Doomsday Wonderland

After the darkness had abated, her eyelashes fluttered. And when she opened her eyes, fog flooded her gaze.

The dense mist loomed in the sky as far as she could see. It looked like white wool, drifting across her vision in fleecy flakes that seemed as if they were solid. The longer she looked, the more she felt her mind was escaping her, deciding to go on a journey into the thick white veil never to return.

The sensation of the rough gravel digging into her back was vividly clear.

Lying prone on the ground, her brain was a shambolic mess. She had no idea what had happened during the transferring process that caused her to end up in this position since she remembered standing before the darkness enveloped her. She pursed her lips and shot up from the ground. Her heart fluttered like a timid bird in a cage. She allowed her gaze to travel out and the bird finally calmed down when she saw Ji Shanqing laying on the ground not far away from her. His long hair covered his face, but she knew he was just fast asleep.

As she nudged Ji Shanqing quietly, she raised her head and took in her surroundings.

The white fog that blotted out the sky hung over them, and she had no idea what was the cause of the formation of the fog. Looking ahead, she found that the thick white fog had enveloped everything three or four meters above the ground. She couldn’t see the sky or the sun.

The ground beneath her feet rustled whenever she moved. It seemed as though she was standing on a large construction site. As she gazed out into the distance, the sights far away coalesced into a meaningless lump of shadow. She had no idea how far the piece of sandland stretched.

After Ji Shanqing had come back to his senses and opened his eyes, he quickly clambered up from the ground. He didn’t say anything, standing next to Lin Sanjiu and looked around vigilantly. Both of them surveyed their surroundings for some time but nothing suspicious appeared. They looked at each other and heaved a sigh.

“Sis’, which way we should go now?” Ji Shanqing whispered as he gathered his long hair into a ponytail.

No matter which direction they looked, there would be a yellow tract of land covered in white fog extending as far as their vision could see. They couldn’t make out any roads through the white blanket and yellow land or decide which path they should take.

“I have no idea,” Lin Sanjiu felt even more lost than her grand prize. After a few seconds, she pointed a hesitant finger to her left while raising her feet, “… Just pick anyway. As long as there are no people.”

The moment her feet touched the ground, a frightened voice rang out from her left, “—Who’s there?”

The grand prize cast a look at Lin Sanjiu.

“Well, I’m accustomed to my luck,” Lin Sanjiu turned and explained to him calmly before turning to face forward and boomed out, “Who’s there? Show yourself!”

The fog appeared as if it was suspended in mid-air by a transparent plastic film, serving as a white barrier that shielded the sun. However, they could still faintly discern the surroundings with the aid of a few lances of sunlight that pierce through the thick layer of fog.

The moment she spoke, a human shape began to materialize on top of the empty yellow sand. The human figure sprang up and the sand on his body fell to the ground, revealing his skin, hair, and clothes that had a similar color to the sand. He looked close enough to a human doll made of soil and he was near imperceptible.

“He must have used an item that grants him the ability of camouflage, just like the chameleon,” Ji Shanqing went closer and whispered into Lin Sanjiu’s ear.

“J-j-just stand there. Don’t come any closer,” the person bemired in dirt yelled desperately. Lin Sanjiu knew he was a man from his voice, but she couldn’t see his facial features clearly under the mud.

“Are you guys posthumans?” The man asked.

Lin Sanjiu didn’t walk forward. Instead, she recoiled steadily. She nodded her head and said, “Yes, we are. How about you?”

“Yes, I am posthuman too. I just arrived in this world not long ago,” the man seemed to have dispelled himself of his apprehension as his voice lightened. He didn’t move closer to them and spoke from far away, “I have been observing here for some times, yet I couldn’t see anybody. I didn’t know what the hell is happening in this world either. How long have you guys been here? Do you know anything about the apocalypse in this world ?”

“We’re arrived not long ago, too,” Lin Sanjiu replied, “… We don’t know anything.”

Upon hearing this, the man opened his lips, adding a tinge of pink color to his yellow-colored body as he responded crestfallenly, “Oh.”

Disappointment slowly seeped into their hearts and all of them plunged into an awkward silence.

After both parties stared at each other for some time, the man struck up a conversation first and shattered the hush.

“So why don’t you two leave now?” He asked, shooing both Lin Sanjiu and her grand prize away as if he was chasing dogs, “Find something else to do, look for somebody else. You guys won’t gain anything from staring at me.”

