Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  "Because of you, of course!"

  Lin Sanjiu jerked her head back to look at the young man. Woyu's expression suddenly changed, as if he knew something bad was about to happen to him. As he expected, he saw Lin Sanjiu raise her hand. Then, before he could say anything, she delivered a blow to the nape of his neck and knocked him out cold.

  It was easier and faster to carry him on her shoulder than drag him.

  She was certain that the two people were hot on her heel, and even a second mattered a lot to her right now. When she saw the hanging bridge above the "river," she only hesitated for a second before bringing Woyu over.

  "Welcome home, administrator."

  Exodus was still waiting silently for her return, and Silas's voice was still as soothing as always.

  Lin Sanjiu dropped Woyu into the maglev pod before squeezing herself into it as well. She didn't know whether or not it was right choice to bring Woyu back to Exodus. She sped up so much that she almost banged into the wall.

  "Administrator, I sense that your heartbeat and body temperature is beyond the normal parameter. Do you need any assistance?"

  'There is a heat sensor around the house?'

  The thought flitted through her mind, but she was too anxious to care about it right now. She then gave her order. "This guy is my captive. Is there any room in Exodus with a particularly thick and sturdy wall?"

  She did not want to show Exodus to an outsider, even if the person was Woyu. After all, he was still a posthuman, and she feared that a normal room might not be able to contain him. If Silas said no, then she had no other choice but to use the [Empty-handed Kleptomaniac] on him.

  However, what Silas said next made Lin Sanjiu feel like she was in a dream.

  "Alright then, please allow me to show you the jail area."

  Chapter 742 - Heaven Zone

  Sitting on a tree, Lin Sanjiu gazed down.

  The tree branches and leaves grew over her head towards the sky while the trunk stretched downwards into the ground. When there was wind, her body swayed in a waving motion just like a leaf.

  The earth beat along with her heart, and the chirping of birds flowed in her blood. Under her "hypersensory state", she had become one with the universe.

  Flame Arm and Tunnel cautiously walked past the tree where Lin Sanjiu was perched, but neither of them realized their target was sitting above them.

  "It's clear here," announced Flame Arm as he pushed the goggles to his forehead. He turned around and muttered to Tunnel, "There is no suspicious heat image around."

  After hearing what Flame Arm said, the bespectacled man silently rose to his feet.

  "I believe she is still in the forest." He pushed his glasses, causing the lenses to catch the light from the sun and glint. His cheeks were deeply sunken, looking like two dark, endless tunnels that if one entered, he or she would never be able to come out again. "Behind the forest is a broken canyon that connects to a big river. I don't think she can walk that far with only her legs."

  Lin Sanjiu lowered her head and examined both of them through the thick layers of foliage. She remained so incredibly still that she looked like a twig on the tree.

  Flame Arm nodded in approval, then they began to move forward again. After they walked for several steps, the burly man couldn't help but say, "The time for the squad to pick us up is long overdue, and we lost two of our comrades…"

  "I know," Tunnel sighed. After a short bout of thought, he flipped his collar outward and revealed a miniature black object that seemed like an interphone pinned to the inner side of his clothes.

  "Vielfalt combat squad calling."

  The three of them waited in silence as the buzzing of electricity filled their ears. After a few seconds, a female voice rang out. "Hello, please report your squad and modal code for confirmation."

  "Vielfalt combat squad 21, Tunnel 08 and Flame Arm 33."

  "Identity confirmed. Please proceed."

  "We met some trouble in our mission, and we need to delay the return time. Two members from our squad, Ikkaku 45 and Lollipop 36, have gone MIA."

  "Understood. Any additional assistance required?"

  Tunnel raised his head and looked at Flame Arm. The virile man compressed his lips tightly into a thin line. The corner of his lips tilted down in frustration.

  "Not for the time being. I will get back in touch."

  "Alright. Good luck hunting."

