Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  She tossed the hair aside and rubbed her hand on her trousers.

  The pocket dimension had said that there were many posthumans who starved to death since they could not crack the secret room. She figured it was normal to find some human bodies or remains here, so...

  Even though that was what her rationality kept telling her, she still could not shake off the strange feeling that kept niggling her. What was more, the strange feeling was getting stronger with every passing minute. She had a very sharp sense of intuition, and something within her was screaming at her, telling her that there was something wrong about the bones and hair.

  What was it though?

  A shade of vermillion was smeared across the sky as the west-bound sun began to descend. Her shadow was getting longer and longer, and it eventually looked like a dead body on the ground. She surmised that there must be plenty of posthumans who lay on the ground like this, waiting for death to claim their lives.

  "Only if the grand prize were here. He would have already cleared the secret room."

  Lin Sanjiu sighed as she gazed skyward into the sun. The sun had gotten so much lower that darkness began to seep in from the other side, and she reckoned that she would not have much time left. She peeled her eyes from the fiery sky and gazed down at the card in her hand. The words on the card [Hey, Sis?] caught the final bit of sunlight from the setting sun and glimmered in her eyes.

  "Let's call him and ask for his advice," Mrs. Manas encouraged, "Besides, you are worried about him as well, aren't you?"

  The card disappeared and a communication device appeared in its place.

  Lin Sanjiu stared at the communication device, unable to make up her mind whether she should call Ji Shanqing or not. After wrestling with herself in her mind, she sighed and placed it on the ground, not turning it back into a card.

  "That is why I can't contact him right now." She stood up and walked towards the patch of grass. "He's probably in danger, and I can't distract him because of something like this. Anyway, what else did you get over there?"

  "Plenty," Mrs. Manas replied, "There is a truncated thick barbed wire, which I don't know how to use, and several pieces of clothing. For example, there's a jacket and a pair of trousers…"

  Lin Sanjiu inspected the ground as she listened to Mrs. Manas's report. She just wished that she could rebuild the other half of the warehouse before the sun completely went down.

  Crouching in the glass and looking for something was an exhausting and time-consuming job. As the day became darker, the soil was consumed by the darkness. By the time twilight receded and was replaced by the night, Lin Sanjiu had already called out her [Polishing Ability Agent]. Looking at a metal frame with the help from the silvery bottle, she heaved out a long sigh.

  "Hold on for a second, Mrs. Manas," she called out, "Look at this. What is this for?"

  "Does this look like a door frame to you?" Lin Sanjiu said doubtfully. Putting everything aside, the metal frame did look like the bottom section of a gate.

  "This is weird," Mrs. Manas replied, "Look here. There are chunks of concrete on both sides of the frame, and they are all made from the same material. Does this mean that the same type of flooring is used both inside and outside of the warehouse? In general, shouldn't there be a sidewalk or asphalt after coming out of a building?"

  However, no matter how much she scrutinized the ground, there was only soil in front of her at the moment.

  "Well, if we want to know if this is a door or not..." An idea popped up in her brain, and she decided to test it out. She rose from the ground and continued, "There is only one way to find out."

  With that, she stepped over the metal frame and strode towards the patch of grass before her. No sooner had she made her second step, her boot fell on the concrete slab. Once again, she was sent back to the secret room full of rows of racks.

  She turned her head and looked at the grass in the distance. The light from the [Ability Polishing Agent] outlined each blade of grass with a halo of silver.

  There was the main entrance of the warehouse.

  If the main entrance was the final stop of the "secret room", she would be sent back to the secret room if she did not clear the pocket dimension in the right way. It seemed to her that the pocket dimension could move or fold space.

  "So, now we know where the main entrance is." Lin Sanjiu heaved out a relieved sigh as a big grin spread across her face. "That was one significant breakthrough."

  "So, what now? Should we go and find the key?"

