Doomsday Wonderland

Chapter 1356: Set Out

“So, have you two found a safe place now?” Wan Qingge asked in a low voice, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Nu Yue was also leaning forward, listening intently.

Lin Sanjiu’s voice came from the communicator on the ground. “Yes, we’re on our way.” She paused momentarily before continuing, “I suspect Guan Hailian disappeared because of him…”

She didn’t say it explicitly, but the implication was clear.

Wan Qingge hardly had any impression of Guan Hailian; they hadn’t interacted much, and he always seemed harmless and honest. He couldn’t understand why He Huan would target him first. ‘Another person gone,’ he sighed inwardly, but the regret quickly dissipated—what was more urgent now was looming over his head like dark clouds.

“The rocket plan must be abandoned,” Lin Sanjiu said slowly. “They’re prepared, so the plan has failed. We must think of another way.”

Wan Qingge and Nu Yue looked at each other. When one said, “Then I’ll continue to figure out how to get adrenaline,” the other asked, “Do we really have to give up? It might not be…”

“Even if we implement the plan immediately, the rocket won’t launch until two and a half days later.” Lin Sanjiu’s voice was heavy, and even through the communicator, they could imagine her emotions. “They have two and a half days to stop us, so this plan won’t work. Besides, they’ll definitely conduct thorough checks before the launch… Let’s take the sea route to another country and find another opportunity to send a message to space.”

After ending the call, the two fell silent for a few seconds.

Wan Qingge had lived through ten or twenty years after doomsday, encountering countless dangers and hardships, but he had never experienced this breathless feeling of suffocation. It wasn’t because of a setback in a specific action—setbacks were something posthumans were no stranger to—but because he realized, without ever seeing the face of an enemy, he was gradually surrounded by omnipresent pressure, as if there were no way out.

He never thought that one day, he would struggle so hard just to leave, an action that seemed well within his freedom.

Nu Yue stood up, walked to the balcony’s edge, and looked outside. Behind them was a unit with no one at home. The streets were filled with surveillance cameras, and it wasn’t safe to go out without disguises. So, they used the balcony of an empty apartment as their route; every uninhabited apartment could serve as a temporary stop.

“The building over there is tall.” Nu Yue pointed to a distant commercial building. “What do you think? It seems suitable?”

“Okay, let’s go there,” Wan Qingge said, standing up and putting away the communicator.

The sun hadn’t completely set yet, so they couldn’t fly openly. Instead, they used the disguises Nu Yue had brought. She quietly raided a company specializing in makeup for film and television. She even infiltrated it beforehand to learn some techniques from makeup artists: covering eyebrows with flesh-colored patches, darkening eyelids and upper skin, and confusing the range of ‘eye sockets’ in facial recognition systems. Changing the size of eye sockets could significantly change a person’s appearance.

They contacted Lin Sanjiu again from the top floor of the fifty-story building.

“We’re near the pharmaceutical factory,” Wan Qingge said. “What do you think?”

“Adrenaline is our only hope now. Keep going,” Lin Sanjiu said, then hung up.

They didn’t move from their spot; they just waited silently.

Night quickly fell over the land, and the artificial lights on the streets faded halfway up, leaving the sky to darkness. Fortunately, this place was always covered in thick haze, with a murky sky that even starlight couldn’t penetrate, hiding everything in the high altitude.

The paper crane from another city finally arrived, flying through the night sky. When they heard its wings flapping, Wan Qingge and Nu Yue jumped up at the same time.

Nu Yue waved towards the small white dot in the night. “Here!”

The paper crane landed safely in her palm, and a red light flashed. Then, Lin Sanjiu’s voice, slightly tense this time, said, “Meet at the beach tomorrow at sunset.”

Wan Qingge immediately called her communicator, and after three rings, he disconnected the call voluntarily—this was a signal to inform Lin Sanjiu that her paper crane had safely arrived. Nobody paid attention to the message inside the paper crane, as it was merely a dummy message sent for testing purposes.

After He Huan escaped, the communicator became unsafe, as nobody knew what technological means the people in this world possessed and whether they could eavesdrop on their conversations through He Huan’s communicator.

Of course, on the other hand, if He Huan had indeed reported the situation, they could have turned this disadvantage into a smokescreen that was advantageous to them; therefore, every word spoken by the communicator was meant for potential eavesdroppers.

They had two other communication methods left besides the communicator: Han Suiping’s signal manipulation and the paper crane. Each had pros and cons, and depending on the situation, they utilized both.

After Lin Sanjiu warned them this afternoon, they went to an electronics store. They called her once, effectively transmitting their location to Han Suiping. The store had a huge wall filled with screens of various sizes; after standing in front of a small TV in a corner for two or three minutes, Han Suiping’s signal twisted into words and appeared on the screen.

