Doomsday Wonderland

Puppeteer lowered his head, and locks of his wet black hair rolled down his pallid skin. The glitter around his eyes turned red, giving him the dangerous vibe of a panther on the hunt. After a few seconds, he opened his mouth and said softly, “You have no rights. You are just a grand prize.”

Ji Shanqing’s face turned pale at those words. He bit his lips, but he dared not to lift his head.

“Lin Sanjiu is useless to me, so I don’t have to save her.”

Sitting on the carpet, Ji Shanqing clutched tightly to the jacket that a puppet gave him earlier on. He looked like a forgotten snowman that was soon to disappear from the surface of the planet.

Everybody hushed and remained motionless, the silence only punctuated by the sound of waves lapping against each other.

The crowd of Zeus craned their and study the situation, while Maxin bobbed in the sea, his mind a quagmire of confusion. He was at a loss of what to do.

“I will do what I want. Your life and reason don’t matter to me.”

Puppeteer stooped down so he was eye level with Ji Shanqing. The leather around his midriff squeaked. A cold gush of perfume tainted the air between Ji Shanqing and Puppeteer as he spoke. “Now, tell me what is going on here.”

The group of Zeus put their heads together, whispering to each other.

Unable to believe what he was hearing, Ji Shanqing instantly felt a rush of relief coursing through his entire being. Holding back a small whimper that lingered at the tip of his tongue, he quickly took two steps back to keep himself out of Puppeteer’s reach. He took a deep breath, and only then did he begin to say in a nasal voice, “We’ve been tricked. The Zeus that sister transformed into is… over there.”

As he spoke, he pointed a finger at the squad of Zeus in the distance.

Apparently, Soulsqn had a pair of good ears. When she heard those words, a subtle surprised expression appeared on her face. Even though she was clear that she was being held captive by the Zeus, she still gave way to her curiosity and wriggled her body and head around to see which one of the Zeus standing around her was Lin Sanjiu.

“Didn’t only Lin Sanjiu have the ability to bribe posthumans?” asked Puppeteer with a frown.

“Yes, no one other than my sister has that [Scrooge McDuck Power].” The more the grand prize spoke, the more he seemed to gather courage, and right now, the trembling edge in his voice was gone. “However, it’s also because of that ability that I realized which one is my sister.”

Then, without waiting for Puppeteer to say anything, the grand prize continued to wring out his words. “This is actually a very basic strategy that Zeus has pulled off to blind us. Look, if my sister changed her clothes with one of the Zeus, all of us would automatically believe that the Zeus wearing a tank top is my sister. In this way, the real one could take the opportunity and hide on one side to use the [Scrooge McDuck Power] on us.

“However, there is a small drawback to this ability. To keep the effect of the ability alive, the user must stay near the affected crowd. In other words, my sister must be around when she is using the ability. And if she wants to stay here, she must hide herself…” The grand prize paused. He raised his head and looked at the Zeus in the distance before moving on. “Other than behind that crowd of Zeus, I cannot think of any viable spots that could hide her presence better, so my bet is that she is there.”

The group of Zeus in the distance looked at each other. Some of them talked while others kept a neutral expression fixed on their faces.

“So… which one is it?” Straightening his back, Puppeteer looked at the group of Zeus and asked.

“Underneath the bandage is a choker. The choker has a very strange feature; it cannot be taken down after you put it on. If you want to remove the choker, the only way is to chop down the wearer’s head,” Ji Shanqing said, his keen eyes hopping from one Zeus to another until, at last, he stopped and stared at one Zeus in particular.

“She gave the bandage away, so she had to find something else to hide the choker. Otherwise, she would give herself away right away.”

Lifted a trembling finger, Ji Shanqing pointed at the Zeus he had been looking at.

“Oh, have I been busted already?”

A Zeus laughed and sighed. He cleared his throat, raised his fingers, and unstrapped the nursing cover that hung around his neck.

The [Pygmalion Choker] shone with great brilliance like a precious gem in a great treasure chamber. Its coruscating beams of radiance shaped like needle-sharp lances, piercing through the darkness and burning people’s eyes.

“Lord.” Just as Ji Shanqing wanted to say something to Puppeteer, he was stunned when he turned his head around. There wasn’t anybody behind him. Puppeteer was gone. Suddenly, a familiar shout erupted from behind him, prompting the grand prize to jerk his head back to see what was going on. Far in the distance, Soulsqn screamed as somebody flung her into the air.

“Stop him!”

Puppeteer’s attack had successfully thrown all the Zeus into disarray. All of them began running hither and thither across the sea as though they were a horde of sheep being hunted by a hungry wolf that invaded the sheepfold. The Zeus that wore a nursing cover turned around and ran. However, the previous Zeus proved with his life that their speed was inefficacious against Puppeteer.

“What the hell are you guys doing?! YOU HAVE SPOILT EVERYTHING!”

A high-pitched voice rang out behind the crowd of Zeus. It sounded as if a Zeus had shouted discontentedly. Nevertheless, when Ji Shanqing jerked his head up and looked ahead, he found that all the Zeus had frozen to their spots. The moment they heard the voice, their expressions froze and their faces dropped. It was as if something, a kind of strong and primitive emotion, was stirring within them.

Fear.

Ever since they arrived in this battlefield, Ji Shanqing had seen and experienced that emotion countless times.

Maxin and Soulsqn did not have enough time to rush to Puppeteer’s side before the carpet below their feet was overturned.

