Doomsday Wonderland

The heaven zone was a tall building.

At the same time, it was a pier, an accordion, or a living creature. The more Lin Sanjiu learned about it, the harder it was for her to define it. The heaven zone was everything, but the agglomeration of sectors by sectors that Lin Sanjiu had in mind was not one of them.

The moment she disembarked from the plane and looked at the corner of the heaven zone, she knew she was wrong.

“See you next time!”

Lin Sanjiu turned around to see that the old pilot had gone back to the plane. All she heard was his lingering voice, which was shattered by the gust. She waved to him and watched the old pilot shut the door. After that, the plane continued to hover in midair for several seconds straight, until one gigantic claw, which was clipped to the plane’s body, slowly released the plane into the air. Slack-jawed, Lin Sanjiu watched as the claw pulled the airplane upward as if the plane was a toy.

The sun looked like a huge melted golden globe in the sky. The mechanical arm made a turn in the sky, leaving a glinting arc in its wake. It then retreated, causing the plane to rise higher and higher until it subsequently disappeared into a gate that was about a hundred meters tall.

Rather than saying it was a gate, it looked more like a hole. As she squinted her eyes, Lin Sanjiu could vaguely see a long conveyor belt beneath the oval arch. Aside from the old pilot’s plane, there was a plenitude of strangely shaped aircrafts, fighter jets, and even gliders on the conveyor belt. One after another, the claw arranged each of them neatly on the belt and then they slowly vanished into the tunnel.

“Male passenger on runway 64I, please don’t stay there,” a tired woman’s voice rang out from a speaker. “Please get off the landing platform through the elevator immediately. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Lin Sanjiu turned her head and saw a big “64I” on the guardrail beside her.

Right now, she was standing on a wide black runway. She could see that there were several more identical runways in the distance that stretched out from the towering building behind her and distributed in a picturesque disorderly manner across a wall.

She was the only one standing on runway 64I. Lin Sanjiu touched her face and looked around as she walked towards the glassdoor at the far end of the track.

Some of the choppers had just landed, their propellers slowing to a stop. There were empty runways in the distance, in which the guardrails rattled as an aircraft approached. However, no matter if it was a plane that glided to the landing platform or a disk-shaped aerial vehicle that could land on itself without any assistance needed, the claw would grab all of them without fail and systematically send them into the arched tunnel one by one.

There were plenty of black dots looming over the horizon, where all of them were flying towards the hangar bay that looked like a tower.

The air was filled with all sorts of noises: the roaring of the engine, the whirling of the propeller, the rattling of the guardrails… All of them merged and produced a discordant symphony in her ears. Then, when she looked down the guardrail, the scene that met her eyes caused her blood to turn cold. Wisps of clouds fluttered over her feet, and beneath the blanket of white were several more black runways. She could barely see through the bottom of the port, able to see nothing more than a smear of grey. The more she looked at it, the more she felt she was being absorbed into it.

She hurriedly retracted her gaze and retreated from the guardrail. She turned around and resumed walking towards the black glassdoor at the end of the runway.

As she got closer, a silhouette of a middle-aged man with a haggard expression and deep laugh lines appeared at the door. Lin Sanjiu glanced at her reflection and then reached out for the only button on the door.

She was wearing the [Single-Use Mask: Ordinary Middle-aged Man Series] that she stole from Woyu. The mask resumed the countdown as soon as Lin Sanjiu took it out of her card. Since Woyu had used the mask for some time, she had to get to The Munitions Factory within an hour before the mask disappeared.

It was only after she stepped into the elevator that she realized how naive she had been.

The speed of the elevator’s descent was so fast that Lin Sanjiu’s heart almost leaped out of her throat; she was enveloped by a sudden sense of weightlessness. She grabbed tightly to the handle and knew her face must look really awful right now. If it weren’t for the two other posthumans in the elevator who looked rather calm, she might have thought she was falling down from a great height.

Then, the elevator continued to rocket down for ten minutes straight.

