Doomsday Wonderland

Standing in front of the grills, Lin Sanjiu was surprised to find that as a rather successful pod hotel, the main entrance was somewhat unexceptional. It was narrow, and there was even a padlock dangling on the doorknob. ‘Is this really the entrance?’ she thought inwardly as she looked ahead. The sky was sunny and it was quiet out there, but she could not see anything else.

“This is the direction Dali pointed me to, so this should be the main entrance of the hotel, right?” She stretched her arm to reach out for the padlock. To her surprise, the shackle was not engaged with the body of the padlock, and she could easily slide it open with a simple flick of the wrist.

“Well, I guess this is it.”

The grills rattled and swished open. A cluster of dust fell from the door frame, eliciting a coughing spell from Lin Sanjiu. She raised her head and looked ahead skeptically. Even though she felt a little dubious about the alley, she still took her first step and walked into it.

It was a long, narrow alley flanked by two red parallel brick walls. She could not see the summit of the walls as they had merged into the glare of the sun. The wall looked pristine, and she saw no trace of the corrosion from the apocalypse. ‘Next time, I should ask the boss about what caused the apocalypse in this world.’

The weather today was excellent, and the sunlight was warm and bright. Lin Sanjiu could see several flitting shadows at the end of the alley, looking like grass that swayed in the soft breeze.

As she walked along the alley, she pricked her ears up and listened to the voice of this foreign world. Occasionally, she would catch some human voices, sale pitches, or the throaty roar of the engines that the wind fetched from afar into her ears. Then, when the wind dissipated, it brought all the voices away and everything returned to silence once more.

Lin Sanjiu sighed emotionally. It was hard for her to believe that she was finally back to human society. She would not have realized how much she missed the human society if she did not return to the Twelve Worlds.

Although the walkway was bustling with people, it was quiet in the alley. There were no pedestrians save for her alone. As she strolled along the alley, she did not come across another gate after she walked through the main entrance of the Lost Dog Pod Hotel. Everything seemed to have been sealed away by the red brick walls. Perhaps the citizens here did that to stop the apocalypse. Lin Sanjiu had no idea.

When she was about to exit the alley, a young girl passing by glanced at her from the corner of her eyes. Lin Sanjiu angled her head, and just as their eyes met, the young girl quickly turned her head away. She picked up her pace, rushed into the sea of people in the walking street, and soon vanished from Lin Sanjiu’s sight.

“Do I have something on my face?” Befuddled by the young girl’s reaction, Lin Sanjiu lifted her hand and ran her fingers across her face. Nevertheless, she did not touch anything.

She shooed away her momentary doubt and took a step forward. It was at this moment that she felt something in the air touching her at the area around her waist. The alarms in her brain blared as she reacted immediately by doing a somersault to the back. However, her reaction seemed completely unnecessary as the thing fluttered and dropped to the ground the moment she touched it.

A yellow ribbon caught a lance of sunlight and glowed brightly. There seemed to be some words written on it, but Lin Sanjiu could not see them clearly.

Slowly but cautiously, Lin Sanjiu inched towards the yellow ribbon. She had walked all the way down from the other end of the alley and had encountered nothing in midway. So, where did this yellow ribbon come from?

With that thought in mind, she crouched down next to the yellow ribbon and began examining it. Then, she froze.

“Thank you for activating the pocket dimension.” There were at least ten languages written on top of the yellow ribbon. “Your body scent has been recorded. For more information, please flip this ribbon over.”

Lin Sanjiu did not flip the ribbon over but jerked up from the ground instead. She looked around quickly. ‘Pocket dimension? This is a pocket dimension?’

There was nothing but silence inside the alley fringed by the two red brick walls. A few rusty spears of sunlight pierced through the overhead clouds, giving Lin Sanjiu a chance to admire the dance party of the dust and air particles in the air. She spun her head around anxiously, yet she failed to find anything that seemed suspicious. After realizing that she now looked like an idiot, she resigned to her fate and flipped the ribbon over.

