Doomsday Wonderland

Sitting crossed-leg on the ground, Lin Sanjiu inspected the remaining half of the lock in front of her under the dazzling light. The warehouse was shaking from time to time. With every boom, there was a subsequent shudder, causing dust to fall from the ceiling and eliciting a tremble from Lin Sanjiu. However, it did not feel like an earthquake as the rhythm was too consistent.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mrs. Manas’s voice rang out and shattered the dismal silence, “The corpse is trying to get back into the pocket dimension.”

Lin Sanjiu continued to examine the lock. After a short while, her eyelashes fluttered. “The corpse wants to return to the warehouse, not the pocket dimension.”

“What’s the difference?”

Everything in the warehouse, even the minutest details, were exposed under the illumination of the incandescent lamps. When Lin Sanjiu raised her head, the light flooded into her amber eyes and made them look lighter than they usually did. As she scanned around the grayish, crude warehouse, one could notice that her pair of black irises were quivering ever so slightly as if her eyes were some kind of sophisticated device.

“Give me one minute,” Lin Sanjiu suddenly said before standing up from the ground.

In front of the hole on the other side of the warehouse, there was a heap of wasted metal which would have been the racks. With each successive collision, a steel bar or an enormous plank on the heap would plop onto the ground with a loud bang, making Lin Sanjiu jump even though she had mentally prepared herself.

The grand prize was really such a scaredy-cat.

“Hey, what’s the difference? You haven’t told me yet.” At this moment, Mrs. Manas’s voice rang out again and snapped her back to reality.

“I’ve carefully calculated the airflow before I used the [Tornado Whip], so even though the corpse was knocked out of the warehouse, it’s actually still inside the pocket dimension. This is all thanks to the time when my wind was bounced back to the pocket dimension. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten such precious data to carry out my calculation precisely,” Lin Sanjiu said. She expelled a long sigh, stretched her limbs, and then strode towards the main door. “Do you still remember? After I got down from the concrete slab, I still had to walk on the grass for a while before I reached the boundary of the pocket dimension and got sent back to the warehouse.”

“In other words, there’s a distance from the wall to the boundary of the pocket dimension, and you sent the corpse into that area…” Mrs. Manas muttered, amazement lacing her voice. However, she soon found something amiss, so she questioned again, “But how do you explain why you were sent back to the warehouse when you were climbing up the wall?”

“There’s only one explanation,” Lin Sanjiu said as she subconsciously increased the grip on the [Power of Word Picture]. Looking through the door made of wire mesh. She could barely make out Ryuji’s outline amongst the bushes. “The wall that I created…they are the answers. You see, when I rebuilt the wall, I unintentionally and artificially modified the boundary of the pocket dimension.”

“So, if we bring the wall down…” Mrs. Manas mumbled in comprehension and quickly asked another question, “But why does the corpse have to smash the wall? It can just walk to the boundary and let the pocket dimension send it back to the warehouse, so why the fuss?”

“Because it can’t do that. The corpse is a pocket dimension being, so it can’t leave the pocket dimension,” Lin Sanjiu replied. After that, she stopped in front of the main door and mumbled something under her breath. When the lock on the door began to grow out from the remaining half of it, only then did she continue, “As a pocket dimension, it can’t step out the pocket dimension, not even by a single step, hence there’s no way it can trigger the pocket dimension’s mechanism and blink itself back into the warehouse.”

“How…how did you know that?”

“Why wouldn’t I know that? I’ve suffered several consequences because of this stupid mechanism, one of which almost cost my life, so of course, I’ve to peruse the entire concept behind it to prevent the same thing from happening again. I don’t want to die here yet. Besides, it’s not rocket science after all.”

“When did you find that out?” Mrs. Manas asked, disbelief accenting her tone, “Don’t tell me that you’ve been thinking about the mechanism all the while you were rebuilding the lock and dealing with the corpse at the same time! How bold!”

Strangely enough, not even Lin Sanjiu herself could explain when she had done the analysis. Everything seemed to happen naturally. The amount of information that went through Ji Shanqing’s brain in a single minute was immense. He had always been several, or a hundred steps ahead of everyone, and could make the best decision in a swift second.

Lin Sanjiu smiled but did not reply. The restoration of the lock was finally done. It gave off a glossy sheen as if it was brand-spanking new. Calling the bunch of keys out, Lin Sanjiu arbitrarily picked a key and laughed. “Now it’s time to verify if I was right or wrong about the internal structure of the key. I wonder if any of these keys can open the door.”

