Doomsday Wonderland

When Ji Shanqing ran down the stairs, he could hear Lin Sanjiu shouting heatedly as if she was on the verge of hysteria, “Don’t come near me!”

He couldn’t help but stop. In his impression, his owner’s voice didn’t even sound like that before. Lin Sanjiu’s screams, peals of laughter, cries, and mumbles reverberated through the empty apartment unit. The noise probably startled quite a few people living a floor above and below where she was. Amidst Lin Sanjiu’s unintelligible and psychotic ramblings, Ji Shanqing soon heard the dull sound of a person ramming herself against the walls…

Ji Shanqing gnashed his teeth, he steeled himself and stopped himself from turning back. As he ran down the stairs, the noise grew softer and softer. The last sentence he heard Lin Sanjiu said was a surprised and joyful exclamation: “Fang Dan? Why are you here?”

She probably saw someone she knew this time.

Ji Shanqing sighed and quickly reached the ground floor.

When he peered out from the rusty building door, he only noticed the dead silence outside, with the exception of the occasional sobbing sounds. The parterre in the middle of the small residential estate lay under the pale moonlight. Only the faded edges of the plants reflected the faint white light as they stood still in the silence seeming like non-living sculptures in this ruined and devoid of life world.

Ji Shanqing crouched slightly and hid in the shadow of the metal door. Bending his ears, he listened for any possible movements outside for a while…

It had been at least 20 minutes since he escaped from the attacks from the male-female duo. However, they seemed to have vanished without a trace and there weren’t any more commotions within the estate. Ji Shanqing raised a brow.

“Are the bald man’s injuries worse than I thought?”

Nevertheless, he did not forget how those two people pretended to leave but returned to secretly observe him in the dark for more than ten minutes. Ji Shanqing looked around nervously. When he was certain that there was no one nearby, he held his breath as he opened the building door as quietly as he could.

Overturned and deformed cars were strewn across roads around the estate. Under the faint light from the moon, they cast peculiar shadows on the ground. There were also ghastly-looking black splatters on the ground of origins that one could only imagine. The scene wasn’t particularly gruesome but Ji Shanqing couldn’t help letting out a quiet sigh. The man and woman had left, it seemed.

Ji Shanqing froze. He turned his body around immediately as he staggered forward. He nearly fell. The moment he regained his footing and looked up, he saw the short-haired woman. Like a spider, she clung on to the outer walls on the second floor of the building with her limbs outstretched. She lowered her head and peered down at Ji Shanqing. Her eyes were glowing with excitement. Saliva poured from her mouth as she grinned at him.

Sticking out her excessively long tongue, she licked the corner of her lips. Without saying a single word, she crawled down rapidly—

[Economic Bubble] couldn’t be used on the same person the second time within a short time span. Since Ji Shanqing had already used his ability on the short-haired woman once, he was pretty much defenseless against her. The only option he had was to run. However, he had barely taken a few steps when he realized that he couldn’t hear his pursuer’s footsteps. Instead, the short-haired woman chuckled, “Unit 302 on the third floor, am I right?”

Ji Shanqing felt as if his feet were pinned to the ground as he slowly turned his head.

302 was the unit he hid Lin Sanjiu in.

“Yes, I saw everything.” The way the woman slid down from the wall was weird. She stood straight like a large insect learning to stand on its hind feet. When she was done, she tidied her hair like a human again. “However, I am not concerned about that woman because there is something I want to ask you.”

Ji Shanqing did not reply. He quickly surveyed his surroundings.

“Are you looking for my companion?” the woman immediately noticed his action and laughed. “Thanks to you, he’s pretty badly injured. I left him in that residential building. Logically speaking, I should kill you immediately but you’re lucky. I very curious about you. How did you suddenly boost my attack that much?”

Ji Shanqing was stunned. He didn’t really understand what she meant. He frowned and sensed that he had caught an insight into the situation. His mind started spinning with possibilities and he couldn’t answer her momentarily.

The short-haired woman shot a glance at him. “Tsk,” she clicked her tongue and snapped her fingers. She walked toward Ji Shanqing very slowly as if she had every intention to pick on him. She had a dirty kitchen knife on her waist and it glimmered under the moonlight.

