Doomsday Wonderland

Chapter 1618: Mine Sweeping and Aerial Splits

When Lin Sanjiu looked back, she could still vaguely see Caster and the Artist sitting on the ground in the distance. The former, out of curiosity, had picked up the book from her card library and was shaking her head as she read, not even knowing if she could recognize the characters. The artist, utterly bored, was fiddling with the items on the blanket. As expected, he knocked over half a can of beer, then hurriedly scrambled for paper and pen, apparently intending to absorb the spilled beer on the blanket by drawing.

She inwardly sighed.

She took those things out for her enjoyment, but somehow, objects that didn’t know how to enjoy had taken her place, and she had ended up working outside the edge of the celestial park.

At that moment, a humanoid item resembling a fitness coach was looking at her with an encouraging and hopeful expression, inspiring her by asking, “How about it? Have you figured out the answer?”

“What was the question?” Lin Sanjiu was taken aback.

To be honest, she needed sleep. She had discovered enough truths for one day; the world must be left with some mysteries.

The Life Coach, patient with unambitious pupils, said, “Do you understand how you triggered the memory? Think about it; you’re really clever. I have faith in you.”

Clever, was he implying she looked stupid?

“I’ve thought about it before, and I really can’t guess,” Lin Sanjiu replied, spreading her hands to show she was out of ideas. She pointed to the celestial park, barely a line away from her toes but a place she dared not enter. “Sometimes I trigger it the moment I walk in, other times I walk half the day without triggering it. I never touched anything, and there’s no switch on the ground. I just fall into someone’s memory with a clang, and I don’t know why.”

The Life Coach was not in a hurry to persuade her. He said, “Go on, keep talking.”

“What else to say?”

“Anything about triggering memories, think and say whatever comes to mind.” He gestured, raising both hands and wiggling his fingers like a starfish. “Think broadly; the answer is in there!”

Lin Sanjiu was almost too exasperated to sigh. She thought aloud, “Hmm… There’s no sign before triggering a memory. Once it’s triggered, I’ve already attached to the memory’s owner, and everything feels natural, even regret. It’s not until a memory ends that I suddenly wake up beside the memory owner. Once triggered, as long as I don’t leave the same memory domain, I won’t trigger it again. You know this.”

After she finished speaking, there was silence for a few seconds.

The Life Coach stared at her with wide eyes, barely containing his antic.i.p.ation.

“Hmm…? Wait, that’s not right,” Lin Sanjiu said, tilting her head. “Before I trigger the memory… the memory owner doesn’t seem to exist.”

She wasn’t sure, but she felt they didn’t exist—otherwise, she would have been alert at the sight of a figure from afar, and never would have blundered her way to the memory owner’s side.

She paused. Every time she woke from a memory, she and the memory owner had spent years together; it felt utterly natural for them to be there.

Moreover, taking the example of the fat old man, the moment before triggering his memory felt like eight years ago to Lin Sanjiu. After such a long time, it became hazy to recall exactly what had been there.

“It indeed wasn’t there,” Mrs. Manas said, promptly resolving her last doubt.

“Wait, so the first time I went into the forest, I woke up beside Wu Yiliu. The second time I triggered the memory on the sidewalk, and when I woke up, I found Heidi standing behind the door of her apartment building on the first floor, looking through the security bars at the sidewalk…”

Heidi was the owner of the second memory. Lin Sanjiu measured the distance between herself and where she was at the time and said, “Even though we were separated by a door, the distance between us would not have exceeded two meters.”

The third time, she woke up in front of the fat, old man, and now she remembered: she had seen a bookstore from afar and just wanted to know if she could collect books. She triggered a memory at the entrance of the bookstore.

At that time, the entrance to the bookstore was empty; the fat old man only appeared after the memory ended.

So, the answer was that simple.

“Could it be that as soon as I approach the range of the memory’s owner, I’ll trigger a memory?” She stared at the Life Coach, speaking with some disbelief. “Before triggering, I can’t see these guys?”

The Life Coach smiled comfortingly. “You see, you have proven once again that my faith in you is not misplaced.”

“So, the memory owner itself is like a switch?” Lin Sanjiu muttered. “Just like an ordinary light switch, if you don’t reset it, it will remain in the same on or off state…”

Once she understood this, she also guessed the Life Coach’s intention.

Regardless of what this memory s.p.a.ce really was, it certainly had its own set of rules and logic—although Lin Sanjiu didn’t understand what that logic was yet.

