by N. Heller
Hearing his question, Lin Sanjiu shook her head and leaned back into the chair. A wry smile crawled upon her face as she said, "I hope I can go there as well."
Oddly enough, she thought she had had enough of all the crap in the doomsday, but right now, she was trying to do everything to keep herself here and avoid the Data Streams Library at all cost. Of course, if it was like what Nüwa had mentioned and the deluge was coming, she might have nowhere left to go.
"The communication device can be used multiple times if the distance between two points is close enough," Lin Sanjiu said, keeping her head low and focused on playing with the thread on her sleeve. She didn't know whether or not Yu Yuan would change his mind, but she was going to continue her sentence anyway. "You should be safe after you get to him through the communication device. Then, tell him about my situation and get him to contact me. I will keep one communication device with me at all times."
Yu Yuan did not give any comment.
She lowered her head. After ascertaining that Yu Yuan was not going to say anything, she continued, "Of course, if you don't wish to go anymore, I understand that too. It is really dangerous over there. The lifeform that he's fighting, they do not have the ability to reproduce and they can only expand their population by turning an outsider into one of them—well, if you are lucky enough. I don't know if—"
"There are two things," Yu Yuan suddenly interrupted. He folded his arms and spoke slowly, his brows deeply furrowed. "There are two things you are going to tell me. One, I want to know what I have gotten myself into and what I am up to."
Lin Sanjiu raised her head.
Leaning against the table, he had merged himself with the shadows, and she couldn't read his expression. "If there is anything I learned from the doomsday, it is that you can never steer yourself entirely away from danger. Whether it is in the Twelve Worlds, other apocalyptic worlds, or where your brother is, it is the same," the young man said, "But I'd rather face a danger I already know about than the danger of the deluge, which leaves you nowhere to run to and can't be prevented. If you can help me prepare everything I need, I will go."
A surge of relief swamped over Lin Sanjiu, and she let out a sigh. "What is the second thing, then?" she mumbled thankfully. She still had another seven months to get in touch with Ji Shanqing. And if the worst case scenario happened in which she couldn't get to the grand prize, at the very least, she still had a second plan.
"The second thing is, the aircraft is no use." Yu Yuan scratched his head as a rueful grin broke across his face. "Like an airplane, your aircraft is an atmospheric carrier. To break through a planet's gravitational force, I need a rocket or…" Yu Yuan paused. He looked straight into Lin Sanjiu's eyes and continued, "A spaceship."
Lin Sanjiu was stunned. It took her a few seconds before she finally came to and said, "Are you saying that you need Exodus?"
Yu Yuan lifted his head, looking a little embarrassed. "I know that you've made Exodus your home. I need a spaceship, but not necessarily an interstellar spacecraft. How about this, isn't Black's Market self-proclaimed as a place where we can find anything we need? Since we still have time left, perhaps we can find ourselves another spaceship from there."
Lin Sanjiu bit her lip and nodded as her heart slowly fell back to the pit of her stomach. She looked towards the clock and realized it was already 12 o'clock, midnight. Even though neither of them was sleepy, she still bade goodnight to Yu Yuan and exited his room.
"Although the kid is a little bit odd, since he can find us an aircraft, I am pretty sure getting a spaceship shouldn't be a problem for him." The young man attempted to ease her anxiety by giving her an assuring smile. "I didn't expect that going into the Reverie Libretto would change my entire life."
"Well, I didn't expect to get nothing from the pocket dimension either," Lin Sanjiu chuckled. She tried not to think about the grand prize because it would do nothing but escalate her anxiety. "I'm still clueless about who is after me, and the Reverie Libretto didn't give me any clues either."
The sentence reverberated in her mind as she walked down the corridor towards her room. When she was back in her room, she called out another communication device and put it on the side. After that, she climbed under the cover.
Lying on her bed, she couldn't stop thinking about the device. She stretched her arm and reached out for it. The device felt cold and smooth under her finger. The sentence still screamed at her at the back of her mind. Then, she slowly closed her eyes.
The night was cold and the room was dark. Suddenly, she shot up from her bed as a chill ran down her spine.
