Chapter 1026: Finally Fulfilling the Dream! Embarking on the Path of Crime
Chapter 1026: Finally Fulfilling the Dream! Embarking on the Path of Crime
Perhaps everyone harbors a dream of robbing a bank.
1
Half of the most popular forms of entertainment in the Twelve Worlds Centrum originated from other human societies destroyed by the apocalypse. This includes various movies, television shows, and books. Amongst these forms of entertainment, Bohemia was clearly a fan of gangster and crime films - no wonder she saw the police as mere "bodyguards."
Her dream might be to don a trench coat, smoke a cigar, be addressed as "Don," and upon opening the bank vault, find it filled with Special Items. However, while there were banks in the Twelve Worlds Centrum, no one dared to rob them.
Before she finished the words "rob a bank," Bohemia was already itching to take action. She jumped up and stretched out her hand to Lin Sanjiu. "Do you have stockings?"
Who knows when we'll be teleported again, and she's worried about having stockings?
Not to mention, why would she even have stockings?
"Well, that won't do. If we're going to rob a bank, we need to look the part. Maybe we can also cut holes in a paper bag." Bohemia suggested.
Since the pot-bellied man didn't have any paper bags, Lin Sanjiu reluctantly washed two of his pillowcases and cut eye holes into them. Thankfully, the junkyard was huge, so he wouldn't be back for a while. However, the more she thought about it, the more she felt like she was acting like a Lunatic. Here she was, sneaking into a social worker's house stealing his pillowcases.
"The junkyard might be far away from the city. Let's drive there," Lin Sanjiu said, lifting her chin and gesturing towards the old truck outside.
Once they were out, even if they couldn't understand the road signs, they could follow the flow of traffic and eventually reach the city.
The junkyard really was large. Even when Lin Sanjiu drove a few laps around the mountains of trash, the engine noise of the car didn't attract the attention of the potbelly man. She was still secretly holding onto a glimmer of hope while driving through – hoping to find Puppeteer somewhere as she drove around. However, after half an hour of searching, when she finally reached the exit of the junkyard, neither of them could find any trace of Puppeteer.
He was really unlucky. If the Great Deluge had been just a minute slower, maybe they could have found another visa and brought him along to "Esculent Alethia."
But speaking of that, what does that name really mean? She understood it to mean something like "edible truth," but that didn't seem any less mysterious.
2
Lin Sanjiu couldn't figure it out, but fortunately, she didn't have to think about it for quite some time. In a world that hadn't yet experienced the apocalypse, entering the city was as easy and enjoyable as going on a sightseeing tour. The two damp pillowcases tied to the windows flapped loudly in the wind. Along the way, Bohemia stuck her head out of the window, marveling at every building, storefront, and facility she had never seen before.
Even Lin Sanjiu found herself in awe, she had almost forgotten what a normal human society looked like. The streets were filled with ordinary people who hadn't evolved, roaming around like carefree sheep. Men and women of all kinds were doing everyday activities that felt so alien now: talking, laughing, strolling around, eating ice cream, making phone calls, waiting to meet up, even just crossing the street. Under the overcast sky, businesses had already lit up with various lights, and the air was filled with the long-lost atmosphere of human life. Among so many people, not even one probably suspected that their peaceful lives were going to end in less than six months.
Because Bohemia lacked familiarity with normal human society, she casually commented on a passerby's dog, calling it ugly while they were waiting at a traffic light. They both received disapproving looks but Lin Sanjiu shrugged it off, saying, "Well, the dog may be ugly, but these buildings are pretty fascinating."
It was true.
There was a peculiar pursuit of architectural aesthetics in this world. They didn't consider practical issues such as obstruction, density, or stability, nor did they consider whether the styles harmonized with each other. It was as if their sole goal in building was to be as unique and diverse as possible, preferably making the building look unlike a building.
For example, the one they had just passed by... It looked like a gigantic cactus, thick at the top and thin at the bottom, with a round body that leaned out from the ground. It was covered with a layer of what looked like strands of "white hair." Upon closer inspection, they discovered that the hairs were actually a multitude of mini offices protruding from the building. Honestly, Lin Sanjiu never imagined that one day she would think of offices as "strands."
Aside from the "individual strands" of offices, they also saw a "bundle" of bakeries.
These were single-story commercial shops on the ground floor, but just figuring out how people entered and moved around inside was a complete mystery.
Four or five bakeries had unreasonably emerged from the center of the sidewalk, squeezed and fused together at the "roots," with only their upper halves extending outward in all directions. They displayed brightly lit orange windows, exuding a somewhat magical and warm feeling in the gloomy weather.
Customers could buy bread from outside the windows, but did the bakers crawl in through the windows? It didn't look like there were any other ways into the structure.
Buildings like this were everywhere. In fact, there were so many novel sights along the way that it was almost more captivating than the Twelve Worlds Centrum. The two of them wandered distractedly for a while, almost forgetting their original purpose.
"I didn't see any banks. Did you?" Bohemia turned her head and asked.
