Doomsday Wonderland

The planet had become a large piece of barren land.

This was what Lin Sanjiu had concluded after she had journeyed on the continent for a few months.

Mile after mile, for months she crossed the continent that had been destroyed by humanity. She traversed through a deep stratum which seemed to have once been the sea. She climbed over the glaciers and the highlands that appeared to have no end. She came across a lot of things, yet in the end, the only thing she never saw was other living organisms.

Compared to her first arrival on this world, the Meat Elysium now looked so still, as if every bit of evidence that symbolized the existence of civilization had been entirely wiped clean of the surface of the planet.

When neither of them spoke, there was only the whistle of the wind blowing through the space between the sky and the earth. Nobody knew where the wind came from, and nobody knew where it would end.

… Just like her.

There were times when she was able to catch a faint murmur, wrapped in the wind before scattering to the four corners of the world. More often than not, she felt she was hallucinating. Even the cries of the lunatics, in retrospect, seemed to pulsate with great vitality. She missed the noise a lot. And the more she missed, the more lonely she felt.

If Ji Shanqing wasn’t by her side, Lin Sanjiu felt she might have gone crazy.

Initially, she thought the dimensional rift only affected a small area. Now that she had walked across the continent, she found that she had been so wrong. The dimensional rift seemed to have appeared multiple times in multiple places. Some of them were large while some of them were small, yet all of them were catastrophic with power enough to destroy a planet, leaving only nothingness behind whenever they appeared.

They went on the journey to look for the consular officer. However, with human civilization stripped from the surface of Meat Elysium, their journey held no more meaning aside from traveling from one place to another.

Sometimes, Lin Sanjiu felt the very existence of Meat Elysium was wrong from the start, and the dimensional rift had come to right the wrong. There was a voice inside her heart telling her that this sounded absurd, but as time passed, the voice started to diminish, ebbing away, and the notion was getting more and more profound in her heart.

Compared to Lin Sanjiu, Ji Shanqing seemed more relaxed.

“Where should we go tomorrow, sis’?”

As the sun set in the west, the sky grew darker. Peering into the turquoise-colored sky, the grand prize lay beside Lin Sanjiu and asked the question.

They were now lying on top of a vast rocky area with the sky as their coverlet. Lin Sanjiu decided to sojourn on this stone was because she was interested in the pattern of the stone. As if melting granite was frozen in time before it completely melted away, the giant rock beneath them was formed of multiple layers of ring-shaped motifs that spread from the center of the stone.

The flame from the bonfire licked upward and dyed the cyan blue sky a tinge of orange-red.

“Anywhere would do,” Lin Sanjiu answered as she took out a thick book from her card. The book was the one she found in the corpse that she bought from a vulture in Red Nautilus, “… After all, there’s little hope of finding the consular officer. Tell me if you found a spot you would like to visit, and we’ll go there.”

The grand prize’s face turned solemn as he began to think where he should go to see next.

Listening to the crackling of the flame, Lin Sanjiu leafed through the handbook. Ever since she had obtained the [Battle Item], she had attained a new habit. She would often flip through the content after she had finished her Higher Consciousness training with Mrs. Manas. Using the perfect depiction in aiding the memorization process, she had successfully ingrained several Special Items in her mind. If she had to put a number to it, it was roughly twenty to thirty items.

The handbook contained a wealth of information on the Special Items from the Twelve Worlds, and she wondered how the author managed to gather so much data. Even after she had flipped through so many pages of illustration, she was always surprised to find that there were a lot more pages to go.

“Eh?”

Stopping at the “Special Item Illustration,” Lin Sanjiu came to a mental halt. She closed the handbook and looked at its spine. Then, a somewhat quizzical expression crawled upon her face.

“What’s wrong?” Her grand prize turned his gaze to Lin Sanjiu and asked while he remained in his prone position.

Lin Sanjiu didn’t reply to her grand prize’s concern. Her brows knit together in a tight frown as she flipped the handbook in her hand.

“This handbook came into my possession when I was in Red Nautilus, and I haven’t had time to take a good look at it. I have been going through it page by page recently, so…” She paused for a moment before continuing hesitantly, “I wondered if this was just my mind playing a trick on me, but I felt the book has become… thicker.”

“Wasn’t that normal?” Ji Shanqing answered as he found her concern unsubstantial, “Flipping a book would leave some creases or sort on the pages, so an old book would naturally be thicker than a new—Eh?”

He found something was amiss before he could finish his sentence. The handbook wasn’t all-new when Lin Sanjiu first obtained it. It probably had been read multiple times by somebody in the past as the edge of the book was slightly ragged and torn.

“I hope this is just my imagination,” Lin Sanjiu mumbled under her breath. She opened the pictorial handbook again, flicking through the dog-eared book page by page. The lines drawn using normal ball-point pen came in together to form a unique depiction, each one more alien than the last. “Perhaps it’s all in my—”

Then, she froze, swallowing the words back into her stomach.

