Doomsday Wonderland

“Congratulation to those who have conquered the ordeals of all three stages. All of you are now fully matured.”

Perhaps he regretted introducing these clusters of posthumans into his farm because they were defiant enough to wipe out all his hard-grown plants, Harry’s voice was spiritless as if he was reciting boring lines, “By going through the three stages, I suppose all of you understand that as long as you trust each other and work together, there is nothing in the world that can stop you from achieving your goal.”

Indeed, among the stages in Harry’s farm, none of them had to cost them their lives. Even though she knew very well that Harry wasn’t mocking them, Lin Sanjiu still felt embarrassed.

The juxtaposition of the situation where all of them could have survived with their current situation implied how badly they’d done. They had a total of forty members in the beginning, yet only ten out members survived.

“If we look at it from another angle, Harry’s Farm is really a Noah Ark’s for posthumans,” she lamented to Number 46, who was sitting next to her.

“I don’t think so,” she couldn’t see Number 46’s expression clearly beneath the veil of his frizzy hair. All she could hear was his cool, emotionless voice, “If helping posthuman is the holy grail of this pocket dimension, there would have been no need to set so many restrictions and rules.”

Stunned, Lin Sanjiu looked at Number 46.

“Because he understands our nature very well, he knows that human can never trust each other. Hence, he set up these rules to tease us, showing us some sort of seemingly hopeful pathway, but look,” Number 46 laughed, “…Rather than trusting a living stranger, we are more prone to believe a dead body. No matter how long it takes, as long as humans still exist, this is the gospel truth that will never change.”

Everybody sat together in a circle whiling away the time to leave the greenhouse. Number 46’s voice was soft yet it still reverberated clearly in the air.

“No,” Lin Sanjiu frowned as she refuted, subconsciously, “The reason I’m here, talking to you, is because I have a lot of friends with me—”

Harry’s thunderous voice cut her off, “Your adventure as a plant is over. I suppose all of you have fully charged and felt very refreshed, right?”

The crowd had been haunted by fear after they’d lost their number tags, so they kept cleansing the greenhouse until the ninth day. They didn’t have a good rest. Looking at each other, all of them realized that aside from Number 46 and Lin Sanjiu, most of their countenances were unkempt.

“Next, I’ll brief you all the way to leave my farm. It is a little complicated, so lend me your ears.”

The crowd quickly bolted upright and listened closely, giving their full attention to what Harry was going to say next. Lin Sanjiu swept a glance across the group and saw that Sunny was resting her chin on top of her hand. She was playing with a pebble in her hand as if she didn’t care about the things that were happening around her. At her side, Queenie’s body was growing, and it seemed that it would soon grow back to standard human size. Right now, she was whispering something in Sunny’s ear which made the latter frown. With a pout, Sunny took out a few articles of clothes from her backpack and hurled them at Queenie. It seemed to Lin Sanjiu that Queenie was embarrassed showing her naked body in public.

“I guess you all must be curious about what is in the abyss, right? Have you all ever played the ‘Bounce’ arcade game in the casino?” Harry suddenly switch to a topic that was irrelevant to the greenhouse, “It’s a pinball machine with many small obstacles arranged on top of a sloped board. After you drop a small metal ball through the entry point, the ball rolls down by winding around the obstacles, and will eventually fall out from different exits.”

As Harry continued with his explanation, Lin Sanjiu somewhat caught the sound of some machine rattling to life below the abyss, but when she listened carefully, she couldn’t hear anything. There was nothing down there, only silence.

“The only way to leave my farm is to jump into the abyss,” the crowd gasped at what Harry had said. “But don’t worry, I can warrant your life. You won’t be dead even if you jump into the abyss; instead, you will become like the small metal ball, and the passage inside the abyss will lead you to different exits. There are three exits from the farm, and it depends entirely on your luck which exits you would end up with in the end.”

“That’s all from me. The countdown will start now. Please leave the greenhouse within three minutes.”

Even though Harry didn’t mention what would happen to them if they continued to stay in the greenhouse, none of them were bold enough to take the risk.

Taking the previous round as example, they were full knew that “Bounce” wouldn’t be as easy as it sounds; or else, Harry would not say they needed to rely on their luck.

The crowd began to move. Some of them walked to the edge and craned their necks to look down into the abyss while some of them glued their eyes on Lin Sanjiu and Number 46 as they wanted to know which way they would jump. The heavily muscled bloke from cluster 3 couldn’t wait any longer to leave the pocket dimension. He took the lead, closed his eyes tight, and jumped, drawing a gasp from the crowd at his bravery. Then, they quickly crowded around the spot he jumped from and looked down. However, what met them was absolute darkness—the man had disappeared into the umbra without a trace.

