Doomsday Wonderland

After Lucy stopped running with them, her figure was soon out of sight.

“Terrific! Did you see her face just now? She almost cried!” Soulsqn exclaimed happily. “She seems to have returned to the previous zone. Remember that place. I’m coming back after I finish this damn race…”

“Leave her alone!” Lin Sanjiu yelled amid her heavy breathing. Perspiration stung her eyes. She was remorseful and sorry for what she had done to the little girl. ‘At the very least, I have to make sure that little girl is out of Soulsqn’s reach.’ With that thought in mind, Lin Sanjiu said to Soulsqn, “Don’t take your eyes off Time!” Then, she began to put on the [Toy Rocket].

The [Toy Rocket] looked like a plastic white shell; Lin Sanjiu had no idea whether it was because it was an imitation or if this was its actual look. After she put on the suit, she found three speed-adjustment knobs right below her chin.

“Hold it!” shouted Soulsqn as she repositioned herself onto Lin Sanjiu’s back after getting pushed away by the rocket suit. It was a good thing that Soulsqn was much lighter than a human; otherwise, she would have brought Lin Sanjiu down onto the ground with all the commotion she was making on her back. “All right, let’s get rolling! That thing is about to catch up to us!”

Lin Sanjiu nodded her head in assent. She closed her eyes, turned the top speed gear knob, and counted one second inside her heart.

She had never experienced such a painful second before.

By the time the second had passed, Lin Sanjiu’s face was bent out of shape.

She did not know that her face was now overrun with tears and snot, as her exposed skin had lost all sensation. Coupled with her droopy face, she looked just like a stroke patient. She needed a long time before she could finally come to. And the moment she regained her senses and blinked her eyes, she realized that her eyelids were stuck together.

Soulsqn was in no better shape. She had been talking when Lin Sanjiu sped up. After a second passed, her mouth ripped apart from her face to the back of her ears, revealing the dried meat underneath. Right now, she was trying to say something, but no words were coming out of her torn mouth.

The silver lining was that their suffering had paid off.

After scorching down a hundred kilometers in one shot, not only had they had left all the other contenders behind, but “Time” was also out of their sight. However, those contenders who claimed the first few places were not to be trifled with. Both of them just took a short break before beginning to appear in Lin Sanjiu’s vision again. Looking at their speed, it would not be long before they caught up to her.

Lin Sanjiu rubbed her face and looked ahead at the endless running track. She cursed inwardly.

‘When is this stupid game going to end? Where the hell is the finish line?’ As she thought this, she switched to the lowest speed gear and resumed running with the help of the propulsion from the rocket.

The moment she began to move again, she felt a sharp pain course through her body as if all of her bones had been crushed into a million pieces. Every step she took, she would have the misconception that her crushed bones were falling off through her heels. The pain was too much to bear.

Suddenly, Soulsqn emitted out a sharp, weird cry.

“What now?” Initially, Lin Sanjiu did not want to respond to her call, but Soulsqn was persistent; she kept uttering a series of weird, muffled cries that ticked Lin Sanjiu off.

The meat worm had lost its mucus due to the strong wind, so she could not articulate her mandible as flexibly as she used to. She hissed and groaned for some time before emitting a legible sentence.

“Some… Somebody is calling to you,” she said in a strange voice, “The 1st place has been waving at you.”

Lin Sanjiu turned her head to see that there was indeed a small figure waving his arm. She weighed her distance from Time and turned off the rocket. The first place soon caught up to her once she slowed down. Lin Sanjiu was amazed by his speed.

“Hi.” Contender no. 17, who held the lead all this time, was a bronze-skinned youth. He sported a huge Afro and wore a pair of goggles to protect his eyes. He was well-prepared, unlike Lin Sanjiu, who now had red-rimmed eyes, and snot and tears slicking down her face. “This is your first time, isn’t it?” the youth asked, offering Lin Sanjiu a smile.

“Yeah…”

Huffing, contender no. 17 wiped off a sigil on the back of his hand and slowed down. “I knew it! You’re new here. I suggest you don’t use that rocket anymore.”

“Why?” Lin Sanjiu frowned her brows.

