Doomsday Wonderland

Wu Yiliu stared at the slowly rising pile of ash near Professor Qiao’s feet, lost in thought. “Yes, that’s Manmiao.” The old lady looked down, her eyes falling on the gra.s.s below. “I feel really sorry for it… I have to involve it to go with me.”

The big bird twitched on its back for a few times, its long wings suddenly spread out, and there was a moment when Wu Yiliu thought Professor Qiao was wrong, and Manmiao was about to fly again. However, its wings fell once more, and only the gra.s.s debris was. .h.i.t into mid-air.

“Let’s go,” Professor Qiao said, her voice gradually lowering. “I have no regrets.”

From behind or beside her, there was nothing wrong with her. It was only when Wu Yiliu realized the situation and looked at her front that he found Professor Qiao was slowly turning to ash: from her collarbone and chest, she was like a hollow paper person burned with a hole, the red-hot opening gradually expanding, getting larger, revealing a dark void inside. Only paper ash fluttered down her body, some falling into the hole, some piling at her feet.

‘Professor Qiao, I would have died long ago if I hadn’t met you,’ Wu Yiliu wanted to say. ‘Professor Qiao, if Sh.o.r.eis hadn’t met you, he might never have lived.’ But he couldn’t say a word; he wanted to cover the burnt hole, he wanted to call for help from the distant posthuman, he wanted to turn and run, but in the end, he just stood there, like a piece of waste.

“Let’s go.” Qiao Yuansi turned her head and smiled at him. The light from the dark clouds blurred the wrinkles on her cheeks, and the wind messed up her hair. The red-hot break was almost spreading to her throat, and Wu Yiliu knew that if he didn’t answer her now, they might lose the last chance to talk.

“I… I’ll accompany you, Professor Qiao,” he finally said. “That way you won’t be alone.”

She smiled softly. “I’ve never been alone.”

Before leaving, Wu Yiliu dug a hole in the gra.s.s with the leg of a chair.

Manmiao was heavy when picked up, and its feathers looked even more l.u.s.trous up close, as if it had lived a carefree life in pampering and indulgence. If birds had expressions, then its sudden terror and confusion at the last moment left no trace.

He still wanted to evolve—of course, he hadn’t changed his mind—but he looked in the direction where the mini-doomsdays were constantly blooming, watched the overlapping and chaotic collisions of several apocalyptic worlds for a while, and walked in the opposite direction.

It wasn’t a decision made after careful a.n.a.lysis; he just felt a little tired.

Maybe rest for a night, and randomly choose a small doomsday to enter tomorrow. Everything is settled now; he doesn’t need to hurry.

Whether it’s the school dormitory or his parents’ house, they feel like words from the last century, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he found them already collapsed and shattered. To him, they are no longer real places, and there’s no need to go back and look at them, to confirm they have weathered with time.

No matter where he goes next, it’s all the same, he could even sit in a park all night.

The place where the mini-doomsday broke out was in the center of the pocket dimension; in his confusion, he still knew to walk towards the farthest exit. Along the way, his footsteps were soft as if walking on clouds, not like fleeing for his life, but more like taking a stroll. Strangely, although he walked so slowly, thinking he couldn’t escape the small doomsday, he smoothly reached the exit.

The place where this world began to collapse was a bizarre kaleidoscope; the green door marked “Exit” in front of him was as ordinary as ever.

Wu Yiliu pushed open the door and stretched out his foot with the locator first. The fake pocket dimension’s monitoring system had long been in disarray, and no one could receive its signal—it was sent into a world of constant change, floating aimlessly like him, not knowing where to fall.

The chaos has not yet spread, and is currently only confined to the fake pocket dimension. Walking down the street, one can still see cars and pedestrians at the intersection in the distance—not many, as this place is remote; but one can see, the engine of a 323 bus chugging like it’s belching, slowly striding from afar.

Although Wu Yiliu has tumbled several times in the posthuman and pocket dimension realms, he hasn’t actually used a Special Item even once.

It was precisely because of this that the “fluttering” sound had been flying around him for several minutes, and he looked around without finding it, only belatedly raising his head to look up—immediately, he saw a paper crane.

He stopped, just reached out his hand, and the paper crane impatiently fell down.

“I was dealing with some issues earlier, so I only just freed up,” a sweet and puzzled female voice said. “Where are you now? Who was the person who pa.s.sed the message for you? He didn’t make the location clear, he just said you asked him to pa.s.s a message. I don’t trust him much, so I sent you a paper crane directly. Is it you who asked someone named Pisces to find me?”

