Doomsday Wonderland

“I saw you from afar when I was up there. I know where you got your gun from.”

The sun was sinking low in the west. It sprayed its final beams of vermillion rays off into the sky, dying it red. The girl stood silhouetted against the red laden sky, her hair fluttering along with the wind. Her face was shrouded in a blanket of darkness, so Lin Sanjiu couldn’t see her expression well.

“You got it from Mayor Orlean, correct?” the girl said as she examined Lin Sanjiu’s rifle as if it was some kind of masterpiece. “I’ve seen this kind of gun with those police officers before. Ah, those good old days.”

When Lin Sanjiu spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “Good old days?”

The girl let out a long sigh. Her mentor, the middle-aged woman with a head of golden hair, was lying lifelessly next to her feet. A pool of blood was forming beneath her head, and the muscles on her left leg twitched from time to time.

“Yeah, there was so much food we couldn’t finish… So, you used to be one of the police officers, right? Can you tell me what happened half a year ago? Where did the mayor and the sacred mountain go?” She fired questions at Lin Sanjiu in a dry, staccato cadence. “Will the mayor ever return to us?”

It was then that Lin Sanjiu realized she was still wearing the police officer’s uniform.

She raised her head and looked at the girl. She did not know what to say.

‘They are just too hungry,’ a voice suddenly sounded at the depth of her psyche. People tended to do crazy things when they were starved to a certain extent, so it was normal to pine for those days where they did not have to worry about clothing and food. After all, they had been reared like pigs for almost a decade.

Seeing that Lin Sanjiu ignored her question, the girl was slightly stunned. Then, she laughed embarrassedly. “Please don’t get me wrong… That’s not what I meant. It’s fine for me if the mayor is not coming back; the most important thing is that you are here now, and you have a gun! You will be our savior! If you take over Peanut Town, I swear to god, nobody will dare to go against you.”

Lin Sanjiu then silently unlatched her rifle from her belt. She could sense the girl’s breathing suddenly become faster as she stared fervently at her every movement.

“Even if I take over Peanut Town, I don’t have food for you all. So, how are you going to solve that problem?” Lin Sanjiu asked, holding the rifle with one arm.

“I have thought about this problem before,” the girl instantly replied the moment she heard her question. “There are actually some farms in the suburb area of the town. Although the farms have been left uncultivated for almost a decade, so long as we form an interim governing council, we can deploy some of the citizens to take care of the farms. We can grow our own crops, and if there is somebody who refuses to follow the order, we can turn them into nourishment for our crops.”

The mentor lying next to her feet twitched again, which prompted the girl to cast her eyes downward. Lin Sanjiu had no idea why, but the way the girl looked at her previous mentor gave her the impression that she was looking at a piece of pork ribs rather than a human being.

“There are farms in this town?” This time, Lin Sanjiu was truly surprised. “The black mountain disappeared almost half a year ago, yet nobody went and reclaimed those farms?”

The girl shifted her eyes to her but did not say anything.

Lin Sanjiu suddenly realized that she had said “the black mountain” just now.

However, the girl peeled her eyes away without saying anything. There was a hint of disappointment sitting on her face as she pouted. “Everybody is too lazy. My mentor and I had been watching the farm for almost a month, yet we couldn’t even find a blade of grass. I remember that Mayor Orlean distributed a lot of seeds and tuber-type food for us. They should take those out and grow them!”

Lin Sanjiu looked at the girl as if she was looking at an alien.

‘She wants other people to grow the crops so that she could steal them?’

“Even though you’re armed, you are alone. If a group of men comes up at you all together, there is nothing you can do,” the girl continued to say passionately. “You need more eyes, and I am willing to become one Wherever you go, there will be a group of people protecting you, guarding you, so that nobody will ever get close to you and snatch your gun away.”

“You are right, but you forgot something: bullets are expendable. We will use up all the bullets at one point,” Lin Sanjiu said coldly, “Then, you will be doomed.”

The girl cleared her throat and tried to calm herself down. She pitched her voice low and laughed. “That won’t happen, trust me. Let me tell you something. About half a year ago, two intruders invaded Peanut Town and set half of our town on fire. In order to protect us, the sacred mountain accelerated and nudged faster towards the town hall. At the time, we heard that it had summoned all the police officers. And once the police officers had been gathered up, the sacred mountain opened its body and took all of them away.”

