Doomsday Wonderland

“You’ve been neglecting your Higher Consciousness practice ever since Magus was gone,” Mrs. Manas said, sounding exasperated, “Do you regret it now?”

If Mrs. Manas were a real person, Lin Sanjiu swore that she would have stuck a cloth into her mouth to gag her before she could say any more. Immediately after another failed attempt to lift her communication device from the ground using her Higher Consciousness, the last thing she wanted to hear right now was Mrs. Manas’s merciless lecture and her repeating “I told you so”.

The dead body was blocking the communication device and in front of her was a wall. She did not want to go near to the dead body, but her Higher Consciousness was not fit for actions such as turning, avoiding, and picking which required a high degree of precision. The only thing she could do was send a large wave of her Higher Consciousness forward to disperse a large crowd of enemies.

However, she could not do that now as that might destroy the communication device as well.

Like the call of the nightingale, the communication device rang out again, spewing its single-note tune far and wide into the dark. As time ticked by, Lin Sanjiu grew even more restless.

This was the fourth time the communication device rang out, but there was nothing she could do right now. Gnashing her teeth, she decided to take the risk and began walking towards her communication device.

“Stop!” Mrs. Manas shouted, “That’s not an ordinary corpse. It’s a pocket dimension being! Have you forgotten the pocket dimension’s warning? Bad things will happen if it gets near you! Stop right now!”

“Then, do you have any better idea than this?!” Lin Sanjiu yelled back. The moment she heard Ji Shanqing calling her, she already lost her sanity.

As an entity living in Lin Sanjiu’s consciousness, Mrs. Manas was infected by her nervousness and panic as well. She stammered, “T-there must be a better way…We just need to think…”

Lin Sanjiu had been looking through her Special Items, but she realized none of them were useful in this kind of situation. The [Unfinished Painting] could pull the communication device towards her, but she did not have the confidence to catch it before it got absorbed into the painting. [The Phoenix] was only effective towards a living human but not an inanimate object, and the [Tornado Whip] was too destructive to handle a fragile device like the communication device.

The fifth call faded away and silence returned to the night, causing Lin Sanjiu’s heart to clench a smidgen as her eyes shrunk. Just when she stopped breathing for a second, the sixth call rang out. Her heart resumed its normal steady rhythm and she heaved out a long sigh of relief.

Previously, she was afraid to contact the grand prize, but now, things had changed. She feared that her grand prize could not get to her.

‘Even though it was a bit of a waste, there seems to be only one option now.’

With that thought in mind, Lin Sanjiu spun her head around and looked at Ryuji. He was sitting completely still in the bushes, his mouth half agape in shock. She seemed to have heard him asking her something like “Is that a phone?” but she did not have the luxury to reply to him.

Right now, She could only test her luck on her [Pygmalion Choker]. If she fully utilized the 5-minute ability the choker granted, then she might have a chance to retrieve the communication device.

Just as she was about to call out to Ryuji, the seventh call was dropped.

She seemingly could still hear the tone of the communication device spiraling in the air as if it was an illusion. It spread very far into the night sky, and she could imagine the disappointed and anxious grimace of her grand prize as if he was right in front of her.

Setting her jaw firmly, she clenched her fists so tightly that her fingers turned white. The sound of the communication device was still ringing in her ears as if it was she was having an illusion. She could not believe she had once again missed Ji Shanqing by an inch. That was her family, her friend, her comrade, and her closest brother, and the feeling was even more terrible than herself getting physically hurt.

The dead body swayed a little as if it realized that something was wrong with the communication device.

Lin Sanjiu could feel a lump forming at her throat. Just as she thought her grand prize had given up, the communication device, which had gone silent for a long time, rang out once again as the blue indicative dot flitted in the night sky.

He had not given up yet!

Lin Sanjiu let out a long relieved sigh as she began to walk towards the corpse, intent on throwing everything into the wind. Screw the dead body and the pocket dimension! The only thing on her mind right now and the only thing she wanted to do was to talk to her grand prize.

The dead body was still standing in the spot beside the communication device. Its body was stooped forward and its shoulders were slumped while its head was nowhere to be seen. Before Lin Sanjiu could walk any further, an ear-grating popping erupted from the figure, and it seemed as if it had become even shorter.

Suddenly, Lin Sanjiu froze, her eyes widening.

The silhouette was stooping down further and further, then with a ding, the single-note tone from the communication device was cut off.

“Huh?”

She stood and stared blankly at the dead body and the communication device. She thought she would be welcomed by darkness, but surprisingly, the blue dot was still there, blinking.

‘So, that means…’ Lin Sanjiu could not fathom the situation happening right before her eyes. The more she thought about it, the more she felt like her brain was exploding.

The night seemed to have been frozen in stillness. That half-second felt as long as an eternity, and the atmosphere was oppressive until a low, bestial growl that gave people an impression of the deathly, corrupted wind from the underworld rippled out from the corpse’s massively decayed throat.

Then, a voice that was as soothing as the stream in the mountains crackled from the communication device and shattered the silence, “Sis?”

It was the grand prize!

It really was him!

In that fleeting second, Lin Sanjiu was overwhelmed by the countless thoughts that flooded her mind, but there was only one that particularly stood out from the others. Ji Shanqing was safe! Her little brother was safe! It turned out that she had just been scaring herself. Since he was reaching out to her himself, did that mean that his war with the Veda was nearing its end, or perhaps had already ended?

Ignoring Mrs. Manas’s warning, she quickened up her pace and strode towards the communication device.

“Sis?” There was a clear hint of anxiety in Ji Shanqing’s voice though nobody could tell if he had just returned from a fight or if he was worried about Lin Sanjiu. “Can you hear me?”

Everything happened in just a split second. “I’m…” Before Lin Sanjiu could spill out the rest of her sentence, the dead body jerked around and lifted its leg. Then, the next thing she knew, it appeared right in front of her.

“The…the murderer is…”

Ever since its appearance, this was the first time Lin Sanjiu heard it speak. Its voice was exceptionally harsh to the ears and did not sound human. Nobody could have told if it was speaking the human language were it not for its hardly discernible phonetics, much less identify its gender.

“The murderer is…right…here…”

Lin Sanjiu was greatly taken aback, but she regained her senses when the arctic-white and highly decayed shoulder appeared very close in her vision. Her words became stuck in her throat and she suddenly stopped. She lunged towards the side and rolled on the ground. Even with her agility, she could still feel a gush of cold air graze past her back and make her hair on her nape stand on their ends.

As soon as she avoided the corpse’s ambush, she turned her head and shouted, “Grand prize!”

However, she did not know whether Ji Shanqing could hear her or not. At the same time that she yelled, the dead body picked the communication device up in the dark and smashed it hard against the wall. To her utter horror, the device broke into various pieces and fell on the ground.