‘How tall is the hangar of the heaven zone?’ 

Well, the question remained unanswered even after she staggered out of the elevator 20 minutes later.

After she exited the elevator, she instantly found herself standing in a hall the size of an airport. The hall was a cocoon of steel. There were countless transparent tubes fitted in the corner of the hall, which housed the elevators. When the elevator landed on the ground floor with the speed of a bullet, the people that came out of it had the same nauseated expression as the mask she was wearing right now. Streams of people were going hither and thither about in the hall; a cacophonous of people talking and machines whirring filled the air. The hall was busy, and a lot of things were going on at the same time. Lin Sanjiu did not know where she should look and where she should go.

Standing stock-still with a blank mind, Lin Sanjiu looked around. The hall looked like a shuttle station to her. There were four gates in four different directions. The light from the outside world filtered inside and caused the gate to turn into a rectangular glow of light.

‘Should I look for someone and ask for directions?’

Lin Sanjiu had once been led into the Mokugyo Forum by a woman she did not know. At that time, she remembered the woman once said that no matter where you were, whenever there was a new guy that asked you something regarding the rules or directions in the Heaven Underworld, you must answer him. Lin Sanjiu thought that it shouldn’t be a problem for her to ask for directions since this rule was applied in this world. However, she was wrong. The second she walked close to a woman, the woman picked up her speed and walked away while staring at her vigilantly.

A little embarrassed, Lin Sanjiu looked away.

“They have used up their quota, so visas to the Peppermint Garden are low in stock…” Two men dressed in white robes talked as they hurried past her. No matter if it was their pace or the atmosphere, there was no room for her to chime in and ask for directions.

Everyone in the shuttle station was busy. Lin Sanjiu tried several times, but nobody was willing to stop for her.

Just as she resigned and intended to go in a direction, a small commotion along with a string of flustered footsteps erupted from an elevator in the distance.

“Please move away, we have an A-class specimen in hand.”

Soon enough, a squad of posthumans in grey uniforms, goggles and face masks appeared in Lin Sanjiu’s vision. They were guarded by a team of bodyguards, and they were carrying a metal case in pairs. It seemed to Lin Sanjiu that nobody wanted to go close to them, as all the pedestrians soon stopped walking and stepped aside to make way for them. Just as Lin Sanjiu wanted to grab somebody to ask for directions, she saw something and froze.

Those cases seemed to be very cold, for she could see condensation on them. However, that was not the thing that shocked Lin Sanjiu the most. On top of the case, there was this line of words that read: Rare Creatures Nature Reserve

She remembered that Silvan once told her through a message that if she needed anything, she could find him at the Rare Creatures Nature Reserve, No 23.

With that in mind, Lin Sanjiu picked up her speed and hurriedly went after the group of staff members.

Strange enough, even though they looked nervous, Lin Sanjiu had the impression that they were not afraid of the pedestrians, but the things inside the case. Walking behind the group of people through a long and narrow passageway, Lin Sanjiu soon found herself arriving in a bright area.

This part of the heaven zone was covered in a dome-shaped glass ceiling. Lin Sanjiu could see the blue sky, which was accentuated by the golden glow of the morning sun. One after another, aircrafts glided over the layer of ground, slaloming between the buildings.

The reason it was known as “a layer of ground” was because when Lin Sanjiu lowered her head, she found that the ground she was standing on was not land, concrete floor, or another layer of ground, but rather row after row of mechanical instruments that reminded her of the accordion back in her hometown. With each opening and closing of the pleated part, it would release a puff of gas into the air. It looked like some kind of machine that generated power.

Lin Sanjiu stared at the machine for a long time. It wasn’t until the team of posthumans almost disappeared from her sight that she snapped out of her thoughts and sped after them.

A wheelless bus hovered about 20 centimeters above the ground. The staff member went into the bus one by one. Lin Sanjiu followed after them. As she claimed a seat of her own, a man dressed in a long, feathered coat approached her. “Hey you, which squad do you belong to? Can you show me your identity card?”