Doomsday Wonderland

Chapter 1239: Insecticide

The warning sound of the malfunctioning elevator continued to blare out abruptly every now and then, its sharp noise almost cutting through the air. Lin Sanjiu was startled and almost poked her finger into Puppeteer's eye again. After that close call, she decided to turn her attention to the outer doors of the elevator. The inner doors of the elevator car were not severely damaged; they were slightly bent and deformed. Lin Sanjiu, wielding her metal gauntlet, hammered and knocked on them for a while, managing to get the elevator car's doors to close somewhat properly.

As soon as the doors closed, the elevator started ascending again. Lin Sanjiu took a step back, feeling a bit jittery, and looked around. Gradually, the dark elevator shaft became visible at the edge of the floor as the elevator car climbed upward. She spotted the corpse, now transformed into a puppet, still holding the skinny man tightly, and Bohemia standing nearby, nodding at her, which reassured her.

"No one... can the elevator go up by itself?" Bohemia withdrew her gaze from the electronic screen and glanced at the skinny man near Puppeteer. "No wonder he was so determined to get in; it turns out he can really get out."

Thinking back now, there were indeed several crucial rules hidden in the NPC's long-winded speech. However, the important points that should have alerted people were overshadowed by the NPC's rambling. For example, the NPC had mentioned, "If there are people present who shouldn't be there when the elevator starts moving, then all of you will lose your discharge qualifications." But he didn't say what would happen to those who never had discharge qualifications in the first place or whether they would be exempt from punishment in such a situation.

"The elevator is moving up on its own now. Will it affect us when we try to leave later?" Bohemia pressed the control button once more, and the upward arrow lit up, still with some concern.

"It should be fine," Lin Sanjiu replied, walking over to Puppeteer. "When you all entered earlier, did you have to wait for the elevator to come down? If the previous group of people had left, then the elevator should have stayed at the top until the next group arrived. I don't think the current situation is any different."

Although she wasn't far from Bohemia, she had to raise her voice several times to make herself heard. The skinny man's eyes were fine, and he had already seen Puppeteer and sensed his combat abilities. However, he didn't seem afraid at all. His sanity appeared to have snapped long ago. As he struggled under the corpse's grip, foam flew from his mouth, and he spewed profanities. He alternated between laughter, curses, tears, and pleas, and sometimes his voice was so piercing that it made Lin Sanjiu's skin crawl.

Despite being one of the targets of his foul language, Puppeteer remained calm and motionless, as if he hadn't heard a thing.

Was it because he couldn't see and was reluctant to act recklessly?

The memory of his quiet "Hm" from earlier made Lin Sanjiu increase her pace. She cleaned her hands and summoned her handkerchief. "I'm going to start now," she said as she once again wrapped her fingertips with the handkerchief. "Keep your eyes wide open and don't move."

Puppeteer snorted coldy.

In the instant Lin Sanjiu touched his eyeball through the silk, a warm, smooth, and round sensation flashed through her heart. He then slightly recoiled—actually, Puppeteer's body hadn't moved, but Lin Sanjiu seemed to vaguely sense that under his skin and within his body, something had instinctively shrunk back when she touched it. It was as if even the young man hiding inside hadn't expected to be suddenly touched. Puppeteer, who had always given off a lifeless and abyss-like impression, suddenly came to life for a moment and then fell silent once again.

When she removed the photographs from his second eyeball, Puppeteer didn't display the same reaction. He remained as motionless as a piece of stone, and only after all the photographs had been taken off did he slowly blink his eyes, scanning the people present.

He lowered his gaze to the skinny man but said to Lin Sanjiu, "Speak. What's going on?"

"Do you remember when you told me to stay close to you?" she asked in return. "How far away did I seem from you?"

Puppeteer remained silent for two seconds before replying, "Quite far away, as if you were planning to quietly commit suicide behind."

Was there a need to voice the hope in his heart?

"In reality, I was only a few meters away from you at that time, and I found it strange when you told me to stay close," Lin Sanjiu said, swallowing a breath. "My guess is that this guy's ability can capture and replicate a portion of the real world, then paste it in the air, making people see the images on the photographs and think they are seeing the real world."

Even the screams of the skinny man gradually subsided at this point.

