Doomsday Wonderland

The ground beneath their feet quaked with every step the massive crowd of duoluozhong  took. They were gaining fast on them, and each of their falling steps felt as if they were trampling her heart, causing her to be fraught with utter despair.

“Oh my god, oh my god! They are gaining on us! Sis’, you have to go faster!” The grand prize howled incessantly on Lin Sanjiu’s shoulder, but his voice was soon engulfed by the sandstorm and drowned out by the loud rumbling. Thousands upon thousands of feet hit the ground, raising a choking cloud of sand that shrouded the sky and smothered their vision.

Lin Sanjiu didn’t make any comment.

She felt as though there was a large invisible hand squeezing her body. No matter how hard she tried to breathe in, all she got into her windpipe was sand, but that wasn’t the worst of it; the scariest thing was that the majority of the duoluozhong  behind them had an Evolving Ability.

Lin Sanjiu realized this fact after one of them hit her after they landed on the ground and regained their original form. At that time, if it weren’t for Mrs. Manas’ quick response to activate the [Defense Forcefield] in the nick of time, she and her grand prize might have already fallen victim to the horde of monstrous beings. After she had endured a few more attacks from them, she finally saw an opening. Seizing her chance, she spread her legs wide and made her way away from the monster swarm.

At her back, the [Defense Forcefield] fulgurated ceaselessly, and each flicker represented an attack it blocked. For the weird attacks that could bypass her [Defense Forcefield], she had to neutralize them using the [Pygmalion Choker]. However, once the five minutes were up and the effect of the choker ended, all she could do was run.

The grand prize clenched the card containing [NOTEBOOK] in his hand while clutching Lin Sanjiu’s shirt using his other hand. As he did, he yelled loudly beside her ears, “Sis! The notebook is becoming thicker and thicker!”

Every Evolved Ability of the swarm was being added to the handbook. If Lin Sanjiu did not convert it into a card, she was afraid that her grand prize wouldn’t be able to keep a hold on it. The thought flashed across Lin Sanjiu’s mind. Clenching her jaw, she sped up again.

In the next second, she came to an abrupt halt just before she fell facedown on the ground, causing the humongous finger to miss its target. However, when it realized that it had successfully stopped Lin Sanjiu from advancing, it did not proceed with its pursuit and shrunk back to the white fog above.

“Damn it!” Lin Sanjiu cursed out loud, but Mrs. Manas wasn’t going to allow her to waste their time on such trifles. Bracing herself against Mrs. Manas’ ear-piercing shrill, she turned and charged towards another direction. She had barely taken a step when a sinkhole appeared on the piece of land she previous stood.

“Do something about it!” She roared in a desperate voice that cut through her burning lungs and throat like blistering hot water, “… That finger has stopped us twice!”

“I’m thinking!” The grand prize turned his head quickly, taking in the surroundings like a cat on hot bricks, “It seems more to me that the finger is leading us into the mob of  duoluozhong  rather than killing us… I don’t understand. Since it’s going to kill us eventually, what’s the difference between—Ah!”

He was almost flung into the air when Lin Sanjiu came to another sudden stop. He clamped his arms tightly around her neck, “What happened?”

“Somebody is there!” Lin Sanjiu growled, “Get off me!”

The grand prize immediately slackened his grip. He looked around, and his eyes glowed when he saw a posthuman around ten steps ahead of them. The posthuman had a red birthmark on his forehead, and it seemed to the grand prize that, like them, the posthuman had just been transferred to this world as well. He rolled along the ground unconsciously for a few moments before the friction stopped him. He remained stationary like a dead body until both of them were close to him, and then he opened his eyes.

“Don’t warn him—”

Before the grand prize could make out his words, Lin Sanjiu had already yelled at the man, “Run! The  duoluozhong  is here!”

As Ji Shanqing sighed regretfully, Lin Sanjiu ran past the man. Both of them turned their head in unison and looked back.

The swarm of  duoluozhong  instantly swept over the posthuman like a tsunami and continued to march toward them. Both of them chided the man silently. Without wasting any time, Lin Sanjiu turned her head and continued to run.

“The  duoluozhong  has become lesser,” Mrs.Manas said, “But you have to do something otherwise your Higher Consciousness is depleting soon!”