Wu Yiliu thought for a moment, then remembered. To him, yesterday’s events felt like many years ago, even he almost forgot; he indeed had asked Pisces to seek help from Milan yesterday—Milan responded the next day, which was not too slow, but for him, and for Professor Qiao, it was already worlds apart.

Milan ended her message with, “If you need help, reply and tell me the location,”

Wu Yiliu raised the paper crane, wanting to reply with a verbal message, but he didn’t know what to say.

“I’m fine,” he began somewhat hoa.r.s.ely, coughing a few times before saying, “For safety’s sake, you’d better avoid the southeastern part of this city, near the suburban Zuo Lian Mountain area. Something happened here, and it’s particularly unsafe for posthumans…”

He paused, thought for a while, and deleted this part of the message.

“Do you know the southeastern part of this city, near the suburban Zuo Lian Mountain? The terminus of the 323 bus, you can search for this location; the station name is Zuo Lian Mountain. Near the terminal, there’s a Zuo Lian Park, I’ll wait for you at the entrance.”

He released the paper crane, checked the direction, and started to run forward. The previous fatigue and softness were all gone, refreshed as if washed by ice and snow. He saw a taxi and hastily waved, but unfortunately, it was occupied.

By the time Wu Yiliu finally flagged down a taxi, he realized that the driver was leaning over and sizing him up. He looked quite disheveled now: his face was dirty, his hands covered in dried blood, and his clothes were torn in several places. But the driver hesitated for a moment, then let him in.

“Where to?” the driver asked guardedly. “You have money, right?”

Wu Yiliu sat in the front seat, quickly pulled out several bills from his jeans, and showed them to the driver. “Sir, I’m in a hurry. I’m going to the city center—”

With a heavy “thud,” a weighty object brutally smashed down on the taxi’s hood, tilting both occupants forward as if on a seesaw—Wu Yiliu quickly reached out to brace himself, preventing a collision with the winds.h.i.+eld.

His heart was nearly in his throat, his entire chest seemed aflame, and as the driver turned to open the door to get out, Wu Yiliu grabbed his shoulder and shouted, “Drive!”

“What?” The driver was completely confused, his face pale with shock. “That leg…”

Wu Yiliu didn’t even want to glance at the slender legs wrapped in jeans on the bent hood. “If you go out, you’ll die. Drive!”

The driver seemed to be completely frightened into action by his roar; he stepped on the accelerator, and the car screeched out onto the road, sc.r.a.ping against the surface. The pair of legs standing on the hood of the car staggered back half a step to maintain balance. Then, the owner of those legs crouched down. As the car wobbled forward, Milan looked like a bird perched on a branch, her nimble body poised on tiptoes, seemingly ready to take flight at any moment.

She smiled at Wu Yiliu and raised her fist. With just one punch, the winds.h.i.+eld shattered into pieces, scattering in the wind. Wu Yiliu had buried his face beforehand, but the driver wasn’t quick enough to react and was caught by the wind filled with gla.s.s fragments. The taxi went out of control and crashed into the trees on the sidewalk.

When Wu Yiliu got into the car, he hadn’t had time to fasten his seatbelt and was thrown forward into the glove compartment. A buzz rang in his head, and his vision became blurry.

Perhaps it was exhaustion, anger, or fear, but his ordinary human body finally surrendered at that moment.

He only vaguely felt the car door being opened. Someone grabbed his collar and pulled him out of the car, his head hitting the side of the road. He was still dazed, unable to regain consciousness, his vision filled with elongated, twisted streaks of color, the world spinning around him.

Milan’s feet appeared in front of him, and one of her hands lifted him up against the tree trunk. The dented taxi was beside him, one of its wheels protruding like a broken bone that had pierced through the skin after impact.

“You tricked me into going to the park, but you were planning to escape by car?” Milan crouched in front of him, her sweet face like creamy chocolate, breaking into a curious smile. “Why? Weren’t you the one who asked for my help yesterday?”

Wu Yiliu stared at her with a foggy consciousness, opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Professor Qiao’s death was undoubtedly the work of a posthuman.

When he was in the fake pocket dimension, he hadn’t considered which posthuman it might be; because at that time, it seemed that it didn’t matter which one it was. Now he realized that it wasn’t the case.

“How… how did you know where I…” he stammered.

“It’s the paper crane,” Milan said, shrugging. “I followed its flying direction, covering a large area, and searched all the way here.”

She tilted her head. “I answered you, so shouldn’t you answer me?”

Wu Yiliu was quiet for a moment.

“It was the paper crane,” he muttered. “On the one you sent… I noticed a pen mark I accidentally made.”