Sunny stood up and walked up to Lin Sanjiu. There weren’t any emotions on her palm-sized face, “So can you return my arm now?”

Lin Sanjiu raised her eyes and saw Queenie, who was trailing closely behind Sunny, as well as Baldhead, who looked at Sunny with longing. A strange, uncomfortable feeling welled in her heart. After Lin Sanjiu stared at Sunny for a few seconds, she finally gave in and summoned her card.

The moment the arm appeared, it instantly flew toward Sunny and reattached to Sunny’s body.

“Why would you do it?” Just when Sunny was turning away, Lin Sanjiu asked her. She deliberately raised her volume so that Baldhead could hear their conversation, “You knew her all along?”

“Yes,” Sunny drawled as she shrugged her shoulders. She had let her hair down, allowing it to cascade so her satin hair draped obediently over her shoulders. With that minor change, she looked like an entirely different person, “Our friendship dates back to our junior high school. That’s probably why we even developed very similar Evolving Abilities.”

As she spoke, she glanced over her shoulders. She knew that Baldhead was eavesdropping on every word not far from her.

“As for the reason why I did it,” A smile crawled into the corner of Sunny’s lips as she walked closer to Lin Sanjiu, leaning her beautiful face nearer to the latter. Her fair skin brightened up with every small angle her lips curved.

“Don’t you think it’s boring-g-g-g?”

Sunny had a crispy, baby voice, which gave people an impression of her being a young teenage girl when she dragged out the last letter of her sentence.

“Even before the apocalypse, nothing aroused my interest. Everything was so dull and bland. Food was delectable only for a few minutes and a good movie could only last an hour or so. When everything has come to an end, our life just got even more empty and boring…”

Not only Lin Sanjiu, but those who had not jumped down looked at Sunny.

“I wonder how those humans live the so-called fulfilling life they were told. Graduate, find a job, get married, have kids: all of these alleged milestones of life just make no sense to me,” Sunny suddenly smiled as if she could see the expression on Baldhead’s face, “Even when the apocalypse arrived, my happiness was short-lived… But fortunately, God has not forsaken me yet. Just when I thought the boredom was going to last for eternity until I was pushing up the daisies, I found something fun and interesting that I could reminisce over in my heart even when it’s over.”

Lin Sanjiu’s expression became colder.

“It was totally out of my expectation that you bunch of nudniks would be able to burst out with such an interesting and fantastic reaction when you all found out that your lives were about to disappear. Yes, I’m the one responsible for the impasse of your cluster in the beginning. Anyway, I have to thank you all for putting up such marvelous retaliation. If it weren’t for you all, the days here would be boring as beans,” Sunny giggled. It seemed that she had finished talking, she spun around, walked toward the edge and said, “And now, it’s time for me to try my luck.”

“That’s not necessary.”

A cold female voice rang out behind her.

Just when Sunny stopped to spun around, a strong puff of gust shoved right on her head and before she knew, she was shrouded under a shadow. Lin Sanjiu had decided that she had to keep Sunny in this pocket dimension forever. Hence she activated her [A Twinkle in the Sky Dark Version: Mosaic Censorship]. With that Special Item, Lin Sanjiu could reduce anything she touched into a pixelated mess. Sunny would not be able to reconstruct her body even with her ability that granted her intangibility.

As expected, Lin Sanjiu’s hands made contact on a person’s belly—the most vulnerable spot of any living organism. Then, in the next second, blood and flesh splattered everywhere, drenching her from her head to toe with that sanguinary liquid like a torrential downpour. Seeing this, Number 46, who was standing right beside her jumped aside yet the blood still found its way and doused half of his body.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t Sunny’s belly that had exploded.

“Go, now! Quickly!” Queenie coughed and growled with a heavy huff. Her body below her chest had been decimated into meat pulp and bloody froth. Her legs, which was blown away by the explosion hopped around on the leaf, “I will be…”

Before she could finish her sentence, Sunny had already split her body into countless pieces and plunged into the abyss like a meteor shower. With Queenie halting her pursuit, Lin Sanjiu had lost her chance to catch Sunny.

“Three minutes will soon be up, please hurry up,” Harry’s voice filled the air, “…For those who remain in the greenhouse after three minutes, you all will be regarded as the losers in the maturation stage.”

The people who remained on the leaf became restless by this announcement. Since they had no other options left, and they felt that Harry would not deceive them anymore as the pocket dimension had ended, they began to jump, one after another, into the abyss. Number 46 dashed forward, grabbed Lin Sanjiu by her arm and yelled at her, “Don’t care about these people anymore; let’s go!”