  "Maybe...But what we found was just a frame. There's no lock, so how are we supposed to open the door and go out?" She walked over to pick the [Ability Polishing Agent] from the ground. With the silvery bottle in her hand, she spun around and took in her surroundings. Now that the sky had completely darkened, it was difficult to look for a key with a single light source.

  All of a sudden, Lin Sanjiu had a brainwave. She realized that the sequence was wrong. There should be a wall first, then a door and a lock, and finally the key, which would be then used to unlock the door.

  Most of the grass disappeared after she used the [Power Of Word Picture] to spread the concrete slab around. The warehouse began to take shape and looked more like a storage place. With the two walls as her premise, Lin Sanjiu tried to rebuild another two. All four walls should be made from the same material. She had no idea why, but no matter how much description she came up with, the remaining two walls just would not appear.

  "Why is this pocket dimension so stingy with clues?" Lin Sanjiu grumbled as she kicked the pile of rubbish next to her feet. "It didn't give me any clue on the size or shape of the key, so how am I supposed to…"

  Before she could finish her sentence, she heard a jangle as a small object dropped on the ground.

  Lin Sanjiu and Mrs. Manas fell silent. Lin Sanjiu looked over to the source of the sound and saw a key the size of just half a thumb lying on top of the mass of garbage.

  "No, no way…" She quickly went forward and picked the key from the ground. Mrs. Manas stammered, "The pocket dimension gives the key to us just like that? How is that possible?"

  As a person that bad luck particularly had a fondness for, Lin Sanjiu was skeptical. Using the [Ability Polishing Agent], she measured the key. It was very small and rather thin. If she brushed the layer of rust off, she was certain that it would become even smaller.

  "This is strange. I didn't see this key just now. Where did it come from?" Mrs. Manas asked.

  Lin Sanjiu looked at the heap of rubbish that lay haphazardly on the ground. An idea flashed across her mind as she crouched down to grab the corner of a cloth next to her feet. She yanked her arm upward and sent a puff of dust billowing. She covered her mouth and nose with her palm and then began examining the cloth.

  It was the jacket that Mrs. Manas had mentioned in her findings just now.

  Due to the jacket being left in the wild for such a long time, it had deteriorated far beyond recognizable. Lin Sanjiu did not know what kind of color it was. After a short bout of rumination, she pulled the jeans out. She wiggled them and sneezed several times as the dust irritated her.

  The reason she was doing this was that since she could not find the key when she ferreted through the garbage for the first time, thus it could only mean one thing—the key was stored somewhere. Amongst the garbage, it could have only been in the pocket of a shirt or a trouser.

  "This warehouse is full of female clothing and all of them are nicely packed," she explained to Mrs. Manas as she patted the dust from the cloth, "Don't you think it's weird that these two are separately packed? Not to mention that they are menswear."

  'Of all the clothes in here, why would the key drop from this?'

  With that thought in mind, Lin Sanjiu raised the jacket. It seemed like a windbreaker as it had a coarse texture. Its pockets were not as deep as those in the jeans, so it was more likely for the key to slip from one of these pockets.

  The night without any artificial light sour
ce was dark as ink. Even with her [Ability Polishing Agent], Lin Sanjiu still had a hard time studying the time-worn jacket. Besides, it was black in color, so...

  "Hold on a second."

  Upon closer inspection, she found that the shoulders, the collar, and the hem of the jacket were actually a deep blue. Only the back and the abdomen area had a patch of irregular black and were far harder than any other spots. Besides that, she also found a hole at the back.

  "So, it isn't black…" Lin Sanjiu mumbled, "The owner of this jacket had bled profusely and soaked the jacket with his blood. The hole on the back was probably caused by a knife of some sort."

  The secret room escape pocket dimension would not kill with a knife, so there was a huge probability that this unfortunate guy had been killed by his companion. Although it was hard to imagine that a posthuman could die from a single wound, it could have been possible if the deceased had been weak and wounded.

  The explanation seemed reasonable, but Lin Sanjiu's brows did not relax.