“This pocket dimension has no spatial limitation. Participants are not required to clear the pocket dimension, and you are free to come and go.” There was only one language on the other side of the ribbon, which was the one that Lin Sanjiu could understand. “The only requirement is that participants must check in daily.”

“What the hell is this?”

Lin Sanjiu closed her eyes and rubbed the center of her forehead. Then, when she peeled her eyelids open, the first thing that welcomed her were the words “Check in daily”.

“The checkpoints are distributed randomly across every apocalyptic world,” Lin Sanjiu read the passage that was written on the ribbon, “Those who walk into a checkpoint for the first time will automatically be registered as a participant. Each participant is required to check in at a checkpoint (any one) once a day. The check-in process will only be considered successful after the checkpoint has recorded the participant’s body scent. All participants have to repeat the procedure until you are transferred.”

In other words, this alley was one of the checkpoints.

Lin Sanjiu had a feeling that if she could extract her bad luck, it must be the strongest weapon in the doomsday.

“For those who complete the daily check-in without any hiccups, they will have a chance to receive a commemorative gift from the pocket dimension on the day of the transfer. On the contrary, those who fail to commit, calamity will befall you. Hence, for the safety and well-being of your family, please mark your calendars, psych yourself up, and remember to check in daily.”

‘No wonder I see no one walking into this alley!’

It was only at this moment that Lin Sanjiu realized she had walked into a trap. However, there was nothing she could do to amend the situation as it was already too late. She vehemently crumpled the ribbon into a ball and threw it into a corner. After connecting with the wall, the ribbon slipped into the slit and disappeared from her sight.

“Hello.”

A voice erupted from nowhere, making Lin Sanjiu jump. She took a half step back to see a furry head popping out from the corner of the alley. It was a young man with a head of unruly hair. He looked at Lin Sanjiu and offered her a wide grin, giving her a glimpse at his row of perfect teeth. “Did you step into a check-in pocket dimension?”

Staring at the young man, Lin Sanjiu did not reply. It occurred to her that he must have been sitting behind the corner silently for the whole time.

The young man maintained his grinned as he pulled himself up from the ground, bringing his full appearance into the light. His hair had matted into clumps and was oily with sweat and dust under the sunlight. His layers of clothes were filthy from patches of caked mud, and as he stood up, dust and dried mud cascaded from his body to the ground, pooling around his feet. Lin Sanjiu had no idea why, but his appearance reminded her of the mophead.

“Don’t look at me like that. I just want to make a deal with you,” said Mophead. He stuck his finger into his hair and plucked something out of it. He flicked the tiny black dot away and continued, “If I were given a choice, I’d never do this, but everyone has to find a way to live, so please don’t blame me.”

“What do you mean? What do you want?” growled Lin Sanjiu as she stared warily at Mophead. Behind the young man was the busy walkway. Stream after stream of posthumans thronged the walkway, but none of them were looking at them. It was as if the walkway and the alley were two different worlds that could never interact with each other.

“I want nothing from you.” Mophead did not walk closer to Lin Sanjiu. With an outstretched arm, he pointed at a brick on the wall and said, “You have just activated the pocket dimension, so you are a participant. I bet you haven’t checked in yet. Come, the checkpoint is here. Slap the brick once and you are done.”

There was a line of words on top of the brick that read: daily check-in.

Although Lin Sanjiu felt skeptical about the young man, she still did as he said. The second she smacked the brick, the line on top of the brick changed from “daily check-in” to “check-in successful”. While Lin Sanjiu was observing the brick, Mophead lowered his head and his hand dove into his own clothes, seeming to look for something. Just as Lin Sanjiu thought he was about to do something bad, he pulled out a stack of brochures from his clothes.

“Just stay there. You don’t have to come near me.”

Mophead gave Lin Sanjiu a business-like smile. He held the stack of brochures in his hand as if he was holding an invaluable asset. He opened one of the brochures, revealing half of a hand-drawn map and rows of texts written in different languages. “Take a look at this. I’ve spent a lot of effort compiling this brochure, and I’m confident that it can be of use to you.”

“This is…” Lin Sanjiu narrowed her eyes. Understanding soon dawned upon her after she studied the brochure for several seconds. “The distribution point of each checkpoint?”