  As expected, The Munitions Factory was very well organized. This team was the combat squad sent out by the factory, and if she were to defeat all of them, it would certainly raise an alarm. Now that they had reported their situation, the factory would think that the mission was still ongoing and she was still being hunted. As such, the factory would not send more people after her to search and hunt her down. And most important, the factory would not make her their primary target.

  When Lin Sanjiu slid down the tree, it sounded like an occasional eddy of wind that rustled the leaves and branches.

  The forest in the morning was quiet. Standing without saying anything, Lin Sanjiu pricked her ears up. Suddenly, the faint mewling of a cat rang out in the distance and was brought into her ears by the wind.

  Although the [Mewling Alarm Clock] had no other uses, it performed its job dutifully as a clock. It rang out accurately according to the time Lin Sanjiu had set. It was normal to hear this sound in a household, as cats would often purr piteously when they were demanding food from their owner. However, that was not the case in the forest; it sounded strange. After the clock meowed several times, silence once again befell in the forest.

  Then, a series of vague and hurried footsteps followed after.

  The clock would ring again an hour from now. Well, only if it wasn't found by the duo.

  Lin Sanjiu had no idea how much time the clock could buy her. After taking in a deep breath, she slowly edged towards the entrance of the forest.

  She had to confess that Flame Arm and Tunnel were prudent. There was now a large swath of spider webs crawling all over the only entrance to the forest. The spiderweb crossed all the way from the ground to the tree and then stretched towards the cliff, finally ending up in midair. Whenever there was wind, the spiderweb would scintillate under the soft lances of sunlight. It looked deadly sharp.

  It was just that their effort was totally unnecessary.

  After she walked down the slope, the trees rose from the ground again along with the spiderweb. The spiderweb oscillated with the wind; there were some specks of dirt on it.

  Lin Sanjiu was finally relieved when she saw the old airplane. It occurred to her that the committee members did not make things warm for the old pilot.

  After going through the things that happened last night, the plane looked even more miserable as if it was tired of getting dragged into the feud between humans.

  The old pilot was sitting at the entrance of the cabin, his two stumpy legs that were wrapped in a pair of deep-blue trousers dangling in the air since he lost the staircase.

  "You see, I don't even have a place to put this," when he saw Lin Sanjiu, he raised the bottle of wine in his hand and nodded at her, "I can only hold it now."

  "It simply means you should cut down on your drinking now," Lin Sanjiu tilted her head up and replied. There was a smile on her face.

  The old pilot snorted disapprovingly. "I will stop drinking on the day I die! By the way, is it only me or is your shirt a little dirty?" He sized her up and retreated from the door. "It seems like you had quite a fun night, huh?"

  "Nah, it was a nightmare." After that, Lin Sanjiu leaped up and climbed into the plane. "How about you?"

  "Well," he yawned, "The little guy let me go in the end. Perhaps they did not want to disturb the Ubume."

  "Perhaps they did not realize it's you who reminded me." Lin Sanjiu looked at him and smiled when she remembered the "show" he put on last night.

  The old pilot wasn't really trying to triple the fare, that's why Lin Sanjiu could not activate the Scrooge McDuc
k.

  "Oh, I really did want to increase the fare."

  The old pilot scratched his beard and closed the door with a loud bang. As he walked toward the pilot seat, he turned his head and asked, "Who are they? Are they tricky to deal with?"

  According to Lollipop and Ikkaku, all of them, including the little guy with stubble around his chin, was supposedly dead. Ironically enough, if she did not pull Woyu down from the plane at the last minute, he would have been dead as well.

  When Lin Sanjiu thought up to here, she shook her head. "They… they are not a problem anymore. Can you fly me to The Munitions Factory? I need to go there fast. If you can't land directly at the front door, you can drop me somewhere nearby."

  The old pilot's eyes bulged. He seemed a little surprised. "The Munitions Factory? Why the heck do you want to go there?"

  "I have a friend to meet," Lin Sanjiu grinned. "So, how much is the total fare?"

