Doomsday Wonderland

Chapter 1156: Con Artist-to-be

After realizing what had happened, Lin Sanjiu stood in place for a while, staring at the wall in a daze. It was only when Mrs. Manas softly reminded her, "Hide, don't just stand there," that she snapped back to her senses and quickly stepped into a nearby alley.

This alley was lined with arched and carved iron gates, and she couldn't tell if it was the same path she had walked before. The hospital's lower levels were a maze of countless similar alleys, and once you went further in, it became difficult to recognize the direction you came from. The sound of rustling fabric seemed to be getting closer, so she took a few steps back, then leaped into the air, pushing off the wall with her foot and pulling herself up with her right hand on the iron gate frame.

Balancing on the narrow, arched iron gate, she crouched like an owl, overlooking the area below, holding her breath and waiting for the approaching person.

Ahead was a T-junction, with both sides unilluminated by the wall lamps, creating a dim and quiet atmosphere. Lin Sanjiu stared at the junction without blinking, and she saw a shadow slowly emerge from the right side of the corridor. It stretched longer and longer on the ground until the person's head came into view. The shoulder-length hair fell down, gently swaying in the light and shadow.

"Hmm?" Ya Jiang looked left and right, seeing no one on the path. He looked cautious and puzzled, hesitating to step outside. "I'm sure there was someone here just now."

Seeing a familiar face in this eerie place, Lin Sanjiu's heart warmed, and she felt like a child who couldn't wait to confide in a friend. She quickly made a soft "psst" sound to get his attention and called out in a hushed voice, "Over here!"

Ya Jiang looked up and was startled when he saw Lin Sanjiu.

"What are you doing up there?" he asked as he emerged from behind the corner, placing one hand on the wall and wiping his forehead with the other. "I never expected that after going through so much, I'd end up in the hospital."

Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but be taken aback.

Why did Ya Jiang still have both arms? Didn't he need to reach out to grab something to be swallowed by lava? She had just been fooled so badly that she was now a bit scared. The thought that someone else might be pretending to be Ya Jiang to deceive her made her break out in a cold sweat. Just at that moment, Ya Jiang suddenly turned his head and lowered his hands.

Lin Sanjiu followed his movement with her gaze.

At this moment, only Ya Jiang's upper body protruded from behind the wall. She couldn't tell exactly what he had been doing with the rustling sounds. However, as he stepped out completely from behind the wall, she finally understood.

"Where... where is your waist and abdomen?" she asked in a low voice.

Ya Jiang had all four limbs intact and was dressed neatly, so it was hard to tell that anything was wrong if his waist and abdomen were hidden. However, from below the sternum and above the pelvis, there was nothing but emptiness. The cut was as smooth and flat as Lin Sanjiu's severed arm, presenting a flesh-pink surface. The two parts of his body were separated, and even the connecting spine was missing. At first glance, he looked like a Lego figurine, except for the missing middle part, leaving his upper body floating in the air.

"What about your arm? Didn't you lose it too?" Ya Jiang said irritably. "Do you really need to ask me?"

As he spoke, he lowered his upper body, clasped his left leg with both hands, and took a step forward. Then he did the same with his right leg, dragging it up as well. It was a struggle, but he managed to move forward along the alley.

Lin Sanjiu opened her mouth, but it took her a while to find the right words, saying, "Your... your third Special Item is in..."

"It's wrapped around my waist," he replied with an expression of 'this is how it is, what are you going to do about it?' "When I was swallowed by lava, Bonnie Bunny couldn't stop laughing at me."

Although it wasn't a common situation, the effect was indeed quite comedic.

"So, you can only move by dragging your legs forward with your hands like this?" Lin Sanjiu stared at him as he painstakingly moved forward and understood why Bonnie Bunny found it so funny. "You can't control your legs anymore?"

"If it were you, could you still walk without your waist?" Ya Jiang seemed to see the smile suppressed on her face and became a little annoyed. "Don't you know that lower limb movements also require the muscles in the waist and abdomen? My upper body is more flexible. I can wiggle my knees, ankles, and toes, but what's the use?"

"How did you get down then?"

"I jumped straight down," Ya Jiang said with a long face. "Thankfully, my patient room was not too high, and the entrance was close to these walls on the lower levels. Otherwise, what else could I have done?"

"You can still jump?" Lin Sanjiu blurted out.

"Just throw your legs down first!" Ya Jiang waved his hand. "Forget about me. What about you? Fortunately, I ran into you, so I don't have to move around with my legs one step at a time. What's going on here? How do we get points?"

