Doomsday Wonderland

Panda Novel

Maxin thought he had had the distance and direction correct. He didn’t know which link had gone sideways. The thick white fog not only affected his vision but also disrupted his other senses. In an instant, countless thoughts flitted across his mind, but the fear rendered him paralyzed; he couldn’t do anything and ended up falling straight into the choppy sea below.

He didn’t have the ability to create a foothold in thin air, nor could he defy gravity and change his direction while in mid-air. He was doomed.

But death wasn’t the thing he feared the most. The only thing he had in his thoughts right now was Zeus’s stomach-churning grin when he appeared from the sea. A second ago, that face was Lin Sanjiu’s.

Soon, he would become like that as well.

Just a moment before he touched the ocean, he let out a scream, a long mindless shrill that constituted of nothing but fear. Then, from a place very close to him came a sharp voice, “Who’s there? The swimmer guy?”

Maxin couldn’t tell who the voice belonged to since all he heard was the sound of his heartbeat and the rushing of his blood. Suddenly, he felt a tug around his midriff. And the next thing he knew, he had stopped dropping and was now hovering about three centimeters in mid-air from the sea.

Disappointed and angered at being unable to devour their prey, the yellow shadows squirmed and wriggled madly in the sea. They didn’t go away but instead patrolled around the area, as if waiting for the next opportunity. A little bit stunned, Maxin lowered his head to meet the thing that had saved him from imminent death. It was a fleshy tendril with a deep red color that resembled the tentacle of a giant octopus.

Then, the fleshy tendril began to reel in. After breaking through the fog, the first thing that welcomed Maxin was the sight of a platform, followed by the flesh worm, whom he had never thought he would feel so happy to see again.

“That was close!” The flesh worm hissed. “Why were you jumping into the sea? Do you want to die?”

Maxin’s heart was beating fast like a galloping horse on the great plain field, for he had just cheated death. With a bloodless face, he listened without saying anything as the flesh worm continued to gloat. “You should be grateful that my reaction speed is fast and I could differentiate your voice from the others’. Otherwise, you would be dead meat by now.”

Soulsqn wasn’t exaggerating; her reaction was indeed fast. Before she finished her sentence, she had already known what she should do. Hence, without wasting any seconds, she shot out a tendril and lassoed Maxin.

“Why… Why are you here?” Falling to his knee, Maxin felt that his lungs were burning. “It’s thanks to you… Or else, as you said, I’d be dead meat by now.”

If he didn’t remember it wrongly, Soulsqn’s location should be very far from his. Why was she here?

“That should be my question,” Soulsqn retracted her tendril, returning to her usual form. “Why are you here? Weren’t you fighting the white camp in front?”

Maxin looked at her, a puzzled expression dawning upon his face.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Didn’t you people dispatch me to jump the platform?” Soulsqn said indifferently. “The fog was too heavy and too risky for me to keep moving around, so I have been twiddling my thumbs.”

‘Did I go the wrong way? But how is that possible? I was clearly going straight in the direction where Ji Shanqing’s sound came from. Besides, Soulsqn was several platforms away from me…’ Then, he choked his thoughts away, as the penny suddenly dropped. The distance between Soulsqn and him was more than a hundred meters apart. He had misinterpreted the distance, and that was the reason he fell into the sea after he did a full jump.

“Looks like this fog can disrupt our hearing and hamper us from communicating with each other.” Maxin rubbed his face and said dejectedly, “I heard Ji Shanqing calling his sister.”

“Lin Sanjiu is still alive?”

“I don’t think so, but I guess Ji Shanqing is in trouble now.”

The flesh worm turned silent.

Sighing, Maxin pulled himself from the ground. “I have to go to find Ji Shanqing. Although she is suspicious, I can’t leave her alone.”

Spinning her upper torso around, Soulsqn met Maxin’s gaze, looking into his eyes with a deep, probing stare. “What are you saying?”

“I said I’m going to help her. Since you can’t do anything in this fog, why don’t you come with me? I could use a little help.”

Slowly but steadily, Soulsqn propped herself up, saying, “Ah, yes, yes, you’re right, we can’t leave her alone. Let’s go together, maybe she needs our help.” Although Soulsqn lacked a human face, Maxin could somewhat make out a grin on the intertwining muscle fibers and veins that ran across her face. He didn’t know whether or not it was because of the fog tapping into his mind or something else, but he decided to push the thought aside.

Both of them stared at each other in speechless dismay. Then, the flesh worm broke the silence first, “Is there a girl in the white camp?”

“Yes,” Maxin replied before the scale dropped before his eyes. “She is the one that caused this fog. Why? Do you want to make her your human pouch?”

” Duh . Does she have long hair?”

“I don’t know. She wore a hat.”

Soulsqn pouted, and Maxin could see desire in her eyes. “Well, since there are no better options, I will gladly accept her as my next human pouch.”

Maxin didn’t make any comments; he felt that he should step out of this.

Maxin reckoned Hegel should have stopped jumping around the platform as well, for the fog was too thick to see through anything. Maxin had no idea how much time they had left before the next platform disappeared. He stood up and looked around, but all he could see was a vast blanket of whiteness that seemed to stretch endlessly before them. He would lose his direction once he turned his head around.

‘Which way should I go?’

