Doomsday Wonderland

As Ji Shanqing rushed to the driver's console and looked at the screen, the vast and endless universe had already been swallowed and submerged into an ocean formed by the gentle undulating and brilliant, changing lights.

Within the ripples of the light, the black rope that connected to Lin Sanjiu still floated in space, as light and ethereal as before. It was like a stroke of black that was drawn by someone, not even moved by the great flood, as if the person connected at the other end was still there.

Indeed, if the Queen Mother had torn the Onion Universe from this place and entered the next layer, it meant that this place was no longer stable and solid. It was very likely that the Great Deluge would rush out from this once-broken place. Although his sister was engulfed by the great flood, there was still a connection between her and the spaceship via this rope. If he followed it...

Before Ji Shanqing could finish this thought, he had already pushed the Exodus and rushed in the direction of the end of the rope.

Doing so was quite risky. It wasn't about Ji Shanqing possibly crashing into the surface of the sun; if he lost his sister, he wouldn't care about his own life. It was just that no one knew what the situation was on the other side of the Great Deluge. If he drove the Exodus headlong into Lin Sanjiu, then she might be utterly doomed.

When his impulsive chase passed, and he realized this, his limbs suddenly went weak, and he almost collapsed into the chair behind him.

"Sis," he muttered, his eyes seeing nothing but the endless, gentle, undulating light. It was as if he hoped that Lin Sanjiu would miraculously hear him. "Sis, please..."

The same dimensional rupture, the same Great Deluge, meant they should appear in the same place. Ji Shanqing, propping himself up with his hand, felt cold and weak all over, like he was waiting for judgment. It seemed to take an eternity for the sweeping flood of light to suddenly darken and recede from his sight.

What appeared in front of him was a large area of color rapidly approaching the Exodus.

The grand prize almost exploded with panic; it was evident that the spaceship was about to crash into something. In a hurried frenzy, he attempted to pull the ship up and turn it. He was unfamiliar with operating the controls, and only after a few intense minutes did he manage to lift the ship before it was destroyed. His heart was beating so violently that his whole body seemed to be shaking.

He was naturally timid, and after such a scare, it took a while for him to recover and slowly realize that something was wrong.

Exodus should have fallen into another layer of the universe. Whether he was now in space or on a planet's surface, he... he shouldn't see this scene.

The vast and massive Exodus, which usually took up a large mountain area, was now hovering between two closely packed tall buildings.

Indeed, they were the common tall buildings found in human society, looking like the very common old residential buildings in crowded big cities. Dirty air conditioning units hung under small, black hole-like windows; black water stains seeped into the walls, colorful clothes were draped on ropes outside the windows, scaffolding with green nets connected one after another, forming fragile ground between buildings that seemed to allow people to walk on.

Even Ji Shanqing couldn't figure out how Exodus could rush between residential buildings without breaking anything. He dared not go out rashly, so he kept looking out from various angles on the ship. The residential buildings were twenty or thirty stories high, crammed together, and the road below was narrow, allowing only two people to pass through at a time. Graffiti, vulgarities, and indecipherable words were painted on the walls near the road surface. Vegetable stalls, large garbage cans, people coming and going with groceries, all in such a narrow alley, chaotic and dense, but still well-ordered.

A woman with her curly hair happened to lean out of a window from the upper floor to the right of Exodus, glancing out at the sudden appearance of a snow-white, ring-shaped spaceship without any alarm. She lit a cigarette and began to puff clouds of smoke.

The grand prize was somewhat taken aback.

He hadn't expected that the Great Deluge would bring him to such a place, and Exodus itself seemed to have inexplicably shrunk, fitting perfectly between two buildings. Everyone on the ground and in the residential buildings must have seen the spaceship, but nobody gave it more than a glance.

'Is my sister here as well? Where... where is this? The people look so normal. Does that mean they're not ordinary posthumans?'

He tried to make contact a few times with his communicator, but it was like casting a stone into the sea; there was no other way but to go out and see for himself.

Ji Shanqing, always cautious, reviewed Silas's analysis report on the exterior of the ship, made some preparations, put on a single-person flight suit, and then descended to the ground from the exit below the ship. Just as when facing the ship, the people walking back and forth on the narrow road, who seemed no different from ordinary individuals, didn't give him more than a passing glance, even as he jetted down from midair.

