Doomsday Wonderland

For Lin Sanjiu, the Lin Sanjiu who agreed to use the “human bomb” operation a few minutes ago was so strange, it felt like a different person.

Yu Yuan saw his chance when Lin Sanjiu was zoning out. He flung his arm and threw Silvan off his body. Even through the gloom, his blood-shot eyes were apparent.

“Stop him!” Silvan screamed. Before he could land on the ground, he shot up and pounced on Yu Yuan along with Lin Sanjiu at the same time. They rammed into him from behind, grasped his arms, and pinned him on the ground.

Yu Yuan was not the only one who dashed towards the container. The second they realized the queen was in trouble, the remaining members from the security department all rushed towards the heart of the explosion. Before Silvan could say anything, Lin Sanjiu pressed Yu Yuan down harder and turned her head to shout at him, “You go stop them!”

Silvan kicked the ground and shot out towards the distance like a bullet.

“Get off me!” Yu Yuan shouted furiously and jabbed Lin Sanjiu in the chest with his elbow. It caused Lin Sanjiu so much pain that all she could do was keep sucking more air to ease away the discomfort. She did not move away from Yu Yuan’s back.

“Trust me! I am saving you!” she shouted.

The second she finished her sentence, her sixth sense kicked in. She turned around and saw a dark figure charging straight at her amidst the shower of rubble and rocks. She ducked down and the figure flew overhead, dropping on the ground behind her. She looked at it and her eyes widened.

It was a human arm.

The palm was wide open and the fingers were still twitching as if they were grasping something. The ring on the index finger caught the light and flickered.

The group of human bombs detonated at the same time, but the blast didn’t stop. Episodes of explosions spread across the air and set the entire ground quaking. Everything had turned to a blur in her eyes, and there was a buzz in her ears that she couldn’t shake off.

The explosion had stopped, but the seismic continued to ensue. Chunks of soil that rolled off the slope were getting larger, as were the cracks on the ground. The dome overhead was on the verge of breaking apart. Countless lumps were cascading down, and it wouldn’t take long until the dome crumbled apart entirely.

From the storm of dust, one after another, figures dressed in Munitions Factory uniforms flew across the air and dropped on the ground. Some of them did not move anymore, while others struggled to get up from the ground. However, none of them made efforts to dash back to the queen.

“Silvan!” Lin Sanjiu raised her voice and shouted her loudest. She had no idea how loud her voice was at this moment, as she had temporarily lost her hearing due to the chain of explosions. She psyched herself up and looked into the darkness behind the container. She squinted her eyes, trying to see through the cloud of dust and sand, but to no avail. She could not see anybody or the queen either.

Would Silvan fall into the state of absence again if he accidentally caught sight of the queen? The ground wouldn’t hold any longer. She had to get him back, but she could not leave Yu Yuan alone here…

Then, she froze.

As long as they held on to the thought of killing the queen using human bombs, the operation would not succeed. If Lin Sanjiu did not realize the drive behind her action, it naturally wouldn’t trigger the manipulating system in her brain. Perhaps not even the queen could have expected that insomnia caused by the parasite would become a weapon for both of them to use against it.

It was also because of this that Silvan did not try to evoke her memory after her last episode of memory loss. When the bomb detonated, she wouldn’t know she had agreed to the operation if she had not heard her consent from the recorder. However, right now, she remembered that the queen could cause people to go into an absent state without the help of outer forces, and this could only mean one thing.

“Can you hear me now?”

She still felt discomfort and buzzing in her ears, but Mrs. Manas’s voice clearly rang out in her brain. Though it had only been two days, she felt as if a generation had passed since she last heard Mrs. Manas’s voice. “The parasite in your brain is acting weird. I guess it’s because the queen was killed, so the parasite has lost its only source of instruction and is getting weaker now! By the way, how is your memory? Do you remember everything now? ”

Lin Sanjiu hastily lowered her head to look at Yu Yuan. He had stopped struggling. Dust continued to swirl in the air. He looked into the distance, a blank expression overspreading his face as if he had just woken up from a long slumber.

“You don’t want to go and save the queen?” she shouted out loud to hear her own voice.

Yu Yuan jerked his head back. Apparently, his condition was better than Lin Sanjiu, so he could hear her voice clearly.

“Screw it! What the hell is going on?! Why is everything shaking?!”

Lin Sanjiu let out a sigh.