She was wrong.
The Reverie Libretto had given her a clue.
Chapter 812 - Lin Sanjiu The Busy Bee
It was 3 o'clock in the wee hours. After the crowds were gone, it was only then that the other side of the Mokugyo Encyclopedic Forum was revealed. Unlike the bustling atmosphere in the daytime, the Mokugyo Encyclopedic Forum was quiet and looked deserted. The smoke had dissipated, half of the lights had been put out, and the air felt colder. There were only a handful of cleaners roaming here and there to clean up the debris and trash left behind by the patrons during the day. As Lin Sanjiu moved towards level B2, she found that there were a lot more parts of the hall that she had never seen before. She surmised that there should be more, as she could see some shadows in the distance where the light couldn't reach.
When she arrived at level B2, she slid into the cocoon-shaped operating pod and activated the monitor. Then, as soon as the monitor was activated, an "Incoming Call" icon popped out from the left corner of the screen. She hastily tapped the icon, and then a huge peac.o.c.k head appeared. Behind the peac.o.c.k head was a white wall. Lin Sanjiu looked around, yet she still couldn't tell where the peac.o.c.k head was right now.
The peac.o.c.k head swayed a little as if there was something moving underneath. Then, from the two slits on its head, a pair of bloodshot human eyes appeared.
"How was it?" Lin Sanjiu asked as she examined the peac.o.c.k headgear. "Any good news?"
Even though the peac.o.c.k head was just another "commoner" in the Twelve Worlds, he was vigilant. Lin Sanjiu hoped that he would keep a vigilant eye while he was doing his job.
"Yeah," the peac.o.c.k head answered simply, "Your task is simple. If I could pick up a few more of these jobs, I'd soon be able to buy a visa."
"All right. Spill the beans."
"She is pretty famous in the Twelve Worlds, so I was able to dig up her information without much effort. She is 29 years old this year, and she came from the world "Sensual Nightmare". She had been roaming around the apocalyptic worlds for about four or five years before she finally arrived in Heaven Underworld two years ago," the peac.o.c.k head reported his finding as he fumbled about something outside of the screen. Then, an "Incoming Files'' icon jumped out on Lin Sanjiu's side. She pressed on the receive button.
The profile about Jezebel was short. It had only two pages. She flipped the profile and found that most of the contents took place in Heaven Underworld, which revolved around the process of her building Bliss.
"There is nothing special about her except the fact that she's pretty." The peac.o.c.k head shrugged indifferently. "In my hometown, we used to call this kind of woman a courtesan," he added, not bothering to hide his sarcastic tone. "Women are good, all you have to do is just spread your legs and—"
Lin Sanjiu raised her head and darted him a glance, prompting the peac.o.c.k head to shut his mouth as he suddenly remembered that his client was a woman as well.
"This isn't right," said Lin Sanjiu. She wasn't in the mood to mind what the peac.o.c.k head said. She put the doc.u.ment away and leaned back in the chair, a hard frown roughening her brows. "This is all you could dig up on her? It's too normal, something just doesn't add up."
Jezebel transformed from a struggling, little-known posthuman into a posthuman who had the ability to claim a small territory as her own in the Twelve Worlds and become the owner of Bliss
. The entire process was too strange. Lin Sanjiu flipped through Jezebel's profile again, and the feeling of something missing did not ebb away, but only got stronger.
"What more do you want to know?" said the peac.o.c.k head. The expression on his face right now suggested that he was not in agreement with Lin Sanjiu's comment. "This is everything about her. To complete her information, I even found one of her fellow countrymen. I am confident that there is no one who could do better than me and investigate more carefully than I did."
He was right. The man really had a good reputation for doing his job.
After paying the peac.o.c.k man the rest of the money, Lin Sanjiu remained seated in the pod and stared at the monitor as if lost in her own thoughts. Generally, based on the principle "you will get what you've been dreaming of day and night", Reverie Libretto would respond to every posthuman who had cleared the pocket dimension by rewarding them the thing that they had in their mind. Even though the reward sometimes did not fully meet the requirement of the posthuman, it was still more or less in line with their goal. That was the reason why Silvan suggested that she try her luck at Reverie Libretto.
