Doomsday Wonderland c1-855

by N. Heller

  The corpse was nowhere to be seen on the ground. From the third or fourth level, a grayish-white hand limberly stretched out and grabbed the edge of the next level tightly.

  It was climbing up the rack.

  It occurred to Lin Sanjiu that she must change her location right now, or else, she would be caught before the communication device could connect to her grand prize. With that thought in mind, she stuffed the device aside and fixed her eyes on the wall not far away. Then, she sprang up and lunged at the wall.

  With a mighty smack, she hung from the wall. However, the surface of the wall was smooth and there were no spots for her to latch on. She brandished her arms and legs, trying to climb up the wall but to no avail. Without any other options, the lightbulb in her brain lit up and she commanded wheezingly, "There's a lamp on this wall!"

  Then, she placed both her hands on the lamp and finally prevented herself from falling.

  She turned to look at the dead body. It was now going down the rack with its head still deeply buried in front of the c.h.e.s.t cavity. She could not comprehend why a sluggish, crippled corpse would have such fast reflexes and moving speed.

  She thought the dead body would come straight for her, but surprisingly, after a momentarily pause, it turned around and went in the other direction.

  'Huh? Couldn't it sense me?' Lin Sanjiu thought as she pulled herself up. Just as she was about to sit on the lamp, her vision went blur and the world in her eyes turned upside down. Before she comprehended anything, a sharp pain spread from the back of her head as she hit the ground.

  She lay on the ground, hissing in pain. In her haze of concussion, she opened her eyes and traded glances with the corpse standing right in front of her.

  Chapter 842 - The Reward Of Good Deed (1)

  Was there any sense of fairness in seeking revenge?

  Imagine this situation: if somebody stabbed you, then you would stab him back. It seemed pretty fair on the surface, but when you looked deeper into it, oftentimes, that was not the case. You did not hurt anybody and were innocent, so why would you have to experience the same pain as the proprietor? The only fair treatment should be the wound on your body disappearing while the proprietor got stabbed in the same spot.

  Let's try to imagine another situation: if you were killed, fairness would ensue if you were resurrected and the murderer died in your place. Only through this way could your benefits be preserved while the murderer received the punishment he deserved at the same time. However, since this kind of situation defied natural law, it was often unacceptable in the majority of places save for one—the pocket dimension.

  Her blood was pumping fast and the flow of blood had blocked out all other sounds. However, despite the chaotic situation, there was one thing clear.

  She finally figured why she must not allow the corpse to get near her. It was because the dead body had regarded her as the murderer and would get its "fair treatment" from her once it got close enough. What could be more just and fair than taking life from the murderer and resurrecting itself?

  "Quick!" Mrs. Manas urged in her mind, "Go to your right!"

  Covering her c.h.e.s.t, Lin Sanjiu kept the [Tailored Learning] away. The line "a dead body that believes in fair treatment can only be achieved through lex talionis" vanished from the air. She loosened her grip on her [Ability Polishing Agent] and the silver bottle rolled out far into the corner of the warehouse. She did not go to retrieve her it and pulled her [Tornado Whip] out instead. Then, with a mighty swing, she sent forth a gale to the front.

  The glut of corruption disappeared from her face along with the dead body, leaving only a faint rotten scent lingering at the tip of her nose. It was hard to describe the smell, and if she must give a description, she would say it smelt like death and decay. When it flowed through her nasal cavities into her body, she felt half of her blood dry up while her consciousness was slipping away.

  Before Lin Sanjiu could hold her breath, a stabbing pain jolted mercilessly through her body and her organs. Her breath became stuck in her throat, and in mere moments, her clothes were soaked with blood that bubbled out from her body. Using the fleeting chance endowed by her [Ability Polishing Agent] before it slipped away from her hand, she saw that the patch of blood on the dead body's c.h.e.s.t was shrinking.

  In less than half a second, the corpse had transferred its injury to Lin Sanjiu's body. She had no idea how it managed to do that, but the current situation did not give her the freedom to find out.