“I guess that posthuman has diverted some of their attention,” as the thought jumped into her mind, she yelled at her grand prize, “What should we do now?!”

“But that giant is blocking our way out, and we have run out of any useable Special Items,” Ji Shanqing’s face was covered in sweat, his mind was at sixes and sevens, and he couldn’t think of any ways to turn the tide now. He raised his head, and his eyes widened in horror as he yelled, “Quick, turn around! In front is the place where the man was crushed to death!”

Lin Sanjiu’s heart seized, and she stopped. She brandished her [Tornado Whip] and flung a few  duoluozhong  beside them into the sky. She swerved and darted away towards the deep gulf in the distance.

Even with Lin Sanjiu’s height, it was beyond the bounds of possibility for her to jump over the chasm. Through gritted teeth, she secured her grand prize on her back with her hand. While seizing the final moment before a blade of light hit her, she ducked and rolled into the deep trench.

Push.  A bloody mess of human remains was sucked in her feet when she stood up. The pervasive bloody stench filled her nostrils and her stomach did a flip-flop. She held her breath.

The first posthuman they met seemed to have been crushed from his head down. His skull was smashed, his spine had drilled into his innards like a soggy french fry dipped in gravy, and his entire body had become nothing but a smattering of red-bloody flowers. The finger had wiped it along the ground, causing the meat mush to fall apart and stick to the walls of the gorge.

It was a scene too gruesome to be seen. Lin Sanjiu immediately averted her gaze. And her grand prize hollered, “Hold on!”

“What’s wrong?” The moment she opened her mouth, the choking sanguinary scent rushed into her nostrils, and her stomach did another flip-flop.

“There! There! Over there!” The grand prize was so excited that he had lost the ability to articulate his thought into words. He flailed his feet anxiously in the air, “Sis’, there! Look!”

Lin Sanjiu gulped the nauseating sensation down and allowed her gaze to travel out towards the direction her grand prize was pointing.

On top of the pile of flesh and blood foam not far away from them, there was an ochre-colored pointy tip. Somehow, the tip wasn’t stained with the blood and remained its original color. If it weren’t for her grand prize, Lin Sanjiu would never have noticed it.

“That must be the posthuman’s special item!” Ji Shanqing shouted himself hoarse, “Take it, sis! It could be of great help to us!”

“I’m coming, Mrs. Manas. Hold on for a little longer!”

After Lin Sanjiu gave a heads up to Mrs.Manas, she darted forward and grabbed the pile of flesh mush. Concurrently, the [Defense Forcefield] behind her gave off an intense light. The  duoluozhong  had jumped into the gulf as well.

“Okay, let’s get out of here!” Ji Shanqing had been staring behind them; his face was bleached white.

The posthuman’s remnants were gone from Lin Sanjiu arms. Half of her body was soaked in blood and body fluid; there was even a chunk of human skin on her trousers. She couldn’t shrug it off no matter how hard she tried.

When she leaped out from the gulf, she finally drew a sigh of relief as she clenched the [Mutilated corpse wrapped in Special Item [Elementary Grade Ambient Color]] in her palm.

The Special Item had survived the smite from the ‘God’ in the sky!

After she had acquired the item, she flourished her whip behind her. Amassing every ounce of strength from her body, she unleashed a devastating cyclone upon the land. The cyclone gulped up everything in its path, raised a sandstorm that sent sand and dust all over the sky. For a moment, there was only flying sand and rolling pebbles in their sight, even the predominant white fog was gone.

The cyclone receded almost as quickly as it had come. When it finally dissipated, Lin Sanjiu and her grand prize had already disappeared.

The hoard of pale-skinned, hairless humanoid slowed down. Their movements were stiff, and they roamed around under the white fog in an unsteady gait, searching the land for any sight of their target. As they did, they turned their head 360 degrees multiple times, as if they had no vertebra.

“Ngh! Ah! Ah!”

Suddenly, from the air came a grumble as loud as thunder strike. The ground shook, and the white fog fluttered. The two people who were hiding under the [Elementary Grade Ambient Color] experienced a throbbing pain in their heads, and their hearts were pushed into their throats.

