Doomsday Wonderland

A loud and muffled thump echoed through the air.

Lying on the ground, Lin Sanjiu had a feeling that she had tripped and fallen over a balcony rather than falling from outer space. Aside from the throbbing pain that spread from her shoulders, she did not sustain any other injuries.

The relentless whirlwind had dissipated and silence had returned. An eddy of air blew across the vast salmon-red land, sounding lonely, hurried and strange.

It occurred to Lin Sanjiu that she had landed on a continent.

She angled her eyes to see a cringe-worthy black slit that sat in the center of the dawn-laced sky. The black slit cosseted behind the soft of the cloud and was closing. It seemed to her that somebody had torn the sky open and another person was trying to fix it. She had even seen such a peculiar phenomenon before—the wormhole that the highest god conjured when he sent Hegel away.

The wormhole was not far away from the ground, hovering at about the height of a two-story building. Judging from the angle, Lin Sanjiu was pretty certain that she had fallen from the wormhole.

The last memory she had before she fell unconscious was being flung away by the airstream when the cord began to fall apart. She did not know when the wormhole showed up and when she fell into it. ‘Perhaps the highest god had come to her rescue in the nick of the time,’ she thought.

Since there was no way she could get an answer to the question, Lin Sanjiu banished the thought away and pulled herself up from the ground. She took a deep breath, her chest shuddering as the air entered her lungs. Nevertheless, it did not decrease the discomfort in her vessels or her organs even by the slightest bit.

Stunned, Lin Sanjiu froze. She repeated the same procedure several times, but the result was the same. The throbbing in her brain got stronger, and she began to grow anxious as a realization dawned upon her. The proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere on this planet was too limited for a human to breath normally.

‘This is bad,’ she thought inwardly, ‘I don’t have an ability similar to the highest god, so how am I supposed to return to the Data Stream Library?’

Lin Sanjiu tried to breathe in as much oxygen as she could, although the oxygen content in the air was very minimal, and most of the time what she inhaled into her nostrils was just sand. She turned around and began to examine her surroundings. Other than a large swath of undulating salmon-red ground that stretched far into the horizon and the occasional swirls of wind that stirred the sand into the air, she did not see anything else.

‘Huh?’

She caught sight of something amongst the barren land. She squinted her eyes to make out a black dot. Her heart gave a little start as she activated her [Defense Forcefield]. Then, she bolted towards the black dot.

The land was so empty that it voided the possibility of finding a blindage to hide in. It was getting even harder for her to suck the air into the lungs the moment she started sprinting. When she reached her destination and stopped, she could hear her own breathing that was sharp and erratic, but there was nothing she could do.

‘ I must get myself an oxygen tank as a backup when I reach the next world,’ she told herself as her chest heaved laboriously in the effort of catching her breath. She slowly walked up to the black dot then froze dead in her step. What she thought was a black dot had grown larger, and judging from its angularity and outline, it seemed more like a human.

Lin Sanjiu threw everything to the wind and ran a few quick steps to the black dot. When she finally had a better vision of it, she smacked her forehead and sighed inside her heart.

He was someone she knew.

There was a thin layer of sand covering the back of Hegel’s bald head and his body. He seemed like he was dead for a long time.

The highest god had indeed honored his promise and beamed him to a planet on which the apocalypse would never befall. However, he did not tell him that there was no oxygen on this planet as well.

Lin Sanjiu went forward and flipped Hegel’s body over. She dusted the sand off his body and began to inspect him. He had no wounds on his body, and his face looked blueish purple, a clear indication that he had died of suffocation. She then rummaged through his belongings anxiously, but she knew very well it was wasted effort. After all, if Hegel had an item that could have helped him breathe, how could he have died?

In the end, she only found a belt that was roughly an inch wide. She stuffed it into her pocket without batting an eyelid. The feeling of breathlessness had gotten into the deepest part of her brain, drugging her consciousness. She felt that once she had a slip of her concentration, the venom would certainly seize the opportunity and drag her down into a darkness that she would never wake up from again.

