Doomsday Wonderland

Crash.  The window was shattered. As the bone whip flung Ji Shanqing into the building, a shriek that would make people’s heart wrench blasted from outside.

Lin Sanjiu had never heard such a cry before. Nevertheless, they were soon liberated from the bombardment of the stomach-churning shriek. It stopped abruptly as if somebody had pressed the pause button. She raised her head, and her face blanched.

The arm-sized rift was too small to contain the body of that thick glasses. His lower torso had embedded into it while his head and arms remained outside of the sky crater. From a glance, he looked like a bouquet of a flower made of flesh.

The blood and meat pulps that burst forth changed their trajectory in mid-air, shooting back to the rift, and slapped on the thick glasses’ squashed body. Judging by their experience, he wouldn’t last longer than three seconds.

However, at that moment, the cigarette stub inside the pool of the fountain was still glowing orange in one end.

“He’s in!” Pressing her body against the windowsill, Lin Sanjiu yelled at the top of her voice. She wanted Qing Jiuliu to seize the opportunity and retreat to the hotel. With that, she still could pull him inside with her bone whip.

The cigarette butt glimmered.

Qing Jiuliu said, “I’m lazy to move.” But Lin Sanjiu heard nothing.

“Quick! Come over here!” Lin Sanjiu boomed. Suddenly, the air began to move again. Understanding immediately dawned on Lin Sanjiu when she saw that the cigarette butt remained unmoved although he was running short of time. Qing Jiuliu knew very well that even if he ran at his top speed, the likelihood of escaping from the ferocious black hole was minimal. Since he was going to die anyway, he instead chose to die alone getting sucked into the rift than getting his friends killed because of him.

“What a fucking lazy asshole!”

As the thought surfaced in her mind, she had already hopped onto the ledge of the window and leaped outside. Magus, who had been observing Lin Sanjiu all the time, naturally wouldn’t allow her to leave. She raised her hand, sending her Higher Consciousness out, and grabbed Lin Sanjiu’s leg in the nick of time.

Without turning her head, Lin Sanjiu waved her hand and released the only thing she had in her disposal that was effective against Magus.

The satiny and lustrous red velvet spread open in the air. The Higher Consciousness sent forth by Magus rapidly disappeared into the red velvet without any traces. Earlier on, Magus had consumed a large amount of her Higher Consciousness to help Lin Sanjiu reactivate her [School of Higher Consciousness]. And now she had lost yet another portion of her Higher Consciousness to the red velvet. The combination of both had drained her. She suffered from a momentary dizzy spell, and she staggered to her feet.

When the red velvet vanished into the ether, Magus pounced herself onto the windowsill and looked ahead. Her countenance was as dark as coal.

The thick glasses had long since disappeared into the rift. The wind roared like a wild monster. Amidst the rough turbulence, Qing Jiuliu was floating, bobbing up and down in the air. However, he did not fly directly towards the rift, for there was a bone whip wrapped around his body.

Lowering her head, she saw Lin Sanjiu.

After jumping out from the window, Lin Sanjiu had lassoed Qing Jiuliu with her bone whip while at the same time latched onto a terrace below. Her body fluttered raggedly in mid-air with her feet off the ground. The only thing that held her in place was her arms that entwined firmly around the balustrade.

“Hey—” Lin Sanjiu had no idea if Magus would be able to hear her voice amid the howling gale, but she had to try. She shouted at Magus, who had popped out her head, “The handrail won’t last any longer!”

As if it was responding to her words, the thin and black, carved in floral metal handrail quivered in the wind.

“If we’re dead,” even though Lin Sanjiu had strained every one of her muscles, she still couldn’t pull the bone whip back to herself. Besides, she had to dole out her strength to not loosen her grip on the handrail; her fingers turned all white, “… you won’t be able to maintain your immortality anymore!”

Magus’ jaw was set; her face was as cold as an iceberg. She disregarded the raging gale, allowing it to dishevel her cascading golden hair. If Magus could kill people with killing intent, Lin Sanjiu was certain that she would have shredded both Qing Jiuliu and her into million pieces.

Truth be told, Lin Sanjiu knew full well that Magus, who had never been threatened before, was resisting against her inner demon to throw both she and Ji Shanqing into the rift.

Suddenly, the balustrade bent with a sickening crack and Lin Sanjiu’s heart skipped a beat, snapping her out of her reverie. She yelled, “I can’t hold on much longer!”