“The farther away the first place is from Time, the more Time will accelerate.” Contender no. 17 huffed heavily like a broken blacksmith’s bellows. “Thanks to you, Time increased its speed all of a sudden and killed a few contenders.”

Lin Sanjiu’s face turned pale.

“Ahem,” contender no.17 waved his hand as he gasped, “Take it easy. It’s not your fault. Those people were going to die eventually anyway. I’m here to tell you that you should not be so reckless.”

Lin Sanjiu did not reply. Her countenance was ugly, even though she knew he was telling the truth. She glanced at the contenders behind her and wondered whether the beardy had survived or not. After a few minutes, she asked in a hoarse voice, “Then… why did you run so fast? If you go a little slower…”

“Hold it right there,” the youth interrupted abruptly, “Don’t get me wrong. Time will accelerate no matter how fast or slow I run.”

Lin Sanjiu was stunned.

She pressed down the guilt that crept into her heart, twisting like vines of ivy, and asked, “What the hell is Time? What happened to those people who were touched by it?”

“As the name suggests, it’s time.”

“What?”

“If time is a dimension independent of this world, then every second you spend contains an independent version of ‘yourself’.” Apparently, contender no. 17 had explained this matter to many people. His thoughts were smoother than butter, and the desired words rolled off his tongue with the least bit of effort. “Is it difficult to understand? Well, then imagine time as a line beyond the height, width, and length… Done?”

“Yes, I’m done,” Lin Sanjiu replied readily.

Contender no. 17 kept his running pace as he continued his explanation. “As you move along the line, you will move to the next second or the next day. If time is an independent line, then any point from this line should contain everything that happened at that particular time point. For instance, if you fell to the ground three minutes ago, you would remain on the ground at that particular time point. You will never be able to get up from the ground, as that event only happens in the next time point.”

Lin Sanjiu had somehow gotten the gist of it. She asked again, “Then, what does this have to do with the game?”

“Oh, you still haven’t figured it out yet, have you? The moment you set foot on this running track, a new timeline will be generated. From the starting line, every point in this timeline will materialize as the light ripple you saw earlier on. Every time point and each of you in that specific point of time is getting faster and faster while catching up to your current location.”

Perhaps he thought Lin Sanjiu still couldn’t understand what he said, as he added, “When the past clashes with the current, all of the time points will merge and become a human-train… I bet you have already seen it, right? Yep, that’s what you will become when you cannot outrun Time.”

There were still some points that Lin Sanjiu couldn’t understand, but she decided to leave the mental work aside until she had finished the race. She looked at the other contenders who were catching up to them and yelled to no. 17, “How do you know so many things?”

“You can refer to the wall after you have finished the footrace. It will tell you everything.” After being overtaken by a woman, the tanned-skin man pulled a pen out of thin air and began to draw on the back of his hand. He kept darting a glance at Lin Sanjiu’s rocket as he scribbled the pattern. It was as if he was taking reference from her rocket.

“Can you tell me where the finish line is?” Seeing that he was getting ready to begin sprinting again, Lin Sanjiu quickly asked, “I’m safe now, but I need to know how long I have to keep this up!”

“You’re safe now?” Contender no. 17 was a little taken aback. He raised his eyes from his hand and laughed at Lin Sanjiu as if he had listened to the funniest joke in the world. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot. You are new here. We are just halfway through the race. You can consider yourself safe only after you survived the second half of the race.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look over there,” the youth pointed his finger to the front, “Can you see the shot-putter in the distance?”

Squinting her eyes, Lin Sanjiu looked ahead and nodded. The players in the distance were as small as ants. She wouldn’t have even known they were the contenders for shot-put if the youth had not told her.

“Well, good luck to you. They are not shooting aimlessly, per se. We are their targets,” the youth said matter-of-factly. “Then there is archery, shooting games, swimming… In a sense, all of the games in the Olympics are connected. All of us are competing against each other.”

Lin Sanjiu was so shocked that she was at a loss for words. After the youth had finished drawing the pattern on his hand, he nodded to Lin Sanjiu and said, “I’m going off now. Good luck! Time will be here soon!”

“Wait!”

Before Lin Sanjiu could finish her sentence, contender no. 17 waved his hand, kicked the ground, and disappeared from her sight. The only thing that remained in the air was his fading voice, “Remember! Don’t go too fast!”