Doomsday Wonderland

Once again, Lin Sanjiu checked through the hotel meticulously with her [Higher Consciousness Scan] as she did for the past couple of days.

Today was the third day Magus went into the Astral Plane. Her body was now in the room one floor above Lin Sanjiu, sealed with a special force field.

Before Magus left for the Astral Plane, she had especially advised that nobody should go upstairs and nobody should touch the force field. “Those who do not listen to my advice… may beg me to kill them when I’m back.” This was what she told them before leaving.

At that time, the way Magus squinted her eyes and how her lips curved up had caused a huge impact on the trio and made their hearts shudder.

It looked as if she could take care of herself just fine and needed no protection from Lin Sanjiu at all. However, Lin Sanjiu was going to fulfill her promise anyway. Every day she would sit at the room underneath Magus’ room and patrol the building daily. Of course, whenever she did that she would earn herself a sarcastic remark from Qing Jiuliu. He scoffed, “You’re just wasting your energy.”

He was right. The days went by peacefully.

Lin Sanjiu let out a breath before retracting her head from the window. Then, she heard the door to the room open.

“Sis,” the grand prize came into sight. He had wrapped around five layers of clothes after his previous clothes were punctured. The layers of clothes rustled as he moved, and he looked more like a gift ball than a present. They usually would catch the susurration of his clothes before actually seeing his figure, “…Is everything going well for today?”

“Yeah, everything is fine,” Lin Sanjiu threw him a smile. Then, her brows furrowed, “…I don’t understand why Number 46 didn’t come to us after we killed his candidates.”

“Perhaps that guy is chary of getting head-on with Magus,” the grand prize mumbled. He took a chair next to her. As he struggled to bend over to sit on the chair, he grunted under his breath, sounding a little bit aggrieved, “Did I wear too many layers of clothes?”

“Has Qing Jiuliu gone out yet?” Lin Sanjiu spun to Ji Shanqing and asked. The days had been too quiet as if it was the eve before a tempest, and because of that Lin Sanjiu felt very edgy. She had a feeling that something was going to happen.

“Yeah, he’s out,” the grand prize answered as he struggled to pull his arm out from his layers of clothes.

Since they still had the trial to clear and also to prevent Irezumi from getting angry with them, they had to venture out to search for Consular Officer now and then. However, due to a safety concern, it was always Qing Jiuliu who was tasked with the assignment while Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing rarely went out to look for Consular Officer.

…Meanwhile, Qing Jiuliu did make justice to the statement that he had survived through six worlds in an inebriated state.

One day after he went out, he did not return until late at night. Just as the two had run out of patience and decided to go look out for him, they saw him walking out from the darkness, yawning. With the help of the candlelight, they saw his arm was crowded with teeth marks.

It turned out that he had come across a  duoluozhong  on his way to search for the Consular Officer. The  duoluozhong  wanted to eat him, but he stank to high heaven of booze and tobacco. After munched on him several times while tousling with its inner self, the  duoluozhong  decided to let him go at last.

“…I took a nap in the woods after I walked a few more steps. I just woke up a little while ago,” Qing Jiuliu said matter-of-factly.

In the end, Qing Jiuliu didn’t bump into any Consular Officer. Instead, he had found six more cartons of alcoholic drink and beverage, and they were now piled in the corner of the room.

“It’s such a shame that Irezumi knows you aren’t a Consular Officer,” Lin Sanjiu sighed. “On second thought, we don’t know is your ability reliable or not either… Otherwise, we might not need to busy ourselves with searching a Consular Officer.”

Since nobody knew whether the visa issued by Ji Shanqing was usable or not, they conducted a small experiment on it and thus found a very crucial weakness on those visas. His ability was known as the [Spumous Visa]. Like bubbles, the visas could last for merely three to five seconds. In other words, even if they had the visa, everything would be for naught if the timing of transferring to the other world did not fall in between the three to five seconds before the visa disappeared, and Ji Shanqing would burst his guise as a Consular officer.