It seemed that he had also read the price list in the room.

Before answering, Lin Sanjiu sighed. "I didn't just lose one arm... I was cheated earlier."

Then she told Ya Jiang all the details of what had happened. As he listened, he couldn't help exclaiming and repeatedly saying things like, "How could anyone have been prepared for this?" and "Even the map was there?" Finally, when Lin Sanjiu finished speaking, he fell silent for a moment.

"No wonder Bonnie Bunny lost interest when I said I thought the goal of the game was to find the handbook. She knew that the things we're able to buy here with points couldn't be the game's objectives," Ya Jiang said, then looked up. "Don't say anything; even though you lost a kidney and didn't get the handbook, you still gained something."

Lin Sanjiu nodded and said, "That's what I think too." Then she slid down from the arched iron gate and landed gently on the ground.

The shopkeeper, in order to successfully disguise himself as a pocket dimension creature, acted and spoke diligently, fully embracing his role. During the process of bargaining with her, he indeed revealed quite a bit of information just like an NPC would.

"First of all, I found out how to earn points in the hospital."

Lin Sanjiu took a few steps and stopped, waiting for Ya Jiang, who was dragging his thigh, to catch up. "Human organs and blood, whether they belong to oneself or others, can be exchanged for points. Otherwise, that shopkeeper wouldn't have deceitfully taken my kidney. Since it's an organ trade, it must be fresh. I used to think that to hunt for fresh organs from others, I either had to rely on force to kidnap someone and bring them to the payment counters or freeze freshly reaped organs... but now I know how they do it."

How did the other players obtain that steel frame? Did they get it from the hospital payment counters?

Thinking back now, she felt that apart from concealing his identity, everything the little shopkeeper had told her was probably true. It would be too troublesome to fabricate too many lies, and it would likely lead to inconsistencies. She forgot who said that the most convincing lies are mostly truths mixed with a little lie.

"Secondly—I'm not entirely certain about this, but I guess the location of the hospital payment counters might not be fixed."

Ya Jiang thought for a few seconds and nodded in agreement as he lifted his right leg. "That's right."

"How did that shopkeeper know whether I'm a newcomer or an old player?" Lin Sanjiu said as she looked at the vast circular building wall surrounding the lower levels of the hospital, seemingly stretching endlessly upwards. The iron gates near the lower levels were as large as playing cards, getting smaller as they went up, from the size of mahjong tiles to fingernails, gradually shrinking until they were almost indistinguishable. In the area she could see, doors would occasionally be pushed open, or shadows would flash on the walls. The quiet and silent sea beneath the surface was never still.

"This general hospital is so big, I'm afraid all the lava players swallowed by the lava outside have been sent here. There could be a significant number of them," Lin Sanjiu continued after retracting her gaze, noticing that Ya Jiang's forehead was covered in sweat from his physical exertion. "The shopkeeper can't possibly know whether the next person coming in is a newcomer or an experienced player. Isn't he afraid that an experienced player would hunt him down after seeing him and instead be hunted? But even so, he still set up a fake shop... so I thought, maybe the payment counter's location is entirely random and changes every time, allowing him to scam people everywhere."

"But... are the NPCs in the hospital payment counters also randomly generated?" Ya Jiang asked.

"I don't know if he used some kind of disguise," Lin Sanjiu said with a frown and thought for a moment. "Before I approached that fake shop, I saw a posthuman standing at the entrance muttering something like 'four points for such a small thing' and then left... I didn't think much of it at the time, but now looking back, that was probably a trap set to lure me in. Maybe that posthuman and the shopkeeper are the same person. If he acts fast enough, he could play both roles."

"That's not good," Ya Jiang said, though his face showed no signs of it being a good thing. "If your deduction is correct, then even if we find the payment counter, we won't be able to tell if it's genuine or a scam."

Lin Sanjiu turned her head and then started talking about something else.

"When I jumped down, there was a person who kept chasing after me, warning me that it was dangerous down below...He seemed to want me to trust him." However, his acting skills were really not that great. Compared to the little shopkeeper, even a fool could tell that something was off. "I was thinking, aren't all the players in the hospital in a weakened state due to their diminished combat power? Could it be that... in this hospital, you have to find a way to deceive people in order to survive?"

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Woo! Double update on a Wednesday!

Thanks to everyone's continued support and comments, we have increased the double uploads to include our dear midweek point. If we continue to gain comments (even short ones will do!), we'll try our best and upload double chapters every day! For now, though, it'll be the Weekends and Wednesdays!