She skimmed through Jezebel's profile anew, yet she still couldn't make heads or tails of it.
She had never met her in the past and they did not have any mutual friends, so there was no reason for Jezebel to kill her. Besides, from the profile, Jezebel did not seem to be in contact with those who wanted her life.
'So what was the clue about…?' Lin Sanjiu thought.
"I guess I have no other choice but to use that one," Lin Sanjiu sighed. She pulled up the message interface from the Mokugyo Encyclopedic Forum's system and noticed that Silvan still remained greyed out. She didn't know if he had already gotten out of the underground or whether the Munitions Factory was still looking for her. She continued to browse through the messages and found several replies from the Consular Officers. Amongst the replies, there was one in particular that caught her attention.
"I don't know who Hai Tianqing is, but I've heard of Sayo before. It seems that she is now in the Twelve Worlds Centrum too. I will contact you as soon as I get any news about her."
The reply was two days ago.
If she could get to Sayo, then she could possibly get to Hai Tianqing and B. Rabbit as well. Hu Changzai had been held captive along with the cat doctor by Puppeteer, and she hadn't heard from him since they parted ways in the Data Streams Library.
'Did he get the cat doctor to tend to his wounds?' Lin Sanjiu asked.
Lin Sanjiu's heart sank when she realized how much she missed her friends and how much she worried about Puppeteer. After a short bout of rumination, Lin Sanjiu decided to do something wild. It was now a quarter past 3 at midnight. Setting her jaw tight, she pulled open the general channel and published a message in a gross language, "Who the f*ck knows where the f*ck Puppeteer is? If any of you happen to bump into that little b*tch who always plays with dolls, tell him to come and find me. I want to snap his two f*cking puny legs into half!"
Even though she used a pseudonym to publish the message, Lin Sanjiu still felt a little guilty. However, she also felt a little delighted. After she had published the message, or to be more precise, the bomb, she jerked up and got out of the operating pod as if she was burned by the seat.
As she closed the pod, a slight cl.i.c.k.i.n.g sound was released into the air, which accentuated the silence in level B2. Lin Sanjiu was the only guest, as the other people were on the upper floor, which was charged at a cheaper rate. She strode towards the door and when she pushed it open, she almost crashed into a man who was walking in.
The man's reflexes were obviously slower than Lin Sanjiu's. He staggered a few steps back before regaining his balance. He pulled his hat lower to hide his face under its shadow. He examined Lin Sanjiu from below his hat and then hurried past her.
Lin Sanjiu got onto the upper level and walked down the rows of monitor screens toward the main entrance. There were very few people in Mokugyo Encyclopedic Forum right now. From time to time, there would be noise coming out from somewhere. However, no matter how they looked, how they dressed, or what kind of species they were, those who appeared at Mokugyo Encyclopedic Forum at this hour looked very suspicious, including herself.
When she walked down the hall, she saw that one of the screens was still on, its lonely light trying to cast away the darkness that was closing in. Lin Sanjiu swept a gaze over it and saw a rolling message. "Looking for a bodyguard. Somebody is coming to kill me, but I don't have much money to offer." She let out a wry smile but didn't stop. She continued to stride forward and exited Mokugyo Forum.
Dawn was breaking as the sun began to rise from the east when she arrived at Black's Market. She stood at a stoop and allowed her gaze to travel out. She could see the undulating shadows in the distance, but she couldn't tell whether or not it was the mountain range that surrounded Mid Mountsburg. After she bought several new masks, she walked forward and dug out a few red crystals from her pouch.
Since she was in Black's Market right now, she decided to put Jezebel's matter aside and settle another issue on her hand right now.
Lin Sanjiu could smell the sweetness in the air when she went near the checkpoint. She paced towards the shop that sold pan-fried buns stuffed with duoluozhong slices and then handed a few red crystals to the duoluozhong that wore a mask. "Give me a few buns and slices."
