Doomsday Wonderland

The game and the death of Fatty, the Jaeger didn’t leave much impression nor cast a permanent shadow over Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing. If there was anything that impacted them the most, it was the errand they were running right now…

Swoosh. 

Another pile of meat pulp had slipped into a plastic bag. Ji Shanqing held the plastic bag open while turning his head away as far as he could. When the persistent fishy smell found its chance and rushed into his nostril, he couldn’t hold it and retched a little bit.

Lin Sanjiu wasn’t any better than Ji Shanqing. As the person in charge of scooping the meat pulp, she was the first person to receive the onslaught of the stench. Nevertheless, she had no other option aside from hacking the body of the short-haired woman into pieces, or else, she couldn’t fit her into the plastic bag.

The fat man was not the only Jaeger; there were at least seven more Jaegers that fed on  duoluozhong  after being infected by the crypt particle. The scene of butchery seemingly had aroused their bloodlust and their cravings for blood and flesh. When the wind carried the stench into the sky above, a few lunatics who craned their heads out became restless. All of them yelled and yelled and yelled one after another, causing an undulating resonance that spread far and wide into the sky.

Realizing the lunatics were getting more and more agitated, Ji Shanqing’s expression became ugly. He covered his mouth with his hand and mouthed his question as clear as he could to Lin Sanjiu, “Sis, do we really have to feed them all this? Is the information given by your card not enough?”

Lin Sanjiu paused at his question. She shooked her head and answered, “The card only gave us the information about the dead body. We can get more information from the mouth of a breathing person.”

The fishy stench rushed into her mouth in the few moments Lin Sanjiu opened her mouth. Her final line of defense crumbled as a gush of gastric juice surged from her stomach through her esophagus, and when it almost reached her mouth, she swallowed it back. Peering into the plastic bag, she surmised that the amount of flesh in the bag should do the job, she then threw the shovel aside. With the help of Ji Shanqing, both of them carried the plastic bag, filled with human flesh, back into the apartment. At the same time, she called the card containing the body of Fatty.

[Fatty’s Corpse]

Name: Zhang Da

Nickname: Fatty.

Gender: Male (Unconfirmed). Due to a few reasons such as obesity and evolutionary pathway, he has adiposogenital dystrophy so his genitals have degenerated.

Weight: 378 pounds.

Race: Human (Unconfirmed).

Abilities: [Fatty’s Playbook of Variety Show], the metamorphosis of teeth, cervical vertebra, legs, and other body parts. The latter was difficult to notice beneath the layers of adipose tissue that covered his body.

The thing that raised the alarm in Lin Sanjiu’s mind was this very last sentence.

She collected a dead body every time she arrived in a new world. Hence, after going through five worlds herself, she was accustomed to the description of the card containing the dead body of posthuman; however, Zhang Da’s card was different.

Posthuman and  duoluozhong  were merely two different evolutionary pathways human developed along to counter the ruination force of the apocalypse. The differences between the former and the latter were as clear as day. This was the case before the  duoluozhong  could evolve to a higher tier and before they could leap worlds. This was the very reason why the description of Zhang Da’s card was so unique. The description wasn’t narrating the characteristic of a posthuman or a  duoluozhong.

No matter how she looked at it, from the aspect of evolving ability, mutation pathway, races, or sexuality, it seemed that Zhang Da had embarked upon a new evolutionary pathway that was the combination of both posthuman and duoluozhong .

“That’s incredible,” Ji Shanqing said while ruminating on the thought, “This means that aside from posthuman and  duoluozhong , there is another evolutionary pathway? What would happen if the Twelve Worlds Centrum got ahold of this information?”

“The level of this world would increase by leaps and bounds if we brought the information back to them,” Lin Sanjiu sighed. Out of so many unclassified level worlds, she didn’t know why her luck was so bad to end up in this one. “No matter why the apocalypse began, posthumans would develop antibodies against the doomsday element before they evolved. Hence, I’m certain this fatso is not a posthuman.”

“Speaking of which, we have never met a native posthuman—the crypt particle could have destroyed both mentality and potential growth value, I wonder how they evolved,” Ji Shanqing paused as something crossed his mind, he turned to Lin Sanjiu and asked, cautiously, “Oh yeah, sis, didn’t you say that your schizophrenia hadn’t dissipated yet? What does that mean? Did you successfully develop anti-psychosis antibodies?”

Lin Sanjiu looked up when she heard Ji Shanqing’s question and saw Xueqin was smiling at her from the corner of the stairway overhead. Then, she pointed at a door with two Spring Festival Couplets.