A terrifying roar, like the first roar of a laevaethain that had just woken up from its long slumber, could be heard across skies, but nobody could see what was going on, for the sky had dimmed down. The ocean seemed to have been turned upside down, and the waves, taller and more massive than any tsunamis Zeus had conjured, engulfed the entire sky in the twinkle of an eye. The sea in the sky poured hundreds of tons of water on the people below, consuming everything in its wake. There was no light, and only by listening to the ear-deafening roar could one know that they were still breathing.

Nevertheless, that didn’t mean that they were out of danger yet. There was water everywhere, and only now did they realize how destructive and merciless the sea could be. It swept and consumed everything in its path; life, breath, consciousness, soul… the ruthless and violent waves were able to drown and crush everything a human possessed. The boundary between the sea and sky had disappeared, the sun was gone, and darkness prevailed. Everything was in such a mess that it was as if the Creator had decided to bestow another doomsday upon this apocalyptic world.

The seconds ticked by excruciatingly slow and the tidal wave seemed endless. After what seemed like an eternity, when the white fog returned to claim its sovereignty over the area, all the seawater in the sky finally had enough playtime and returned to the ocean below.

There were now a ton of human bodies scattered haphazardly across the sea surface like a bunch of driftwood.

“Swoosh.” 

Above the loud noise of the sloshing water, a whoop that sounded like a broken wind blower pierced the silence. A figure amidst the sea of dead bodies jerked and sank into the sea. It took him a considerable amount of time to pop his head back above the surface of the ocean.

He almost drowned not because he was bad at swimming, but because of the two things in his hand that he grabbed before he passed out.

Maxin seemed to cough up all the water that he had swallowed in his life. As the fog in his eyes gradually cleared, he could finally take in his surroundings.

There were too many people here.

Before the huge waves came and before he passed out, he remembered that there were only a dozen people in the sea.

But now…

As if they were inside a huge cradle, countless bodies in different attires swayed up and down along with the gentle wave. Maxin blinked his eyes hard, a confounded expression gracing his face as he studied the sea.

There were ten—no, hundreds—of human bodies sprawled across the sea to the horizon like toys in a spoilt child’s playroom. Their numbers were so many that there was more brown skin than the sea.

‘Who were they? Where did they come from? And where is everybody else?’

Maxin immediately killed his thought as he suddenly realized something. With a swift motion, he pulled the two people in his hands out of the water, one of which took some time before her red-colored head part emerged. Gritting his teeth, Maxin threw the other onto his shoulder. Like a bag of potatoes, Ji Shanqing lulled over Maxin’s shoulder lifelessly. His eyes were tightly shut and his breath was shallow, barely noticable.

The sea breeze blew across the corpses. The Olympics was so quiet that it seemed like everybody was dead.

Fetching the two people on his shoulders, Maxin once again embarked on his journey to look for the carpet. However, he could not find it anywhere, much to his chagrin. Leaving no other options left, Maxin could only follow his heart and swim in a random direction. Just as he swam forward, he heard the splashing of water in the distance. Then Puppeteer’s voice came, “Is it you? Come over here.”

Dumbfounded, Maxin looked around.

“Yes, I am talking about you. Where are you looking at?” Puppeteer sounded impatient. “I’m right here. Bring me the grand prize!”

It was only until then that Maxin could make out a very small black dot in the distance. Even though it was Puppeteer, it was still better than facing a sea of unknown corpses. Carrying both Soulsqn and Ji Shanqing on his shoulders, Maxin swam towards Puppeteer. He asked, “What is going on? What happened just now?”

“How would I know?”

When he went closer, Maxin realized that Puppeteer was sitting in a lotus position on top of a corpse. He had no idea whether it was Puppeteer’s ability or not, but he did not sink into the bottom of the sea along with the corpse underneath him. He looked like a vagabond. The only thing that set him apart from any other vagabond out there was that instead of collecting dump and rubbish, he collected the Zeus’s corpses.

“Are all of them dead? But how?” Maxin was startled. “I thought it was them who raised the tsunami.”

“How should I know?” replied Puppeteer, his impatience thickening. Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he nudged his chin towards a few corpses floating around and said, “Give them to me, and go find Lin Sanjiu.”

Just as Maxin wanted to nod, he suddenly had a brainwave. He cast a furtive glance at Puppeteer, hesitating to leave the grand prize to him. He emboldened himself and asked, “Erm… why don’t you go and look for her?” Puppeteer had been here long before him. He did not have to wait for him to be here to search for Lin Sanjiu.

Puppeteer laughed coldly.

“Do I need to lie to you if I want to unwrap him?” Half of Puppeteer’s face scrunched up, which caused his face to look even paler. “If you don’t mind, you can bring them together to look for Lin Sanjiu.”

Maxin swallowed the doubt he had in his mind, gulped down whatever words he had on the tip of his tongue, and went to do Puppeteer’s bidding. He swam close to a Zeus nearby, but he knew that the corpse was not Lin Sanjiu’s from a single glance. This was because there was nothing around the Zeus’s neck. Then, just as he was about to go for the next one, he froze.

Raising his eyes, Puppeteer drawled, “What’s wrong?”

“You…” Perhaps the water was too cold, as Maxin shivered profusely. The worst thing happened at the worst time. It was hard for Maxin to say the things that were stuck inside his throat. “Are… you injured?”

“So, what are you suggesting?”

‘Perhaps it was because he was injured that he asked me to look for Lin Sanjiu.

‘And that’s also why he did not notice that “thing”.’

Maxin gulped.

“There is… somebody behind you.”

Staring at them, the man in question smiled.