Lin Sanjiu did not avert her eyes from him and her legs remained rooted firmly in place. The man could merge himself entirely with the terrain when he stayed completely silent, thus granting him the power of near invisibility. His actions were non-committal, and his face simply gave nothing away, so why would Lin Sanjiu turn around and expose her vulnerable back to a mysterious man such as him?

“Why don’t you go first?” Ji Shanqing retaliated, “We’re going to stay here and look around for some clues.”

The man was dissatisfied with the grand prize’s answer as he clicked his tongue in dismay. He turned his head left and right several times as if he was surveying for any danger that might be lurking around. Perhaps he was very confident in the invisibility granted by his Special Item, he turned back to them and harrumphed, “Fine, I’ll leave now. Step back and don’t follow me.”

“Please, you think too highly of yourself; nobody’s willing to follow you,” Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help but counter. However, her words proved to be unable to quell the trepidation of the man. He remained on his guard, taking his step backward while facing them. He only turned to flee when he was disappearing into the sand far away from them.

“Sis’, let’s go after him!” The grand prize suggested, tugging at Lin Sanjiu’s arm and tried to make her move; his voice was thick with excitement.

“What for?” Lin Sanjiu furrowed her brows in reluctance.

“Don’t you think it’s better to have somebody scout the trail for us? With that, we won’t expose ourselves to danger!” The grand prize was extremely agitated. He added, “Chop-chop! We’re losing him!”

It was not a bad idea. As such, Lin Sanjiu wrapped her arm around his waist and placed him on her shoulder. She spread her legs and sprinted after the man.

The man wasn’t fast, but that Special Item of his was a nuisance. Despite Lin Sanjiu being able to gain on him with her superb speed easily, she still lost sight of him very soon. After she had run for a couple of minutes, her gaze was greeted only by a field of yellow sand. The man had vanished. Perhaps he had used his Special Item again to blend into the surroundings.

“We lost him,” the grand prize grumbled, “We lost him! I told you we had to go faster!”

Lin Sanjiu flicked his forehead with her finger, causing her grand prize grimaced in pain. Then, she said to him in a low voice, layering her words with a tinge of confusion, “Why the fuss? It would not be a big deal if we lost sight of him. By the way, this place is huge—Hm?”

“What? What’s the matter?” The grand prize raised his head and followed her gaze, then his eyes glowed.

In front of them, the horizon formed into a slope. On top of that sand slope, there was a tiny, almost non-discernible human figure. Moving on his hand and knees, the man only straightened his body when he reached the slope and gave away his location to Lin Sanjiu.

“So I have run ahead of him,” Lin Sanjiu said, half laughing half crying. Seeing the guy had turned and ran far into the other direction, she also lowered her body as a smile tugged at the corner of her lips, “Hold tight, I’m gonna—”

She didn’t have a chance to finish her words. The white fog above the slope suddenly parted. A flesh pink colored shadow descended with great speed onto that spot, and before Lin Sanjiu could get a clear look, the land beneath her feet quaked vigorously and she was flung away.

Just when she thought it was another dimensional rift, the tremor stopped mysteriously, disappeared into thin air just as suddenly as it had appeared. Lin Sanjiu quickly clambered off the ground. After she’d regained her balance and looked ahead, she froze.

There was a massive flesh-colored column standing on top of the slope. It reminded her of Pan Gu, the first man of the universe in Chinese mythology that stood between the heaven and the earth to keep them apart. It was so huge that it occupied every inch of her vision, and she didn’t know how far or how long it reached into the sky.

The top section of the flesh column was shrouded in the white mist while the lowest part had stabbed into the sand below. A swath of blood could be seen drenching the center part of the column, dripping to the ground slowly. The man had been crushed to death by the flesh column. His blood spurted far into the distance, painting a startling blood red onto the monotonous yellow and white realm.

“Wha-what’s that?” Ji Shanqing stammered while he helped himself off the ground, “What is that thing?”

Lin Sanjiu recoiled a few steps back, staring at the flesh column as her brain was too blank to command her mouth to speak.

Suddenly, the massive flesh column began to retreat into the sky. It surprised both of them that it did not produce any sound despite its colossal size. Just as two of them continued to move backward while staring at that column, Lin Sanjiu saw it.

She saw that there was a pinkish translucent horn-like plate, as large as a lake, sitting at the tip of the flesh column. It was a plate that she was extremely familiar with, for she would see it on her fingertips countless times a day. The only difference was that her own did not have the dirt-laden, yellow-tinged free margin as the flesh column had.

