Doomsday Wonderland

As soon as those words were spoken, two figures dashed towards the other two doors on the other side of the hall. Standing with her arms folded together, Lin Sanjiu cast Number 42 a sidelong glance before joining the group.

Number 42 was the last person to move; his face was stoic as if it was a thousand years granite.

“Nothing!”

No sooner had Number 44 and Number 47 arrived at the second chamber did the voice of Number 44, which sat on a higher pitch range compared to most males, resonated from the passageway, “The structure here is similar to the previous chamber, but there’s nothing here!”

Lin Sanjiu was stunned.

“The third chamber is empty too!” Another person chimed in from the third chamber.

Suddenly, everybody focused their gazes on Lin Sanjiu. Maintaining a rather safe distance between Lin Sanjiu and himself, Number 42 uttered a cold laugh.

“Do you know what are you doing, Number 49?” Number 47 frowned and asked, his voice was tetchy, “You spoke as you’ve seen through everything but look at this…”

“That’s weird. According to Ji Shanqing’s analysis, the remaining water droplets had to be in those two chambers—”

It was hard for Lin Sanjiu to believe that grand prize had missed his guess. She did a double take before hastened her pace toward the two doors. While she was searching for the plot hole in her conjecture, she saw Number 45 was coming out from the third chamber. Behind her was Number 46 and Number 48.

“So that’s how it is.”  Lin Sanjiu exclaimed inwardly. The entire machination was as clear as blue sky in front of her eyes even without the use of her [Consciousness Mimicry].

“Number 45,” Lin Sanjiu hollered, “Are there really no water droplets in the third chamber?”

“Yea, it’s nothing inside,” Number 45 answered. A hint of disappointment washed her face, “Jesus, don’t just simply give people false hope while—”

“Did you check it with your own eyes, or they told you so?” Lin interjected while pointing at Number 46 and Number 48 behind her.

Number 45 was taken aback and while she stammered to construct her sentence, her countenance had changed, “Number 46 told me that the chamber was empty. Then, I saw Number 48 come out from inside, so I didn’t bother to check again…”

“The second chamber is empty too!” Number 44 interjected, “You don’t believe us?”

“No, I believe you. The second chamber has to be empty. However,…” Lin Sanjiu gave a half-smile, swept a glance over the crowd as she sauntered towards the third door.

Though she remained silent through the process, the crowd somewhat understood the underlying meaning behind her gaze. As Lin Sanjiu made her move, some of them followed suit. Just when Number 45 hastily turned around, her gaze met with somebody behind her which gave her a huge fright.

“What a group of annoying chaps,” Number 42’s voice which lack of any emotion reverberated in the chamber, freezing everybody in their places.

Number 45 was shocked as she didn’t realize when Number 42 had snuck behind her. She staggered two steps backward as she queried, her voice was thick with fear, “W-what do you want?”

“Interesting—”

While everybody else gasped with surprise, a thought flashed across Lin Sanjiu’s mind.

Crouching in front of the door, Number 42, who portrayed as a calm, dependable middle-aged elder brother next door a few moments ago, had a different vibe now. Nobody could tell which part of him looked different as the changes were too subtle to notice, but he did exude a strange aura that made him looked completely different. Upon closer inspection, they couldn’t even tell his age.

When Number 42 narrowed his eyes while scratching his face, somebody asked, though his voice was filled with uncertainties, “Is that Number 42?”

Hearing that question, Number 42 huffed a plume of air through his nostrils. His face full of annoyance and irritation as a sardonic smirk found its way and crawled upon the corner of his lips. He now looked like a frustrated adult who had enough of nannying his own children at home.

If he weren’t still wearing his usual clothing, Lin Sanjiu might even begin to think he was another person and not the Number 42 she had acquainted with not long ago.

“Impressive,” Lin Sanjiu said, sending a cold stare at Number 42. Then, she praised, “Your mastery over the art of camouflage is truly amazing. With only a slight change in your expression, you look completely different.”

Clap, clap.  Two clear claps resounded from Number 42’s palms.

“You have good eyes; I have to give you that one,” Number 42 said, squinting his eyes, “Pretty awesome, right? Never have I thought I could turn this poor acting skill of mine, which has failed miserably in getting me cast in a movie, to a good account after the world has ended.”

“Is this your doing? Are all the water droplets in the third chamber?” A sharp voice raised from the crowd. It was Number 44. He continued his outburst, “Move away now and let us in!”

“Why would you do that?” Somebody turned to Number 46 and Number 48, “Why would you two lie to us?”

“And, why is the second chamber empty? Please explain to us—”

Various kind of questions came pouring out from the crowd and soon all of the voice merged into a hellish noise that made the confined space seem hell itself. Lin Sanjiu stretched her arm forcefully, trying to silence the crowd. When they calmed down a bit, she sighed.