  Even though they were friends right now, the old pilot was not going to give her a special offer or a mates' rate of any kind. "Well, that ain't going to be cheap." After a short pause, he laughed. "However, it's pretty easy to go to the heaven zone."

  The sachet of red crystals that Lin Sanjiu gave him did boost the plane's speed a lot. Although the plane rattled as if it was going to break apart, it still brought Lin Sanjiu to the heaven zone after two hours of flight.

  She had been to a financial institution situated outside of the heaven zone when she was buying Exodus. At the time, she thought the heaven zone would be no different from that area. At best, the streets might be cleaner, with fewer pedestrians and stricter security.

  However, she was wrong.

  "This is the heaven zone! You can go down now!"

  The old pilot slid the door open and the cabin instantly filled with the raging winds from the outside. His face had turned red from shouting himself hoarse. "Go down from here, and you will reach the heaven zone!"

  Lin Sanjiu rubbernecked between the door and the old pilot. She refused to move a step forward.

  The old pilot had expected her reaction and sighed. He scratched his chin and smiled bitterly. "Here is the heaven zone! You have to decide fast whether you want to go down or not. The claw just allotted me five minutes, and there are a lot of planes queueing behind us!"

  Aside from knowing that the old pilot was asking her to get down from the plane, Lin Sanjiu did not understand any of his words.

  The first thing was that this plane was hot a helicopter, so how could it hover in midair? Secondly, what was the thing outside the door?

  'This is the heaven zone?'

  Chapter 743 - Please Show Me Your Identity Card To Ride The Vehicle

  The heaven zone was a tall building.

  At the same time, it was a pier, an accordion, or a living creature. The more Lin Sanjiu learned about it, the harder it was for her to define it. The heaven zone was everything, but the agglomeration of sectors by sectors that Lin Sanjiu had in mind was not one of them.

  The moment she disembarked from the plane and looked at the corner of the heaven zone, she knew she was wrong.

  "See you next time!"

  Lin Sanjiu turned around to see that the old pilot had gone back to the plane. All she heard was his lingering voice, which was shattered by the gust. She waved to him and watched the old pilot shut the door. After that, the plane continued to hover in midair for several seconds straight, until one gigantic claw, which was clipped to the plane's body, slowly released the plane into the air. Slack-jawed, Lin Sanjiu watched as the claw pulled the airplane upward as if the plane was a toy.

  The sun looked like a huge melted golden globe in the sky. The mechanical arm made a turn in the sky, leaving a glinting arc in its wake. It then retreated, causing the plane to rise higher and higher until it subsequently disappeared into a gate that was about a hundred meters tall.

  Rather than saying it was a gate, it looked more like a hole. As she squinted her eyes, Lin Sanjiu could vaguely see a long conveyor belt beneath the oval arch. Aside from the old pilot's plane, there was a plenitude of strangely shaped aircrafts, fighter jets, and even gliders on the conveyor belt. One after another, the claw arranged each of them neatly on the belt and then they slowly vanished into the tunnel.

  "Male passenger on runway 64I, please don't stay there," a tired woman's voice rang out from a speaker. "Please get off the landing platform through the elevator immediately. Thank you for your cooperation."

  Lin Sanjiu turned her head and saw a big "64I" on the guardrail beside her.

  She was the only one standing on runway 64I. Lin Sanjiu touched her face and looked around as she walked towards the glassdoor at the far end of the track.

  Some of the choppers had just landed, their propellers slowing to a stop. There were empty runways in the distance, in which the guardrails rattled as an aircraft approached. However, no matter if it was a plane that glided to the landing platform or a disk-shaped aerial vehicle that could land on itself without any assistance needed, the claw would grab all of them without fail and systematically send them into the arched tunnel one by one.

  There were plenty of black dots looming over the horizon, where all of them were flying towards the hangar bay that looked like a tower.

