Doomsday Wonderland

Why is there a planet at the other end of the rift?

It was a question without an answer at the moment.

After what seemed like an eternity, Lin Sanjiu rose from the ground.

Her limbs were still quivering from overexertion, and a buzzing noise filled her ears as the loud rumbling of the toppling mountain and the overturning sea rang out much louder than she could have imagined. She couldn’t shake it off even after she rested for almost half a day.

A boundless sinkhole with an abysmal depth was sitting quietly beside Lin Sanjiu around ten steps away from her. The darkness within was darker than the dark, and quieter than silence. The only traces left that hinted at the existence of the town before the destruction was the underground pipeline left dangling at the edge of the crater.

All of the cars, the roads, the houses– everything– had been wiped from this piece of land. No, it was more appropriate to say that even the land itself had vanished.

Using her bone whip to secure Magus to her back, the trio plodded up the road and left the place as quickly as possible.

All of them were at lost of where should they go. However, it didn’t matter anymore as any direction was the same for them, so they picked a direction opposite of where the rift had been. For several days, they wandered across the barren land without finding anything until they finally saw a small town where they could take their break.

It seemed that the concept of country didn’t exist in this world. No matter how far they traversed across the continent, all they saw was town after town.

It was a small town situated at the border of the continent, and it took them merely 20 minutes to walk from the east side of town to the west side of the town. Nevertheless, like every other city, it seemed that bloodshed had also ensued here unbeknownst to the public. Every entrance that led them to the inner part of the town was sealed with layers of barb wire. Cutting through the barb wires, they went into the town, only to be welcomed by a mass grave of bones, broken limbs and dried blood.

“Somebody locked these madmen in,” Ji Shanqing concluded from what he had seen after roaming around the town, “… It seems that all the people here have been eaten.”

The grand prize did not give a damn about the welfare of other people aside from Lin Sanjiu. He kicked a skeleton out of his way as he spoke. The bone with a few strands of flesh rolled along the pavement, sending a series of jarring echoes into the air.

“Can we take a break here?” They had been walking for a long time, and Qing Jiuliu looked as pitiable as a beached fish. He dropped to the roadside with a plop and refused to move an inch forward, “… To be honest, with every new step, the thought of parting from you guys grows more appealing in my mind.”

“It would be nice if we could stay here until we transfer to the other world,” Ji Shanqing echoed, “… After all, we don’t have to meet up with anybody anymore, anyway.”

Not even the sea could escape its fate of being gobbled up by the dimensional rift. With that in mind, perhaps Irezumi and Cyrus who traveled by sea might have already—

When Lin Sanjiu thought about it, she felt as if somebody had punched her in the gut.

“Alright, we, indeed, have to rest and reorganize,” she sighed and said after a short while.

So far they had not stumbled into any psychos. Although the town itself seemed somewhat safe, Lin Sanjiu still felt the need to turn the entire town upside down for any lurking dangers. After that, they settled down in city hall. They swept the bones out and stole a few mattresses from a house nearby, laying them side by side in the corridor behind the main hall.

The water of the town came from a reservoir on the outskirts of the town. Contaminated by an innumerable amount of decomposed bodies, the reservoir had become a gooey, non-consumable pool of dead water. Perhaps the psychos had resided in this town for quite some time, they couldn’t find any clean water and food after searching the town a couple of times. The biggest reward of their search was the tobacco & liquor store that had remained intact.

All of them had had a rather peaceful life surviving on the clean water in Lin Sanjiu’s card and the [Military Compressed Energy]. The only hiccup they had during their undisturbed days was that the “visa agent” from [eBay] remained unresponsive to their inquiry.

“Nothing,” Lin Sanjiu returned the red plastic letter to her card and sighed disappointedly. She had left many inquiries to the “visa agent” in the last few days, yet her all requests fell on deaf ears.

“Could it be that the agent has also been sucked into the dimensional rift? That perhaps might be the explanation why all your queries have remained unanswered,” Mrs. Manas suggested in her mind.

Lin Sanjiu didn’t make any remarks to Mrs. Manas’ conjecture; her brows remained furrowed. She had thought about that probability as well. If that were the case, then the path ahead would be harder now.

Where else could she go to find visas?

After a few seconds, Lin Sanjiu dispelled the thought. She changed the topic and asked, “How’s the thing with the Astral Plane? Can I go in now?”

As soon as Lin Sanjiu picked up this topic, Mrs. Manas let out a long sigh and spoke with a voice full of irritation, “Had I not make it clear enough for you? Your [School of Higher Consciousness] is not at that stage yet so even I have returned, you still cannot go into the Astral Plane. To be honest, I came up with this idea based on the news you told me. If it wasn’t for you, I do not even have the faintest idea about the existence of the Astral Plane.”

