Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  It all happened so fast that Lin Sanjiu couldn't react in time. The moment before her hands connected with her face, Mrs. Manas deactivated the [Mosaic Censorship].

  It was only when her hands fell on her shoulder and her forehead that she finally came around to her senses. Her heartbeat sped into a gallop, and she belatedly realized that Mrs. Manas had deactivated the [Mosaic Censorship] in the last minute so that she wouldn't blow herself up into pieces. If it weren't for Mrs. Manas, she would be a pile of lifeless meat right now. The realization did not comfort her by the slightest bit, but made her even more scared. Her back was wet with sweat and her legs were shaking profusely.

  Slowly, she raised her head and looked up.

  There was a huge, black, petunia-shaped creature on the ceiling. It glissaded across the ceiling and slid down the wall into a window display at the corner. Lin Sanjiu peeled her eyes away and looked back. Not wanting the tentacle creature to catch up to her, she darted straight into the corridor. When she passed by the window display holding the creature that assaulted her just now, she saw it get up from the floor and then stand straight, swaying back and forth like a petunia flower in the wind.

  "Jezebel" began to speak again. "Aren't they cute? Anyway, if I were you, I wouldn't underestimate them. Although they all look strange, they are pretty nasty. That little creature that attacked you just now is something I came across in the past. It is very good at misdirecting its opponent, and then it strikes back by using its enemy's own attack."

  "Who the f*ck are you?" Lin Sanjiu shouted.

  "Well, if you insist, you can call me Bliss. There is only 30 minutes left, but you won't be able to reach the pool and check-in. Do you know why?"

  Lin Sanjiu finally saw the light.

  "Because you are this building," she answered.

  Chapter 819 - Tower Defense (1)

  Her giggle resembled the sound of the ocean waves at night when lapping on the shore and softly wisping back to sea. It was soothing to the ears and could cleanse one's soul.

  Though, that was what Lin Sanjiu would think in normal circ.u.mstances. Right now, Bliss's voices sounded just like an apparition whispering into her ears.

  "I was right. You really are something else," she said, "I wonder where you got the idea from. Many people have guessed my identity, but none of them gave an answer like yours. You are the only one who almost got the answer right."

  'Almost? Does that mean she's not the building? What is she, then?'

  Lin Sanjiu raised one of her brows, and just as she was about to ask Bliss what she meant, a rumbling noise as if something was dragging itself on the floor erupted behind her. She jerked her head back and caught sight of an arctic-white shadow. However, before she could do anything, the staircase suddenly began to whirr to life. Like an escalator, it sent the creature down to the first floor.

  Lin Sanjiu had no idea what was going on. She did not know why the staircase would suddenly move, and she did not know why Bliss would help her. Then, Bliss's voice rang out once more, "See? As long as you listen to me and be a good girl, I won't let them go near you."

  Following her words, all the lights on the second floor turned on one after another, bringing the window displays on both sides of the corridor into the light.

  Lin Sanjiu squinted her eyes as a measure to protect her eyes from the sudden blast of light. Then, by the time she got a better view of her surroundings, she froze. She didn't know where she should put her eyes, even though she did not want to look at any of the displays.

  "All of these are your collections?"

  In reply, Bliss gave a half-hearted assent.

  "They are all duoluozhongs?"

  "Well, not all of them," she giggled, her voice sounding so near that it startled Lin Sanjiu. She quickly turned around to look about the corridor but she found no sign of Bliss. Instead, she found an old man, so old that he looked no different from a dead man, staring at her from a window display.

  She had never seen such an old person before. His appearance had decayed to the point that it was too grotesque to look at, and the very sight of it would make a person's stomach to churn. His gender and age were indiscernible, and Lin Sanjiu wondered how he could breathe with such a decrepit body. Her breathing quickened, and she had no idea if it was her brain or her nose playing a trick on her, but she seemed to be able to catch a strong, foul-smelling odor from the air even though the old man was locked away in a window display. When the old man turned his pair of bloody greyed-out eyes, it sent chills down Lin Sanjiu's spine and her back drenched in cold sweats.