After fighting quite a few battles beside Lin Sanjiu, Ji Shanqing also gained some combat experience. Based on both their physical attributes, he knew that he would be caught in a few minutes if he ran, even if the woman did not know about Lin Sanjiu being in unit 302.

From the looks of things, his opponent had intentionally allowed him to get the wrong impression that he managed to buy some time.

“Wait,” Ji Shanqing raised his hand when the short-haired woman was almost right in front of him. “I have a suggestion.”

“What?”

“I can tell—whatever you want to know. In exchange, you need to answer my questions. If you don’t agree to my conditions, I’d rather die than utter a single word.”

The short-haired woman narrowed her eyes and laughed, “You’re so naive. If you fall in my hands, you will wish you were dead… But, I want to know what you want to ask me so I don’t mind playing along.”

The woman was just one step away from Ji Shanqing. There was a sudden breeze and Ji Shanqing caught a whiff of the woman’s fishy, smelly odor. Forcing himself to hide any emotions he shouldn’t show, he held his breath and nodded.

“You shall answer me first,” the short-haired woman said mildly as she licked her lips again. “What did you do previously?”

“That’s my ability. I can boost the attack of any target I want.” Ji Shanqing cleared his throat and only gave her a half-answer. If his conjecture was right, the woman would…

Just as he expected, the short-haired woman was stunned. Her smile, which made his skin cringe, disappeared.

“What ability?” she blinked her eyes, confused. She looked at Ji Shanqing with suspicion and her expression showed her gradual disappointment, “Are you going to tell me you have superpowers?”

“I’m right. She doesn’t know anything about evolved abilities!”  Ji Shanqing could even feel his breathing speeding up. Every word he was about to say was crucial to the situation.

“If you think that I’m mentally unsound like my companion,” he said every word carefully, “you’re wrong. I’m not talking about superpowers. My body has not been altered by any government or even aliens. The information I have is something you have never even heard before but I can assure you that it is the cold hard truth.”

The short-haired woman looked at him doubtfully. Just as she was about to say something, Ji Shanqing interjected, “But, I already answered one question. To be fair, and also for me to better explain the situation to you, it is now my turn to ask a question.”

The short-haired woman nodded and rolled her eyes.

Ji Shanqing comforted himself thinking that the situation was now slightly within his control.

“Why did my companion suddenly go crazy? What happened in this world?”

“Since you can stand here with your sanity intact, don’t you know that there are crypt particles in the air?” the short-haired woman laughed with her mouth wide open. She was now standing so close to Ji Shanqing that he could see the red bloodstains between her teeth. “Don’t tell me a story like you’d just woken up from a vegetative state after the apocalypse that has already happened more than two years ago.”

“Crypt particles?” Those two words caught Ji Shanqing’s attention. He took a few seconds to recognize the information that the woman had revealed to him unwittingly.  “It has already been two years, but she apparently has no idea about the compulsory world leaping. The woman assumes that my owner and I are from this planet just like her…”

“You’re exactly right,” Ji Shanqing replied with a straight face, holding back his emotions and misgivings.

“Oh, so that’s true…” The short-haired woman looked as if she understood everything in a flash. Before Ji Shanqing could nod his head, she suddenly burst out laughing. She lunged at him with the blood-covered kitchen knife in her hand. With a swooshing sound, the knife came down in an arc toward Ji Shanqing.

Ji Shanqing did not anticipate her sudden attack. If he didn’t step back because of her stench, that knife would have cut his face. He staggered backward gracelessly and shouted at her, “Don’t you want to know more about my ability!”

“Your ability?” the short-haired woman sneered quietly before she mildly commented, “I’ve seen many psychos. There are only very few psychos like you who retain their logic and a coherent thought process, but it isn’t entirely unheard of. Since you are also a psycho, it makes things easier for me…”

This time, Ji Shanqing had no choice but to throw himself to the ground. He only managed to avoid her blood-covered kitchen knife by rolling aside. Rip. Despite that, the knife cut through a large part of the back of his trench coat.

