Doomsday Wonderland

The woman’s voice was pleasant and enchanting, like when the fingertips of a maiden caressed one’s eardrums and nerves, causing their skin to tingle and burst into gooseflesh.

When Lin Sanjiu heard the singing, an image of two slithery snakes entwining together popped up in her mind. She tried to search through her memory about the song, but her brain was lulled and stupefied by the song. The thought was washed away like smoke dissipated by wind the moment it rose.

She shuffled her feet and trudged forward, her steps heavy as if she was plodding through a mud.

The sun had fully risen, floating coldly in the sky. No matter how long she walked under the sun, it couldn’t warm her up.

Lin Sanjiu raised her head and scanned her surroundings. She felt like she was seeing things through a veil of water. Then, at the corner of her foggy vision, a humanoid color clump sprang up from the ground and began running away. Staring blankly at the figure that was getting smaller and smaller, Lin Sanjiu brought her rifle up and pulled the trigger.

She didn’t even need to take aim. A spray of crimson spurted into the sky, looking like a red scarf thrown skyward.

Blood. That was the only thing clear in her eyes.

A half-suppressed sharp cry rang out somewhere to her left. It sounded like the final chirm of a bird that got shot down from the sky. Keeping a neutral expression on her face, Lin Sanjiu turned and looked at the residential buildings.

After that, she aimed her rifle and sprayed a massive shower of bullets in that direction. The windows were instantly shattered into pieces and fell to the ground like snowflakes. Lin Sanjiu continued her shooting until she reduced most of the articles in the building into smithereens. Then, another cry rose up like a specter’s shriek as the person barreled around, trying desperately to run for his life. Suddenly, the despairing cry came to an abrupt end amid a horrible crashing sound as a human figure smashed into the wall and slid down, leaving a trail of blood behind.

Lin Sanjiu touched the hot gun barrel. She felt an itchiness and realized there were a few strands of hair on her face, so she raised her hand to wipe them away. Then, when she looked at her fingers again, she saw blood.

Obviously, it wasn’t her blood, but she couldn’t remember when the blood found its way and splashed onto her face. She looked behind her, and everything that greeted her gaze was crimson red. It was a slaughterhouse. Dead bodies laid here and there along the street or on the roof. There were even one or two corpses hanging down from the speakers, looking like strips of pork on sale. The only difference that set them apart was that there was a sea of blood underneath the dead bodies.

The soft, silvery singing continued to ring inside her ears. She turned her head over expressionlessly. Accompanied by the enthralling female voice, she resumed walking down the street.

Reload, target, pull the trigger.

She repeated the three steps again and again and again; the clank of the bullet shells dropping onto the ground filled the air. People were running hither and thither in search of safety. Some of them hid behind the corners of buildings while others went indoors and took cover behind a couch. Be that as it may, no matter how well they were hidden, so long as she caught sight of them or heard something, a bullet would pierce through a forehead or a chest.

The gunshots and the beguiling woman’s voice weaved and rose into the sky before getting carried away by the wind into the distance. Wherever Lin Sanjiu went, silence followed.

Suddenly, a series of desperate and hurried footfalls rang out from an alley not far away. Whoever the person was, he seemed to be heading towards a building ahead. Lin Sanjiu had never once stepped into a residential building ever since she began her massacre, so perhaps for the citizens, the residential buildings were safe.

Lin Sanjiu stopped walking and hid behind a building. As soon as she stopped, she could clearly hear the footsteps becoming faster and faster. Very soon, the man appeared from the shadows in the alley and pounced on the door. Just as he was about to open the door, Lin Sanjiu popped out and shot him right in the back.

She looked on silently as the man squirmed like a worm on the ground until the light slowly left his eyes. However, rather than saying she was expressionless, it was better to say that her face could not make any expressions as if she was sleepwalking.

Oh yeah, she was indeed walking in a dream.

Lin Sanjiu took a step forward and pulled out a box of matches from the man’s pocket. She stuffed it into her pocket and resumed walking again.

When she had been holding back the murderous part of herself from emerging and taking control of her body, the people of Peanut Town did not appreciate her goodwill and were instead hell-bent on taking her life. However, when she began her slaughter and turned one citizen after another into lifeless bodies, none of them dared to make any attempt against her. All of them just hid in the dark and prayed that she wouldn’t find them.

If this weren’t a dream right now, would she still be doing what she was doing right now?

The question suddenly flitted across Lin Sanjiu’s mind. As if to answer her own question, she shot the window of a residential building next to her. As a mixture of blood and shattered glasses spilled into the air, and the person that was standing behind the window swayed and fell out of the window.