The posthuman was crushed to death by that finger because he stood up and revealed himself. In other words, if they remained utterly still, there might be a chance that the giant finger would not notice them.

The voice that resounded through the sky seemed had proved their guess correct.

“Ngh! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ugh! Ah! Ah!” Initially, the voice came rolling from the fog and cloud carried no meaning at all. It was full of unrelenting fury, sounding like a child throwing a tantrum about not getting the toy he yearned for, “Ngh! Ngh! Ngh! Where is she?!”

All the  duoluozhong  fell to the ground and lied prostate in unison. Their legs bent like frogs, and their upper torsos were stretched out, pressing against the ground as if they were performing some kind of ritual.

“They must have been fallen into the hand of the demons, blighted by their venomous doctrine,” a faint voice said. Its prayer drifted into their ears, “O’lord, the only True God, may the two stray lambs we found be able to quell your anger… Your endless holy light will eventually reach out to the four corners of the world, cast away every evil spirit and demon and liberate every lost soul from their affliction.”

Lin Sanjiu held her grand prize under her arm. Even though they felt at sea with the current situation, neither of them were valiant enough to make any moves.

Fortunately, it appeared to them that as long as they did not move, the “True God” would not notice them. However, they did not dare to try their luck even though their opponent was no longer speaking. Pressing their head into the sand, they listened to the rustling footsteps and the whispers that were getting further and further away like an ebbing tide.

They waited for another ten minutes until they no longer felt the vibrations in the ground. Calmness slowly returned to the air until it became rigidly still. Nothing stirred; there was no sound from either the swarm of  duoluozhong  or their “True God.” It seemed that they had already gone far away from where Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing were.

Lin Sanjiu waited prudently in the deadly silence for a bit longer. She poked her head out after she was certain that they were safe. Squinting her eyes, she tried to take in her surrounding.

The thick white fog in midair separated the world into two. The soil and rocks were picked up by the wind, rolling along the sandy ground. It seemed the calmness had returned to reign over the space.

Even so, Lin Sanjiu did not straighten her body. She was afraid that the moment she rose to her feet, she would share the same fate as the previous posthuman. The sky was shrouded in the white fog, and nobody could tell whether or not the eyeball was watching above the fog for them to show themselves.

“Let’s crawl backward,” Lin Sanjiu mouthed a dozen of times before her words finally reached her grand prize. They ran there from other directions, and there was only the direction that lay behind them left for them.

She had to worm her way backward while making sure that Ji Shanqing didn’t slip off her arm. Even for a posthuman, moving in such a way with her knees and elbows was hard for her. Nevertheless, Lin Sanjiu remained steadfast, bearing against the searing pain, caused by the gravels and sands, and continued to move in this way for another half an hour, only then did she stop to catch her breath.

“I guess this should be far enough?”

She thought for a moment, but the picture of the bloody finger rubbing against the ground rammed into her mind and sent a chill down her spine. She then decided to move back for another thousand meters.

Her knees were fine since they were wrapped in her combat pant, but her exposed elbows were not that fortunate. The rough sand had created several lacerations on her elbows. Enduring the throbbing pain, Lin Sanjiu moved her right arm and her left leg to her back in the same way she had been for the past hour.

Suddenly, she missed her step and her body slid downward. Ji Shanqing gasped in horror, and her vision turned upside down. Her heart fluttered so rapidly that it almost jumped out of her throat. Using her hand, she stabbed her fingers into the sand and left a long trail. Finally, with her effort, she was able to stop their descent.

The ground had opened into a cliff. Her grand prize hugged one of her legs, dangling in midair. The color instantly drained from his face when he looked down.

“What the hell happened?”

Huffing, Lin Sanjiu looked down as well.

The [Elementary Grade Ambient Color] had fallen and soon disappeared from her vision into the valley below. From the aerial view, the ground seemed like a large bowl. The area was comparable to the size of a half city. Upon closer inspection, the oblique wall inside the “large bowl” was full of subterranean passages.

Every subterranean passage was filled with many holes. Countless inhabitants could be seen bustling in and out from the holes. Their movements were slow and sluggish, and they all wore the same deadpan expressions.

From above, one would have a bird’s eye view of the structure below.

It looked just like a huge ant pit.