  She never detested elderly people, but the old man's flat, soulless gaze really made her queasy. She could feel her stomach shrinking a little more every second.

  As an entity living inside her sea of psyche, Mrs. Manas seemed to be infected by her queasiness as well. She kept mumbling in the back of her mind, "I warned you about this, right? Right? I told you not to come to Bliss, but you wouldn't listen. You are really cruising for a bruising. I wonder how you are going to reach the checkpoint in 20 minutes."

  Lin Sanjiu paid no mind to Mrs. Manas. She wiped the slime off her face and asked again, "What are you then if you are not this building?"

  "You already know the answer, don't you? About my real identity," Bliss chuckled, "On that night..."

  "So are you a human?" Lin Sanjiu interrupted.

  Bliss's answer caused her to frown.

  "From a certain perspective, you can consider me as a human."

  "All you need to say is yes or no," Lin Sanjiu said as she slowly inched forward. "There is no in-between."

  "One more step and I will release one of the monsters."

  'Damn it!'

  Lin Sanjiu stopped moving forward unwillingly.

  The battle between posthumans was often predictable. After all, no matter how vast or bizarre an Evolving Ability or Special Item was, there ought to be a pattern. However, it wasn't the same case for duoluozhong and other monsters. Their movements and abilities were often unpredictable. The best example would be the queen at Shambhala. Who could have thought that it could inject parasites into its victims' brains to lure them to Shambhala and consume them?

  The worst thing was that she rarely ran into a duoluozhong ever since she left Hyperthermal Hell. Hence, she couldn't tell what those monsters in the window displays could do.

  Even though she was very confident with her speed, there was no way she could cross a thousand meters in a flash. With that thought in mind, she pulled out her [Tailor Learning] and grasped the card firmly in her palm, hoping that the pointer could help point out the weakness of the duoluozhong.

  "You're not giving up yet, aren't you?" Bliss suddenly asked softly. "You know, I can see very clearly what you are trying to do over there."

  'If she isn't the spirit of the building and if she isn't here, then how on earth did she know I just moved my fingers?'

  Lin Sanjiu quickly calmed herself down and said, "I am just a little curious about your collection." She took a step forward and before Bliss could say anything, she stopped and pointed at a window display in the corner. Then she froze in confusion as she asked, "Is that a duoluozhong as well?"

  Bliss gave a half-suppressed laugh, "Try and take a step forward, then you will know the answer yourself."

  'I don't have much time left. I have to do something…'

  However, she needed an opportunity.

  She spun her head around and looked at the window display on her right side. It was filled with sand, and the grainy gravel was clearly visible on the glass. There were holes, similar to the burrows of a ghost crab on a beach, here and there in the sand.

  The window display on her left side held a machine that was hovering in midair. The machine was a cube and had a bright metallic sheen.

  She did not know what was the use of the machine, but compared to other creatures, it looked the safest.

  The most important thing was, it wasn't a living thing.

  Lin S
anjiu's body glowed as she activated the [Defense Forcefield]. She balled her hand into a fist and expelled a puff of air on her joint as she said in a low voice, "It seems to me that you love to avoid giving an honest answer. It is a little rude, don't you think?"

  Bliss was slightly stunned. However, before she could say anything, Lin Sanjiu thrust her fist into the glass on her left.

  The machine was still levitating obediently in midair. The air was filled with a faint noise that sounded like a mechanical whirring. Just as her hand almost touched the machine, a strange feeling rose up from her belly.

  Something was not right.

  She was inside one of Bliss's window displays and she was about to do something to one of her collections, but why was Bliss so quiet? There wasn't any movement in the corridor, and it seemed as if Bliss was waiting for something else to happen...