  Mustering every ounce of strength in her body, Lin Sanjiu pulled herself up from the ground. Her ears started to ring and her vision turned gray and fuzzy. Barreling forward, she went straight to the direction under Mrs. Manas's navigation and hid in between two racks. She turned her head and peered through the slit in between the racks to see the dead body flying through the air with its two legs fluttering like two sacks before its entire body hit the ground.

  "Don't let it come any nearer to you anymore," Mrs. Manas spoke hastily, "I don't wish to see your neck get twisted like that."

  'Not that I want that to happen, but…'

  The words lingered on the tip of Lin Sanjiu's tongue, but she could not spit them out. Leaning against the rack, she kept her hand pressed tightly over the wound and her consciousness was fuzzy like a TV screen that was covered in snow.

  'Did I hurt any of my essential organs? Are my lungs bleeding?' Lin Sanjiu did not know. She was clueless about what had happened to her body, and she did not know why such a small wound could cause her to be on the verge of losing consciousness. She had suffered countless injuries more severe than this, yet...

  Ryuji seemed to notice her condition as well. He was calling out to her, yet he sounded like he was talking underwater. His voice became almost inaudible. To make the situation worse, the warehouse was dreary and her field of vision was now becoming more nebulous with every passing second. She had to blink her eyes hard several times to remain focused. In the distance, the corpse was getting up from the ground. Without the wound on its c.h.e.s.t, its limbs behaved in a more coordinated fashion and its movement had become more agile.

  'Damn it…'

  Lin Sanjiu turned to resume running, but her legs refused to obey the command. She stumbled and her shoulders slammed into the rack.

  "The first aid kit." As her consciousness was fading away, Mrs. Manas's voice became more unstable. "The grand prize must have prepared one for you. Quickly look for it."

  As if there was an ever-growing black hole in her body sapping her strength away, she grew weak rapidly. She plopped onto the ground, then got up again albeit falteringly. She subconsciously took a cuboid object out, but it was the communication device and not the first aid kit.

  "First aid kit," she mumbled. It seemed that even in her current condition, the wellbeing of her grand prize was all she cared about. "Grand prize…"

  Dragging its arms and tilting its head, the corpse charged straight at Lin Sanjiu at a blinding speed. She summoned her dissipating strength to pull herself up from the ground and began tottering down the warehouse. The wound was causing her tons of pain and it was getting harder for her to breathe. As a posthuman, this was one of the few occasions on which she felt powerless and vulnerable.

  However, Lin Sanjiu let out a bitter smile when she thought of something else.

  The corpse had transferred its injury to her. It had been fatal to the corpse. Therefore, according to the principle of "an eye for an eye", she should have been dead the moment she received the wound. The reason she could survive for so long was that her physical body was more durable than a normal posthuman's.

  As she wobbled towards another side of the warehouse, she could not believe that she did not even have the room to take a breather after sustaining such a severe injury. Standing on the only side that was not covered by any wall, Ryuji shouted, "What's going on? Your wound seems terrifying. Don't you have any medicine or appliances to tend to that?"

  Before Lin Sanjiu could reply, sh
e tripped and fell to the ground once more. She was certain that the grand prize must have prepared a first-aid kit for her, but in the situation whereby she did not know the exact name of the kit, she had no other choice but to search through her card deck one by one.

  "Here, take this. You've helped me a lot. This is the best I've got now. I'm throwing it in!"

  As soon as his voice faded away, a spherical mass flew from Ryuji's hand into the pocket dimension. Gnashing her teeth, Lin Sanjiu forced herself up from the ground and grabbed it. Then, as if triggered by the scent of blood, the thing came to life and poised its head up. After that, it made a beeline for her c.h.e.s.t area and coiled its body around her wound like a snake.

  Chapter 843 - Reconnected With The Grand Prize

  Burp.

