agent had leaned his body forward with his brows tightly creased. He touched his ears and mouthed, "Keep going. I can hear you."

  He only released the flush lever after a long while, and the toilet gradually came to a still.

  "What…are you doing?" Lin Sanjiu asked with a blank expression as she was too flummoxed to come up with a response, "Why would you…?"

  "Ahh, don't mind about that. It's just a requisite measure." Timo shrugged. Then, he turned and tore several pieces of doc.u.ments down from the wall. After he shoved the doc.u.ments into the gaping collar in front of his c.h.e.s.t, he lifted the toilet lid. "May I know what kind of houses are you looking at?"

  "I'm looking for a batch of houses that are very near to one another. A contiguous lot, if possible," Lin Sanjiu said hesitantly, "Also, it has to come with a complete set of facilities."

  "A contiguous lot? Hmm, alright." Timo lifted the toilet lid. "I'm not sure if I have anything that suits your criteria, but anyway, let's take a look."

  'Look at what?'

  Just as Lin Sanjiu thought that the man would pull out the doc.u.ments about the houses—or a packet of heroin—something fluttered in her brain which prompted her to look down.

  Earlier on, she only heard the water flowing down the tank, but she did not hear the sloshing of contents moving into the pipe. Right now, the toilet bowl was overfilled with a sea of blackish liquid. She could clearly see the ripples that spread towards the rim of the bowl.

  "First time buying a house?" the estate broker teased, "Well, you'll see the light soon. Come, sit here."

  After that, he pulled a folding chair out from nowhere. A clueless Lin Sanjiu crammed herself into the chair and sat next to the toilet bowl. It was uncomfortable for her as the cubicle did not have enough space for her to position her long legs.

  After that, Timo took a cane out from behind the water tank. He sat down and began stirring the blackish liquid inside the toilet bowl.

  "Why are you looking at me?" asked Timo as he rolled his eyes at his stupefied customer. The unconvincing real estate broker pulled the cane out and rapped the rim of the bowl. "Look here. Is this what you are looking for?"

  Before Lin Sanjiu could ask where she should look, she instinctively peered into the toilet bowl.

  The blackish liquid was clearing up as various colors and shapes began to fill the space, forming a view that was very familiar to Lin Sanjiu. She felt like she was looking at a house tour. The living room was an unusual circular space surrounded by a ring of rainforest-like plants.

  "This is…" Looking straight into the pool of water, Lin Sanjiu was so dumbfounded that she was tongue-tied. The quality of the image was superb and the water was calm, disturbed only by the occasional rippling wavelet.

  "This is the most suitable house on hand, and the house is in tip-top condition. What you're seeing now is a kind of liquid crystal that can playback whatever graphics that have been preloaded into it. Why do you look so surprised? Have you never seen a Special Item before? I thought you were a posthuman, so you should be accustomed to a gadget such as this. Anyway, this is a kind of vision fluid that was developed from a Special Item."

  "What's the use of developing it?" As Lin Sanjiu asked, she craned her neck to have a clearer look at the graphic in the toilet bowl. The view had now changed to a rectangular passageway that looked like a corridor. However, the corridor was too long, so the exit was merely a globe of light the size of a human fist. The broker tapped lightly on the corridor, and several sheets fell off from the walls on both sides, revealing the darkness within. Lin Sanjiu had no idea what the use of it was.

  "It is pretty useful, but now isn't the time to talk about it."

  Lin Sanjiu was certain that Timo was just being lazy. She noticed his indifference from the way he drawled his words when he was introducing the houses.

  "How many of you are going to stay there? Including the camouflage barrier, this house has a total area of 2,000 square meters, and all the basic facilities are readily available. It has a total of 12 rooms and several storerooms, so I'm certain it can fit your party perfectly." Like all other real estate brokers in the modern days, he was skilled at capturing his customer's heart by emphasizing the pros of his product.

  Lin Sanjiu tried to imagine the day when all of them stayed in a house together. She realized that it was probably a nightmare. Rabbit would surely often pick a fight with Hei Zeji, and she was confident that the cat doctor would abuse his power to help him satisfy his strange hobby of collecting corpses.

  "No, I don't think this will do. Do you have others?"
Lin Sanjiu asked, "My friends are all pretty eccentric, and I don't think they can stay together harmoniously without getting into a fight."

  Upon hearing her words, Timo began to stir the liquid again. There was nothing special about his motions. It occurred to Lin Sanjiu that it was the spot where he dipped the cane into that gave different commands to the vision fluid. When he stopped stirring, the previous image disappeared, to be replaced by a long paragraph filled with tiny letters.

  "If you want adjoining houses, currently I have only two on hand, and the other houses nearby have all been sold out. So, I have two options for you. Firstly, you can snap up these two houses first, and then slowly acquire the remaining adjacent houses. Or secondly, you can take a look at one of the c.o.n.d.o.miniums I have right now. It has a quiet environment and an excellent security system, but the compromise is that the price isn't very customer-friendly."

  Nevertheless, the image that appeared on top of the toilet bowl did not quite match the image Lin Sanjiu had in mind. The c.o.n.d.o.minium was not a building. In fact, it could not even be called a c.o.n.d.o.minium. It was a perfect annular white eminence with sophisticated metal plates protruding from the hollow center of the ring that formed an intricate pattern.

  "This…What's this?" Lin Sanjiu glanced at Timo. She noticed that the real estate broker believed that she would not be interested in buying the lot, so he looked rather unenthusiastic.

  "Why is it a ring?"

  "Well, they are designers, and we commoners will never understand a designer's brain." Timo spun his black-ringed eyes in a full circle, but he did not look at her. "It's very spacious. The total area is 302.8 acres with 36 units available. It comes with 4 large dining halls, a tennis court, an air pressure control system, a water circulation system, cold storage…Umm, there's also a gym, a shooting range, an unmanned semi-autonomous clinic…" He was too lazy to describe every single facility to Lin Sanjiu, so he just sped through the images using the cane and gave a vague explanation.