When it ran smoothly on its own track, Lin Sanjiu couldn’t get out, and didn’t know how to find the grand prize and Yu Yuan; to get out, she must first try to disrupt this s.p.a.ce, creating chaos within it. Only through chaos might there be a gap.

As for where to start, that was why the Life Coach wanted her to collect the fat old man.

“Very good, your thoughts are starting to take shape,” the Life Coach said. “If we are bolder and imagine what would happen if one switch triggered another switch… what would happen?”

They were all essentially objects, and even if they intentionally looked for the memory owner, it probably wouldn’t trigger a memory. But the memory owners were all the same kind of thing, so wouldn’t they react to each other?

They would probably have to try to find out.

Although Lin Sanjiu’s physical and mental energy needed to rest and recover, seeing that a plan was taking shape and that it could soon be implemented, she couldn’t find a reason not to do it—she really looked hard for one.

For example, there was a problem that needed to be solved first: they had the fat, old man, but where was the memory owner of the Celestial Park?

“I can’t see him before I trigger it, and it’s useless after I do…” Lin Sanjiu started, her eyes falling on the Life Coach’s smiling face, then on Celestial Park. “…Oh.”

“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?” The Life Coach waved his hand, pa.s.sing it through the boundary between two memory territories, and then took it back.

She had figured it out.

The Celestial Park in front of her might be during a holiday or weekend, with no shortage of people coming and going. Hot dog and ice cream trucks, skateboarding girls, young couples sitting on the steps, parents watching celestial bodies with their children, a tour guide in a red hat and her group of tourists—it was not as crowded as dumplings in soup, but it was dense enough.

The advantage of having many people was that each person was equivalent to a “there is no memory owner here” marker.

“Strangers usually keep a certain distance from each other,” Lin Sanjiu said, feeling her own reluctance. “I can use the park visitors as stepping stones, releasing the fat old man to probe and find the memory owner’s location on the empty ground beside them…”

Certainly, the memory owner might also be accompanying someone and walking invisibly next to a tourist; however, if that was the case, they could detect clues from the tourists’ expressions, and before going over, they could use the fat old man to “sweep for mines.”

“What if the memory owner doesn’t trigger the memory, and as I go over, I end up triggering the memory myself,” Lin Sanjiu asked, grimacing. “Then wouldn’t I have to experience another stranger’s memory?”

“There’s no plan in the world that is absolutely successful, without a hint of unexpected occurrences,” the Life Coach said, clapping his hands. “Every action has risks. When we have a greater chance of winning, we must strike decisively!”

This was just like probing for landmines with a stick, costing her a bowl of noodles.

“I just feel that this plan is both tiring and risky,” Lin Sanjiu said disinterestedly. “I could have taken a nap with this time…”

Though she said this, having prepared to this extent, she decided to go ahead with it, if only to shut the Life Coach up.

She always acted faster than she thought. As this thought occurred, her foot already stepped over the boundary between the Celestial Park and the Twelve Worlds Centrum bookstore—just as her left foot landed, she suddenly remembered the human-shaped objects behind her, and she wasn’t sure whether to leave them or take them with her.

“Artist, Caster,” Lin Sanjiu turned and called back. “You two, bring the stuff over here!”

As she called out, she was ready to take back her left foot.

However, at that moment, she felt her left foot slowly sliding forward.

Lin Sanjiu was horrified and immediately understood: the Celestial Park was drifting away.

She absolutely could not let the Celestial Park drift away—who knows what the next memory territory would be like? A memory area full of tourists was ideal and rare; this plan could only be implemented in a crowded place.

But it was already starting to drift outward, what could she do?

Lin Sanjiu’s whole body tensed for a moment, her left foot still firmly planted on the slowly moving ground, her mind a bit chaotic. In her haste, she quickly turned back and urged, “Hurry, b.u.mp into my hand!”

The Artist and Caster also realized something was wrong—they hadn’t even had time to wipe the stunned expressions off their faces before they hurriedly jumped up. They sweeped and rolled the stuff on the ground into their arms, clattering towards Lin Sanjiu while dropping things along the way: peanuts, beer cans, playing cards…

The Life Coach, who was very aware of the situation, had already touched her hand and turned back into a card.

Lin Sanjiu’s left foot seemed to be deserting her, gradually moving farther and farther away; one foot was in the Celestial Park, the other in the Twelve Worlds Centrum, her legs were spreading further apart, and her body was gradually sinking down—looking down, the mist was already rising between the cracks.

She was almost driven to laughter by the absurdity of it all, wis.h.i.+ng she could throw the Life Coach into the mist and abandon him; she looked back and yelled, “Get over here before I split in two!”