  As the bandage coiled tightly around her upper torso, a gush of air rose from her stomach and she burped. She heard Mrs. Manas chuckle, then she felt the depletion of her strength begin to slow down gradually until it finally came to a complete stop.

  Using the dim light as her sole light source, she looked down and saw that her entire upper torso was wrapped in what seemed to be a bandage as it was white in color. Blood spread and sank into the bandage but soon stopped completely. She turned her eyes to the roll of gauze in her hand and realized it had shrunk to half of its original size. It was now expanding and contracting arduously on her palm, seeming to gasp for breath.

  "Bandie!" Hiding in the bush, Ryuji shouted. Lin Sanjiu had no idea why but his voice was shaking slightly, "Is…is Bandie okay?"

  'Bandie? Is that the name of this roll of gauze? What a casual and cute name…'

  Looking at the wheezing bandage, Lin Sanjiu did not know if she should cut it off from her body or not. Since this little thing had a name and could breathe, she feared that she would hurt it when she cut it with a knife.

  "Oh, I see it. That's great," Ryuji sighed and she could sense the slight relief in the timbre of his voice. "Can you throw it back to me? It will detach itself from your body."

  As if it heard its master's voice, Bandie reeled back slightly and then tore itself from Lin Sanjiu's body. The remaining bandage then made a knot and fell silent as if it had become a real bandage.

  "But I can't return it to you now," Lin Sanjiu said apologetically. Her voice was still faltering from the injury. "Before I clear the mystery, nothing can leave the pocket dimension."

  Staring at his Bandie, Ryuji rubbed his face and took in a deep breath. When he raised his head, his expression changed. He pointed a finger behind her, and before he could warn her, Lin Sanjiu had already leaped out to the side. At that moment, she sensed a glut of decaying and rotten stench graze past her shoulder. Even though she was gripped by the sharp pain that burst from her c.h.e.s.t, she still escaped unscathed.

  Like Bandie in her hand, she wheezed heavily due to her severe injury.

  She admitted that she had underestimated the effect of the "fatal injury" that the corpse had transferred to her. She did not expect it to affect her so much.

  Lin Sanjiu converted the roll of bandage into a card and then spun her head to look at the communication device in the distance. She had summoned it because contacting her grand prize was the only thing in her mind while she was lingering on the line of unconsciousness. Right now, two minutes had passed, yet her grand prize still had not called in yet.

  'Is he in trouble? Should I call him instead?'

  However, she soon rejected the idea. Since Ji Shanqing did not call her, he must be in some kind of trouble. She was worried that if she were to call him now, he might get distracted from whatever he was doing and end up in a dangerous position.

  In a split second, the corpse began to make a beeline for her once more. Its head was deeply sunken into its c.h.e.s.t, and its limbs were flailing madly in the air. It did not seem like it was moving on its own but rather was pulled forward by a thread of some sort. According to her experience, the dead body would belch out decaying breath whenever it came near her.

  She suspected that it was the decaying breath that gave her the injury.

  She was certain that she could not keep running forever like this. She had to find a way out of this pocket dimension.

  Scooping the silver bottle up and holding it in her hand, Lin Sanjiu finally felt a little at ease.

  "Ryuji!" The only person that could help her right now was the man who was sitting idly outside the pocket dimension.

  "Help me think—" Before she could finish her sentence, she was interrupted by a long, stifling fit of coughing. She spat on the ground and wiped her lips before continuing, "How the murderer escaped from here."

  Ryuji did not respond. It was only when she ran past him that she saw the deep frown on his face. Sensing that she should not interrupt his thoughts right now, Lin Sanjiu picked up her pace again despite her body screaming at her not to and she put a large distance between her and the dead body once more.

  She was confident that she would be dead by daylight if she kept running like this in her current condition.

