Doomsday Wonderland

Lin Sanjiu vaguely remembered that she had come across this popular science article a long time ago. The report claimed that when humans were frightened or in a desperate situation, the brain would experience a disorder known as transient global amnesia. For instance, if you accidentally cut your finger, when you tried to recall the incident, all that would come into your mind was nothing but fuzzy and blurry images.

In the same way, she had no idea how she got rid of the cord, blasted open the hole, fell along the tunnel, and finally ended up on this piece of land. She tried to think back, but there were only fragments of messy images left in her head.

She laid on the ground for roughly 10 minutes. A dark fog clouded her vision. Her bones felt as if they were crushed. Her organs were severely damaged, and her mind so messy that she could not think straight. All she could do was lay helplessly on the ground as the pang of intense pain and darkness engulfed her whole. She huffed and puffed slowly, for she feared that she wouldn’t be able to breathe anymore should she stop respiring.

There were muffled noises in the air. A person was saying something to her, but Lin Sanjiu couldn’t hear it. After the pain had ebbed away and light returned to her eyes, a face appeared in front of her vision.

Perhaps because they fell from high sky, the person’s face was flattened and her facial features were all out of places. “You are awake.”

Lin Sanjiu opened her mouth, but no sound came out of it. She tried a few times before she finally found her voice. “S… Soulsqn?”

Soulsqn lowered her head, causing her two ponytails and skin to slide down her face. At a glance, she looked like a human skin baggage.

“Oh my good lord, who would’ve thought you could survive a fall from such a high altitude. When I was falling, I kept thinking about how lonely I would be if all of you were dead…”

Lin Sanjiu groaned as she pulled herself up from the ground. The moment she moved, she felt a little punch-drunk, and her vision blurred again. She waited until the dizziness faded away before interrupting the flesh worm weakly, “Where is gran… Graham and Puppeteer? Are they here too?”

“Nope. I didn’t see them around,” Soulsqn replied matter-of-factly.

“Then… Did you see them enter the wall?” Lin Sanjiu asked. Throbbing pain crawled through her brain as she tried to recall the incident but to no avail. She couldn’t remember who had followed her into the wall.

“I’m not sure.” The meat worm adjusted her skin. She patted it twice, only feeling content after moving the skin back to its original position. “I was the second to jump into the wall, so I don’t know whether or not they followed us.”

“So… Where are we now?” Lin Sanjiu asked as she rubbed her temples. “Are we inside the hall?”

However, she did not expect the kind of answer Soulsqn gave her.

“Nope. We are in the Olympics.”

There was silence in the air.

Moving her hand away from her temple, Lin Sanjiu stared blankly at the quasi-human face. Although she was talking in a language she was familiar with, Lin Sanjiu could not understand any words that came out of her lips. “…What did you say?”

“I said, we are in the Olympics,” Soulsqn tidied her face and hair, “Are you dumb or something?”

“O—Olympics? We are in another apocalyptic world? B-bu-but how? It still hasn’t completed the 14 months yet. How is it possible for us to be in another world?” Lin Sanjiu stammered, shooting out a barrage of questions. Then she shook her head, sensing something amiss. “Hold on a second, how did you know we are in another apocalyptic world?”

Soulsqn pouted her lips, gesturing for Lin Sanjiu to look behind her. “Would you mind turning around? You would see the reason then.”

Lin Sanjiu turned her stiff neck around.

As her vision got clearer, she noticed that similar to the Salvation of God, a thick layer of fog was hovering right under the dawn-stained sky. The summit of the jagged mountain ranges in the distance was shrouded in fog, appearing to be a dab of turquoise-colored stain on a white blanket. Spreading out from the foot of the mountain was a large swath of arid land where not even a blade of grass or stone could be seen. From a single glance, it seemed like a concrete floor.