Ji Shanqing’s vision suddenly blurred. In the end, Ji Shanqing was a prize. If his outer wrapping was a little damage, it wouldn’t affect him much. However, if his trench coat was too badly damaged, it would be equivalent to him being unwrapped. Of course, Ji Shanqing didn’t know what would happen if someone other than Lin Sanjiu unwrapped him. Neither did he want to entertain that thought.

Breathing laboriously, he pressed the flapping torn fabric against his back. His vision returned. When the short-haired woman saw this, she laughed delightedly. “Why are you so afraid to see your clothes a little torn? I’ll have you know that when you’re dead, I have to remove all your clothes!”

Her comment was like a jolt to his mind. When he rolled to dodge her attack again, Ji Shanqing already connected the dots—he understood the situ ation.

“The accumulated food supplies on the corridor, the residents’ strange behaviors, Madam Cui’s death and every word the bald man and short-haired woman said… Most importantly, these two people might be very dangerous but they were not mentally ill. And, furthermore, they had not been sent to another world even after such a long time…”

However, before he could organize his thoughts, it was too late.

After going through so many dangerous confrontations that night, Ji Shanqing was already very exhausted. Being distracted for a second, he didn’t even notice what happened. His vision blurred again as a kitchen knife stabbed through his chest. Next, a shadow loomed over his eyes and all he saw was black.

“Huh?”

Perhaps, the short-haired woman already realized something was strange when she stabbed Ji Shanqing so she pulled out her knife with all her strength. Losing the “support” from the knife, Ji Shanqing collapsed to the ground. Even though he couldn’t see a thing, he held the opening in his trench coat tightly.

A satisfied smile graced the short-haired woman’s face. She stuck out her tongue and touched the tip of her nose. Then, she stepped on Ji Shanqing with one leg.

“I… I have a question,” the youngster’s eyes had already turned glassy but his voice was just as gentle as before but he sounded much weaker, “Did any of the mentally-ill people ever recovered?”

“How would I know?” The short-haired woman took a deep breath sucking in the blood between her teeth. “Even before they could recover, we already ate them.”

Ji Shanqing coughed, his face turned beet-red. The darkness that clouded his eyes subsided for a moment. He caught a glimpse of his opponent slowly raising her kitchen knife again.

He was Lin Sanjiu’s grand prize. No matter who unwrapped him, his content should belong to Lin Sanjiu… right?

As that thought ran through his mind, through his blurred vision, he saw the knife heading for his chest once again. When he blacked out once again, Ji Shanqing knew that his short five-month life was ending soon…

That was until he heard a loud thump.

“It’s you?” the short-haired woman exclaimed.

Ji Shanqing could not see anything through the darkness. All he could do was to listen anxiously to the sounds around him. He could sense faintly that there was another person in front of him. That person had placed herself between him and the short-haired woman.

“That’s impossible. You jumped down from the third floor. How can you be alright?” the short-haired woman blurted in astonishment. Ji Shanqing’s heart started thumping. He couldn’t believe what had happened but he called out quietly, “Sis?”

“Yeah,” a voice beside him answered. It obviously belonged to Lin Sanjiu.

“Sis! It’s really you! Are you alright now?” Surprised and delighted, the darkness in front of his eyes gradually faded. The familiar outline of Lin Sanjiu’s back slowly appeared before him. Ji Shanqing quickly revealed everything he had discovered to Lin Sanjiu, “Sis, in this world, there are things called crypt particles in the air. Somehow, they cause people to go insane. The only way to avoid going insane is to avoid eating anything that had been exposed to the air. All the residents reared here are all mentally ill. It is all because of their food rations! And, that woman isn’t a posthuman! She is a first-tier duoluozhong!”

Ji Shanqing did not hear Lin Sanjiu’s response but his vision was almost back to normal. He saw everything under the moonlight once again. His heart sank. Lin Sanjiu, who had just jumped out from the third floor, was crouching on the ground. She was staring blankly at an empty spot. She was still mumbling incoherently as if she was talking to someone that he couldn’t see. She was so engrossed in her conversation with the empty air that she did not notice the short-haired woman slowly approaching her.