When traveling across apocalyptic worlds, it’s often difficult for non-consular officers to avoid getting caught up in a paradoxical situation. If you want to have an easier life in a new world, you have to go to a more difficult world. While it is true that a lower-tier or a new apocalyptic world poses a lesser risk, the visa required to go to such worlds normally has a higher price. Besides, the competition in lower-tier worlds would be way more intense than in any higher tier world, as those posthumans who had successfully traveled to such a world would seize any opportunity they had to milk the world of any useful resources. Hence, in such a competitive situation where power was everything, most of the posthumans would end up empty-handed before they got transferred away. Some of them didn’t even have enough resources to exchange for a D-level world. In theory, only consular officers were able to survive in a lower-tier world.

Unfortunately, Maxin was one of those who “didn’t have enough resources”.

Thanks to Soulsqn’s highly malleable body, both of them soon figured out a way to cross the sea safely. First, Maxin tied a rope to Soulsqn’s tail. Then, he grabbed the rope with his left hand while gripping tightly to the flesh worm’s tail using his right hand. On the other side, Soulsqn stretched her body forward, feeling around for a platform. Once she found a platform, she then retracted her body. Next, the only thing Maxin needed to do was jump a hundred meters forward in the direction of the rope.

Without a doubt, it was a slow and dangerous task.

Both of them were practically groping in the dark. Neither of them could say for certain whether they were moving in the right direction. Fraught by his anxiety, only now did Maxin remember those Special Items he had used to exchange for a visa: A heat detector, pheromones-detecting Groucho glasses, and several paper cranes…

Soulsqn disappeared into the fog in front. The rope wiggled.

Maxin rubbed his leg to ease away the throbbing pain, looked at the rope, and jumped. The milky white fog blew against his face, peeling away from his eyes as he leaped through the air. By the time his vision became clear again, he had landed on the platform, and the scene that welcomed him shook him to his core.

There were many people on this platform.

“It was not me,” said Soulsqn, who now looked like an air-dried sausage that dangled from the hand of a hooded figure. “She is the one that shook the rope…”

Soulsqn was terrified, and this was the first time he saw her in such a state.

“Two more,” the hooded figure said. His voice was muffled and strange. He raised his arm and flipped his hood back, revealing his face. “Great. After I get rid of you two, we will win the game.”

Standing stock-still, Maxin still couldn’t come around from his shock. Suddenly, Soulsqn struggled vigorously as she pleaded, “Lord Nüwa… Please… Lin Sanjiu said…”

‘Nüwa?’

Maxin had never heard that name before, but he was familiar with the face.

Freed from the hood, her short, satiny golden hair cascaded down her ears freely like a golden stream and formed a beautiful ringlet next to her crimson red lips. Her irises were a rich blue; it was as if there was an ocean in her eyes.

Like a glass of aged red wine, even though age had left traces on her face, it failed to take away her gracefulness.

Maxin could never forget this face, despite the fact that he had only met the woman once.

The memories of that day began to surge into his mind with splendid clarity like a tidal wave. For a moment, he couldn’t even breathe. There was a sound in his brain that screamed at him, nagging him to run away, but he held it back. Gritting his teeth, he looked at the woman in front of him straight in the eye.

Not even he realized that he was heaving rapidly like a cow right now. Every muscle on his body was pulled taut and trembling with fear. “What—what did you say? You called her Nüwa?”

The woman released her grip. The flesh worm fell to the ground with a loud thud.

“Wasn’t she called Magus?”

At the sound of his voice, the flesh worm, falteringly, lifted her head. But she immediately lowered it the moment she locked gazes with the woman.

“She is Lord Nüwa…”

There was a smirk dancing at the corner of the woman’s lips. She didn’t make any moves, but Maxin was certain that she was ready to kill them, and no matter how they struggled, they wouldn’t be able to change anything.

There were certain groups of people that you would know had sealed your fate the moment you encountered them.

As if falling from a cliff into an abyss, Maxin was enveloped in a heavy fog of despair. He dropped to the ground. The flare in his eyes was gone as if he had resigned to his fate.

Likewise, the flesh worm coiled herself up on the ground, unable to muster up even the slightest strength to do anything. Maxin didn’t expect that he would meet his end so soon. When the woman walked to them, the figure of Ji Shanqing came into his mind, and he said to himself bitterly in his heart, ‘Well, this is it. We are all going to die. But perhaps it would be better off to die here… I’m getting tired of all this apocalypse shit…’

Then, his thoughts stopped as something else appeared. ‘Soulsqn said this woman is Nüwa, I thought she was Magus, and Ji Shanqing called her… Hold on a sec…

‘Ji Shanqing?’

Just when the woman’s shadow loomed over him, Maxin understood everything. He tugged at the rope in his hand to trip the woman, and as the woman staggered, he pounced on her.

“Come and help me, Soulsqn! Everything we are seeing right now is an illusion! This is his ability!”

Soulsqn raised her “head”, which was full of snot and tears. She looked blankly at the two figures that were engaged in a brawl.

“His ability is to turn into the person you fear the most!” Maxin boomed.

It was pure luck. Perhaps it wasn’t the time for him to die yet. Otherwise, why would he suddenly realize that the person Ji Shanqing feared the most was Lin Sanjiu?