She had reached the last page of the Special Item chapter, and the next page should be the introduction of Evolved Ability. Lin Sanjiu stared fixedly at the page, her mind drifted away, and her expression froze. His curiosity piqued, her grand prize craned his neck forward. He was stunned the moment he caught a glimpse of the thing that caused the shock in Lin Sanjiu.

“This…” He looked puzzled at the black figure that looked like a suit. He raised his head and asked, “Isn’t this the [Criminal Suspect Suit]?”

Not only the [Criminal Suspect Suit], but a plethora of Special Items Lin Sanjiu had seen before had been recorded in the last few pages of the Special Item section: [Birdcage], [eBay], [Truth Revealing Candle], [All Birds Pay Homage to the Phoenix], [Siren]… They could find every single Special Item that they had used before here. Lin Sanjiu and Ji Shanqing looked into each other eyes, and the scale fell from both of their eyes. She quickly flipped the page to the last few pages of the Evolved Ability section.

Qing Jiuliu’s [Insolvent Drunkard’s Light Of Hope], Irezumi’s [Bashful Python], and that strange old lady’s [Concept Mishmash]… Every Evolved Ability of the person she knew or met had been recorded here as well.

Lin Sanjiu’s heart fluttered.

She flipped the pages backward several times and searched until she saw her ability, the [Planar World]. Underneath the name was a line of simple description that read: An ability to convert an item into card storage with a daily upper limit.

Both of them looked at the time-worn handbook silently. Neither of them spoke.

“… Think about it, it seems like I have never used any of my other of abilities aside from the Planar World,” Lin Sanjiu muttered after a short while.

Ji Shanqing didn’t speak. He sat aside quietly and watched as Lin Sanjiu lay the book on the ground then take a branch from the bonfire. No sooner had Lin Sanjiu hovered both her hand on top of the twig the tree branch had exploded into a wood splinter mess.

After that, both of them quickly turned back to the book. They flipped the book to the last page, and they noticed that the previous last page had now become the second last page. The new last page that had just appeared read: [Mosaic Censorship].

“… This is a Special Item,” Lin Sanjiu stared at it for a good while before breaking into a fit of laughter, “This goddamn handbook is a Special Item!”

It wasn’t her fault for not realizing it until today. When she turned the handbook into a card, the description on the card was extremely mediocre and ordinary: [NOTEBOOK]

A thick handbook that sold for 119.90 dollars. From its look and the paper quality, it totally was not worth the price. The handbook is filled with many kinds of information, written by an unknown author.

Similar to the [Ability Polishing Agent], its description didn’t provide any clue or help for them to specify the use of this Special Item. It seemed that they needed to keep digging if they wanted to know more about the book.

“The description isn’t helping at all,” Lin Sanjiu deactivated the card and flipped the book again, “Hold on, something is not right.”

“What is that?”

“I told you before right? I met a girl named Sunny. She used her ability against me, but I cannot find her ability in this book.”

Tilting his head, Ji Shanqing thought for a while and asked, “Who else is not in the book?”

“Her partner, the girl named Queenie. Her ability wasn’t recorded in the book either… Oh ya, there’s one more guy that goes by the name Zhang Da. Hmm, there are more, but I can’t remember.”

“Those people you mentioned, they are all dead, right?”

Stunned, understanding instantly dawned on her, “Are you saying that the ability of those who have died would not be recorded in the book?”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, I have—”

She flipped the book again and saw [Bashful Python].

Since she did not know about Cyrus’ Evolved Ability, but she sighed the moment she saw the words.

“At least one of them has survived.”

This was the first time in months Lin Sanjiu felt relieved after Magus and Qing Jiuliu had been sent away. She and Ji Shanqing chatted for a while. They even tried to tear the page containing the information of [Planar World]. However, the feeble and ragged book remained intact after Lin Sanjiu had pulled it with all her strength. What surprised them the most was that the book seemed to be fireproof; it didn’t catch fire after they put it on top of the bonfire for a while.

For a Special Item like this book that contained the information of her ability and was practically indestructible, it was no wonder that the man in Red Nautilus decided to swallow it.

The days went by peacefully. [Notebook] had become the only interlude before Lin Sanjiu was transferred as there wasn’t even a Pocket Dimension left in this world.

Since the killer came so suddenly, her grand prize had lost most of his visas that night. Two of them couldn’t make up their mind which visa they should use out of the remaining visas. After a lengthy discussion, they finally had settled down on a world that seemed somewhat less aggressive.

Clenching a visa in her hand while holding her grand prize in the other, Lin Sanjiu stood as stiff as a ramrod. When her body started to become faint, she lowered her head to look at the visa in her hand: Salvation of God.