“I can’t tell you how exactly I feel, but there’s one thing for sure is: I didn’t develop any antibodies,” Her voice sounded much calmer than she actually was, “As you said, under the factor that destroys the evolving ability, generating an evolving ability to negate its effect is simply a paradox.”

“So?”

“The reason I’m sane now is that the Potential Growth Value that I have gained across time has balanced out my schizophrenia. Besides, it seems that the schizophrenia I’m having now has incited my [School of Higher Consciousness]…” Lin Sanjiu couldn’t explain it well, all she could give him was merely a vague idea.

As they were talking, they arrived in front of the door with the Spring Festival couplet. Lin Sanjiu kicked open the door. At the loud bang, a lunatic charged outside. However, he disregarded the two people standing in the door and went straight for the plastic bag.

He was so tempted by the smell that he couldn’t wait any longer and chewed the plastic bag with the flesh inside. While he was savoring the meat, Lin Sanjiu took her time observing the man. This man wasn’t as fat as Fatty, so his mutation was much more visible. There were approximately five thick strips of masticatory muscles stretching over his cheeks. The muscles moved in tandem whenever his mouth moved, and it was obviously not a human muscle should look like.

Ji Shanqing couldn’t resist watching and moved behind his master.

The room was instantly permeated with the fishy stench the moment the flimsy plastic barrier was breached.

Neither Lin Sanjiu nor Ji Shanqing could tell the age or the appearance of this nutjob. His face was covered with blood, body fluids, flesh, and innards. He wasn’t a picky eater like Fatty as he even chowed down the flesh with some hairs on it. In an instance, the room was filled with the sound of his teeth crunching against each other.

Suddenly, Ji Shanqing frowned. The plastic bag was a large plastic garbage bag, and it could contain half of the short-haired woman. Fatty had only taken a few bites of her neck and stomach before he had regained his senses, yet the belly of the man before their eyes was swelling up larger and larger, but he didn’t seem about to stop enjoying his buffet anytime sooner.

Just when he turned his head wanting to say something to his master, Lin Sanjiu made her move.

She nodded to a corner and walked forward, placing her [Vibroblade] on the neck of the lunatic.

“Drop the act,” She said cooly, “The amount you have consumed is more than enough to bring you back to your senses.”

The lunatic was stunned. Then, he pulled his hand out from the plastic bag.

“Woe is me,” He laughed. He raised his hand and wiped the blood stains on his face, revealing his young face at Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing which caused the latter to scream in awe, “He’s pretty young.”

“Gee, if I’d known you guys knew, I would’ve stopped eating it. I always suffer from indigestion, so I like cooked meat more.”

When he wasn’t eating, the muscles on his face receded, and he was, unexpectedly, quite handsome, or he would have been if his eyebrows were not knitted together by the fresh blood.

Lin Sanjiu narrowed her eyes. Then, she cast a knowing glance at Ji Shanqing. Ji Shanqing had known this man was trickier to deal with compared to Fatty. He quickly ran to Lin Sanjiu side.

“I watched the whole match just now. Impressive, I would say. Of course, I saw it, but I couldn’t react to it until now.” The youngster sneered. Then, he stood up. He was still wearing his patient clothes distributed by the asylum. As he wiped his hands clean on his trousers, he talked, with an amiable smile, “I’m patient number 573 in the asylum. You can call me Five.”

“Are Fatty and you—” Lin Sanjiu couldn’t find a word to articulate what she wanted to ask, “…human?”

As if he had listened to the funniest joke in the world, Five let out a brazen fit of laughter. Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing could see the flesh stuck between his teeth.

“I would say yes only under the condition we could still be considered as humans,” As he gestured his hand toward Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing, he sailed into the kitchen with the remaining flesh in his hands. He looked so perfectly calm that it gave people the wrong impression that the flesh in his hand was fresh meat he bought from the market, “I think Fatty told you already, right? We are Jaegers.”

“It’s another Jaeger.”

“Thinking of it as a food chain, small fish would eat the fry and large fish prey on the small fish. Those monsters you guys call  duoluozhong  feed on ordinary people and we feed on them…” Five was unfazed by the weird-looking blade in Lin Sanjiu’s hand. After he was done storing the flesh, he threw himself onto a couch, “I have never laid my hand on your partner. You can’t just kill me because my feeding menu is different from yours.”

Tightening her jaw, Lin Sanjiu stored the blade away. Though she had disarmed, she remained vigilant as she had learned her lesson well when dueling Fatty. The youngster might have developed an Evolving Ability as well.