Lin Sanjiu yelled out in surprise, “What? You didn’t know about the Astral Plane?”

“Why do you think I would know about the Astral Plane?” Mrs. Manas retorted firmly, “I’m merely a counselor set up by the [School of Higher Consciousness]. I can only tell and teach you about things when you reach a certain stage. Nothing more and nothing less. I’m not a Bodhisattva who leads a stupid monkey on a pilgrimage for Buddhist scripture, so don’t expect me to spoon feed everything to you.”

Lin Sanjiu still couldn’t come around from her shock. She remained silent for a long time. The air was filled with the mumbling of a conversation from the hall outside.

After she thought for a moment, she asked, “What should I do now, then?”

Mrs. Manas sighed again. If she had a body, she would have blown Lin Sanjiu’s brain out already.

“Right now, we can only do what we can do. There’s no point of rushing things. If what Nüwa has said is the truth, I believe you can enter the Astral Plane once you have honed your ability to the maximum.”

“When will I be able to reach that stage? I cannot afford to wait for so long,” Lin Sanjiu was aggrieved, “I haven’t even entered the secondary school… Can’t you do something about it? Can’t you do something like Nüwa did and send me into the Astral Plane in advance?”

“Go find your Nüwa, then,” Mrs. Manas grumbled, though Lin Sanjiu didn’t make out the rest of what she said.

“… Alright, listen,” Mrs. Manas began to talk again after a few minutes of silence. She started to sound a bit weary, “If the [School of Higher Consciousness] is an application, then I am the user interface. I can assist you in developing and upgrading your new abilities into a newer version, but as a user interface, there are some things I can’t do, and cheating is one of them. This has no relation to my identity or my ability as an ultra-intelligent artificial intelligence. It’s just the limitations of the application had set upon me.”

Lin Sanjiu finally understood.

“However,” Mrs. Manas said again, “… Don’t feel discouraged. The reason your growth is so slow is that too many things have popped up in the past. First, you were locked away; then, you lost your body. When you finally got your body back, there came Nüwa who kept on bugging and attacking you. The good thing is that she’s gone now, so you can rest assured and concentrate on your training. I believe your development will certainly be greatly accelerated.”

However, her words didn’t light up the darkness in Lin Sanjiu.

“Can Magus wait until then?” She rubbed her face after an interval, “… She should’ve survived, but I stole her chance. It makes me feels bad like I owe her a life.”

With that, she rose to her feet. Her grand prize and Qing Jiuliu had moved Magus out from the hall on the basis that she needed some sunlight. They had been outside for quite some time, and Lin Sanjiu was worried about them. She walked out towards the source of the sound.

The weather was great, and the sky was blue. Sunrays like spears of flowing, molten gold pierced through the cloudless sky, casting the particles in the air a gold-like sheen. She allowed her gaze to travel out, and then—

Her jaw dropped to the ground.

She finally saw the reason why the grand prize and Qing Jiuliu would suddenly become so unlike them and take Magus for a sunbath.

“That’s the right feeling there. You’re pretty talented,” Holding a cigarette in between his teeth, Qing Jiuliu was so absorbed into the thing he was doing now that he didn’t realize Lin Sanjiu was standing behind him. Right now, he was talking to the grand prize with a frown and a serious expression dawned his face, “… But I’m not fond of the Stanislavsky system. Putting yourself in the shoe of the role you’re playing merely paints the overall casting experience in bright colors. It creates a lot of restrictions on an actor… Of course, in your case…”

Having no idea what to say, Lin Sanjiu merely walked in front. Her eyes were vacant, and her mind was blank.

“I’m more apt to the Brechtian style developed by Bertolt Brecht. Rather than investing in or becoming the character yourself, you must emotionally distance yourself and demonstrate the role with cool, witty, and skillful self-critique so the audience can see the relationships in a new way.”

Lin Sanjiu saw her grand prize nodding incessantly as if he understood Qing Jiuliu’s long-winded and Daedalian lecture. A moment later, he cleared his throat and spun to face Magus who was sitting listlessly in the wheelchair behind him. His expression turned grave.

“You don’t have a mother. Try to imagine she’s the woman who brought you to this world, and also the one who abandoned you…”

Following which, a myriad of expressions flashed across the grand prize’s delicate face. He looked as if a broken child who put on an adamant front in front of people.

“Yes, that’s the expression I want; keep it going. Picture that she is now sitting in front of you, telling you that she abandoned you because she had a few skeletons in her closet.”

Lin Sanjiu couldn’t take it anymore. Caught between laughter and tears, she strode towards them and hollered out, “Hey guys, what’re you doing?”

The two jumped and turned around, startled by her sudden appearance. They were too immersed in their lesson that neither of them heard her footfalls.

“Sis’!” Her grand prize raised his head and offered her a wide grin, exposing his row of pearl-white teeth, “Qing Jiuliu is teaching me how to be an actor.”