Magus closed her eyes and grunted. When she clenched her jaw tight and her mouth drooped, she looked as if she had some years on her. Without replying to her comment, Magus stretched her arm, beckoning with her nail painted in bright red polish.

Lin Sanjiu immediately felt a force below her, which in turn had helped to mitigate the suction force. The bone whip that fluttered in the wind was returning to her.

The silver lining was that her distance was pretty close. Hence, Magus could easily pull her back from the suction force with her power. Saving Lin Sanjiu was tantamount to saving Qing Jiuliu.

When Magus had tossed both of them into the room, Ji Shanqing came into the room from the door. His body was full of splinters.

“If the dimensional rift moves in here,” Magus said as she stood in the center of the room, staring coldly at the two that were gasping for the air on the ground before shifting her gaze onto the grand prize. The way she smiled froze Ji Shanqing to his core, “…I’ll uses these two wimps to block the rift.”

Lying prone on the floor, Lin Sanjiu did not dare to utter any word. She understood how much Higher Consciousness Magus had used and how angry she was. She was afraid that once she rubbed Magus in the wrong way, the latter might throw both of the boys out of the room.

“If that happens,” Lin Sanjiu waited until Magus’ expression became lighter before talking earnestly, “I’ll take out the red velvet. Perhaps we can absorb the dimensional rift with it.”

“That’s impossible,” Magus refuted her statement point-blank.

“There’s nothing that the red velvet can’t…”

Before Lin Sanjiu could finish her sentence, an unseeable force had smacked her at her head, causing her to shut her mouth with a snap. Her jaw numbed and she almost bit her tongue. She looked ahead and saw the flame behind Magus’ eyes, as if the latter was suppressing herself from an outburst. Magus withdrew her finger and said cooly, “… Much better. Let me paint the picture for you. No matter what, be it Evolved Ability or Special Items, everything that belongs to our “side” does not affect the crack that comes from the other dimension.”

Lin Sanjiu was dumbfounded; then, she drew her eyebrows closer. Starry Carnival Amusement Park, the Astral Plane, and the dimensional rift, all of them were like pieces of a puzzle. Right now, she only needed to put them together and once she had attained more clues, she would be able to bring the whole picture under the light. However, she had no idea what answer she would get in the end.

The room fell silent as nobody talked; only the whoosh of the wind could be heard. Magus’ tow-colored hair and the hem of her skirt fluttered in the wind. She turned around and gazed out at the dimensional rift that floated in the sky. She murmured, “…Let’s pray it won’t come to us.”

She didn’t use her Higher Consciousness when she talked. As such, nobody heard her whisper.

At last, all of the windows that faced the rift had given in to the intense gravitational pull and were shattered. The glass shards glittered under the moonlight, zooming straight at the rift as they were a flock of wild geese returning to their nest. Windows, doors, curtains, chairs, tables… Everything in the building was flooding madly toward the rift. The wall blocked some of them, but most had flown and disappeared into the night sky.

The rift was larger than it previously was. Lin Sanjiu had clawed at the wall whilst the other two had picked their respective life-saving straw. Magus was the only one who relied on the support of her pair of stilettos. She stood firmly in the center of the room with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

The whirlwind had impeded them from communicating with each other. Four of them struggled for a few moments in the brutal turbulence until they sensed that the intensity of the suction force of the rift was ticking away. Yet, none of them was audacious enough to let their guard down as they all knew this could just be the beginning.

The wind had finally ceased away, and the rift disappeared.

The room was a shambolic mess of destroyed furniture. All kinds of furniture littered around the bottom of the wall. Three of them stretched their sore fingers as they glanced at each other before once again clenching their fingers at the corner of the wall. All of their countenances were white as a sheet as they waited.

… Would the rift follow them? It was a question without an answer. As if it was a massive boulder, the issue weighed heavily on their hearts, except for Magus.

She turned around and flicked her finger, dragging Qing Jiuliu across the floor to her side with her Higher Consciousness. Since she knew his ability, she didn’t touch him. She pinned him on the floor next to her using her Higher Consciousness. Then, she spun her head over to look at Lin Sanjiu, whose face was ghastly pale. She said, “…Please don’t blame me.”

Her words sent a chill down Lin Sanjiu’s spine, and her lips quivered. Lin Sanjiu immediately formed a dome shield around the hotel with her [Higher Consciousness Scan]. With that, she would be the first one to notice if the rift appeared in the hotel.

The minutes ticked away. Nobody moved and nobody talked. Their hearts fluttered wildly beneath their ribs. Even their minds went blank.