It was a nail plate.

“That… that thing is a finger?” The grand prize was so shocked that his feet were cemented to the ground and refused to move backward.

Lin Sanjiu pulled at him and immediately, both of them turned to flee. Both of them sprinted at their top speed as the finger returned to the fog above. However, before they could catch their breath, the finger descended again on the sand not far away from them.

As a loud thump burst forth, the duo was sent flying by the shock wave. The finger drew a line through the sand, creating a deep gulf with a depth that reached human midriff in its wake.

When the finger scraped against the sand, the blood, clothes, shredded flesh, entrails, and bones—whatever had constituted the man that was stuck on the epidermal layer of the finger mixed with the whirling sand and fell into the gorge that the finger made. The action reminded Lin Sanjiu of the action they used to do after killing a mosquito—smearing its remains on a wall.

The grand prize gasped as another finger, much shorter than the previous one, appeared from the fog above. Both of the fingers clashed with a loud thud then rubbed against each other, causing a shower of sand mixed with the blood and flesh of the man to rain on the two people below. Very soon, the air was permeated with a sickening bloody stench.

The ground continued to grumble, and Lin Sanjiu knew she had to act fast. Grinding her teeth, Lin Sanjiu blocked her face with her hand and flung her grand prize onto her shoulder. She doubled back to where they came from at her highest speed, causing her lungs to burn in pain.

The wind whistled past her ears, and for a moment she couldn’t hear any voices from outside. Suddenly, there came a grumble from the sky above that sounded like a clap of rolling thunder, cutting through the deafening whistling wind and reached her ears. But the sound was too loud even the air particles shook from the intensity, so Lin Sanjiu thought it was just her mind playing a trick on her again. She shrugged it off and kept running.

“Sis!” It was at this moment that her grand prize suddenly yelled into her ear. She turned her head back to have a quick look while panting heavily.

Unbeknownst to them, the two fingers were gone, disappeared completely without a trace into the white fog.

“Are they gone?” Lin Sanjiu’s intuition prevented her from stop running or slowing down. She opened her mouth and gulped in a mouthful of air.

“Yeay, they’ve been gone for around ten seconds already,” the grand prize quickly added, “You can stop running now. It seems like it’s just stopping anybody from going in that direction.”

Lin Sanjiu ran for a few more steps dubiously and kept turning her head. After she confirmed that the two fingers no longer appear from the white fog, she slowed down. The [Battle Item] in her palm was wet with sweat.

“What the hell was that? Could it be God?” She stopped at last and hurled Ji Shanqing onto the ground. She rested her hands on her knees and panted like a cow that had contracted a cardiovascular disease, “If whatever up there is going to kill us when we go that direction, then where should we go now?

“I—I don’t know,” the grand prize’s face was pale as paper, “How about this? Let’s do a trial and error: We walk slowly to that direction and run whenever the finger showed itself.”

Lin Sanjiu’s brows locked together tightly in consideration. Just when she began to contemplate the feasibility of that idea proposed by her grand prize, the sky above darkened.

Both of them stood still, exchanging glances. For a moment, none of them were willing to raise their heads.

A row of long and thick black hairs penetrated through the white fog, hovering just above their head. The row of black hairs looked like a rank of electric poles. They fluttered and set off a violent gust of wind.

Slowly, bit by bit, Lin Sanjiu raised her head. Her gaze was instantly greeted by a round eyeball, a thousand times larger than her own, looking just like an asteroid that happened to pay a visit to the planet. The eyeball bore through the fog and the dark iris in the center rolled around above them, revealing half of the blood vessels that were previously hidden inside the eye socket.

“Ahhhh!!” The grand prize jerked up, “Run!”

But they were too slow.

Before his voice died down, the row of black hairs swiftly shrunk back to the fog above. A large hand then appeared. However, the hand did not crush them like crushing two ants; instead, it waved around in the fog, sending many figures onto the ground just like a hailstorm.

More and more figures dropped to the ground, occupying almost every inch of the land. However, it didn’t end yet. The crooked, deformed human figures that landed waggled to their feet. Just like inflating a balloon, their deflated foreheads, crumpled abdomen, twisted limbs were swelling and was slowly regaining their previous shape.

A sea of ashen-white faces turned to them. Like a storming sea, they attempted to drown Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing with their searing stare.

“Holy,” The grand prize’s mouth opened big enough for a ball to enter, “… the people of God are duoluozhong ?!”