“This is not a small feat that could be accomplished alone, Number 42 needed some companions,” Lin Sanjiu said as her gaze jumped from Number 42 to Number 48 and ended up on Number 46, whom she took extra time to look at his silky hair, “…I guess Number 46 and Number 48 are not an item. Both of them should be the companions of Number 42 and the three of them came into this pocket dimension together.”

Number 48’s highly strung nerve almost burst when he heard what Lin Sanjiu had said. As he stepped forward wanting to say something, Number 46 grabbed him by his arm and pulled him back, intervening what he was about to do. Then, he shot a cold stare at Lin Sanjiu.

The chamber suddenly fell silent. After a few seconds that seem to be like an eternity, Number 45 broke the silence; her unusual spiky tone filled the chamber, “Number 49, can you elaborate more on this? I couldn’t understand at all.”

“The second chamber is empty, right?” Lin Sanjiu turned around to explain to the crowd standing behind her, leaving her back wide open to Number 42 and his companion, “This is because Number 48 moved all the water droplets out from the second chamber. They are here, right in front of us. Initially, I thought the water droplets from the first chamber would be inside the second chamber, but I forgot that Number 42, too, has a spatial pocket.”

“What did you say? All of these water droplets are from the second chamber? How do you know that?” Number 43 was confused. He studied the water droplets for a moment before asking, “I can’t see any difference in them though.”

Lin Sanjiu was tickled pink by his action. She summoned the card on her hand and waved it in front of the crowd. Then, she said, “All the water droplets are the same from their external appearance, I believe you all know about that. There is no way to tell them apart; however, that’s not the case for me. I have a little trick of my own that could mark all the water droplets I have collected with numbers. For instance, I have found 24 water droplets, so my water droplets would be numbered from 1 to 24.”

“Now, here comes the real thing. When I return to the hall just now, I’ve reverted all my water droplets to card form, then I found out that water droplet that should be the number 1 has become number 25,” Lin Sanjiu turned her head over to look at the trio at her back and said, “This means that somebody has secretly moved my water droplets.”

“But when?”

“Right after we all marked our water droplets and returned to the first chamber. Number 48 then began his given assignment.”

“That’s impossible,” Number 47 refuted, “Nobody came out after we return to the first chamber. The chamber is filled with many cubicles; there are even cubicles on the ceiling. The person who was searching for water droplets in the cubicles on the ceiling would have been the first person to notice his movement if he tried to make his way out.”

“That’s because unlike all of us, he never returned to the chamber,” Lin Sanjiu remarked as she looked at Number 48. Calling his appearance unassuming made it sound decent, but in fact, he looked like somebody had beat him with the ugly stick. He didn’t have the head of silky hair as Number 46 possessed. Right now, beads of sweat began to ooze from his forehead.

“We made the headcount,” Number 45 interjected, “Everybody is present at that time.”

“Yeah, and no way Number 42 could lie. I saw Number 48 in the chamber with my own eyes,” Number 47 added, “I saw both Number 46 and Number 48 when I moved to the next zone.”

Number 42 and his gang didn’t need to say anything and the rest of the seeds had already begun their articulate assault on Lin Sanjiu. If they had to say, it was quite amusing.

“Really?” Lin Sanjiu flashed a smile. She seemed somewhat unfazed by their interjection, “I saw Number 48 too. To be honest, it’s too dark inside there, and all I could see was a head of silky hair glittering in the dark when that person snuck into a cubicle… At that time, I thought that hair obviously belonged to Number 46, yet he’s wearing Number 48’s number tag. Initially, I thought I saw it wrong but once I think about it, I realized that I might be right. As I mentioned earlier, the chamber is too dark. In a space devoid of light, we could only see an ambiguous figure and the only thing that assists us in recognizing our identity is the number tag. Also, don’t forget that to elude the possibility of being observed, both of them would go as far as feigning as a homosexual couple, so—”

“Are you kidding me? We would die once our number tag left our body!” Number 45 said as she covered her mouth, “Harry had even emphasized on that!”

“Is it true? Why don’t you try and bend your body a little bit?” Lin Sanjiu suggested as she bent down her body. The number tag which read Number 49 swayed away from her chest and dangled in the air, “See? When we’re looking for the water droplets, our number tag has left our body countless time. The only thing that never leaves our body is the ribbon around our neck.”

This statement had obviously blown everybody away. All of them fell silent for a significant amount of time before somebody finally mumbled, “Could it be… Number 48 removed his number tag and gave it to Number 46? He only leaves the ribbon to himself?”

Number 48 suddenly burst, “You removes yours first!”

“No, I think that won’t work,” Lin Sanjiu rejected the idea, much to everybody surprise, “I revise my sentence. Removing only the number tag won’t do the trick. The number tag comes with the ribbon. Once the number tag is gone, I think we would still die even we still have the ribbon on our body. But there is this precondition that grants Number 48 the leeway to carry out their machination.”