Even though she claimed that she was unsure, her firm and confident tone suggested otherwise. She inserted the key into the lock cylinder over and over again, and the metal clink that was elicited was particularly clear in the warehouse where silence reigned. When she was down to the second last key, she heard a click from the lock. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she turned the key around smoothly.

The lock was opened.

Her heart leaped into a gallop even though she had not deactivated the [Consciousness Mimicry] yet. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the door open and was immediately welcomed with a waft of cold air carrying the tantalizing aroma of grass.

“Can you come out yet?” Ryuji got up from the ground hastily and went up to her to ask, “Have you solved the murder case?”

“Yes,” Lin Sanjiu said, offering him a grin. She did not step out of the warehouse immediately though as she continued to say, “It isn’t that difficult, to be honest.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s very simple. You see,” She pushed the door open fully and took out the windbreaker and the jeans she found earlier on. However, before Ryuji could take a good look at them, she yanked her arm up and hurled the jeans back into the warehouse. The jeans flew across the air and dropped on the ground with a clear jangling noise. It seemed that she had already stuffed the bunch of keys back into the pocket.

“There’s one point I found pretty ironic in this so-called locked room mystery. The victim was murdered in a warehouse full of clothes, but he was stripped naked and wore nothing more than a white vest top and a boxer,” Lin Sanjiu said as she flicked the dust off the windbreaker. “This is because his clothes are the key to create a locked room scenario. Just like what you mentioned earlier, most locked rooms aren’t locked rooms at all.”

“Why?” Ryuji realized something was different about her, but he could not really tell, so he asked, “Hey, y-you seem different. Did you change your clothes?”

“Nope, but I’m about to put one on.”

She had not deactivated the [Consciousness Mimicry] yet, so she was still affected by her grand prize. Looking at the dirty and moth-eaten windbreaker in her hand, Lin Sanjiu’s face scrunched up in disgust as the grand prize was a clean freak. After she checked through it and ascertained that the window key and the employee card were in the pocket, she gritted her teeth and put the windbreaker on.

Then, she stepped out of the warehouse. Her feet crunched the grass outside.

“Yes!” Mrs. Manas exclaimed, “The wall on this side isn’t broken yet. You really have stepped out of the pocket dimension boundary.”

Ignoring Mrs. Manas, Lin Sanjiu raised her eyes to see that Ryuji was staring at her with a confused expression on his face. After a few beats of zoning out, he lifted his finger.

“Erm…I don’t understand. How is it that you can come out from the pocket dimension after putting on the jacket? Why did you leave the jeans in the warehouse? Why don’t you take it out as well?”

Lin Sanjiu immediately stripped the windbreaker off her body and dumped it aside. She summoned a towel out of her cards and wetted it with water. After that, she began cleaning her face and body

“That’s my way of telling the pocket dimension that I’ve cleared the locked room mystery,” answered Lin Sanjiu as she continued to clean every inch of her skin like what the grand prize usually did. “The murderer took the jacket out of the warehouse, but he put it on and then returned to the warehouse.”

“Huh?” Both Ryuji and Mrs. Manas were confused.

“Let me explain from the beginning,” said Lin Sanjiu. Then, she tapped the cement floor and continued, “Do you still remember this? It’s the same type of flooring and the steel bars inside the wall tell us that this warehouse isn’t a stand-alone single-story house but is really part of a building. Usually, only a corporation would need a warehouse of this scale. In other words, unlike a general warehouse keeper, the victim has a colleague.”

“So, are you saying that the murderer is the colleague?” Ryuji asked, “The colleague also has the same set of keys, so this is not a locked room at all?”

“Nope.” Lin Sanjiu sighed. “There’s a high possibility that the colleague is the culprit, but we don’t know about that. If the murderer had the keys, he wouldn’t have to go through so much trouble to create a locked room as it would be pointless. The only one who owned the key was always the warehouse keeper, our victim.”

“So, how he—”

Before Ryuji could finish his question, the ground suddenly quaked violently. It was not caused by the corpse, but it seemed as if a monstrous beast under the ground was waking up. The ground cracked open like a gigantic mouth, gobbling down soil and grass. The violent tremor left both Lin Sanjiu and Ryuji sprawling on the ground, and they nearly rolled into the pocket dimension. Fortunately, Lin Sanjiu reacted swiftly by pressing Ryuji to the ground. Then, she took out a pole and stabbed it into the ground to stop them from rolling forward.

“Here it comes,” Lin Sanjiu warned in a trembling voice. “We have busted its disguise, so it’s coming out now.”

“What’s coming out?” Ryuji looked over his shoulder to see that Lin Sanjiu’s face had turned pale.

“The pocket dimension,” she said, “The pocket dimension is coming out.”