On the other hand, it was considered pretty accurate if a posthuman could fix up the date one or two days before the transfer. This was because a different world had a different almanac system, and some of them didn’t even have a military time clock. Also, the flow of time was different in each pocket dimension, so the saying of 14 months transferring period could only be used as a reference.

In the end, it was Lin Sanjiu who barely managed to put the not-so-useful ability of Ji Shanqing into good use. She first asked Ji Shanqing to issue her a [Spumous Visa] and then she immediately turned it into a card. She was going to call it out when it was time for her to travel to another world. However, would it work out as she intended? Lin Sanjiu didn’t know.

As she chewed the fat with Ji Shanqing to while away the time, she took out six colored balls that Magus had left for her.

There was nothing special about the balls. The only thing that gave Lin Sanjiu a headache was Magus’ instruction. She wanted her to levitate all six balls with her Higher Consciousness at the same time while moving the balls around the room back and forth in multiple directions with different speed. On top of that, she had to make sure that no balls fell onto the floor and the balls had to stay in their track all the time.

“…You will have to keep trying and trying until you can trace a figure of the logo LOEWE in the air with these balls while simultaneously engaging in a convo. Only then will I give you the pass. You copy?” Magus said before leaving. She even showed Lin Sanjiu the logo on her purse, and the latter almost fainted when seeing how complicated it was.

Right now, Lin Sanjiu could only keep at most four balls in a stable hover, let alone trace an emblem of such complexity.

Ji Shanqing looked at the two balls that remained on the ground first before shifting his gaze over to Lin Sanjiu, who was struggling with all her might to keep four balls floating in the air. He sighed, “Sis, the Astral Plane is a different dimension constructed by posthuman who have Higher Consciousness?”

“Yes…” The moment Lin Sanjiu opened her mouth, two balls dropped from the air. Shocked, she immediately used her Higher Consciousness to keep the two balls afloat. As she elevated the two balls to their previous height, she continued to say, “…That’s an incredible place. It never entered my mind that Higher Consciousness could work just like the ‘internet.’ There, everyone exists in their Higher Consciousness form, and everyone looks like stars. Unless you took the initiative and changed your own outlook.”

Gaping his mouth, Ji Shanqing was bedazzled by Lin Sanjiu’s story.

Although he looked like a human, deep down inside he was still an item. Hence, he didn’t have Potential Growth Value as any other human did. Overwhelmed by the sadness of not being able to step into such a wondrous place in his entire life no matter how much he yearned to, the grand prize sighed regretfully, “…It’s amazing to create such a dimension.”

“Yeah,” Lin Sanjiu replied, “The Astral Plane is huge. I haven’t had a chance to look around, and Magus had already dragged me out from the Astral Plane. Before that, I was in an online gaming platform.”

“Online gaming platform?” The grand prize asked.

Lin Sanjiu filled Ji Shanqing in with the details J7 told her. She paused for a second, tilted her head and mumbled to herself, “…I wonder if I would make a spurt of progress in enhancing my Higher Consciousness if I stayed in that gaming platform.”

“That J7… It is a bionic automaton?” The grand prize parroted, “What kind of game were you guys playing at that time?”

“It’s called… Wait, let me think first. I just took a glance at the name, and I was forced out from the Astral Plane… Oh, it’s called the “Three-Legged Prison Break.” Once Lin Sanjiu had stabilized the four balls in the air, she then proceeds to lift the fifth ball from the ground, “It’s been a while and J7 has probably finished the game already. That’s the only tie between us and I don’t know where I could find him in the future… It’s such a shame I didn’t have the chance to bid him farewell.”

Ji Shanqing was stunned. He blinked his eyes and asked, “Three-legged race?”

“Oh no, it’s a prison break, three-legged prison break,” Lin Sanjiu added. She averted her gaze, and she yelled in a theatrical exhilaration, “The fifth one! Finally!”

Ji Shanqing fell into deep thought. With furrowed brows, he scrutinized Lin Sanjiu in a peculiar expression as he struggled with the growing realization that Lin Sanjiu hadn’t been able to read between the lines. He couldn’t help but open his mouth, wanting to say something.