Suddenly, a cracking sound reverberated through the suite. Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing’s heart tightened, skipping a beat as they looked at the source of the noise to see that Qing Jiuliu, who was held fast by Magus on the ground in a prone position, was playing with his lighter. He took a long pull at the cigarette and exhaled a ring of white smoke into the air. He said casually, “I guess… It won’t appear already, right?”

Magus cast a sidelong glance at him before giving a loud snort. Moments later, she waved her hand and Qing Jiuliu felt that the force at his back had disappeared. He quickly clambered up from the floor.

Seeing this, Lin Sanjiu heaved a long sigh of relief. She leaned herself at the wall as a drop of cold sweat trickled down her forehead.

Ji Shanqing had swathed a ribbon around his body to cover the proliferation on his chest. Sitting with his legs crossed, his gaze jumped from Lin Sanjiu to Qing Jiuliu before it finally stopped at Magus. Driven by his curiosity, he took the first step and fired the question in his mind, shattering the silence, “…So, what’s a dimensional rift?”

Magus rolled her eyes but said nothing.

“Where would we end up with after getting sucked into the rift?” The grand prize pressed on and asked again, “How do you know about the dimensional rift? Why is it here, and why would it move along with posthuman?”

Slap . The grand prize’s mouth was shut as well.

Magus looked around the room but she couldn’t find the single sofa that she had been sitting all the time, “…Go and find me a sofa. I’m tired.”

Even though she didn’t explicitly instigate who should do the errand, Lin Sanjiu was the first one to jump into action. She spread her legs and darted toward the door. Before she could leave the room, Magus’ indifferent voice came from behind her and halted her advance, “Stop right there. Let both of them go.”

Qing Jiuliu exhaled a mouthful of smoke. He exchanged glances with Ji Shanqing and walked outside.

“Get over here,” Magus spun her body and said softly to Lin Sanjiu.

It had nothing to do with her ability. Magus had a special kind of magnetism that would entice you to do as she asked. Without saying anything, Lin Sanjiu inched one step at a time toward Magus, with the fear that the latter was going to get even on her.

“I have over-exploited my Higher Consciousness,” Magus said openly, “So I won’t be able to help you reactivate your [School of Higher Consciousness] for the time being.”

When Lin Sanjiu recalled the excruciating pain, she let out a sigh of relief.

“… Put on your game face,” Magus berated. She narrowed her pair of grayish azure eyes, staring menacingly at Lin Sanjiu, “…Have you not realized yet? There’s now a hole in your gene as the foreign cells have done much more damage to your body than you could’ve imagined. See, you still couldn’t withdraw your bone whip until now.”

Lin Sanjiu was stunned as she also realized something was amiss. She then tried to keep the bone whip into her body but the whip that she had been commanding with practiced ease did not react to her order. She needed more times before she could finally retract the bone whip back into her body. Her expression turned sour.

“So am I…”

Magus waved her hand and cut into her speech.

“Don’t alter your body configuration anymore, unless the situation calls for it. That’s my first advice. After I have obtained the segment of cells, you can reconsolidate your gene.”

Lin Sanjiu nodded in assent, pouting.

Magus lifted her eyes and threw a glance at Lin Sanjiu, wondering if she should tell her the thing in her mind. After much contemplation, Magus decided not to tell her the whole story, “The second point is… I guess the dimensional rift is somehow related to the formation of ‘Meat Elysium.’ If that’s the case, I might need to go the Astral Plane once more.”

“You have drained your Higher Consciousness, haven’t you?” Lin Sanjiu asked, “It’s not safe to go into Astral Plane in your current state, right?”

As if she had heard a joke, a smile tugged at the corner of Magus’ lips as she lifted her chin, “…Owh, How lovely. Are you worried about me?”

Lin Sanjiu didn’t know how to reply. Magus turned around and continued to walk to the door. As her stilettos clicked on the ground, her rasp yet gentle voice drifted clearly into Lin Sanjiu’s ears, “I’ll leave a few things to aid you in polishing your Higher Consciousness… When I’m not around, you all must under no circumstances leave this hotel. Don’t simply wander to another place. I won’t be responsible for anything that happened to you. Capeesh?”

Lin Sanjiu blinked her eyes. Just when Magus reached the door, she released an “ah” through her lips and made Magus freeze in place.

“Understood,” Lin Sanjiu nodded, “Don’t worry. You’ve saved us, so we’ll protect your body at all cost.”

Magus’ eyes widened, for she was not expecting the answer. There was a silence for a brief moment, then she chuckled. She didn’t say anything and went out of the room.