Doomsday Wonderland

At this moment, Lin Sanjiu was confident that Veda had done something to the Pocket Dimension.

The remaining snacks had died down after the first canned potato chip finished speaking. The mustached male figure, the ever-smiling spokesperson, the leopard that was eating corn puff… Numerous faces sat neatly on the shelves, staring at her quietly in the dim light.

“What the hell does it mean by picking the correct packet of chips?”

In merely a few seconds, Lin Sanjiu had lost sight of the canned potato chip. She paranoidly scanned the shelves over and over again from top to bottom.

“Tell me! What am I supposed to do?” Her voice dropped to a low growl.

The shelves remained silent; there was no response from the snacks.

Apparently, the Veda had deleted the ‘rules explanation’, but the Pocket Dimension was still running on the same rules. It seemed like she was taking an exam in which she wasn’t given the question, and she had to write out the correct answer.

After a short moment of contemplation, Lin Sanjiu lifted her shopping basket and touched a bag of corn puffs using its corner.

She chose the corn puffs and not the chips, as she wanted to see the consequence of getting the wrong answer. The corn puff wiggled slightly before deflating, but it soon returned to normal. There was a few seconds of silence, and nothing happened.

“So, as long as I don’t put it into my shopping basket, it’s okay if I pick the wrong packet of chips?”

Lin Sanjiu thought for a while and squatted down. She stretched her arm and poked a bag of cereal with a rooster printed on its packaging.

The bag of cereal rustled, prompting Lin Sanjiu to retract her hand. She quickly looked around at the shelves, but the shelves soon became silent once more.

It seemed like she was right in her guess.

Lin Sanjiu heaved a sigh of relief as her courage mounted. She glanced across the shelves. All of the snacks were covered in a layer of dust. Their colors had faded, and they all looked musty. Apparently, they must have been put on the shelves a long time ago.

“The correct packet of chips… Could it be the one that hasn’t expired?”

She looked at the shelves with a quizzical look on her face.

“In that case, I’ll have to figure out today’s date and then the manufacturing date printed on the bag so that I can make the comparison… but isn’t that too simple?”

Since she could only make her next moves based on guesses, Lin Sanjiu began to get paranoid again.

But she still decided to try it out nonetheless. “I should probably check out the magazine at the cashier. The magazine should be of the latest issue…” However, the moment she got up, she froze.

Then, she lowered her head slowly.

Similar to any other convenience store, it was impossible to have only one unit per product on the shelf. Typically, a shop owner would arrange a few more packets of similar products neatly together in a line and occupy a small section of the tray. The shelf that Lin Sanjiu used to do her experiment was no different as well. One by one, the black and red packaging lined up on the shelf below. There was a massive rooster printed on each bag, and all of them were showing her their smiling profiles.

However, there was this one giant rooster that faced Lin Sanjiu directly. Its enlarged beak was pointed towards the top of the package. It looked as if it were trying to come out of the drawing.

And what surprised Lin Sanjiu the most was that that package was the one Lin Sanjiu poked just before.

Her heart skipped a beat, and she hastily looked at the other corn puff, the one she touched using the corner of her shopping basket. However, there weren’t any changes to the cartoonized leopard. Similar to its other comrades on the shelf, the leopard puffed one side of its cheek.

“What would happen if I touched it again?”

Although the idea appeared in her mind, Lin Sanjiu did not touch the corn puff again. The hint given by the canned potato chips was apparent: pick the right chips. Thus, after much thought and consideration, Lin Sanjiu stretched her arm towards a package of potato chips that had no drawing.

She touched the package and quickly retracted her fingers. Her heart pumped fast like a fluttering bird as she stared unblinkingly at the potato chips.

Nothing happened.

Lin Sanjiu then extended her hand once more, but this time, she lingered a little bit longer. Aside from getting some more dust on her fingers, the result was the same.

Her courage grew deeper and her mind firmer after each attempt when nothing happened. Finally, at her last attempt, she gripped the packet tightly with her fingers and slowly took it off the shelf.

A deep hole immediately appeared amidst the fully filled shelf, looking like a tunnel that could go on forever. Lin Sanjiu could feel cold air blowing out. Looking at the “hole”, Lin Sanjiu did not put the packet of chips in the shopping basket. She instead flipped it over and over again, looking for the manufacturing date.

She soon found a line of words in a tiny font that was fading on top of the seal: “1986.10.21.”

“It has been so long?”

Lin Sanjiu was taken aback, as she did not expect a packet of chips to be even older than her. She continued to study the packet of chips, but she couldn’t find the expiry date.

‘Well, I should just put it back,’ Lin Sanjiu thought inwardly. Since she couldn’t leave the lane, she could just summon Puppeteer here. Even though that guy did not seem to be a bright person, two brains were still better than one.

As she thought, she raised her eyes.

A blurry face had appeared in the hole, staring squarely at her.

Lin Sanjiu’s heart raced. With a quick motion, an arm shot out from the shelf and gripped onto her wrist. The arm was pale and skinny, but Lin Sanjiu couldn’t shake it off no matter how hard she tried. The arm then pulled her towards the shelf. The hair on her back bristled, and just when she wanted to summon the [Tornado Whip], everything went dark.

The face and the pale arm that hid behind the shelf had all disappeared like magic.

Very soon, her vision returned.

The lane, the shelves, the dim light, and the dust in the air… everything remained the same.

The only difference was that her viewing angle had changed. Right now, she was looking at the place where she had been standing a few seconds ago.

She tried to turn her head, but somehow, she felt that her body had become very stiff.

She fell silent for two seconds, and the scale dropped before her eyes.

She mustered up all her strength and looked to the left. Nevertheless, she could only see with the corner of her eyes. All kinds of snacks were sitting firmly and obediently next to her.

Not only her left and right side, but even the level below her was neatly arranged with snack packages and canned potato chips

She had turned into a packet of chips on the shelf.