He looked up, and under the high gray-blue sky, Exodus's shadow was shaped like a giant donut, its size seemingly unchanged. It was too large, divided by the cluster of buildings, so people could only see part of its body. From the ground's angle, it didn't look like it was stopped between two buildings but rather floating in the air.

What was going on? Even Ji Shanqing could not find the answer.

"You've become bold, making excuses to leave in the middle of piano practice." A woman's voice not far away made the grand prize instinctively turn his head. "Do you know how much a lesson costs me? You miss half a lesson, and that's throwing away one hundred and fifty dollars, do you understand?"

It was a weary-looking middle-aged woman, dragging a child who was lagging behind two steps. The sounds of the little girl's wet footsteps on the stone path, the rubbing of her mother's plastic bag, a man nearby calling for a taxi, and the myriad noisy, bustling, lively noises engulfed Ji Shanqing.

After the mother and daughter had turned the corner and disappeared, he turned his gaze back.

It was too real... just as if there had been no apocalypse. If this were the Twelve Worlds Centrum, it might explain why ordinary people were indifferent to him—but in the Twelve Worlds Centrum, there were no mothers taking their children to piano lessons.

Since he also didn't know which direction his sister had fallen, he would just randomly pick one. Ji Shanqing hesitated for a moment, looked around, and approached a fruit vendor nearby. "Excuse me, I'd like to inquire about something."

The vendor looked up from a tabloid magazine—it happened to be a posthuman as well.

"What do you want to know?" He closed the magazine with a headline blaring "Miscarried 3 times? Tycoon's Mistress Facing Dumping!" and placed a flip-flop-wearing foot on his knee, shaking it. Next to him, a radio was playing a song from somewhere; rows of apples, cherries, oranges, and various other fruits were displayed, enough to stun most evolved beings. In the post-apocalyptic world, fresh fruits and vegetables were rare and could sometimes be traded for a decent visa. This little stall casually laid out a large quantity.

"Did a tall woman fall from the sky around here just now? About this tall, with a bandage around her neck, wearing combat trousers?"

"Are you looking for a person?" The vendor seemed quite amiable, not minding Ji Shanqing holding up his business. But his words left Ji Shanqing momentarily taken aback. What else could that description be but a person?

"Yes, yes..."

"Oh," the stall owner slapped his knee, "let me think... Hmm, I don't know if she fell from the sky, but I do remember a woman walking past my stall not long ago, just as tall as you described, wearing combat trousers."

Things were going smoothly! The grand prize's heart lightened for a moment— but after listening for a few more seconds, it gradually sank again, as if being pressed into dark lake waters by a giant hand.

"Did she have a scar this big on her arm?" The stall owner gestured. "Looks like her hair hasn't been trimmed in a while, short and messy. She went that way more than fifteen minutes ago. You might not catch up with her."

How could he remember so clearly? Wasn't his sister just walking past his stall?

If he had been looking at his magazine all along, then remembering someone who had happened to walk by was already great luck for the grand prize. But in the span of a second or two, he noticed her hairstyle and the scar on her body?

To Ji Shanqing's confusion, the stall owner simply and matter-of-factly said, "Do you really need to ask? I have an exceptionally good memory."

Faced with such an answer, the grand prize was left speechless.

He thanked the stall owner, full of doubts, and turned away, leaving the vendor to continue reading his magazine. His face revealed nothing, but his heart bobbed like it was floating on water, unable to settle.

After walking in the bustling crowd for a while, he stopped.

He looked back over his shoulder.

A narrow alley paved with stones, sandwiched between rows of old buildings on either side, people bustling along it, faces coming and going; the haggling of vendors, distant car horns, neon advertisements lit up in the early evening, the greasy warmth from restaurant kitchens all together formed a most ordinary, mundane scene.

He turned again, looking ahead.

It seemed almost unreasonable because, before stepping to this spot, he had been looking forward without seeing anything out of place. It was only when Ji Shanqing reached this place and looked up that he suddenly found the city had disappeared, as if it had never existed.

What unfolded before him was a desert under the night sky.

A gigantic full moon hovered over the endless desert horizon, with stars twinkling in the black night. In front of Ji Shanqing, a line of solitary footprints was etched into the smooth sand, extending far into the distance.

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