Doomsday Wonderland

Chapter 905: Such Emptiness

Strange, does the Rare Creature Natural Reserve have differences in elevation?

As Lin Sanjiu walked deeper step by step, she had to stop to catch her breath. The rope around her waist dangled behind her, gradually climbing higher and disappearing behind a low slope. The narrow path turned into an open space, and as she descended the slope, her pace slowed down, as if the air was weighing heavily on her.

Something seems off with the... force field here.

She felt a slight itch on her forehead and wiped it with her hand, only to discover a fine layer of sweat that had appeared without her notice—besides Pure Touch, there seemed to be other factors in the environment that were rapidly depleting her stamina.

After walking for a while longer, the length of the rope didn't allow her to continue forward. Even if Lin Sanjiu felt guilty and uneasy, she would have to turn back when the time came; she couldn't save everyone. Surviving in the apocalypse for so many years had taught her when to draw a line for herself, as a standard for stopping.

No matter how urgent her mood was, the injured little girl had completely disappeared in the maze.

Accepting reality, she turned around and started walking back... but it proved to be much more difficult than Lin Sanjiu had anticipated. She stood in place for a few seconds before slowly turning her stiff body and taking a step towards the way she came.

With a soft "thud," the rope fell lightly to the ground in the distance, still tied to her belt.

Lin Sanjiu trembled all over, and the first thing that arose in her mind was confusion—because Pure Touch hadn't detected any signs of attack. Then, she quickly untied the knot on her waist and sprinted madly along the long rope on the ground.

In just a few seconds, she realized: In order to maintain the same speed as usual in this place, she would need to expend ten times the energy and physical strength. Midway through her run, Lin Sanjiu even started to gasp for breath—she gradually turned into a half-walk, half-run until she saw the man who had fallen on the ground at the intersection just moments ago. She hurried a few steps faster but suddenly stopped tens of meters away from him.

"Hey!"

She called out in a low voice, but the figure remained motionless. Apart from occasional faint sounds of something passing in the distance, there was silence all around. Whatever had attacked that man, it was likely gone now.

But Lin Sanjiu didn't approach rashly. In the dim light, she could vaguely see that the part that she thought was a "bald spot" on the back of his head was actually the man's face—his eyes wide open, his contorted face turned towards the night sky as if frozen forever.

She had come back too late.

The flashlight couldn't be kept on all the time, lest it attract things wandering in the darkness. Lin Sanjiu turned off the flashlight and was about to walk over when, somehow, she withdrew her steps. Before she realized it, she had already sidestepped and blended back into the shadows.

Upon careful recollection, in those few seconds when the light swept across, the man did indeed stop breathing. Besides having his head twisted 180 degrees and his feet hidden in the corner of the wall, his face and body exposed in the flashlight's beam were just ordinary human features... he was undoubtedly a human who had already died.

There are always some differences with duoluozhong that make them somewhat distinct from humans. Some duoluozhong would disguise these "differences," which is why Lin Sanjiu immediately suspected that the little girl was a duoluozhong. But what exactly is wrong with this man?

Lin Sanjiu couldn't figure it out, and she didn't want to risk approaching for observation. The distortion of the force field in the natural reserve was becoming more severe. Standing in this place felt like being caught in countless currents flowing in different directions, and just maintaining her balance was already exhausting.

She had to avoid any unnecessary physical exertion. She still had to reach the Munitions Factory before daybreak.

As she thought about this, Lin Sanjiu tried to calm her breath.

Standing by the dark and quiet path, everything fell silent like melting ice. Except for the occasional strange sound carried by the night breeze or the distant trembling of the earth, it was quiet as if everything had died.

After about ten seconds, a delicate female voice broke the silence: "...Did she leave?"

The voice dissipated into the night, returning to silence as if it were just an illusion.

After an unknown amount of time, the man on the ground suddenly sighed and used his hands to push himself up. He didn't stand up but remained on all fours like a dog, with his face still on his back, looking up at the sky.

"It feels terrible," he maintained this position and spoke towards the sky. The mixed voice of fear and longing from earlier disappeared, replaced by an equally delicate and uncomfortable peculiar tone, "So... empty."

So, he is a duoluozhong?

Lin Sanjiu let out a long sigh of relief in her heart, as if a heavy burden had been lifted. They were duoluozhong, so does that mean the little girl from earlier is also a duoluozhong?

That's great, really great.

She didn't move and quietly stared at the figure with the strange posture in the distance.

"I really want a posthuman," the female voice said sharply, "They come and go, demanding this and that, never even looking at us... treating us like objects... trash..."

Huh?

Lin Sanjiu furrowed her brow.

When the female voice spoke, she finally emerged slowly from behind the wall for the first time.

She finally understood why she felt that something was off about the "male corpse" earlier. Generally, as the legs go down, they should become thinner, but the man's legs gradually became thicker from the knees, growing larger instead. What emerged from his pants was not two feet, but the body of another humanoid creature.

Where his feet should have been, a pair of robust limbs sprouted. Following these limbs backward, Lin Sanjiu's gaze fell on the belly of the speaking "woman."

It looked as if she had extracted a fully grown person through a cesarean section.

So, that's why she had been hiding behind the corner all this time, right?

"Posthumans," the man hissed, "Shouldn't trust posthumans."

"I don't want to die here," the woman sobbed, "But she let us die here."