  'How amazing would it be if I could imitate the grand prize? This kind of mind-twisting game is a piece of cake for him…'

  However, she could not do that as she had lost the ability to imitate her grand prize right after she realized he was trying to lock her up in that universe. She clearly remembered how the bud of fear began to sprout from the depths of her heart when she had sat in the sand and wind. That had been the first time that she had felt so afraid of the teenager who behaved like her brother—or her sister.

  Fear sprang from ignorance, and ignorance meant lack of information or knowledge. Without the needed information, the imitation would not succeed.

  "It's weird, don't you think? I love him and I miss him, yet I'm afraid of him…" she said as she stifled a bitter smile. Despite that, when she passed by the communication device, she still went for it after a slight pause.

  "I don't understand why you are willing to pick up his call but aren't willing to call him yourself?" Mrs. Manas asked.

  Lin Sanjiu was stumped.

  "Yeah, why not?"

  The speed of the corpse increased again, so she had no choice but to follow suit. However, with every step, she would cough up blood. With her mind fully occupied by the name "Ji Shanqing", she muttered, "I always felt that if he reached out to me, I still would have some room to run away, but if I take the initiative and go to him…"

  She would feel like a mosquito flying into the mouth of a Nepenthes.

  Of course, she was certain that the last thing her grand prize would do to her was hurt her. The only thing that was waiting for her would be a long and endless…love?

  "You don't understand him, so you don't want to see him," Mrs. Manas said softly, sounding even more like a consciousness. "In other words, the more you know about him, the more secure you feel when you see him."

  "But how?" Lin Sanjiu forced another bitter smile. Perhaps due to his identity, the teenager had mutated into something bigoted and intense while being very gentle and soft at the same time. He seemed to know that he would cause a situation she did not favor, so he had held himself back. He was greatly tortured by such restraint, and the fence that was holding him back would collapse at any moment.

  'Hold on a sec…'

  Like a dust-filled memory that had been opened, something in her head snapped the chains that were binding it.

  Chapter 844 - Consciousness Mimicry: Ji Shanqing

  Maybe it was just a stroke of luck.

  There was a voice ringing in Lin Sanjiu's head as she hauled herself up from the ground.

  Her understanding of Ji Shanqing at this point was barely enough for her to maintain the minimum effect of the [Consciousness Mimicry].

  Her analysis of her grand prize was based on the days she had spent with him. However, with the grand prize's reluctance to show his true self, she barely knew much about him. Even after she had learned something about him through some speculation, the [Consciousness
Mimicry] was not stable and would be deactivated so long as she had the slightest bit of doubt.

  Therefore, to prolong the effect, she must avoid all distractions to prevent herself from having any suspicions about the grand prize.

  In other words—

  Lin Sanjiu raised her eyes and looked directly at the communication device on the ground not far away. Without wasting any time, she zipped towards it.

  Sensing her movement, the corpse jerked its body around and a pop filled the air. Then, with its head held low, it swung its four limbs and hightailed towards the communication device as well.

  The corpse seemed to have become sentient and was able to discover the relationship between Lin Sanjiu and the communication device. Therefore, it knew it just needed to stay close to the communication device to, wait for its chance to launch at Lin Sanjiu, and finally get its revenge.

  The corpse was much closer to the communication device than Lin Sanjiu. She cursed inwardly and stopped. S.u.c.k.i.n.g air through her teeth to ease the pain spreading from her c.h.e.s.t, she recoiled a few steps back and stared as the corpse approached the communication device.

  The distorted and crippled corpse turned around in the dark, seeming to wait for her to come close to the communication device. The blue blinking light from the communication device had turned the corpse's feet a dull blue.

  "First step: retrieve the communication device," Lin Sanjiu spoke under her breath. Her brain was now working in the same calm and phlegmatic way as the grand prize. "Second step: look for the final piece of the puzzle and clear the locked-room pocket dimension."

  "The final piece?" Mrs. Manas asked. She was apparently startled by her sudden change of behavior. "How about the other parts?"

  "They have all been solved."

  "Huh? Solved? What are you talking about? When did that happen?"