Given her current progress, only God knew when Lin Sanjiu would be able to enter the Astral Plane again. However, Ji Shanqing could see that there were still ample of conundrums awaiting her to solve, and each of them was heavier than the last.

“What’s wrong?” Lin Sanjiu looked at him before averting her gaze toward the last ball.

“Uhm, nothing,” Ji Shanqing gulped down the words that formed at the tip of his tongue. He turned over to the window, “…Why hasn’t Qing Jiuliu returned yet?”

“I don’t think he will return so soon,” Lin Sanjiu said without turning her head. “I guess he must be drinking or taking a nap elsewhere. He probably won’t show up until late at night.”

Seeing that Lin Sanjiu was trying to pull a ball toward herself bit by bit, Ji Shanqing returned his gaze to the window, looking ahead with a guilt-laden face.

Since the rooms that faced the hotel’s front garden, where the few of them had resided previously, had been destroyed by the dimensional rift, they had no choice but to move to the other side of the floor. Looking out from the window, they would see a wide street, with many London plane tree planted on both sides. It seemed that it was a shopping district home to a multitude of luxury stores before the apocalypse arrived. It was no wonder that Magus would settle there.

Right now, something or someone was phasing in and out under the lustrous and thick vegetation. Ji Shanqing narrowed his eyes to have a better view, and when the shadow came out a little, he realized that he was Qing Jiuliu.

“…Speak of the devil, there he is,” he mumbled at Lin Sanjiu. Both of them then gazed out.

Even though they couldn’t see his face, they were certain that he must have soaked himself thoroughly in booze. His steps were groggy, and he was hauling a large gunny sack at his back, plodding along the street toward them. Then, he suddenly stopped at the junction, as if he thought which path he should take. After a few seconds, he swerved into another road.

Lin Sanjiu smacked her forehead, “…Call him.”

Within the few minutes, as the grand prize struggled to pluck his body out from the chair, Qing Jiuliu had gone a few more yards away. When the grand prize went to the windowsill and before they could shout, both of them froze.

There was another person who was walking toward Qing Jiuliu.

“Who’s coming?” Lin Sanjiu asked, squinting her eyes.

“I don’t know,” the grand prize answered, staring fixedly at the person who was getting closer to Qing Jiuliu, “Whoever it is, he doesn’t seem like a lunatic.”

At this moment, Qing Jiuliu finally realized somebody was walking toward him.

It was hard to see Qing Jiuliu’s figure through the thick foliage. When he walked into the opening gap in between two trees, both of them saw him turning his head. He studied the stranger for a few seconds, then continued to move forward when he realized he couldn’t match the person’s face with the faces in his mind.

… After the world had ended, what should two posthumans who were perfect strangers to each other do when they encountered each other on the street? It seemed to be not the type of the question where Qing Jiuliu would think after.

The stranger was moving closer to the hotel, shrouding his figure under the shades of the trees. He seemed to have no interest in the man as he disregarded Qing Jiuliu’s intense gaze and moved past him in a similarly relaxed demeanor. When the person walked nearer, only then could Lin Sanjiu and the grand prize sees clearly that the figure was a senior woman, clad in a green robe.

She was holding a walking stick while resting her arm at the hunch on her back. She had a bun hair and was wearing a green robe. With her large and loose black slack, she was the perfect epithet for the word “old lady.”

The old lady sauntered, one step at a time because her legs weren’t very strong. Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing looked at each other, but none of them tried to call Qing Jiuliu.

The figure walking in an unsteady gait had gone further and further away. Halfway through, he took something out from his pocket. Judging from their knowledge towards him, it should be either cigarette or booze.

At this moment, the old lady suddenly stopped. She spun her head around, looking at Qing Jiuliu who was far away from her.

Both of them were dumbfounded. The old lady turned her body around and darted toward Qing Jiuliu in a speed which belied her aged appearance.

Even though her figure blurred when she was traveling in hyper speed, she was still “walking.” In a blink of an eye, her figure had disappeared amongst the shades of the tree.

Coldness instantly took over Lin Sanjiu. “You stay here!” After she ordered to her grand prize, she stepped up the windowsill and jumped down from the building.