Doomsday Wonderland

The last sentence from the Veda had imprinted deeply into Lin Sanjiu’s memory.

“This is our data transmitting channel,” the voice said indifferently as if it was introducing its home appliances to Lin Sanjiu, “Other than our data and information, nothing can go into this passage. Not even you guys.”

It took Lin Sanjiu several seconds to fully digest the meaning behind the sentence.

‘In other words, the moment we stepped into this passage, we will be broken down into data and store in here?’

Lin Sanjiu’s heart spurred into a gallop at the thought. She jerked up from the floor and turned to look over her back. It was just after being tossed here and there, she could not tell which direction she came from anymore. Everywhere she looked, the wall and the floor of the passage would stare her back and gave off a gunmetal grey sheen. The moment she jerked her head back, she gave a violent shudder and immediately took to her heels.

“Since you refused to join us, then you shall become a part of our information.”

This was the second sentence the Veda said.

A deluge of stones, bricks, soil, and rocks came crashing down from the other side of the passage with a devastating force towards Lin Sanjiu. The ground beneath her feet shook vigorously. The force was so great it lifted her feet off the ground with every other step she took. As she continued to run at her top speed, she turned her head to look at her back, and she almost caught her foot several times when she saw the scene that was happening behind her. Wherever the avalanche of rocks and bricks passed, edifices and houses would spring up from the ground and formed into a street in the blink of an eye.

The rock and stone that had not turned into buildings or houses swept across Lin Sanjiu in a twinkling and spread forward. She buried her head in her arms and closed her eyes as she activated her [Defense Forcefield]. She stood in the heart of the storm where the whirlwind hurled pebbles and stones in all directions, yet she remained unscathed. The low rumbling was getting further and further away, more and more buildings and houses were gradually taking shape until a cityscape was formed.

Lin Sanjiu dared not to deactivate the [Defense Forcefield]. She gasped and slowly peeled her eyes open.

A winding cobblestone pavement that stretched into the alley laid before her eyes. She shifted her eyes away from the pavement and allowed her vision to travel far as she took in her surroundings.

The houses that lined beside the street were low. They were constructed of stone or branches covered with mud and straw, and the roofs were thatched. In the distance near the fortification stood a pencil-thin minaret that looked over the entire city like a white guardian. There was a crescent-shaped marking carved into its rough exterior. The people who shuffled through the street were all dressed in robes. Some of them were balancing something on their heads, while the others had swords strapped around their waists. All of them looked at her curiously, but nobody stopped for her.

Apparently, this was not a modern city. Regardless of which world the Veda got the information form, the question should be why they were bringing it out now?

Since the Veda had already analyzed her, they should be able to see through her movements and her train of thought as if they were reading an open book. So what would they do against a defenseless opponent?

Lin Sanjiu tried to look at the whole picture from the Veda’s perspective. However, she failed to get anything into her mind.

‘Forget it,’ Lin Sanjiu sighed inwardly. ‘Rather than wasting my time thinking about what they are going to do, it’s better for me to use the time to go and find Ji Shanqing..’

Be that as it may, it was not going to be easy. She had no idea where the passage forked, not to mention that her surroundings now had transformed into an Arabic medieval city. Peering into the clear blue sky above her head, she didn’t know which way she should go.

She simply picked a direction and decided to walk to it.

But her feet refused to move.

Her brain did give out the command and she could feel the muscle on her thigh twitching, but that was what it ended there. The muscles, tendons, nerves, everything that went below her sheen refused the command. It was as if they were not theirs. In the end, she could not walk out that step.

Lin Sanjiu’s heart clenched and she lowered her head, but she could not see her feet. Well, to be more precise, she could not differentiate her feet from the ground. Everything that rushed into her eyes the moment she jerked her head down was craggy cobblestone that covered with bumps and grinding marks. She thought her eyes were playing a trick on her, but after she looked closer for another two seconds, only then understanding began to dawn on her.

It looked as if her feet were melting into the ground. The first thing to suffer the brunt of the melting was her boots as they had entirely merged into the cobblestone pavement already, with only the tip of her boots and her shoelaces barely visible in her eyes.

“What the f*ck is this?!”

Lin Sanjiu growled nervously when she saw that the melting was spreading to her ankles. Her vision was getting lower and lower. She tried to pull her feet out, but other than slowing down the melting process, it did not do anything.

‘I cannot chop off my feet like that!’

“Oh yeah, Higher Consciousness!” Lin Sanjiu’s eyes glowed up. She then tried to send her Higher Consciousness down into her feet, only to receive an exasperated sigh from Mrs. Manas. She said fretfully, “No, that won’t do anything. Your Higher Consciousness cannot diffuse into the part that has been turned into stone.”

“Then, what should I do?!” Lin Sanjiu growled back aggravatedly. As she used her Higher Consciousness to hold back the melting process, she accused, “I’m about to melt into the ground! How can you not realize it and inform me earlier?”

“Actually, I wouldn’t have noticed it if you hadn’t seen it. I didn’t sense anything at all,” Mrs. Manas replied flusteredly, “Your [Defense Forcefield] is on standby mode all the time, so why… Ah!”

“What is it? You figured something out?” Lin Sanjiu asked, anxious dripped in her voice as she found her Higher Consciousness was not very effective in stopping her from melting into the street. While she was busy wiggling her legs, more and more pedestrians, some of whom had a clay pot balanced on top of their heads, had stopped moving around. All of them were gathering around her, measuring her up with their deep-set eyes that sat on top of their roman noses from her head to her toes.