On the land behind Lin Sanjiu stood a large stone tablet with inscriptions on both sides. Lin Sanjiu approached it and looked closely. She found that although there were different languages engraved on the stone tablet, all of them meant the same thing: Welcome to the Olympics.

After a minute or two, all the characters floated up. They merged with the tablet to form a smooth surface before sinking again and shaping into different words. Although they were in different languages, Lin Sanjiu suspected that it was the same sentence.

She looked in a daze at the stone tablet for a while.

‘How is this possible?’ Lin Sanjiu denied inwardly. She had stayed in the Salvation of God for only seven months, eight at most. There was still roughly half a year before she would be transferred to another world. Moreover, she fell straight into this world from the metal wall in the Data Stream Library…

‘Could it be that there was another wall? One of the walls led to the Salvation of God while the destination for the other is the Olympics?

‘But what does this mean?’

Lin Sanjiu had a severe concussion due to the heavy blow she received to her head when she fell from up there. She sucked in air to lessen the pulsating pain. The image of her grand prize entered her head with sublime clarity. If Ji Shanqing were here, he would certainly do much better than her in figuring out this mess.

Lin Sanjiu then scanned her surroundings. There was a single unbroken, longitudinal eminence delineating the other side of the boundary. The day was dawning, but the sky was blue. She could not see anybody around.

As she took in her surroundings, the words on the stone tablet shifted again. This time, it was no longer the same greeting message. The font had become smaller, and the passage had grown longer. Lin Sanjiu waited patiently for a while until she finally saw the language that she knew—human language.

As her gaze hovered above the passage, it stopped shifting as if it sensed somebody reading the message carved on its body.

“In the name of the highest god Zeus, under His divinity, the Olympic Games (Note 2) will be held all year round on this planet to perpetuate this glorious tradition of ancient Greece (Note 1). It is the most solemn festival, holy and inviolable. Therefore, we wish every contender will abide by the rules and be true to yourself during the competition. Entrants are free to choose, repeat, and participate in any games and show Zeus the power and beauty in you.

“The game will begin at sunrise every day and end at sunset. When night falls, the game will be called off temporarily, and any hostilities are prohibited. The planet demands unquestioning obedience, and under no circumstances are the contenders allowed to break the rules. All violators will receive judgment from the planet. Contenders will be granted a day off. Nevertheless, punishment will also be handed down on any entrants who failed to join any games for three days consecutively.

In the end, we wish nothing more than to create a harmonious atmosphere consisting of the four vital elements: honesty, equality, liberty, and fraternity. Hence, let’s battle to your heart’s content and present the best competition to Zeus, the highest god.

“Note 1: Ancient Greece was a place name on a certain planet. The name of the planet is untraceable. However, there is reason to believe that it is one of the realms once ruled by Zeus.

“Note 2: The Olympic Games, which have been passed down from Ancient Greece, were said to have been held initially to honor Zeus, the greatest god of all time. However, after a thousand years passed, the grand festival gradually died out due to earthquakes and other factors.”

It was not easy to read such a long passage. Lin Sanjiu fell silent for a few seconds to digest all the content.

She was no stranger to a situation where she needed to follow a specific set of rules, but most of them only happened in the Pocket Dimension. Right now, the entire planet was a battlefield. This was the part that she found hardest to accept.

Lin Sanjiu let out a breath to calm down her rumbling thoughts. Suddenly, she raised her head to look at the mountain ranges in the distance as she realized something.

‘Damn it! Isn’t it already sunrise?

‘So the game is about to start? Where does it begin? What is the program? What should I do now?’

In the blink of an eye, all sorts of questions rose like a tidal wave in her brain. She shook her head vigorously as she realized that now was not the time to think about the relationship of this world, Salvation of God, and the Veda. The stone tablet did not provide her any useful information but brought her a lot of problems instead. She waited for a little longer, clinging to the flimsy hope that it would give her more intel. When the greeting words “Welcome to the Olympics” appeared on the surface again, she tugged Soulsqn, and both of them walked away.