Lin Sanjiu remembered the couple where the wife reported about her husband’s apparent traitorous action and how the black mountain reacted by opening its body and consuming the husband.

Perhaps the black mountain wanted to juice up by absorbing more “energy” from the police officers before it came to attack them.

“Those police officers took all the guns away with them, so there aren’t any guns left. However…” The girl cleared her throat again, as she felt raw in her windpipe. After that, she pointed in a direction and grinned. “Over there we have an armory. Inside the armory we can find a great wealth of ammo.”

Lin Sanjiu followed her finger and gazed at the building indifferently. Then, she crouched down and lifted Yu Yuan up.

“You can hide him in my house first,” the girl suggested, her cheeks livid. “That way, when we are gathering more people, he won’t get in…”

“Get lost.”

The girl fell silent. A blank expression dawned on her face as if she did not understand what Lin Sanjiu was saying.

By the time she finally came around, the smile on her face dropped and her brows drew together in a deep frown. “What?” she asked dryly. “What did you say?”

“I said get the f*ck out of my face.”

Lin Sanjiu pointed the rifle at the girl. There was a friendly, almost amicable grin on her face and her voice was gentle. “I don’t care what is on your menu today or if you have food to eat in the future. I am not interested in your proposal, and I don’t want to see you again.”

The girl’s face turned even grimmer. She stared at the rifle, disbelief was written all over her face. She looked at Lin Sanjiu’s face intently as if she wanted to pierce through her brain with her gaze. After that, she turned around and went into the building.

After seeing her figure disappear into the building, Lin Sanjiu let out a sigh. She lifted Yu Yuan up from the ground arduously and began to move forward.

Truth to be told, she did not know where she should be going. After she wandered aimlessly about on the street, the night came and darkness fell. It was just that the flow of time in the Reverie Libretto was faster than it was in the real world, hence the night soon ended and the dawn began to break. However, Lin Sanjiu felt that this time, the time flew even faster. It was as if the plot was speeding up.

When the first ray of sunlight skewered through the darkness and lit up the sky, the speakers on the roadside crackled and let out a buzzing noise.

‘The speakers are still functional?!’ Just as the thought surfaced in her brain, Lin Sanjiu caught a fairly familiar voice from the speaker.

“Attention everybody!” a sharp voice that could only belong to a female rang out. Although it sounded a little different, Lin Sanjiu still recognized it as the girl’s voice. It seemed to her that the girl had grown up overnight, as her voice sounded much more mature right now. “All the survivors of Peanut Town, listen to me! I am here to reveal something that you should have known earlier. There is now a woman dressed in a police officer’s uniform roaming around in our town. She is the main culprit who deprived us of our beautiful and peaceful lives! I have a series of evidence pointing to her being the one who destroyed the sacred mountain and murdering Mayor Orlean. I am very certain about it because I am the one who buried Mayor Orlean’s body! Your suffering, your misfortune, your poverty… everything that you are experiencing right now is because of her! Do you want to let her go like this? Don’t you want to tear her bones out, eat her flesh, and drink her blood?”

Standing next to a speaker, Lin Sanjiu was stunned.

She turned around and she could only see a row of speakers standing under the dimly lit sky. In the dimness of the shadows, bloodless faces and pairs of eyes glittering with cold light flitted through like reptiles and bugs.

Perhaps they were more interested in how much flesh her body could provide them. However, she was pretty certain that they wouldn’t care to vent their anger while they fed on her body.

Be that as it may, none of them dared to come up to her directly because of the rifle in her hand. Lin Sanjiu let out a sigh and decided on her destination. With a menacing face, she picked up her pace and hurried over the armory at the corner of the street not far away.

“When you guys see her, don’t be scared. This is because her rifle has no ammo!” the girl continued to shout through the speaker. “Anyone who kills her and gets her gun can come and see me. We will form an interim armed governing council together. I have a gun as well, and I only need one more partner!”

Lin Sanjiu could sense that the things hiding in the dark were getting even more restless after hearing what the girl said.

Right now, Lin Sanjiu felt like she was walking in a dark sewer. She knew she was surrounded by mice, but she did not know where they were. Worst still, Yu Yuan continued to stay unconscious. In the eyes of the citizens of Peanut Town, an unconscious man was like a stationary flesh factory.