Doomsday Wonderland

The warping process felt like a portion of time had been devoured by darkness.

When Lin Sanjiu opened her eyes, she saw a ceiling and wondered if she had just fallen into a deep slumber after all.

Her nose had picked up some strange odor that laced the air. It smelled like a mixture of sweat and blood, a musky stench as if the furniture had not been touched by the sun for a long time. It was this odd stench that made Lin Sanjiu realize that she had arrived in a new world.

The room was dark with only a faint light and a little noise phased out occasionally somewhere.

Lin Sanjiu adjusted to the darkness with a few hard blinks before standing up to look for Ji Shanqing. When she swept a glance across the room and found Ji Shanqing laying beside her along with her [Tape Recorder], her racing heart finally slowed down a little bit as she let out a sigh of relief.

As an “item,” it seemed like some link had established between him and Lin Sanjiu which allowed him to follow her whenever she transferred to another world.

She gave Ji Shanqing a nudge, and he woke up abruptly. Though badly frightened as he was, being a shrewd person he was quick to understand that their current situation required absolute silence. Hence, without making any noises, he ghosted his way to Lin Sanjiu’s side while keeping his ears open.

“Where are we?” He asked with a volume that was inaudible to anyone other than Lin Sanjiu.

Lin Sanjiu shook her head. She replied to him at the same volume, “Seems like we’re in the bedroom of somebody’s house.”

After the darkness that shrouded their view gradually faded like a diluted black ink, everything around them appeared in detail.

The double-sized bed they were sitting only had a crumpled bedsheet curled at the corner of the bed, revealing the hard, yellow-stained mattress underneath. The size of the bed didn’t go along well with the dimensions of the room: it was too large. Lin Sanjiu could touch the heavy black drapes embroidered with yellow thread by stretching her arm while sitting on the bed. A wooden dresser from the old age and a massive wardrobe that had withstood the test of time occupied the only space in the bedroom, leaving only a small pathway the size of an ordinary adult which lead to an ajar door.

Through the gap of the door came a familiar flickering white light that sparked Lin Sanjiu’s memories of something she used to know. The noises and babel of voices that wafted into her ears from the machine led her to one conjecture after she thought for a while. It was a television which she had not seen for a long time.

If there was a television, there had to be an audience, but aside from the voices coming from the television, there weren’t any sounds in the living room.

The light from the television continued to flash. The audience had probably toned down the volume, so the cacophony of laughter and happy speech of the host of the variety show wasn’t blaring. It was still, nevertheless, loud enough to cause an echo through the unit and gave the unit an even more ominous vibe.

“It was such a heart-trembling session, I must say! Don’t you all agree? Now, moving forward. Let us welcome with hearty applause our next guest…”

“Since the television can still receive signal, can I say that the apocalypse just arrived in this world not long ago?”

If the apocalypse had just befallen this world not long ago, then the populace in this world must have not yet started evolving. Even if the evolution processes had taken place, Lin Sanjiu doubted that they could harm both of Ji Shanqing and her which would make their survival in this world a piece of cake. Though that was the case if they didn’t include the other posthumans who had been transferred to this world in the equation; however, she was confident that by combining her combat capability and Ji Shanqing’s sharp mind, they would be able to turn the thing around if any unfortunate event happened somehow.

With that thought in mind, Lin Sanjiu got out of the bed. As she moved, the time-worn springs in the old mattress released an ear-piercing screech that sliced through the air. The television muted the next second, thrusting the whole apartment into a pool of deathly hush.

“Somebody is out there.”

Ji Shanqing exchanged a knowing gaze with Lin Sanjiu. His face was blanched in white.

“Don’t worry. We can at least have the man to fill us in as to what has happened to this world,” Lin Sanjiu comforted Ji Shanqing. Before she made any further move, the combat capability of the grand prize dawned on her, so she commanded, “Stay here. Don’t move.”

A few seconds passed and the silence continued to reign over the apartment. Logically speaking, an ordinary person would have started to check their house for an intruder when they heard some strange noises. For those who remained calm without making any moves, either they were so startled that they became motionless and speechless, or they had rich combat experience that made them think that such measures weren’t necessary. In this case, it seemed to Lin Sanjiu that it was the latter.

“Out of a million possibilities, who could’ve thought I had been given the worst. Straight off facing an experienced fighter right after arrived in a new world? Good riddance; to be honest, nobody has worse luck than me,”  with that thought, Lin Sanjiu slowly pushed the door open. Her muscles were all tense wrung up like a lioness prepared to pounce on her prey.