“What condition?”

“I hope you guys haven’t forgotten that a seed from the previous batch died,” Lin Sanjiu said. She had begun to admire Ji Shanqing’s sharp mind, “There should have been a number tag on that seed.”

“According to Harry, three could cause the death of a seed. The first is if the seed lost his or her number tag and got crushed to death, he would just leave the body to rot in the soil; the second is similar to the first condition is that the body of whoever failed to germinate would be left by Harry to decompose in the soil. Harry won’t dig the body out as well, but take note that in this case, the seed still has the number tag with him. Meanwhile, in the third and also the last condition, if the seed is dead due to poisoning, Harry will dig the body out along with the number tag.”

“By now, I guess everybody more or less understood what happened to the seeds of the batch before us. In other words, in addition to the eight number tags of 42 to 49, there is a ninth in this chamber. If I’m right, Number 42 retrieved this number tag and handed it to Number 48. After all, Number 42 was the first person to arrive in here. He’s the only person here who had the chance to commit such a deed. Hence, when Number 46 went back to the chamber with two number tags in his possession, Number 48 was left behind alone in the main hall. He moved all the water droplets of the first chamber away and replaced them with the water droplets from the second chamber. All those ideas such as a hidden passage, or spawning time suggested by Number 42 was to buy more time for Number 48 and to stall us. To make his plan more perfect, he even hid five water droplets in advance for us to find.”

The hall was silent as a graveyard.

“Why… Why would you do that?” Somebody asked, shattering the hush.

Lin Sanjiu didn’t answer this time as Number 42 suddenly rose up to his feet, successfully shifting all the gazes from Lin Sanjiu to him. Hugging his head, he stretched before sighing, “Didn’t Number 49 mention it already? I want all of you to become my white mice!”

Even though they already knew Number 42 was the culprit, when he openly admitted his crime, they were still pretty shocked.

“I’ll be straight with you,” Number 42 said as a smile danced around his lips, despite that his smile reminded Lin Sanjiu of the smile of the witch who tricked Snow White to eat her poisoned apple. “Nobody will be able to differentiate the water droplets by just looking at them. When you guys were rummaging for water droplets in the first chamber, I came out once. When I studied the three chambers altogether, something clicked in my mind.”

“What have you learned?”

Number 42 refused to answer that question, giving Lin Sanjiu a grin instead. The latter’s countenance sank, she sighed and words came through her lips slowly, “The structures and the water droplets’ distribution and permutation in all three chambers are the same. Am I right?”

“Bingo!” Number 42 clasped. He exclaimed, “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting half as much from a muscle-laden person like you. I’m really impressed. You guys have tried a hodgepodge of ways to differentiate the contaminated water droplets apart from the pure water droplets, but none of the attempts was successful. This is because I have kept the main key to the solution from you guys.”

When the crowd learned that their attempts were in vain was because of Number 42’s selfish act, they all were so furious that they couldn’t express their anger.

Pulling her face, Lin Sanjiu commented, “Moving and replacing our water droplets is simply a waste of effort if the arrangement of water droplets is different in the chambers. Moreover, it’s a bit unnatural when you insisted to partitioned the cubicles into a few zones. After all, if we wished not to miss anything, the safest way was to search the cubicles one by one, starting all the way from the first to the last. I guess you divided the water droplets in the second chamber according to their regions and distribution before giving us the zone we should be in charge of, is that correct?”

“Ho-ho-hold on. Can you repeat again? I’m lost,” Number 44 stammered.

Lin Sanjiu sighed as she reorganized her words, “He jotted down the distribution pattern of the water droplets in the second chamber. For instance, he fixed the number and order of water droplets in the first cubicle under our name. Since the water droplets distribution pattern is the same for all three chambers, if one of the water droplets is pure, we’ll know that in next two chambers, the water droplet of the same location ought to be pure as well.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” Number 42 suddenly guffawed brazenly, “Brilliant!”

“Ironically, like what I had said earlier, eight of us have to join forces to thrive this round,” Number 42 said, ignoring the indignation in the crowd’s eyes, “Since the distribution of water droplets is fixed, we can know that the total water droplets in all three chambers ranged around 649. In other words, the ratio of pure water droplets to contaminated water droplets is 1:1. Judging from everyone’s physical condition, you all are completely capable of taking such trial and error. Even if the fortune goddess is not by your side, you can stop before you exhausted your vitality. After all, if one has a lot of contaminated water droplets, then the other must have extra pure water droplets.”

“I supposed you all more or less have a good grasp of the situation now, right?” Number 42 narrowed his eyes, giving him the look of a certain kind of canine animal, “From now on, you guys have to listen to every word I said and try to please me as much as you can. I’m the only one who has the water droplets distribution pattern recorded. For those who go against me, sorry but no droplets for you. So, what is your choice? Think carefully. This is the only and last chance you guys have to get pure water droplets.”