Doomsday Wonderland

Lin Sanjiu was very familiar with Dali’s footsteps.

During her stay in the Lost Dog’s Pod Hotel, she would always wake up to a series of light and hurried footsteps in the morning. As the owner of the hotel, there were a lot of things waiting for Dali to settle every day. The moment the sun went up, she had to run up and down the corridor like a busy bee, collecting room fare and distributing breakfast for her guests.

Right now, at 3 o’clock in the wee hours, her footsteps were echoing down the corridor.

At the end of the T-shaped corridor, a silhouette was growing in size. Lin Sanjiu called out for her [Tornado Whip], but she soon kept it back after a short bout of rumination. Putting everything aside, Dali was considered her friend as well, and The Lost Dog’s Pod Hotel was her precious belonging. If she were to use her [Tornado Whip] in here, she was certain that she would obliterate half the building.

Dali slowly emerged from the darkness. Her blouse and her ornaments glittered with every step she took. She turned around and gazed at Lin Sanjiu, but she did not walk to her. Instead, she walked into the corridor to her right and vanished from Lin Sanjiu’s sight.

‘Isn’t she coming for me?’

Frowning, Lin Sanjiu listened as Dali walked further and further away. She seemed to be on her way to the back of the hotel. Seizing her opportunity before the hypnosis began to influence Dali, she hurriedly turned into another corridor and began searching for Ryuji’s room.

From the back of the hotel, an ear-grating metallic shrill rang out. Apparently, Dali was closing the back door. It seemed that she had indeed been hypnotized and was trying to trap Lin Sanjiu inside the Lost Dog’s Pod Hotel.

Lin Sanjiu could not come up with an idea about how to deal with Dali.

She could not retaliate with the [Unfinished Drawing] as anything that was sucked into the drawing could not be released anymore. She had left the [Battle Item] at Bliss, and there was no handy ability in the [Empty-handed Kleptomaniac]. The [How to render] that she used to distort the light when she was facing Bliss had no effect here either.

After going through all her Evolving Abilities and Special Items, she realized that all of them were too powerful to be used here. Lin Sanjiu let out a sigh as she stopped in front of a door. She rapped on the door and said in a low voice, “Ryuji, it’s me, Lin Sanjiu. Open the door.”

However, there was no reply from the room. Perhaps he was too exhausted from all the running and hiding that he had fallen into a deep sleep.

With that thought in mind, Lin Sanjiu changed another approach and kicked the door. Originally, with her current strength, she could easily lay waste to the door with a simple kick. However, it seemed to her that the door was exceptionally sturdier than any ordinary door outside. Perhaps, it was because this building was a Special Item.

“Ryuji, open the door!” Lin Sanjiu urged again. Then, she heard Dali’s footsteps.

She stopped calling for Ryuji at once. Otherwise, he would be exposed as well, and that was something she did not want to happen. Just when she moved away from the door and was about to walk toward the entrance, another door not far away opened.

“Who the hell is so blind to disturb my sleep? Don’t you know it is already very late at night?!” A woman with flaxen hair poked her head out and shouted grumpily, “If you don’t shut your mouth now, I will shut it up for you!”

Concurrently, there was a loud rat-a-tat on the door coming from the other end of the corridor.

Lin Sanjiu ignored the blonde-haired woman and walked away with a solemn expression. She went into hypersensory state and began reading her surroundings. The woman came out of her room. She did not come towards her but went the other way instead.

However, the heaviness on her chest did not decrease even by the slightest bit.

She had been turning the corners again and again, but she would always find herself walking in a whole different corridor. The Lost Dog’s Pod Hotel was small, but it was sectioned into a multitude of corridors by layers of walls. The reason for this was to maximize every inch of space to fit in as many rooms as possible. As Lin Sanjiu traveled down the corridor and turned another corner, the building began to wake up. A harsh discordant mixture of knocks and raps, whispers and shuffling of footsteps began to plague the quiet air.

“Stop her at all costs…”

The sentence kept echoing through her mind like the wind howling through a hollow cave. Since she was the target, she was immune to the effect of hypnotism induced by the message. Be that as it may, she still could not forget how the message touched her mind and managed to cause a ripple in the depths of her psyche.

It now occurred to her that everyone in this hotel had been hypnotized.

One after another, the doors were opening, and guests were coming out from their rooms. Seemingly emboldened by their increase in numbers, after they came out from their respective rooms, they all stared fixedly at Lin Sanjiu. However, what surprised her the most was that they did not pounce at her.

Lin Sanjiu very soon knew the reason.

The main entrance had vanished.

There was now a wall where the main entrance should have been. It seemed that the wall had been moved from another part of the hotel. It looked like a beehive with many room doors on it and each door had a head popping out from behind just like bees.

At the corner of the wall was the reception desk. The crystal ball was sitting on top of it as the TV series continued to play.

Dali had moved the entrance away. She could change the interior of the hotel as she pleased as the entire building was one of her Special Items. This could also shed some light on why she did not hire any employer to help her manage the hotel. When she was about to be transferred to another world, she just needed to keep the hotel back into her ring.

Lin Sanjiu inspected the wall and then sighed inwardly

“Should we try our luck at the door at the back?” Mrs. Manas asked.

There were no perfect Special Items. Each Special Item was bound to have a certain restriction or weaknesses, and this building was no exception. Dali could not move the gate at the back away, so she just locked it up. Compared to the wall that could move here and there according to her wishes, perhaps the gate at the back was Lin Sanjiu’s best option right now.

Using her hypersensory to feel the movement of the air, Lin Sanjiu slowly turned around.

The corridor became a hive of activity. All of the guests had come out from their rooms and stood in the corridor, their hot breaths pluming out into the cold air in the building. All of them had just woken up from their sleep. They were in different attires, their hair was messy, and they all had blank expressions on their face as they stared at her.

If she wanted to go to the back door, she had to go through all of them. Apparently, she had walked straight into Dali’s plan. The reason the cunning hotel owner had gone to the back door first was to create a fake impression that she was locking the back door and forcing Lin Sanjiu to go to the main entrance, which Dali had long moved to another location. When Lin Sanjiu arrived at the main entrance and found that it had been moved away, there was little she could do anymore. Therefore, she would be trapped in the deepest part of the hotel and the furthest point away from the only exit.

“Since you don’t cherish your own hotel,” Lin Sanjiu mumbled, “then, don’t blame me for destroying it.”