When the door finally creaked to open, she quickly glanced over the living room, and the condition that met her gaze made her lose her composure.

The floor was littered with empty lunch boxes and food debris. There was a single sofa in the center of the living room which was occupied by a morbidly obese man. He was at least 300 pounds. He was so fat that even the sofa could not contain his oversized body. Even though he didn’t move, his forehead and his cheeks were covered with perspiration.

He lifted his eyelids casting an indifferent gaze at Lin Sanjiu as if he wasn’t really at all that surprised at the fact that a woman appeared from his bedroom. He remained seated on the sofa and pressed the button on the controller with his stumpy fingers.

Bzzt. 

Then, the television was on, once again filling the living room with the happy sounds of the variety show. The light from the television reflected on the man’s jowls which magnified his inhuman features.

The man then turned his glassy eyeballs back to the television. Lin Sanjiu was petrified as she wasn’t expecting such a lukewarm reaction from the first person she met in a new world.

After hesitating for a moment, Lin Sanjiu phrased her sentence carefully when she spoke, “Err, nice to meet you. Are you the occupant of this apartment? Can you tell us what is going on here?”

The man didn’t spare her even a glance and focused on the variety show. His breath grew heavier with every passing second.

“Hello?” Lin Sanjiu began to feel nervous, “Is this your house?”

“Arghhhhhhh!” The man yelled out of a sudden. He smashed his hands against the handrest of the sofa and the flesh under his chin swung profusely in the air. “Argh! So annoying! So annoying!”

Lin Sanjiu walked two steps back and raised her guard, staring warily at the man.

“Stop bothering me! Do whatever you want, just stop bothering me!” The obese man continued his outburst, his voice sharp. “I just want to watch the show quietly.”

“Fine, fine, just continue to do whatever you’re doing,” Lin Sanjiu felt the situation had gotten a little bit out of hand. However, since she was a newcomer, so she also had to be careful with what she did. She took another step back as she said, “I’m leaving now.”

The man huffed twice, and as he was returning his gaze to the television, Ji Shanqing tiptoed out from the bedroom. When the man saw another person was hiding in his bedroom aside from the woman in front of him, he once again blew his fuse, “Oh for god sake, not another one.”

“Perhaps too many posthumans have landed in his house when they are leaping worlds, so he is already accustomed to it?”  For some inexplicable reasons, this unconvincing thought swayed into Lin Sanjiu’s brain.

Ji Shanqing shared the same baffled expression as Lin Sanjiu as well. His sharp and penetrative mind, which he took pride in, failed miserably to interpret their current situation. When they saw the man once again fall silent and return his attention to the show on the television, both of them exchanged a glance, and they looked over to the door at the same time.

Though this man didn’t look like a fighter from any aspect, it would be best if they left now.

Slowly and quietly, Lin Sanjiu picked the anti-theft lock and let Ji Shanqing go ahead of her into the hallway. Just when she got outside and turned around to close the door, the same phrase meandered into her ears again, “It was such a heart-trembling session, I must say! Don’t you all agree that? Now, moving forward. Let us welcome with hearty applause our next guest…”

“Hey, that sounds familiar. Didn’t it play before?”

Lin Sanjiu instinctively looked up, and she saw an intense gaze hiding in the midst of the light of the television. The man cocked his head, staring fixate at her with his yellowish eyeballs.

Her heart skipped a beat; then the man turned his head again.

“Let’s leave now,” After closing the door, Lin Sanjiu gestured to Ji Shanqing, “This man is fishy.”

Ji Shanqing didn’t move; instead, he lifted his head and peered into the room.

“What’s wrong?” Lin Sanjiu followed his gaze and looked at the hallway. At there she finally saw the reason that had prevented the grand prize from moving forward.

At first, she thought the reason the hallway felt narrow and suffocating was that the building was an old residential building. However, after she had a closer look, she realized that she was wrong. The other side which she mistook as the “wall” was half a hallway worth of cartons that were stacked neatly up to the ceiling.

“This…” She had yet again lost her words, “It cannot be…”

“Yeah, all of this is food and water,” Ji Shanqing interpolated. He stepped forward and touched the carton. He still couldn’t believe what was he seeing right now, “Oh my good lord, just how many resources have they amassed?”

Looking from the words on the carton, aside from the instant packaged food such as cake, eight ingredient congee, instant noodles, and biscuits, there were also boxes of rice, flour, mixed grains, oil, salt, sugar, and sausage. The space in the hallway was insufficient to put all the cartons, so more trailed to the staircase. If Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing were to walk along the stairway, they would find that all of the hallways in the building were filled with boxes of resources.