It seemed that time had abandoned the duoluozhong as well. Even though several months had passed, Naga-ashi still looked the same. It stayed in the same place and did the same job. Whether or not it was injured or engulfed by its hatred, as a duoluozhong, it had to return to the shop to do its job and serve the customers. Apparently, Naga-ashi did not recognize her. It took the red crystals and threw her orders into two paper bags. After the collapse of human's society, plastic had become a rare material. Perhaps as Nüwa said, the demise of mankind might actually be beneficial for a planet.
Naga-ashi threw her a surreptitious gaze but did not say anything. After a few minutes, it looked at her again. The shop was small, and Lin Sanjiu was blocking almost half of it. When Lin Sanjiu popped another bun into her mouth, the duoluozhong finally spoke up, "You can't eat in here."
"I know. Your shop is so packed."
"Then, can you eat somewhere else?" Naga-ashi asked sternly.
"Sure, but I have a condition."
Stunned, Naga-ashi's hand slowed down.
Lin Sanjiu turned her head over but she did not take down her [Mask]. "I want to see Timo. I know you're still looking out for him," she stared at the duoluozhong and said softly, "Tell me, where he is now."
Chapter 813 - Jezebel, Target Found
"I repeat, I don't know where he is."
Naga-ashi lowered its head, refusing to make eye contact with Lin Sanjiu. It smacked its hand on the kneading board and hissed, "If I knew where he was, I would have killed him already."
It seemed that its human positive side had deteriorated in light of its transformation into a duoluozhong. There was only hatred in it, and its enmity towards Timo, who was its childhood sweetheart, was fueled by the fact that Timo did not get turned into a duoluozhong.
"Leave me alone, or I will call the cops," the duoluozhong growled. Its eyes were turning bloodshot, the mask puffing and then crinkling back in a papery rustle of accordion folds across its nose and mouth.
Lin Sanjiu remained steadfast in the face of Naga-ashi's sudden hostility. She roved over the duoluozhong up and down, and then turned away without saying anything.
As she moved down the street, Lin Sanjiu could feel Naga-ashi's gaze glaring into her back. She paid no mind to the duoluozhong's conspicuous hostility and turned around the corner. Then, after a short while, the sound of the duoluozhong's hands falling on the chopping board filled the air anew.
Initially, Lin Sanjiu planned to sound out some information about the former owner of Exodus from Timo. After all, Timo was his assigned real estate agent, and since the man could
get his hand on a spacecraft, he might have clues about the location of other spacecraft. In the event that she couldn't manage to scoop anything out of the man, at the very least, she would know where he hid all his fortunes.
Her money was enough to buy another house, but not a spacecraft.
"Forget it," Lin Sanjiu sighed deeply. "I don't hold out much hope either," she said to Mrs. Manas as she alighted from the bus. "I think I need to find another way to look for a spacecraft."
She waited for a while, but Mrs. Manas remained silent. Lin Sanjiu didn't know where she had gone, but she did not plan to find out.
She pulled herself out of her thoughts and looked ahead. Mid Mountsburg seemed to have been shrouded in a perpetual hail. The posthumans over here had refitted the buildings into their own liking. All of them had a different style, and they all particularly stood out from the white snow.
As she went near the tavern, she stopped and looked up. Even though there were several languages written on the signboard, she knew none of them. Although she couldn't tell if the building in front of her was a tavern or not, she did not mind much about it. She pushed the door open and stepped into the tavern.
She looked around and found herself a table near the window. She took a seat and looked out the window. The Bliss Convention Center and its surroundings were bathed in a symphony of red and blue. The scene was mesmerizing and pleasing to one's eyes. She retracted her gaze and began examining the interior of the tavern. There was a group of four bald hunks sitting next to her. All four of them had the same appearance, and their body sizes were too large for the tavern, making it look small while accomodating them. They didn't speak but merely stared at each other sternly. Just as Lin Sanjiu was sizing them up, a soft voice rang out beside her, "They are the gestalt brothers. I have never seen you around before, is this your first time coming here?"
Perhaps no one would use color to describe a voice. However, Lin Sanjiu saw the color of the voice when it slid into her ears. It was purple. Flabbergasted at the feeling, Lin Sanjiu looked at the man.