  Chapter 836 - Warehouse Keeper

  She put the [Ability Polishing Agent] on the shelf. Then, using the silvery light, she looked through the windbreaker.

  The tag and washing label was worn out beyond recognition. There were a moldy paper towel and a piece of chewing gum wrapping paper inside the pocket on the left. The chewing gum wrapping paper was dotted with rust; Lin Sanjiu surmised that it got the rust from the key. In another pocket, she found an employee card in a yellowed plastic holder. The lanyard had long broken, and perhaps that was the reason why the person kept it inside the pocket.

  The plastic holder was brittle and blotted, and several of the words were smeared. Lin Sanjiu suspected that nature had caused the damage. She squinted her eyes and barely made out several letters such as "company", "keeper", and "Li", which seemed to be part of a name.

  Suddenly, she had a brainwave and everything made sense to her. She took a deep breath and said, "He is not a posthuman."

  "No wonder why I kept feeling that something is wrong," continued Lin Sanjiu as she rubbed the center of her forehead. When she raised her head and looked into the warehouse again, everything seemed different. "What makes me suspicious is not what is in the pocket dimension, but what should have been in the pocket dimension."

  She was confident that there must be more than one, perhaps hundreds or thousands of posthumans, who died in this pocket dimension, yet all she found was a small pile of broken bones and hair. Where had the other people's corpses gone to?

  Many had died here, but their bodies were nowhere to be seen. The pocket dimension must have done something to those dead bodies, as it did not want the dead bodies of those posthumans to affect Lin Sanjiu's decision in looking for the clue. The pocket dimension went through all the trouble of disposing of all the dead bodies, yet it deliberately left out the pile of broken bones. This could only mean one thing; the pile of bones was the clue and combined with the hint she received just now, it was sending a message to Lin Sanjiu—firstly, somebody died here, and secondly, the victim was a staff member at this warehouse.

  Hence, it was likely that the person died before the doomsday came. After all, nobody would still attend to their work faithfully after the world's demise.

  "You might be right. Besides, I don't see any living material or household waste around," Mrs. Manas agreed, "So he couldn't have used the warehouse as a shelter."

  "He was murdered in a normal society." Lin Sanjiu raised her brows as she looked at the hole at the back of the jacket. "So is this a murder case?"

  "Hold, hold on a second," Mrs. Manas stammered. "Are you telling me that the locked room pocket dimension happens to be the crime scene?"

  "I am not sure, but there must be some connection between these two things," Lin Sanjiu said as she put the jacket down. She reached out for the jeans, and a string of jangling sounds rang out when she lifted it up.

  Piqued by her curiosity, she stretched her hand into the pocket and was surprised by what she pulled out.

  It was a bunch of keys.

  She didn't realize there were keys inside the pocket of the jeans when she went through the mass of garbage the first time. It now occurred to her that a new clue would be unlocked as she progressed further in clearing the locked room.

  "There are five keys here," Lin Sanjiu muttered, "But how should I find the right one from these when there are no doors for me to test?"

  Unlike the previous key, these five keys were much heavier and more solid. They were cylindrical in shape, and the keyring was slightly loosened. Lin Sanjiu took out the tiny key and realized it could fit into the keyring as well. It seemed that the key got loose and fell from the keyring, so the owner just shoved it into the jacket pocket.

  "Let's see what we got in here…"

  She laid the keys, the paper towel, the employee card, and the windbreaker on the ground. Her eyes hopped from one to another as she said, "Looking at the size of the jacket and jeans, the victim should be standing at about 175 cm tall and has an ectomorphic body. While for his age, as a man who doesn't really care about what kind of clothes to put on his body, it is really hard to guess.

  "The employee card must belong to the victim, and that could only mean one thing. He is one of the working staff here, so could it be the "keeper" here means "warehouse keeper?"

  If he was the warehouse keeper, then everything would make sense. Lin Sanjiu did not forget that the ground inside and outside of the door frame was the same. If this warehouse was just a part of the building, then it explained why they would use the same flooring inside and outside the door. It also threw light on why the warehouse keeper had more than one key. After all, as a warehouse keeper, it was his duty to hold the key.