“Yeap!” Mophead nodded incessantly. “I’ve spent plenty of years in the Heaven Underworld, so I’m absolutely clear about the number and location of each checkpoint! This brochure sums up not only the distribution points but also the experience of the previous participants. Hence, it will certainly be of good use. Do you want one? It’s not expensive.”

It seemed that this was how this guy earned his fortune. He would lurk around a checkpoint, waiting for a freshie like Lin Sanjiu to activate the pocket dimension and then go up to offer them his brochure.

“Why couldn’t you warn me when I was about to step into the pocket dimension?” A fit of anger swelled in Lin Sanjiu’s heart when she thought about how this guy remained silent even though he saw she was about to activate the pocket dimension. “If you shouted at me, I wouldn’t have bumped into the yellow ribbon. And if I turned back, then I would never have become a participant. This is all your fault!”

Listening to Lin Sanjiu’s accusation, Mophead set his lips in a firm line. An indifferent expression crawled upon his face.

“Alright, alright, you are right,” replied the young man halfheartedly as he nipped something else from his hair and flicked it away. He fidgeted his leg impatiently. “However, even if I hadn’t been here, you’d still have walked into the pocket dimension. Besides, it will only take you five minutes to check into a checkpoint. If I were to sit here and remind everyone, who is going to feed me?”

Lin Sanjiu took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. “How much for one?” She had just arrived in this world, and there were a lot of things for her to do. Therefore, she figured that she should not waste her time on something of little consequence such as this.

“Huh?” Mophead was a little taken aback by how fast Lin Sanjiu changed her mind.

“I said how much for one of your damn brochures!? I’m going to buy it with a red crystal. Is that okay?”

“Oh, sure, sure, right away!” The young man’s eyes glowed. “What a wise decision you made. Even though you look a little fussy at first, I have taken a liking to you now. So, one brochure for you, and that will bring it up to 5 medium red crystals.”

With a darkened face, Lin Sanjiu put her hand into her pocket, only to find a new problem. Before she was transferred, she just grabbed a fistful of red crystals with her. However, after paying two medium red crystals to Dali as the room fare, she was short of medium red crystals now. The grand prize had given her a ton of red crystals, but she had placed them all into a container. As a result, right now, she had to take the carton out from her card first

“Turn around,” she said, shooing Mophead away, “Don’t look at me. I’m going to take the red crystals out.”

The container was as large as the alley. She needed to adjust the angle several times before she could fit it into the alley. Walking into the container of shiny red crystals, she felt like Scrooge McDuck swimming in a sea of gold coins. To prevent the same circumstance from happening again, Lin Sanjiu took out another bag—prepared by her grand prize too—and stuffed it with the red crystals before turning it into a card again.

The container in the alley lured the gaze of the pedestrians. Turning a blind eye towards their searing stares, Lin Sanjiu exited the container and turned it back into her card.

She was not afraid of becoming the center of attraction as she believed that no one would guess it was a container filled with red crystals.

“Oh my!” Although she had asked Mophead not to look at her, the moment she kept the container away, his head popped out from the corner of the alley. It was apparent that he had been observing her all the time while she was taking the red crystals. “What a good idea! A huge container that can even double as a house.”

Pulling a long face, Lin Sanjiu took out five medium red crystals and shoved them into Mophead’s hand. Even though the Red Nautilus was considered as a small world in the Twelve World Centrum, their currency was hard currency. This was because the red crystal was a kind of ore that was indigenous to the Red Nautilus, and it was said that it could not be found anywhere else in the universe. Therefore, the storage volume was always low and it was difficult to counterfeit.

Of course, the grand prize was an exception.

“Oh, so you came from the Red Nautilus?” Mophead probed, smiling mirthfully at Lin Sanjiu after he had struck a deal with her. “I’ve never been there before. I heard that things there are much cheaper.”

Lin Sanjiu stuffed the brochure into her card without saying anything. Just as she was about to leave, she suddenly remembered something. She turned around and asked, “Hey, do you know how to go to the Mokugyo Encyclopedic Forum?”