  The air was filled with all sorts of noises: the roaring of the engine, the whirling of the propeller, the rattling of the guardrails... All of them merged and produced a discordant symphony in her ears. Then, when she looked down the guardrail, the scene that met her eyes caused her blood to turn cold. Wisps of clouds fluttered over her feet, and beneath the blanket of white were several more black runways. She could barely see through the bottom of the port, able to see nothing more than a smear of grey. The more she looked at it, the more she felt she was being absorbed into it.

  She hurriedly retracted her gaze and retreated from the guardrail. She turned around and resumed walking towards the black glassdoor at the end of the runway.

  As she got closer, a silhouette of a middle-aged man with a haggard expression and deep laugh lines appeared at the door. Lin Sanjiu glanced at her reflection and then reached out for the only button on the door.

  She was wearing the [Single-Use Mask: Ordinary Middle-aged Man Series] that she stole from Woyu. The mask resumed the countdown as soon as Lin Sanjiu took it out of her card. Since Woyu had used the mask for some time, she had to get to The Munitions Factory within an hour before the mask disappeared.

  It was only after she stepped into the elevator that she realized how naive she had been.

  The speed of the elevator's descent was so fast that Lin Sanjiu's heart almost leaped out of her throat; she was enveloped by a sudden sense of weightlessness. She grabbed tightly to the handle and knew her face must look really awful right now. If it weren't for the two other posthumans in the elevator who looked rather calm, she might have thought she was falling down from a great height.

  'How tall is the hangar of the heaven zone?'

  Well, the question remained unanswered even after she staggered out of the elevator 20 minutes later.

  After she exited the elevator, she instantly found herself standing in a hall the size of an airport. The hall was a cocoon of steel. There were countless transparent tubes fitted in the corner of the hall, which housed the elevators. When the elevator landed on the ground floor with the speed of a bullet, the people that came out of it had the same nauseated expression as the mask she was wearing right now. Streams of people were going hither and thither about in the hall; a cacophonous of people talking and machines whirring filled the air. The hall was busy, and a lot of things were going on at the same time. Lin Sanjiu did not know where she should look and where she should go.

  Standing stock-still with a blank mind, Lin Sanjiu looked around. The hall looked like a shuttle station to her. There were four gates in four different directions. The light from the outside world filtered inside and caused the gate to turn into a rectangular glow of light.

  'Should I look for so
meone and ask for directions?'

  Lin Sanjiu had once been led into the Mokugyo Forum by a woman she did not know. At that time, she remembered the woman once said that no matter where you were, whenever there was a new guy that asked you something regarding the rules or directions in the Heaven Underworld, you must answer him. Lin Sanjiu thought that it shouldn't be a problem for her to ask for directions since this rule was applied in this world. However, she was wrong. The second she walked close to a woman, the woman picked up her speed and walked away while staring at her vigilantly.

  A little embarrassed, Lin Sanjiu looked away.

  "They have used up their quota, so visas to the Peppermint Garden are low in stock…" Two men dressed in white robes talked as they hurried past her. No matter if it was their pace or the atmosphere, there was no room for her to chime in and ask for directions.

  Everyone in the shuttle station was busy. Lin Sanjiu tried several times, but nobody was willing to stop for her.

  "Please move away, we have an A-class specimen in hand."

  Soon enough, a squad of posthumans in grey uniforms, goggles and face masks appeared in Lin Sanjiu's vision. They were guarded by a team of bodyguards, and they were carrying a metal case in pairs. It seemed to Lin Sanjiu that nobody wanted to go close to them, as all the pedestrians soon stopped walking and stepped aside to make way for them. Just as Lin Sanjiu wanted to grab somebody to ask for directions, she saw something and froze.

  Those cases seemed to be very cold, for she could see condensation on them. However, that was not the thing that shocked Lin Sanjiu the most. On top of the case, there was this line of words that read: Rare Creatures Nature Reserve

  She remembered that Silvan once told her through a message that if she needed anything, she could find him at the Rare Creatures Nature Reserve, No 23.

  With that in mind, Lin Sanjiu picked up her speed and hurriedly went after the group of staff members.