  "A warehouse keeper who was stabbed to death in a warehouse," she parroted, "But why is the jacket so clean?"

  She remembered that she discovered the jacket and jeans in the deepest part of the warehouse whereas the find-spot of the pile of broken bones and hair was in the middle of the warehouse.

  There could only be two explanations for this kind of situation. One, the bones and the clothes belonged to two different people, and two, after the warehouse keeper was dead, someone stripped him n.a.k.e.d and hurled his clothes into the deepest part of the warehouse.

  Be that as it may, Lin Sanjiu was more inclined towards the first explanation.

  Frowning, Lin Sanjiu sank into deep thought. If the clothes and the bones were from two different people, then all her speculations would end up for naught.

  After a long while, she forced herself back to reality and sighed dejectedly.

  "And I am still very confident in my speculation," she mumbled. After that, she stuffed the chain of keys and the employer card into her pocket. "Forget it. Guess I still have to rebuild the main entrance first—"

  She created the wall, the rack, and the goods at the same time. If one rack disappeared, the other would soon follow. Lin Sanjiu summoned the [Power of Word Picture] once more, and as she was repeating the description and detail, another two racks disappeared.

  "Student Lin," Mrs. Manas called out to her suddenly. Lin Sanjiu had no idea why, but her voice was a little shaky. "Lin Sanjiu."

  "What's wrong?"

  "I… I'm not sure either… It's just that I felt something. I think you better turn around and have a look."

  Lin Sanjiu froze. She stood straight as a ramrod as she activated her hypersensory. However, she couldn't sense anything. Even the air had stopped moving as well. The feeling was not pleasant. It felt as if she was being buried under a coffin.

  "You… can you walk one step forward?"

  Lin Sanjiu followed. She lifted her leg, took one step forward, and then put her leg down. The slight click when her boot connected with the ground was exceptionally clear in the deadly silence.

  Mrs. Manas did not have a corporeal body, but she "gulped".

  "I recall that you have a mirror, don't you?" she asked in a very low voice. "The one prepared
by your grand prize…"

  Then, she finally saw it.

  The spot where the rack should have been was now shrouded in darkness, out of the [Ability Polishing Agent]'s reach. In the darkness, there was a humanoid shadow. Even though it was very far away, the chill of death emanating from its body crept onto Lin Sanjiu's skin without any problem.

  In the mirror, the humanoid figure's head held so low, its neck made a 90-degree angle with its c.h.e.s.t. It was leaning against a rack, and it took it a lot of energy just to stand straight.

  "Turn… turn a little to your left," Mrs. Manas stammered.

  Holding her breath, Lin Sanjiu turned the mirror slightly.

  It was then that Lin Sanjiu saw the humanoid figure's long and thin limbs. The white vest on his body had become black. He wore only a checkered boxer, and the remainder of his legs were hidden in the dark.

  Using the rack as its only support, it took one large stride forward and came closer to Lin Sanjiu.

  Chapter 837 - Another Face

  Lin Sanjiu felt a chill rush down her spine when a discordant note rang out, jarring her out of her reverie. The [Ability Polishing Agent] fell to the ground, thrusting the warehouse into a limbo of light and dark. The silvery bottle rolled all the way until it was stopped by a foot.

  The foot was gray and bloodless, and the skin was wrinkled like a stiffened piece of old leather that had been exposed to the sun for too long.

  Using the momentarily chance granted by her [Ability Polishing Agent], Lin Sanjiu trailed her gaze along with the silvery light and looked up. The legs were raw-boned and exhibited an unwholesome pallor while there was a long shadow dragged behind the frail silhouette. Suddenly, she heard a series of bone-popping sounds coming from the figure's neck. It seemed to her that the thing was trying to straighten its neck but to no avail.

  Lin Sanjiu hastily kept the mirror away. When she turned around, she was already holding her [Tornado Whip].