“No, nothing,” Mrs. Manas answered sheepishly, “I just happen to figure out why I couldn’t realize it earlier. The Veda has analyzed all your information, so for them, bypassing your [Defense Forcefield] is as easy as crossing a stone…”

“It’s good that you finally figured something out, but what has it got to do with helping me from getting out of here?!” Lin Sanjiu intercepted before Mrs. Manas could finish her sentence. In a sense, Mrs. Manas’s analysis was helpful, and though it did give her a rough idea, it did not help her situation at all. Right now, it was apparent that all her abilities and Special Items were useless against the Veda.

She continued to command her leg muscles as she looked around, staring vigilantly at the crowding pedestrians. It was at this moment that Mrs. Manas’s voice rang out in her mind again, her words were even less useful than the last, “Ah, since [Defense Forcefield] has no use, I better shut it down to preserve your Higher Consciousness.”

“Now is not the time for that!” A drop of sweat rolled into Lin Sanjiu’s eye and stung it with salt. She blinked rapidly to clear it away but it did not help. In her blurred vision, she saw several took the large clay pot down from their heads.

“What were they doing?”

The second the thought surfaced in Lin Sanjiu’s mind, an olive-skinned middle-aged woman lifted the clay pot and hurled it towards her, drawing an arc in the air. Startled, she immediately ducked down as the clay pot narrowly hit her fluttering hairs and crashed onto the ground at her back.

“Ah!”

Mrs. Manas shouted again, making Lin Sanjiu jump. She responded in an equal volume of voice, “What’s wrong?” Then, she heard the self-aware entity replied in a faltering voice, “Quick! Find something and cut off your hair!”

“What did you say?”

“A part of the clay vase from just now has merged into your hair. Hurry up, it’s going up your head!”

Lin Sanjiu’s hair stood up on their ends. She hurriedly pulled out a knife, gathered her hair in her hand and cut it off with a quick downward swipe. When the bunch of hair fell to the ground, she heard a cracking sound which prompted her to lower her head. On the ground, she saw that the bunch of hair had turned brown red and become clay-like. It slowly melted into the ground and soon vanished from her eyes.

Lin Sanjiu seemingly had a rough picture of how the Veda was going to make her a part of their information.

She pushed the thought away and raised her head. At this moment, more and more people raised their arms into the air, holding not only clay vases but also stone slabs. There was even one who picked up a long wooden bar that acted as a resting bench. The air was dry and dusty. All of the paraphernalia in the pedestrian’s hands were speckled with the scattered sunlight and pierced through the haze.

Lin Sanjiu’s feet had melted into the cobblestone pavement, so there was no way she would be able to evade the attack. Just as she tightened her muscles and circulated her Higher Consciousness around her body to prepare herself for the upcoming tough fight, she looked down and stared at the knife in her hand.

“Wait!” The second the word tumbled off her tongue, an order erupted from the crowd around. A large pottery basin bathed under the Arabian sun departed from a person’s hand and flew through the air.

“What do you want? They are attacking us!” Fortunately, the conversation between Mrs. Manas and Lin Sanjiu happened inside of her head, so they did not have to go through the process of talking and listening.

“Help me,” she could only manage to utter two words and the pottery basin had already arrived right in front of her face. She ducked down, giving way to the pottery basin to fly past the top of her head. Only then she continued to finish her sentence, “stall them off!”

“Wha..? How should I stall them?”

Turning a deaf ear against Mrs. Manas’s panicked shout, Lin Sanjiu closed her eyes. She took a few deep breaths to calm down her galloping heart. What she was going to do would cost her life if she failed, but she did not have other better plans already. Assuming a crouching position, Lin Sanjiu peeled her eyes open, and with a loud battle roar, she thrust the knife into the ground in one mighty downward swipe.

This was an ordinary kitchen-use knife. However, under the combined effort of her strength and Higher Consciousness, it stabbed straight into the ground as if she was cutting butter. When she saw the inside of the ground was the same material as the cobblestone pavement, she let out a relieved sigh.

Of course, she knew everything was far from being fine. Countless shadows were showering down at her. She could not evade nor she could run away. She could just rely on Mrs. Manas to deflect each of them with her Higher Consciousness, and she was almost hit by the falling objects several times.

“Whatever you are doing, you have to hurry up!” Mrs. Manas growled, “There are more people coming. I can’t hold them for long!”

Lin Sanjiu did not reply. She gripped the knife handle tightly and carved open the cobblestone ground. The knife was thin, and the ground was thick and hard. Were it not for she wrapped the knife with her Higher Consciousness, it would have broken into half already. Gnashing her teeth, she continued to maneuver the knife until she drew a deep circle around her.

The moment she withdrew her Higher Consciousness, the knife separated from the knife holder and shattered.

‘Now, for the best part.’ With that thought in mind, she punched around the line that she carved until it cracked and a standalone stone was formed. After that, she sat down while using her hands to support herself. Before her hands and bum began to melt, she placed all her strength on her feet and pulled the stone out.

The moment she regained her freedom, she hastily pulled herself up from the ground. The melting had already spread to her trousers as she could feel them hardening. The stone that her feet turned into was craggy, so it was hard for her to maintain her balance. Setting her jaw tight, Lin Sanjiu shouted at Mrs. Manas, “Are you ready, Mrs. Manas?”

“What? What should I do?”

“Wrap my Higher Consciousness around this stone, and make sure it will not break!” Lin Sanjiu shouted anxiously, “I don’t want to lose my feet yet.”

“What the hell do you want to do?”

“Have you ever seen a kangaroo? I’m going to run now!”