It was at this moment that a woman’s shrilling scream finally pierced through the fog in her mind. She did not know how long the woman had been screaming.

Slowly, ever slowly, Lin Sanjiu turned around and looked toward the direction of the sound. Then, her eye fell on a black speaker.

“Come out, you guys! Don’t hide anymore! Let’s work together and defeat her! She is alone and she only has one gun…”

Lin Sanjiu stood waiting beside the speaker for a long while, yet nobody came out. A little disappointed, she raised her rifle and shot the speaker. She watched as sparks hopped around the speaker. Then, she lit up a match and threw it into the pile of wasted steel.

As the woman hit a high note, the speaker exploded and burst into flame.

Afterward, she continued and set the rest of the speakers ablaze. The flames rapidly spread across the street, and not even the thick layer of blood on the ground could stop them. The town had no water for a long time, so the dilapidated buildings corroded by the wind were soon engulfed with the contorted flames, which danced high into the morning sky. Black smoke curled and twisted upward, blotting out the sun.

As if a hornet’s nest had been stirred, all the survivors began to scream and run out of the residential buildings. As soon as they showed themselves, Lin Sanjiu put a bullet through each of their heads, silencing them for good. They all fell to the ground, their eyes staring blankly at the crimson sky as the light in their eyes slowly dimmed down.

Standing amidst the song, blood, dead bodies, screams, and fire, Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath.

The air, mixed with a sulphuric smell, and the metallic scent flowed into her lungs and coursed through her entire body. It boiled her so much that she began to tremble.

Right now, there was only one thing left for her to do.

The sea of blood and flames had dyed half of the town in two different kinds of red. They moved at a slow but steady pace to invade every inch of the town and gradually transform it into a bloody red hell. And in this hell, there was only one person left standing.

When she found Yu Yuan, his surroundings had been contorted by the flames. All the metal frames and buildings were on the verge of collapsing.

Lin Sanjiu took a few quick steps forward and lifted him from the ground. His body felt hot after being baked by the fire for so long. She lowered her head and saw that the “straw” on his wrist was gone. Just as her brows deeply furrowed, a familiar woman’s voice, which she had anticipated for a long time, rang out in her ears.

“Congratulations for clearing your libretto. You will be sent out of this pocket dimension soon. The reward for completing the storyline has been given to you, please check it out when you are outside. Thank you for participating in the Reverie Libretto. We hope to see you again soon.”

‘Is it finally completed?’

She felt a tingle and the veil that covered her mind dissipated. Everything became clear again.

“Completed?” Mrs. Manas murmured in her mind. “Yes, finally! It is completed!”

Sitting on the ground while hugging Yu Yuan, Lin Sanjiu still couldn’t come around to her senses.

“We cleared the storyline?” she murmured under her breath. “I didn’t even figure out how my storyline goes, so how could it just end like that?”

“You did know,” Mrs. Manas said softly, “At least on a subconscious level, you knew it all along.”

“What’s that?”

The fire was getting fainter and fainter in Lin Sanjiu’s eyes. It seemed that the Reverie Libretto was going to end.

Suddenly, she gave a slight start. She looked ahead and saw darkness seeping in from the horizon, gobbling down the fire and all the buildings in Peanut Town in its wake. She laughed a mirthless laugh. “I see now. This is really… not a likable story.”

“You see it now?”

“A young man who wanted to slay the dragon to save the world ended up being a demon that was viler than the dragon. That is what we used to say in my hometown,” Lin Sanjiu said. She gazed at Peanut Town, which was slowly losing its shape, her voice getting fainter. “However, that statement doesn’t work for me. This is at most the experience of cleaners¹. It can’t even be called a story.”

The moment she finished her sentence, Peanut Town fell into the maw of darkness. She could see nothing but darkness. Yu Yuan remained to lie quietly in her embrace. His body was warm.

‘Can he leave the Reverie Libretto with me if he’s dead?’

Lin Sanjiu suddenly realized that she hadn’t checked his pulse yet, so she couldn’t confirm that he was dead. However, just as she reached her hand out for Yu Yuan’s neck, a gush of something wrapped around her and threw her upward. Yu Yuan was flung away from her arms, and then she fell unconscious.

By the time she regained consciousness, she was lying on top of a conveyor belt.

This time, she opened her eyes to the real world.

All she saw was darkness, and there were huge rocks hanging on top of her, forming into an undulating shape in her eyes. She clearly remembered that she was on any flat ground before she entered the Reverie Libretto, so she had no idea how she ended up lying under a band of rocks now. Below her, something was pushing her like a conveyor belt. Vaguely, she could hear the sound of other posthumans.

Waiting in front of this group of posthumans was the sloshing sound of water.