“Why would you want to be an actor?” Lin Sanjiu looked behind them to see that they had wrapped Magus’ head with a whimple like something a female peasant would wear in ancient times. With her elegant and silky golden hair buried under the headdress, she looked somewhat simple and unadorned.

Lin Sanjiu was relieved that Magus, who wore Jimmy Choo and was in the Astral Plane right now didn’t know what had they done to her body; otherwise, she might not be pleased.

Exhaling a puff of smoke, Qing Jiuliu spoke lazily, “… I’m telling you, the art of performance is a great skill to have. You can do a lot of things once you’ve mastered it.”

“Oh? Enlighten me, then.”

“Think about it, sis’,” the grand prize answered, his eyes glowed brightly in jubilation, “If I manage to excel in acting, then I could convince people much easier. Don’t you think that would make our journey safer?”

With locked brows, Lin Sanjiu eyed the two people in front of her. She spoke only after she came out from her thoughts after a few seconds, “… I guess so?”

“To be honest, I’m just too lazy to act,” Qing Jiuliu said. He exuded an air that gave the message that he was doing them a big favor by not acting in front of them, “Otherwise, I could play you fools all I want.”

The grand prize was averse to what he said, “… I’m not the fool you’re talking about, right?”

The grand prize’s question remained unanswered as Qing Jiuliu moved on, “… So I think you should take on a class to brush up your acting skill as well.”

Lin Sanjiu did not say anything. She stared at the two, then her eyes widened, and her face blanched.

“Alright, stop it right there. You this surprised expression is a little bit pompous,” Qing Jiuliu evaluated, “The inner—”

Before he could finish talking, the grand prize had hit him in his arm. Qing Jiuliu came to a mental halt as he realized something wasn’t right and he quickly turned around.

Magus was still sitting on the wheelchair behind them; her eyes remained closed. Everything about her seemed normal, were it not for her body that appeared to be growing more faint with each passing second. She looked as if she would dissipate into the air at any moment.

“Shit! She’s transferring!” Lin Sanjiu bellowed out. She darted towards Magus and grabbed her sleeves with the knowledge that such action would not help things at all. Seeing that Magus was getting paler and she couldn’t do anything, she was so anxious that she felt as if there was a fire burning in her chest—

Magus was the first among them to transfer. That meant that she would be transferred to another world alone, without anybody protecting her.

“Throw the Criminal Suspect Suit on her!” Qing Jiuliu’s roar cut through her muddled thought. Without wasting a second, she tapped at Magus’ shoulder and the [Criminal Suspect Suit] appeared. It instantly turned into a black suit and wrapped around her body.

Before Magus could completely envelop in the suit, Lin Sanjiu suddenly felt a slip in her hand. She lowered her head to see that the sleeve was already gone from her palm.

It was as if Magus had evaporated into the air without any traces, leaving only the wheelchair to roll on itself out of the inertia towards the front.

Three of them quieted down, staring at the place where Magus had just sat. For a moment, nobody spoke.

After a short while, Lin Sanjiu threw herself to the ground as she pressed on her temples. The last thing that she wished to happen happened. Right now, she needed to find the visa to the world where Magus was sent.

“Erm, guys,” Qing Jiuliu said, shattering the silence.

“Yeah, spit it out?” Lin Sanjiu replied without raising her head.

“It seems like I’m also transferring…”

As if a needle had pricked them, Lin Sanjiu and the grand prize jerked up. The moment the thing that was happening met her eyes, she almost blacked out.

Qing Jiuliu was studying his fainting hand with a weird expression. The gold-like sun rays fell on his body; they pierced through his crystal-like body and cast a kaleidoscopic of colors in the air. He now looked like foam on the beach that was soon to disappear—

Foam!

Lin Sanjiu startled by her thought, her body broke into gooseflesh. Part of her felt relieved while the other part of her wondered why she didn’t think of that just now. Since their time was of the essence now, she quickly summoned a card and shoved it into Qing Jiuliu’s hand.

That card contained the visa issued by her grand prize using his [Spumous Visa] ability. Since the visa couldn’t last very long, she didn’t hold much hope for it. At that time, she just stole a glance at it and kept it away. Then, she had totally forgotten about it.

It was still a visa issued by Ji Shanqing, although the visa couldn’t last very long, it was more than enough.

The type of visas Ji Shanqing had issued were the same before and after his ability had evolved. The visa that she gave to Ji Shanqing was a visa to a lower level world “Sandwich Cookie.”

“Remember!” Lin Sanjiu shoved the card containing [My Hand Which Ran Through Your Black Hair] into the hand of the faint figure and yelled with all her might, “You have to protect Magus at all costs, even if you have to sacrifice your chastity. If we have the chance, let’s meet at the Twelve World Centrum!”