Doomsday Wonderland

Lin Sanjiu realized she was wrong.

She had always thought that the giants were the reason for the downfall of the world. She only realized how wrong she was until Deva pinched both of them in between her fingers.

On the long white face with a pointy chin, the muscles on Deva’s cheeks were so thick that she couldn’t open her eyes more than a slit. Her breath had a fishy smell, and each of her inspirations stirred up hot and humid air.

For a moment, the image of her being crushed like a squashed grape was there in Lin Sanjiu’s mind before she even knew, but the colossal Deva, who stood at the height of a thousand meters just picked them up fondly. Her eyes were full of tenderness, much to her surprise.

After that, she bent down and scratched both of them down from her finger as if she was picking her nose using her fingernail, sending them falling straight into the city of ants below. Throughout the whole process, Lin Sanjiu’s body was as stiff as a wooden block. She could not move any parts of her body aside from her eyes. Both she and Ji Shanqing were now like two paralyzed patients—their mobility was utterly stripped away from them.

“Could this be the “divine power” of a God?”

The ground was approached at a mind-boggling speed. When the imminent had arrived, she smacked hard on the slate, her eyes blackened, the world disappeared in a swirl of black, and her bones rattled as though they had been shattered.

The next thing she knew before she fully recovered from her grogginess was footfalls coming from all directions flooded her ears. When the dust settled down, faces, one after the other, slowly came into sight like bamboo shoots after a spring rain until they filled up every inch of her vision. The faces were both expressionless and moribund.

From a single glance, all of them were so much alike that it was impossible to distinguish them from one another. Eroded by the wind and sand all year round, their faces had turned yellowish and their skin dangled, flabby and loose from their bones. They looked as like a bunch of older adults with one foot in the grave.

When five slightly muscular men made their way through the dense crowd and picked them up, only then did Lin Sanjiu realize that the eldest people amongst the populace might probably be in their thirties to forties.

As they lifted them, Lin Sanjiu turned her eyes, and to her surprise, Deva was nowhere in sight. She vanished as quickly as she appeared. The only thing that remained there was the towering rocky mountain with its peak that almost stabbed into the thick white fog.

Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help but think of the finger that shrunk into the white fog.

“Oh?” A parched voice came from the owner of the hands, “It’s a woman.”

Another man replied, talked with a similar cracked and rasping voice, “Oh! You’re right! Hey, you over there; go and call the warden.”

Somebody from the crowd cleared his throat and answered. Then, the next thing she heard was footfalls that were getting further and further away. All of their voices were raucous and coarse. Recalling the babel of sound she had heard during her fall, Lin Sanjiu surmised that these people must have damaged their vocal cord due to excessive yelling.

So, what was wrong with her being a woman?

Lin Sanjiu had no idea what Deva had done to their bodies. It had already been thirty minutes, yet their mobility still hadn’t returned to them. Her heart was sinking deeper and deeper into her stomach as despair began to take hold of her mind. Her eyes ached as no matter how hard she strained her eyes, everything that came into her sight was merely the blanket of non-ending white fog in the air and the chin and nostrils of the person who was carrying her. The world in her vision bobbed up and down. The man who took her continued to move forward. Judging from her kinesthetic sense, it seemed to her that they were going down a slope. And after what it felt like ages, the man stopped, and they were placed on the ground.

“Hold them up,” a voice that she had never heard before rang out above her head not far away. The man’s voice wasn’t as harsh as the other people’s voices, but it wasn’t pleasant either. It sounded like two bones rubbing against each other, “… Which one of these is a woman?”

With that, somebody positioned Lin Sanjiu and leaned her upper torso against something. They finally had a more unobstructed view. However, before Lin Sanjiu could take in their surroundings, a man next to her pushed her grand prize forward and said, “This is a woman.”

“Great,” the sound said before asking again, “How about this?”

As the question raised into the air, Lin Sanjiu lifted her eyes.

There was a  duoluozhong  standing at about ten steps ahead of her. Its skin was arctic-white, and it had no hair. It wore a long robe and its body seemed empty. Its two eyeballs were sunken into the sockets, and its lips were parched and dry like a black hole on its face.

Behind the  duoluozhong  called “warden” stood a cluster of people. Some of them were  duoluozhong , but most of them were human. Like the people outside, their skin had a yellowish tinge and they wore a similar weary look. None of their robes were as clean as the one wore by the  duoluozhong  standing in front. Behind them were concentric rings that made up the wall, appearing like an enlarged version of the Roman Colosseum except, instead of seats, each of the rings were carved with many holes that the people treated as their dwelling spaces. From there, it seemed to Lin Sanjiu that they were now at the bottom of the city of ant-like people.

“I guess this is a woman, too,” the warden   walked closer. Its eyes rolled, flattening the creases on its forehead. And somehow, the confirmation of her gender had stirred up a murmur from the crowd.

The duoluozhong  studied Lin Sanjiu from her head to her toe before stretching its two long, dead-branches-like arms wide, “… It has been a long time since we last came across a female infidel. I suggest delaying their baptism.”

“Warden,” the man who carried them whispered a question to the  duoluozhonghe called warden, “Wouldn’t it be too risky not to baptize these infidels immediately? After all, the stigma…”

“Stigma? Is it that thing that makes us unable to move?”

The warden   stretched open its face. And a mischievous, furtive smile blossomed around its lips.

“This must be a test from Deva,” its two eyes rolled around, “Rest assured; I’ll make a decision before the stigma goes away.”

All of the raw-boned crowd with dirt-laden face lowered their head and murmured something in unison.

“At least the baptism won’t happen now…”

Before Lin Sanjiu could relax, her heart tightened again the moment the duoluozhong  moved to a side, and the people behind it fell into her sight.

There were women there also — many of them. Their hair was disheveled and dry and their eyes were vacant and glassy, looking like two swirls of black scribbled by pen.

What surprised her the most was almost all of the women, no matter how old or young, were either pregnant or holding a child. Their stomachs were so large that it contorted their body. The extraordinarily large sphere had placed too much strain on their flimsy frame, giving Lin Sanjiu an impression that they would fall to the ground at any time.

When her glance caught a glimpse of a pregnant woman with a head of white hair and wrinkled skin, her stomach churned, and she quickly averted her eyes away.

She wanted to turn to check on Ji Shanqing’s condition, but her body wouldn’t listen to her command. Her fists laid beside her legs, and although there was nothing in her palm right now, her brain was running fast filtering which Special Items she had that could save both of them without moving her body.

The  duoluozhong  nodded. It spun around and waved its hand, “Bring them to the shrine.”

Two arms suddenly appeared from her behind her and lifted her. The crowd parted, revealing a staircase that led further into the deeper region of the city.

Two statues of Deva stood at the entrance of the staircase. Each of the sculptures was as tall as a human. When Lin Sanjiu was being carried down the stairs, her eyes accidentally met with Deva, and it’s smiling eyes spooked her to the core.

When both of them were thrown on the ground of the shrine, from the ill-lit space came a low groan. Lin Sanjiu hurt her nose when the person flung her to the ground; she winced in pain as she raised her eyes. Through the help of some light, she was able to make out a figure that was laying on the ground.

The smell of blood assaulted her nostrils. As the rustle of fabric drifted into her ears, one after other feet, which could only belong to  duoluozhong  walked past them.

“… You will now witness his baptism,” a  duoluozhong  whispered from behind them, “He’s a posthuman we caught, by ourselves.”