  Lin Sanjiu's heart made a somersault and she changed her direction just as the tip of her fingers grazed overhead the machine. The mechanical whirring seemed louder for a second, but then it dimmed down very soon in the next moment.

  Bliss let out a relieved sigh. Her voice sounded soothing like the ocean's tide.

  "Luckily you pulled out at the last second," she said, and Lin Sanjiu noticed a distinct hint of relief in her voice. "I really didn't want to see you get turned into a sausage."

  'That was a meat grinder?'

  "All right, get out of there," Bliss said affectionately, as if she was coaxing a child to take its medicine. "The machine cannot move or attack anyone actively, but don't look down on it just because of that; this machine can do something far more fearsome than you could've imagined. It can turn anything it touches into grind meat. Be it an Evolving Ability or Special Item, they are nothing but materials for it to make sausage. Did you use your ability just now? Well, yeah, if you did not stop at the last minute, then it would have turned you and your ability into a sausage with ability. Of course, I can also entrap you with the machine in the window display, but I would rather not do that. Anyway, come on, come out now, that's right, one step at a time and you will be fine."

  Lin Sanjiu did not know why, but she felt a little embarrassed, and her cheeks turned pink. Just when she stepped out of the window display, all the glass shards floated up into midair as if they were bestowed with life and began to assemble themselves back into an entirely new piece of glass.

  She turned her head back, and she somewhat understood how the machine could hover in mid-air without touching anything. Be that as it may, there was something she couldn't understand. "If anything that touches it will be turned into a sausage, then how did you manage to put it in Bliss?"

  The woman laughed, "Who told you that I put it in Bliss?"

  Lin Sanjiu frowned.

  As if she was tickled pink by Lin Sanjiu's reaction, Bliss gave out a hearty laugh, "You are so funny. Alright, alright, I didn't put it into Bliss because I built Bliss around it."

  This was indeed a shocking answer, but Lin Sanjiu did not have the freedom to marvel at the machine right now. She had less than 20 minutes to check-in, and she was still stuck on the second floor. She held an arm up and called out a card by using the arm as a distraction.

  "Even if I say I'd stay, you wouldn't believe me, right?"

  "Yeap. After all, you are not the kind of person who would give up so easily." Bliss sighed, which sent chills up Lin Sanjiu's back and made her remember the scene in the pool the other day. "So I had to keep an eye on you all the time."

  It occurred to Lin Sanjiu that Bliss and her comrades knew her very well.

  "You keep saying that it is "them" who want to kill me and not you, but you never told me who they are and why they want to kill me," Lin Sanjiu said as she secretly sized up the corridor that laid ahead of her. Even though the corridor wasn't all the way straight, it was still possible for her to rush to the other side of the corridor if she went full out on her speed.

  "Well, your very existence is a threat to us, and you have something on you that they want," Bliss did not give a direct answer to her question. And just as she was about to continue, Lin Sanjiu saw her chance and hurled something to the front.

  'If Bliss is really a human being, then this might work…'

  A plume of smoke sizzled out and filled the area in a split second. Lin Sanjiu could not see anything and her eyes began to tear up. She closed her nose with her hand and went into a full sprint. Using the [Battle Item] to imitate a smoke bomb might be a waste, but this was her best shot. She planned to pick the [Battle Item] up along the way, but she couldn't locate it amidst the smoke.

  After she galloped along the corridor at her top speed for a few minutes, her feet kicked something.

  Her heart leaped from joy, but her happiness was short-lived.

  It wasn't the [Battle Item], but something else.

  Chapter 820 - Tower Defense (2)

  The moment she kicked the thing, she felt something touch her shoulders.

  It was impossible to see beyond the billowing wall of smoke, so Lin Sanjiu came to an abrupt stop and recoiled two steps to the side. She jerked her head around but there was nothing on her shoulder.

  She had her hypersensory activated, so by right, she should be able to notice if a duoluozhong came near her.