“I have no idea where did you guys come from. However, there is an ancient saying that goes one who trims his sails to the wind is a wise man. I am a wise man, and I know I can’t defeat you two in a match, so fire anything you guys got at me.”

“He is smart. He has turned the whole situation in his favor with just a few words,” Ji Shanqing’s eyes twitched as he stared fixate at him.

“Is your feeding the only difference between the Jaegars and  duoluozhong?”

“Hmm, you have it half right,” Five shrugged, “Due to an unknown force, the Jaegers, that’s us, the  duoluozhong , and the ordinary people, have changed in ways that are directly related to what we eat. For an ordinary person, once they have consumed food that has been exposed to the air, they become insane; they won’t become anything else. Meanwhile, if the person is still an ordinary person a moment before, even with only a small bite of human flesh, their body instantly makes the corresponding changes.”

Five tapped on his cheek when he reached this point as he smiled, “I guess you guys were so grossed out by the gory scene down there that you guys missed something. The short-haired woman had a total of 50 teeth. I eat sparingly whenever I get a chance to eat the flesh of a  duoluozhong. Normally I would cut their cheek’s flesh and tongue to cook it thoroughly. It’s all thanks to this habit of mine, or else I won’t discover it either.”

Ji Shanqing couldn’t help and swallowed back the gurgling gastric juice at Five’s explanation. Only now did Ji Shanqing realize, as an item, his stomach could churn as well.

“Is the mutation developed differently for you Jaegers and  duoluozhong ?”

“Of course,” Five raised his chin, “At the very least, they did not develop any kind of ability as we have. We are a species that is much more impressive than them.”

Though they all looked human from the surface, it hit Lin Sanjiu that deep under the skin, they had gone further and further away from each other.

“I have one last question,” She asked sternly, “Is there any other ways to survive aside from consuming human flesh?”

Judging from her current condition, she would never dare eat food at the moment. If she accidentally broke the equilibrium between her Potential Value Growth and schizophrenia, she was unsure if she would she able to return to being sane again or not. At the same time, she would rather die than eat human flesh.

However, even as a posthuman, they would also die if they did not consume anything for 14 months.

The reason the posthuman could survive without any food for a prolonged time was not that their body was no longer required to replenish their energy. It’s just that a posthuman was optimized to fully absorb nutrients and store the energy obtained from the food they consumed. This was also the reason why they had less excretion. However, if they didn’t eat anything, they would still die.

Initially, Lin Sanjiu wasn’t prepared for any good news but Five surprisingly had fallen silent.

“I can’t vouch for it since I became this even before I realized,” he stood up after contemplated for a while, “To explain it further, let me show you guys a map.”

“A map?” Lin Sanjiu wondered but she still nodded.

Ji Shanqing, on the other hand, wired up like a startled fox and leered with the eye of a hawk at Five. As if he had sensed Ji Shanqing’s intense gaze, Five gave a bitter laughed and leaned his upper torso into his room while leaving his leg outside, as a comforting sign to them.

“The map is here. Please wait for a while.”

As if he was extending his arm, the leg outside the door tipped a bit.

Narrowing his eyes, the grand prize cocked his head and peered at the room.

“Sis, he’s tricked us!”

Ji Shanqing yelled, and he pulled Lin Sanjiu over to the door but their attempt was futile. It was too late. The leg was disappearing into the air like bubbles, and the rest of the body of Five had already gone.

“Right there!” Fang Dan pointed to the window and hollered them.

Lin Sanjiu rushed over to the window and saw a person sneaking into a vehicle. Seeing that he had already turned on the car, both of them jumped through the window without thinking any further.

The performance and horsepower of the car Five had prepared for any adversary were impressive. The engine whirred to life and the Land Rover charged toward the entrance gate.

The two iron gates opened with a loud bang. The iron wire scratched along the windscreen and released an ear-piercing screech. The moment the Land Rover was outside, Five stomped hard on the pedal and dashed into the night.

“Quick!” Lin Sanjiu yelled at the grand prize. Seeing that the grand prize was decelerating, she quickly put him on her back and stormed forward.

Since the schizophrenia had affected her Potential Value Growth, she could not unleash her full power and dash out at her top speed much to her dismay, not to mention that she was bearing the weight of two people right now. After chasing the Land Rover for roughly ten minutes, the Rover still disappeared from her vision.

Lin Sanjiu slowed down as she stared vacantly into the distance.

“What… What is that?” Those were the only words that managed to escape her lips the moment her eyes met with the scene in front of her.