Lin Sanjiu sat on top of Hegel’s body, her mind blank. It would not take long before she would join him and become a forlorn dead corpse in this vast, arid land. Perhaps because too many things had happened and her brain was flooded with a plethora of questions and doubts, she did not realize there was a figure lurking behind her. It was only when Mrs. Manas gave her a mental nudge that she came back to her senses and turned around to face the meaty head.

The second before she brandished her Tornado Whip, the hideous, fleshy head opened and revealed two rubbing stubs inside its mandibles. Then, Soulsqn’s voice slid into her ears, “Why are you here? Did the Veda throw you here too?”

It took several seconds before Lin Sanjiu snapped out of her trance. She shouted in disbelief, “Soulsqn? Why are you here? Is that really you? I’m not having a dream, am I?”

She looked around and she saw the light, “Did the Veda do this to you?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” the flesh worm replied. The flesh worm looked even more miserable now as there were patches of dried blood here and there on her massive body. “When Lord Puppeteer and I fell from the sky, we stumbled upon this dead body. It’s such a shame that there are no other better and more beautiful clothes for me to wear as a pouch other than him.”

“Puppeteer is here too?” Lin Sanjiu felt that it was too hard for her heart to bear the combined paroxysm of astonishment, anguish, and exhilaration. “Where is he now? Is he okay? I heard from the Veda that they deleted you two…”

“That’s true. They almost deleted us.” Soulsqn spun around and slithered to the back. “However, the Veda themselves admitted that their biggest and only irresistible desire is their gluttonous appetite for data. They disabled Lord Puppeteer’s action module and captured me. Then, they flashed a few times, and just when I thought this would be the end for me, they gave up.”

“They gave up?” She could not quite relate that word to the Veda, and she was confident that the flesh worm must have misunderstood something. Just as she frowned and fell into thought, a sentence surfaced in her mind. “The Veda told you guys that they have a gluttonous appetite for data?”

“Gluttonous” was what the grand prize used to describe the Veda earlier on.

“Yes,” Soulsqn replied simply.

‘This is weird.’

At that time, the grand prize was inside the database, so it was impossible for him to overhear the conversation between the Veda and Puppeteer. However, he did.

‘Could the grand prize has been able to keep tabs on whatever is happening outside the whole time?’

“Then, what happens next?”

“Wasn’t that freak the first one to be captured by the Veda? I reckon that after they analyzed him, they found that he sent this balding man here. Hence, they followed suit and beamed us here as well. They didn’t seem to care at all whether we could survive here or not. I guess they are satisfied as long as they get our bodies,” the flesh worm said, “Of course, I only figured it out when I was here since I really thought we were going to be deleted.”

“It has been bugging me for some time, but can you breathe in here?”

“The Souls have developed the characteristics of an anaerobic organism. We can survive in both aerobic and anaerobic environments. You humans are too fragile.”

The buzz in Lin Sanjiu’s head was getting stronger due to the oxygen deprivation. Her condition was getting worse because the more she talked and moved, the more oxygen was consumed from her bloodstream.

“Come over here,” Soulsqn said, and she followed her to a sand dune. “Lord Puppeteer is right under this.”

Startled by Lin Sanjiu’s sudden change of expression, the flesh worm asked, “Why do you suddenly look like you are going to kick the bucket soon? Lord Puppeteer could hold on for so long, so don’t tell me that you can’t do the same.”

“Why did you bury him if he’s still alive?!” Lin Sanjiu lashed out at the flesh worm. As a consequence, her vision blurred for a moment and she felt dizzy.

“Oh, can you just keep your mouth shut if you don’t know anything? You are making yourself look ridiculous.” Soulsqn, the queen of the Souls who had roamed the universe for a hundred years, scoffed. “Your body won’t consume any oxygen if you are in thanatosis. I bet you’ll come for my help later.”

Lin Sanjiu felt like a heavy burden had been lifted off from her shoulders when she knew that Puppeteer was still alive. She limped onto the sand dune as the fatigue began to set in. She smiled bitterly. “I wonder why the Veda would lie to me and tell me that they deleted you guys.”

Soulsqn answered her question readily, “They said if they didn’t delete us, you guys wouldn’t have come out from the database.” The flesh worm did not realize the impact of the sentence on Lin Sanjiu as she continued to mumble, “If Lord Puppeteer is dead, do you think I can wear him as my human pouch?”