  Tears were flowing profusely out of her eyes. She covered her nose with her hand and attempted to round the thing that she kicked just now when she heard the sound of glass shattering against the floor.

  Judging from the intensity of the sound, she reckoned that Bliss had unlocked at least three to four window displays ahead of her.

  'This is bad…' Lin Sanjiu thought inwardly.

  After sizing up her surroundings, she realized she was now in a situation that could be called 'trapped between a rock and a hard place'. There were a lot more display windows behind her, but her sight was limited. She didn't know how many monsters were on the loose and she couldn't be sure how many of them were coming at her right now.

  All of a sudden, the air began swirling energetically as a buzzing sound came to life. She was dazed for a few seconds before she finally realized it was the air ventilation system that had been turned on. Fresh air was being pumped in, and the smoke was dissipating away from the corridor, though the process was horrendously slow as the smoke continued to hang low and heavy in the air. Lin Sanjiu held her breath, her hearing sharpened, focused.

  There were other things lurking around as well.

  Aside from the constant buzz, the air was also filled with a cacophony of clattering, bestial cackling, and panting. She squinted her eyes, trying to see past the thick blanket of greyness but to no avail. She couldn't make out anything more than shadows that flitted here and there in the distance.

  It now occurred to her that it was no longer realistic to get around the thing on the floor ahead of her.

  Lin Sanjiu pressed her back tightly against the wall; the pointer elongated and slid between her fingers. Tears raged out of her eyes uncontrollably, which only added to the dread of the situation. Her visibility was already greatly restricted by the smoke, and right now, she couldn't even see more than six inches ahead. Left with no other choice, she could only rely on her "hypersensory" to gauge her surroundings.

  However, looking on the bright side, since she couldn't see anything, she was certain that the situation was the same for Bliss as well. That's if she was a human being.

  Suddenly, she captured some movements from the air. She snapped herself out of the train of thought and concentrated on her ears once more.

  Then, she heard a sound of distant movement—clothing rustling, the body of a human dragging against the floor. Before she could respond, another series of clip-clops rang out from behind. She jerked her head back and took a peek, but the dense smoke had rendered her unable to see through anything. In front of her, she could feel a cold shadow hovering not far away. The shadow looked strange. Sometimes it was big while other times it was small. For a second she could differentiate the shou
lder from the head, but in the next, she felt that it looked just like chewed bubblegum.

  Lin Sanjiu couldn't tell how many monsters were hiding in the smoke, but one thing was certain. All of them were coming for her, eager to tear her into pieces.

  She snapped her eyes closed. Brine was playing a wild game on her face, and she found it harder and harder for her to breathe. Every breath she took in was half-filled with smoke. It made her cough. She tried to suppress the urge, as she feared making any sound at all, for the slightest sound would expose her location, and Bliss would react by releasing more monsters upon her. That was something she did not want to happen.

  Her lungs and cells were screaming for oxygen, and blood was shooting up to her brain. It dampened the accuracy of her "hypersensory", and she couldn't detect the location of the creature in the smoke very well. Suddenly, she felt something was on her feet. She instinctively jumped backward and brandished her pointer in a downward swipe.

  By the time she felt a stinging sensation on her arm, the pointer's assessment had arrived as well. "Target has developed card and explosion related abilities, as well as heightened reflexes and enhanced physical strength. It is advised not to engage the target in close-quarters combat, please proceed with a long-range attack…"

  She had no idea why, but she found the description a little familiar.

  But she knew it was not the right time to dwell on such trivial stuff. Ignoring the complaint from her eyes, she wiped the tear off her face and forced her eyes open. She looked around and saw a familiar face amidst the smoke.

  It was her own face.

  There were two harsh lines running down on each side of the face. The person had the same messy hairstyle as her and the same pair of amber-colored eyes. The only thing different was that the "Lin Sanjiu" was lying on the floor, clothed in ragged garments as she dragged herself forward.