After reading the message, they immediately left the electronics store.

Although Han Suiping’s signal transmission was convenient, it had location limitations and was prone to drawing attention. After they spoke to Lin Sanjiu again on the communicator, saying words like “abandon the rocket program,” they arrived at the top floor of a skyscraper. From another city, Lin Sanjiu also stood on the top floor of a skyscraper, sending them a paper crane.

When the paper crane was out of all sight, traveling in a straight line from one point high in the sky to another, it was possible to ensure that it would not be intercepted by the people on the ground.

After confirming the safety of the first paper crane, the second one that arrived finally carried the crucial message.

“With just a few casual words, they might not fully believe our fake plan and might not divert all manpower to defend the pharmaceutical factory and the coastline. I’ll find a way to make them believe it,” Lin Sanjiu’s voice came steadily from the paper crane. “I estimate that all transportation towards the rocket launch site will be closely monitored these two days. For safety reasons, if we want to continue with the rocket plan, we can only rely on ourselves to cross this distance and enter the base before they react. Wan Qingge doesn’t need to be mentioned… Nu Yue, can you drive?”

Although it was a recorded message in the paper crane, Nu Yue nodded.

After Lin Sanjiu explained her plan, she asked, “Do you see any problems? Is it feasible?”

They had few other options besides this method. Each person had tasks, with Lin Sanjiu doing the most dangerous work. She would expose herself to create a false impression, diverting firepower and attention to herself and leaving space for others to act.

“We don’t see any problems,” Wan Qingge replied to the paper crane. “With my speed, if I run at full speed the entire time, I should be able to reach the base before the rocket launches.”

It was too dangerous for him to go alone. Even as a posthuman, facing modern military formations alone might not guarantee his survival. Nu Yue would follow him in the car the entire way, abandoning the car and sneaking away if they encountered a checkpoint. She would inevitably fall behind Wan Qingge because the car’s top speed couldn’t match his pace, so the two had to agree on a safe distance. Even if just knowing that there was a backup that would quickly arrive in case of danger, Wan Qingge felt much more reassured.

According to Han Suiping, he had to infiltrate the communicator into the satellite at the last moment before the rocket closed, even an hour earlier might be detected. Han Suiping’s task was to remotely ensure that it would ascend with the rocket without being discovered.

“They won’t have external network connections for safety during the launch, but even the internal launch system requires signal transmission,” Han Suiping said in the first paper crane, seeming to be gearing up for a battle. “I… I can let myself enter the internal system and the signal and tamper with the commands.”

After everything was discussed, it was time to leave.

Before going downstairs, Wan Qingge walked to the rooftop’s edge and looked at the city night illuminated by lights. He longed to see this scene when he became a posthuman: a peaceful, orderly, and abundant human society, a place where they could escape from the law of the jungle and return to civilized life. Now that he had seen it and lived in it for a few months, he was ready to exert all his efforts to escape it.

Nu Yue approached him and looked out. “I always thought, if we could settle down here, could we live well?” Her voice and hair were soft, scattered by the night wind.

Wan Qingge didn’t say anything.

“Do you remember Guan Hailian’s analogy?” she said thoughtfully, not looking at Wan Qingge. “The analogy of why posthumans are drawn to each other involuntarily. If that theory is correct, then the number of posthumans we’ve encountered is too few.”

Wan Qingge nodded. “It’s abnormally low.”

The combined population of several major cities in the advertising area was more than twenty or thirty million; however, only five posthumans were gathered together, and four had just been teleported recently. Considering that posthumans had probably been sent over in the decades before this, this number was too low even if it doubled.

“Then, what about those people?” Nu Yue said, seeming to be asking herself.

Wan Qingge suddenly wanted to smoke a cigarette—although he never smoked.

“We’re in the midst of a doomsday, so we yearn for a normal human society…” Nu Yue seemed to have pondered this thought for a long time, and once she started speaking, she couldn’t stop. “As you’ve always said, we live by the law of the jungle in the doomsday world, living like animals in the wild. Besides our own strength, there’s nothing to guarantee our dignity and the right to life… Naturally, we long for a human society free from the cruel laws of nature, where everyone can live with dignity.”

Wan Qingge nodded. He understood why Nu Yue suddenly wanted to say these words—once they set out, they might not have the chance again.

“If powerful forces can still reign unchecked in a modern society while the weak have lost even the right to resist and cooperate, then why leave the world of doomsday?” Nu Yue smiled. “For the rice and instant noodles in the supermarket?”

1

“We can’t be the first batch of posthumans to think like this. That’s probably why the previous ones have all disappeared. Eight out of ten of them weren’t calm enough.”

Wan Qingge stood straight and withdrew his gaze from the city night, softly saying, “Let’s go.”

Nu Yue silently followed him.