“Hey, hold up. Where are you going?” Although Soulsqn did not sustain as much damage as Lin Sanjiu when falling from the wall, she wasn’t in good shape either. Under Lin Sanjiu’s superior strength, her skin was skewed.

“Did you not see it? This whole damn world is a huge battleground!” Lin Sanjiu hissed as she dragged herself forward. “I don’t want to get involved in any of the games. Let’s go look for Puppeteer and Graham, and then get the hell out of here!”

Soulsqn pulled her skin and said, “But where should we find them? What if they didn’t make it?”

Biting her lips, Lin Sanjiu looked ahead at the wall in front. She took a deep breath and yelled, spreading her voice across the sky, “Puppeteer! Graham!” Soulsqn was startled by her shout.

It was a wasted effort; nobody responded to her call.

The grand prize had clumsy hands and feet, so she wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t make it, but Puppeteer? How was there any possibility that he couldn’t make it as well?

If even Puppeteer had failed, then the grand prize…

And, what if both of them ended up in the same spot? How long would the grand prize hold out against Puppeteer?

Gulping down her anxiety, Lin Sanjiu tried to chase the dark thoughts out of her brain. The place she landed on was a vast landmass. Perhaps both of them had fallen into another region. After all, the wind might’ve carried them away when they were falling from the sky.

All of a sudden, a loud trumpet rang throughout the air, spreading and filling every corner under the sky with its brassy knell.

Startled, both Lin Sanjiu and Soulsqn halted their steps right before the trumpet stopped as well. After a momentary stop that lasted roughly half a second, the horn rang out again. It came on and off three times straight until the wall rumbled open.

“I will now announce the beginning of the 3,278th Olympic Games.”

A rich, deep voice resounded. Lin Sanjiu had no idea where it came from, but it seemed like the sound was coming from the white mist above. It was loud, reverberating across the entire land. “Attention to all contenders and spectators, the second stage for shot put has been changed to zone no.19. The remaining zones remain unchanged. All spectators are advised to leave immediately, and all contenders should gather at your respective zones. Should anyone wish to participate in the game, please register yourself in front of the wall.”

The moment the voice died out, a large Roman numeral “5” appeared on the ground next to Lin Sanjiu. The same numerical digit appeared at intervals of every 1,000 meter. They must be the number for the zone. Then, several straight lines appeared and partitioned the ground into a few lanes. Squinting her eyes, Lin Sanjiu studied the tracks quietly. After a few seconds, she sighed and said to Soulsqn, “We are standing on a running track.”

Soulsqn did not reply. She looked forward blankly as if she was too immersed in the changes that were happening in front of her eyes. Flags raised, and an observatory deck was set up. The stone tablet was nowhere to be seen. In the blink of an eye, the arid land had become an enormous arena.

Swarm of people began gushing in, chasing the silence away. These people were obviously the contenders. They were clear about where they were going, as they soon divided themselves and headed out to their respective destinations.

Looking at the group of people walking towards the track, Lin Sanjiu’s heart started pounding faster. She stared them down as she gripped Soulsqn’s hand tightly. They recoiled one step at a time, trying to make a detour around the crowd.

But her vigilance was needless. Although the group of posthuman varied in appearance, all of them were shabby in dress, and they wore similar weary expressions on their faces. They did not even look at her, probably because they saw she did not have the number tag pinned on her clothes.

“What, what should we do now?” Soulsqn tilted her head and asked.

Lin Sanjiu raised her head and looked at the mist-shrouded sky.

There was no way she could fly that high like the Veda and “gods” in the Salvation of God. Lin Sanjiu knitted her brows in concentration. “What is the relationship between Zeus and the Veda? Why would they create this world?”

Soulsqn thought for a moment, but she did not have the answer either.

Lin Sanjiu sighed.

“Alright, forget about it. Let’s go and have a look at the registration spot.”