"Maybe we saw some but didn't recognize them." Lin Sanjiu replied with a shrug.
Perhaps that ordinary-looking bungalow in the junkyard represented "humble simplicity." Honestly, Lin Sanjiu didn't know what most of the architectural facilities she saw were for, but they succeeded in evoking a feeling of grandeur.
"Why don't we ask someone?" Lin Sanjiu suggested.
"You wanna ask someone which bank to rob, before we start robbing it?" Bohemia retorted, incredulous.
"Do you have a better idea then?"
As expected, she didn't. Lin Sanjiu stopped the car by the roadside and shouted at a passerby, "Excuse me! Where is the nearest bank?"
The man with the gray face in the coat looked puzzled for a moment. "B-bank? What?"
They exchanged glances.
"He might be an idiot," Bohemia whispered.
"That's not it... Don't you think it's more likely that they don't call it a bank here?"
"Oh... of course you know-it-all." Bohemia gestured in exasperation.
Lin Sanjiu poked her head out again. The residents of this city seemed quite calm and polite. After her hushed exchange with Bohemia, the man was still waiting there patiently.
"It's... um, the word is right on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember it at the moment. You must have experienced this before, right? It's the place where you deposit money. What's it called?" She gave an embarrassed laugh, but the man continued to look at her blankly. "I don't any. I really don't know."
She gave a sigh.
"For example, if you've spent only half of your income and want to save the other half, the place where you save it is called..." Lin Sanjiu listened to her own voice and couldn't believe she wasn't mentally ill.
"Ah!" The man with the gray face suddenly realized and pointed to the intersection ahead. "Turn left there, drive 200 meters, and you'll be there."
The two soon-to-be robbers expressed their gratitude in a polite manner and drove towards the place that they were going to rob, still having no clue about its name. Although the buildings were headache-inducing with their peculiarities, the vehicles on the road were surprisingly normal. It was fortunate because Lin Sanjiu couldn't imagine what she would do if she had to park between two octopus-shaped cars.
They parked the car outside an umbrella-shaped building, facing many long and narrow slits embedded in the "roots" of the building. The gaps were barely wide enough for one person to fit through and formed a row of about twenty to thirty doors for the building. Of course, if they hadn't seen other people squeezing in and out of the narrow slits, they would never have guessed how to get in. From where they were surveying the building, the bank seemed to be pretty big.
They both took a deep breath simultaneously, still sitting in the car. Even though they had vast experience with killing people, they were suddenly feeling nervous about robbing a bank.
"You need to act more professionally," Bohemia said as she removed the pillowcase from the car window. "After we enter, put this on first, then shout 'this is a robbery, don't move.' Point the gun at them and make them lie on the ground while I go to the counter to get the money."
"Sounds like you've seen too many movies.
"I don't have a gun," Lin Sanjiu admitted. "I dropped the one Silvan gave me in a lake."
"What lake... How come you can't even hold onto a gun?"
"What's the use of a gun? Abilities and Special Items are much better than guns, aren't they?"
"No!" Bohemia insisted stubbornly. "That's not professional! Besides, if you have a gun, these ordinary people will get scared. If you threaten them with a ladle, they might as well laugh to death."
She didn't even have a Special Item that looked like a ladle.
Seeing that the bank was right there but she had no weapon, Bohemia couldn't help but become anxious. "Forget it," she said impatiently, "if there's no gun, I'll just grab some other Special Item as a demonstration, a show of strength. You don't have to say anything— I know what you're going to say. We can't kill people, but can't you at least punch a wall?"
Lin Sanjiu opened the car door with relief. "You really are different from before."
"Shut up."
There was no shortage of plastic bags in the junkyard. Each of them took a dirty plastic bag to hold the money, with pillowcases tucked in their pockets and stains from the junkyard still clinging to their clothes. They approached the entrance of the bank building, unwittingly resembling two beggars.
Lin Sanjiu had never seen such a weird door. Instead of going straight from the ground, they were raised about twenty to thirty centimeters above the ground, opening into narrow slits. Following the example of others, they each chose an unoccupied narrow slit and then lifted their feet, half climbing and half crawling to squeeze inside. After half a minute, they finally emerged, sticking their heads out from the other end of the wall.
"Did they build this place while drunk?" Bohemia complained, as she lowered her foot into the hall where Lin Sanjiu was already standing.
Although the exterior walls were thick enough to take half a minute to crawl through, the inside of the building was surprisingly small, taking up only about a few hundred square meters. There wasn't even a single window in the small hall; it was illuminated solely by the ceiling which emitted a uniform white light.
There were small counters distributed haphazardly throughout the hall, as if the construction workers couldn't even set them in a straight line. They circled the interior of the building but still couldn't figure out who the bank staff were or where the money was. They exchanged glances before promptly taking out the pillowcases.
The damp cloth pulled over their heads, covering their faces and revealing only their eyes. Bohemia raised her ring-clad index finger, pointed it towards the ceiling, and shouted, "Don't move, this is a robbery!"