Ever since she had left the Hyperthermal World, this was the first time Lin Sanjiu witnessed such a massive amount of food reserves. According to her rough estimation, this amount of food was sufficient to supply to a hypermarket for half a year.

Both of them stared at the wall of boxes as they walked down the hallway.

“If we took all these resources back to the Red Nautilus,” the grand prize murmured, “We could at least make 300 red crystal of profit.”

Suddenly, Rena and Reno butted into her mind, she quickly shooed away the image as she said, “If all of these resources were collected by the residents of this apartment to overcome the apocalypse, why isn’t anybody watching them? Like that man we met just now, why isn’t he afraid that we will raid him?”

Apparently, Ji Shanqing didn’t have the answer to her question, “Perhaps they have too many so that they couldn’t care less?”

As Lin Sanjiu strode down the staircase while holding plenty of questions in her mind, she found there were a few commercial refrigerators at the corner of some floors. All of the refrigerators were packed with cold foods such as frozen dumplings, buns, and pizza. As tempted as she was to take some of the food, the issue of ownership of the food was pulling her back. Since she had no idea who the owner of the food was, she pushed down the urge to touch take it.

Even though she had ended up in a place full of mysteries, she wasn’t at all disheartened. After all, ending up in a world rich with resources was much better than a world that was deprived of resources.

Both of them were in the limbo of happy and anxious. Taking advantage of the night, they both scurried out from the residential building to do some reconnaissance around and get a better picture of the world.

It seemed like Lin Sanjiu had guessed it right: the apocalypse had befallen this world not long ago. In this district where mostly buildings that looked like old, non-self-contained apartments from the 1980s or 1990s, almost all of the lamp posts were ruined. The vehicles were spread higgledy-piggledy across the asphalt. Some of them were dented while some of them had broken windshields. None of the buildings had doors, and the rooms on the ground floor were vacant. The broken windows and doors seemed like eyes, staring at the duo who were unfortunate enough to barge into this desolated land.

The breeze of the night blew past the duo, carrying away some of the heat from their bodies while at the same time fetching the sound of sobbing from a distance.

It was more than usual to hear this kind of wailing in the apocalyptic world. Lin Sanjiu brushed it off as her gaze fell on the entrance to this neighborhood.

She was in a hopeless tangle as she still couldn’t find the cause that actuated the demise of the humankind in this world. However, when she looked at the door, she somehow had an inkling that the residents here were desperately preventing something outside from coming in.

The two-meter-high iron fence was not only completely locked down, but it was also reinforced with a piece of thick wooden board. Sharp mirror shards and knives were littered densely on top of the archway. As if the residents didn’t feel secure enough, they even entangled the wall and entrance gate with thorn-like iron wire.

“Are they defending against the duoluozhong ?” Lin Sanjiu mumbled under her breath, but she couldn’t be sure, “No wonder they keep so many resources in the building, so this is their fortress.”

Though crossing the entrance gate was an easy task for her, she wasn’t in a hurry to leave at the moment.

The reason was simple. Since the residents here had turned this neighborhood into a large refugee camp, there had to be other people around. The obese man they had met earlier might be a freak, but it didn’t mean that every resident was a weirdo. Lin Sanjiu could get more information about this world from the other survivors.

“Good idea, sis,” Ji Shanqing was exhilarated when he realized he didn’t have to face another unknown world right away. He pointed to a building that was nearest to them and suggested, “Let’s go into this apartment. I can see lights from here.”

Though there was light coming from some of the windows, that was not in the case for the hallway. An impenetrable umbra seemed to fill every inch of the hallway. Similar to the residential apartment they first landed in, half of the hallway of this apartment was also occupied by tons of cartons stacked up to the ceiling. If one weren’t careful, he would trip up. As Ji Shanqing stumbled his way to keep up with Lin Sanjiu’s speed, to his dismay, the gap between them grew larger and larger. Just as the grand prize wanted to shout at Lin Sanjiu to ask her to slow down a bit, the shadow he had been trailing suddenly stopped and turned around.

“Sis, you’re walking too fast,” the grand prize panted. As he was talking, he walked toward the eyes that gleamed in the darkness, “Hm? What are you staring at, sis?”

The owner of the eyes opened his mouth; however, it was an unfamiliar, saccharine voice.

“What am I looking at? I’m looking at you, of course.”