"He captured the way I was going upstairs, pasted it far away in the depths of the staircase, and then took another photograph of the empty staircase, pasting it behind you, blocking the real me," Lin Sanjiu said. She thought for a moment and turned to ask the skinny man, "Is your photograph divided into inside and outside? From the outside, it looks like a photograph, but from the inside looking out, you can't see anything?"

The man remained tightly sealed his lips, but from his expression, Lin Sanjiu had already drawn her own conclusion.

"I think that's the reason. When I looked up at you, there was nothing unusual. But from your perspective, where I was, it appeared to be an empty staircase, and far away, there was a Lin Sanjiu." She glanced around at the others and said to the other two, "That's why Puppeteer told me to stay closer. This guy seized the opportunity he created and quickly moved the photograph of me in front of myself and followed closely behind him. At that moment, I heard Puppeteer tell me to step back again. I should have been more careful then, but... in any case, I ended up taking a few steps back."

Later on, she maintained a distance of about seven to eight meters, enough space for several people in between. However, Puppeteer was satisfied because at that time, the photograph of Lin Sanjiu was following closely behind him, neither too close nor too far away. In reality, the actual Lin Sanjiu was unaware that in front of her eyes was a photograph of Puppeteer and his group going upstairs, facing her. On the other side of this photograph was an empty staircase, facing Puppeteer.

As a result, when Puppeteer turned around, Lin Sanjiu was several meters behind him, and in her eyes, the people in front of her were continuously ascending at the same speed, with Glowfish even repeatedly returning in a very regular manner. No one knew that due to the adjustments made by the skinny man several times, Lin Sanjiu was actually getting farther and farther away from everyone.

"Later on, were you alone in that staircase... looking for us?" Bohemia shivered. In some aspects, she was much more sensitive and perceptive than others, and she almost instantly sensed Lin Sanjiu's psychological state at that time.

Even though it had already dissipated, recalling the fear in the staircase still made her feel as if an ink brush had passed over her heart—sweeping over it, the pitch-black ink gradually spread in place. Lin Sanjiu didn't want to linger on that emotional period too much; she just nodded and asked the skinny man, "But there are still many things I don't understand. Your photographs can't block sound, but the staircase happened to absorb all the sound, allowing you to quietly tamper with things. You needed to impersonate one of us to sneak into the corner of the elevator, and there happened to be a corpse here... do you happen to know a lot about the interior of the staircase?"

The skinny man let out a hearty laugh.

"Know about it?" He widened his blood-red eyes, as if he was about to burst out of his skin. "You're asking me if I know about it? I've entered this place four times, trying to set up countless cameras in this corridor, staring at it day and night for eight months... and now you're asking me," he raised his voice, imitating Lin Sanjiu's tone, distorting his face, "'Do you happen to know a lot about the interior of the staircase?'"

Lin Sanjiu crossed her arms and stared at him for a few seconds. "You managed to come in and out four times. That's already pretty lucky."

The skinny man abruptly sealed his lips.

"So, when did you sneak in?" She had been using Higher Consciousness to pull the door shut all along and hadn't felt any vibrations on the line.

The skinny man was lying on the ground, panting heavily. He rolled his eyes upward from below and smiled at her. A bubble of foam escaped from the corner of his mouth. "Aren't you clever? You can counter my ability, right? Since you're so powerful, why don't you think about it?"

"Oh, the elevator is here," Bohemia suddenly called out.

Lin Sanjiu turned to see that the elevator car was indeed descending from the elevator shaft. When she turned back, her vision blurred for a moment. Even with her dynamic vision, she couldn't make out what had happened in that instant. It was only when she felt a hot, bloody wind rushing past her face, over her hair, and by her shoulder that she focused her gaze on the wall across the hall.

She could no longer discern the skinny man's form.

It was as if a mentally deranged abstract painter had crushed flesh and bone into pigment, splattering a blood-red painting on the wall. Life had been shattered into unrecognizable fragments, revealing the colors of death from within. Blood slowly flowed down the wall; with a dull thud, a severed forearm fell into the pool of blood, and a few fingers trembled in the air.

Even though Lin Sanjiu hadn't intended to spare this man, she was still stunned for a second or two. She had seen Puppeteer kill people before. She had seen him kill quite a few people, in fact—but rarely with such violence and lack of self-control. Not to mention that he had caused this gruesome death with his own hands.

Puppeteer lightly brushed away the nonexistent dust from his fingers, turned around, and walked into the elevator.