Lin Sanjiu didn’t have the time to deal with Queenie, nor she could look at Baldhead’s reaction, she quickly followed after Number 46, kicked off the leaf, and thrust her body into the air.

Wind roared beside her ears and the gravitational force had pulled her straight to the bottom of the abyss. In the blink of an eye, there was only darkness in her vision. Sunny, Number 46, and other people who had hopped from the leaf had vanished without a trance into the darkness as if they had never existed.

Just when Lin Sanjiu thought she was going to fall straight to her death, her body had slammed into something which pushed her in another direction. Before she could find her second wind, she was smacked by something in the dark and fell straight down again.

Never once had she thought that Bounce, by its very nature, turned all of them into small metal balls!

Lin Sanjiu grasped some comprehension of how to reduce the damage after she had been smacked a few times. Hugging her legs, she curled herself into a ball. Whenever she felt there was an obstacle below her, she would land first on the tip of her feet and rolled a bit forward just like a real ball. With that, the impact she endured became much smaller.

She didn’t know how long she fell; then, a dim light finally appeared in front of her.

“That should be the exit,” the moment the thought surfaced in her mind, the dim light intensified, pounced forward, and devoured her whole.

When the sunlight outside of the pocket dimension once again grazed her cheeks, Lin Sanjiu, who had been trapped inside the pocket dimension for a month still couldn’t come back to her senses. She groggily blinked her eyes and looked around.

The sky was turquoise blue. There were a few wisps of cloud. The dilapidated high-rise was barely standing against the assaulting wind of death, and it looked like it was going to collapse sooner rather than later. Eye-widened, Lin Sanjiu turned around to see that she was now standing at the corner of a street, above her was an archway with the word that read: “weed.”

“Where are the others? Am I the first one here?” Lin Sanjiu walked around yet she saw no people. “Where is Sunny, Number 46, and the other? Are they all dead?”

Just when her heart began to pick up its pace, she heard somebody screaming from the archway behind her. Lin Sanjiu immediately spun around, and she saw Number 46 appearing from within the white darkness. It seemed that somebody had banged into him as both of them had rolled out from the air. Number 47 hurriedly scrambled up from the ground as he apologized to the sullen Number 46.

Perhaps due to them having fought together in the maturation stage, both of them waited beside the street with Lin Sanjiu after they saw her. However, their endeavor was in vain as nobody else appeared.

“It seems like Number 45 fell into the wrong exit,” Number 46 said, his voice was soft as if he was unfazed by the realization, “This exit is named “weed,” and we, who exited this door, survived. I suppose that the other two exits should be either “grains” or “greens”… Yeah, that’s right; after all, all matured crops should belong to the farmer.”

Lin Sanjiu’s blood turned cold, “So, are you saying that this pocket dimension is a trap?”

“It seems that the Goddess of Luck has not abandoned us,” Number 46 cast a sidelong glance at Lin Sanjiu, “Since we’ve come out from the pocket dimension, I suggest we should part ways now.”

He paused and the next words he said left Lin Sanjiu confused, “I hope we won’t see each other again.”

With that, Number 46 turned around and walked away without any hesitation. Very soon, his figure disappeared into the wasteland.

“If you don’t mind,” Number 47 said, “I wish we could continue our journey together. After all, we have gotten to know each other pretty well…”

“Indeed. I know you very well,” Lin Sanjiu interjected him with a cool voice which gave Number 47 a fright. She looked at Number 47’s somewhat confused face and sneered, “… For example, I know you’re a Jaeger.”

“Wh-what?”

“You can drop the act now,” Lin Sanjiu waved her hand impatiently, “I don’t care if you still call yourself that, but you feed on posthumans and  duoluozhong, right? The reason you’re still sane is that you have eaten the flesh of a duoluozhong  before entering the pocket dimension. Number 45, Number 46, and I have long since discovered your true identity.”

“B-But when did you all find out?” Number 47 stammered as he subconsciously recoiled two steps back.

“When, you ask?” Lin Sanjiu scoffed, her voice took on a somber tone, “We discovered that when Military singlet held you hostage. The reason you maintained a deadpan expression is that you didn’t want the muscle on your face to show up, but little did you know that those muscles of yours that you desperately tried to hide away from us had come to light when the man grabbed you by your neck… Okay, enough talking. If you can disappear from my vision before I counted to ten, I’ll spare your life. Since we fought together in the pocket dimension.”

Number 47’s hand found its way to his cheek and before he could think any further, he turned around and darted away.

Lin Sanjiu sighed after she had waited until he had gone from her vision.

“It’s been a while now; I guess both Sunny and Queenie are probably dead,”

After she thought for a while, she walked around and headed toward the high-rise that Ji Shanqing had told her about.