“I will explain it to you later.” She got off his back and continued, “This place is about to crumble. Are you injured?”

Yu Yuan sprang up from the ground and stretched his arms. “No!”

“Great! Now, listen here. You are going to bring all the survivors out of here. Go in that direction and go up the slope. You still remember the way, right?”

“Okay. How about you?”

Lin Sanjiu gazed over her shoulders and then smacked her hand on the container. The container disappeared and revealed the scene behind it.

“I am going to look for Silvan!”

At those words, she turned around and sped towards the heart of the explosion. The artist quickly gathered up all his belongings and followed after his master. Everything was grey over there. The billowing dust was so thick, even the falling rocks could do nothing against it. It looked just like a pool of sticky liquid.

She called out her [Ability Polishing Agent]. Through the silvery beam, she could see dust ramming up against her. She covered her mouth and nose while narrowing her eyes. She did not know which direction she should go. She turned around, and her artist nodded quickly.

“What do you mean?” Lin Sanjiu asked as she avoided more falling rocks. “Where is the queen?”

The artist fell into his thoughts for a second and then sat down on the ground. He pulled out a huge canvas and began drawing. He finished his drawing in a whiff before Lin Sanjiu could say anything. After that, he lifted the drawing. On the canvas, there was a huge arrow that pointed at the road towards her right.

The road to her right was blocked by a pile of rocks and rubble, but that was nothing to her. She activated the [Mosaic Censorship] and blasted all of them away. A tunnel that was about the size of an average person appeared in front of them. After they squeezed themselves through the tunnel and stepped into an open space, both of them looked like dolls made of mud.

“Silvan!” she shouted again. She could taste rocks in her mouth and smell soil in her nose. She spat on the ground several times and continued, “We have to go now! Otherwise, we will be buried alive here!”

It was at this moment that the shaking suddenly stopped and her words spread clearly throughout the air. A familiar voice then rang out from the darkness ahead, “I am here!”

Lin Sanjiu heaved out a long sigh and gestured to the artist. As she struggled to make her way to Silvan, she yelled, “Come out now! The cave is crumbling!”

Silvan replied something, but it was drowned out by the rumbling noise.

“Are you hurt?”

She pushed a rock away and wedged herself through a heap of soil. When she raised her head, she froze.

A large brain was sitting in front of her, covered in soil and mud. It was crimson in color and its surface was marred with sulci. The reason she did not see the queen earlier on was that it was not as large as it was before, as half of its brain had been pulverized by the series of explosions. The ground was besmeared with its brain matter and flesh.

Silvan was standing in front of the queen. When he heard her footsteps, he turned his head around.

He was covered in mud and soil as well. He bunched up all his golden hair and simply tied it behind his head. “Look,” he said, his emerald green eyes twinkling. “This thing is still alive.”

Lin Sanjiu stopped her pace, scorched by the fire underneath the twinkle of his eyes.

“It’s sustained too much damage, so it can’t do anything right now,” Silvan said as he ran his fingers across the grooves on the queen’s shell as if he was petting a child. “A thing that can grow into the brain of a planet… Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Looking at him, the scene of when she first met him surfaced in her mind.

“What are you planning to do with it?”

The rocks in the distance continued to crumble away. Wave after wave of rumbles was sent into their ears, and the quake intensified, throwing them slightly off balance.

Silvan did not give any answer to her question. Just when Lin Sanjiu was about to ask again, he suddenly spun his head back.

“Do you want it?”

“What?” Lin Sanjiu was stunned.

“The queen. Do you want it?” The man grinned, showing off his row of bright white teeth. “If you don’t want it, I’m going to take it.”

Lin Sanjiu stood on the ground, bewilderment written all over her face. She searched through her brain, trying to say something, but no words came out of her mouth. It was only after a few seconds that she found her voice back. Disbelief accenting her tone, she said, “What do you want to do with it? Do you know that it needs human brains to grow?”

“There are a lot of people dying every day in the doomsday, so it is not a problem to find a human brain.” Silvan smiled. “As for its use, we will know about it in the future.”

“But how are you going to move such a big thing out? The cave is collapsing.”

Silvan nudged his chin. An affable smile broke across his face as he spoke in a gentle tone, “Yeah, you are right. So I am going to stay here with it for a while and wait for the rescue team from the Munitions Factory. Don’t worry, I have already sent them my location. Although this isn’t something I want, it’s time for us to say goodbye.”