Doomsday Wonderland

Lin Sanjiu thought that if Bee Sting Venom had a choice, she'd probably grow two antennae on her head: whenever faced with a situation, she'd extend them first to probe the surroundings.

1

Right now, she could almost feel those invisible antennae cautiously testing Lin Sanjiu's proposal.

"Memories... can be altered?" Bee Sting Venom asked, hesitantly dragging the wet towel down her arm. Without noticing, a small piece of semi-dried skin flaked off and fell into the bucket. "It's... it's not your black smoke, is it? The one that wrapped around someone's head? I saw it."

Lin Sanjiu gave a wry smile. Even if the tour guide returned to normal, they weren't exactly close, and she was still under the duoluozhong's influence. Convincing her to hand over her mind for tampering wouldn't be easy.

"Of course not," she explained patiently. "I don't actually have black smoke that can corrode brain neurons."

To demonstrate, she activated [The Power of Word Picture] and went through the process again. When materials were sufficient, she could temporarily create or alter substances through description. As soon as Bee Sting Venom saw Lin Sanjiu's entire head vanish into black smoke, she panicked. "You don't need to use your own head—"

"It's fine," Lin Sanjiu said, waving her off. "What you're seeing is just normal air transformed into black smoke through my ability. It's harmless."

Bee Sting Venom leaned in, her golden eyes peering through the smoky haze like fireflies in a foggy night. "Really?"

"I didn't have anything to fight against R Chen at the time, so I used two unrelated objects to put on a show," Lin Sanjiu said, dispelling the smoke. "I wanted R Chen to believe that the body with the black smoke was his own, while the smokeless one was safe to absorb. The experience hall was dim enough that he couldn't see clearly and didn't know I could remove the smoke at any moment. It worked, didn't it?"

"I never would've guessed you were that quick-witted," the tour guide said. "So what will you use on me? Why do you have so many Special Items? Are you... rich?"

Compared to Bee Sting Venom, Lin Sanjiu suddenly felt she might actually be wealthy. She coughed awkwardly, not wanting to highlight the difference. "Not... not really. Are you done wiping? Put your clothes on first, and I'll call him out to explain."

1

The guide looked confused but nodded.

Posthumans born after doomsday, whether male or female, didn't seem to care much about privacy. A body was just flesh, and there were countless people who died exposed on the streets, living day by day. She casually picked out clothes, her bare back to Lin Sanjiu, utterly unfazed. Lin Sanjiu, on the other hand, felt like she was sitting on needles.

Once they had cleaned up and disposed of the dirty water, Lin Sanjiu realized she couldn't summon Ah Quan's pocket dimension without a target. Not even if she aimed it at herself.

Out of options, she handed the card representing Ah Quan's pocket dimension to the tour guide and explained it as best she could. The guide, cautious and skeptical, had plenty of questions. They went back and forth for nearly ten minutes. "I'm already late to meet the tour group anyway," she said. "Might as well clear this up first."

By the time she finally agreed, Lin Sanjiu's palms were sweating.

Blurring Bee Sting Venom's memory wasn't difficult, yet she felt an inexplicable reluctance to face Ah Quan.

Even though Ah Quan never said it, after altering her memories, had he been waiting for her to re-enter the pocket dimension and restore them? She kept delaying... Was he disappointed in her?

On reflection, he had exercised great restraint in modifying her mind. Lin Sanjiu vaguely knew which memories had been altered. For instance, she remembered experiencing others' memories during her last visit to the pocket dimension, but she had no recollection of whose memories they were or what had happened in them.

Similarly, she intended for Bee Sting Venom to retain the experience of accidentally entering a duoluozhong's mind but to forget the disturbing details that could shatter her sanity.

"I'm ready," the tour guide said nervously, clutching her pants tightly as she sat on the bed. "It's not scary, right? That NPC Ah Quan... does he look like a person?"

He was a person.

Lin Sanjiu muttered to herself and, standing in the corner of the room, tossed the compressed cube of the pocket dimension toward the guide sitting on the bed. The air shimmered almost imperceptibly, like sunlight softened by a breeze. In the next moment, Ah Quan materialized in the center of the room, his back to her.

The guide took a sharp breath, eyed him uneasily for a moment, then gradually relaxed.

Ah Quan couldn't turn his head to see who had summoned the pocket dimension. From his posture, Lin Sanjiu felt he seemed momentarily surprised upon seeing Bee Sting Venom—perhaps he hadn't expected a stranger to be the target. Or maybe that was just her imagination.

"Please blur the details of her memory after she entered the duoluozhong's mind, removing the negative effects... just like you did when you altered mine. No need to make her forget she was altered," Lin Sanjiu said, subtly revealing who was standing behind him.

Ah Quan's shoulders visibly relaxed as he exhaled.

A hazy expression clouded the guide's face. In a daze, she stood up and approached Ah Quan. The scene played out like a silent film. As Ah Quan extended his hands, she trembled, nodded, and wept, her tears mingling with a fragile hope as she placed her hands in his.

As Lin Sanjiu expected, this task was simple for Ah Quan. He finished altering the guide's memory quickly.

When she retracted the pocket dimension, her final worry dissipated. If there had been even a sliver of duoluozhong consciousness within the guide, all its memories would have been laid bare before Ah Quan. His lack of any reaction or surprise confirmed that he had seen only the guide's memories.

"Bee Sting Venom? How do you feel?" Lin Sanjiu asked softly.

The guide wiped away her lingering tears and smiled. "Don't keep calling me by my full name," she said, her voice light and relaxed. "Just call me Bee Sting. That's what my friends call me."

She took a deep breath. "Was I really troubled by duoluozhong thoughts? I don't remember a thing... I feel the same as before, just a bit curious."

Good; that was a relief. Watching Bee Sting undergo the memory alteration stirred some vague emotions within Lin Sanjiu, a flurry of thoughts rushing to the surface. Just as she was sorting them out, a knock sounded at the door.

The cramped corridors of the Great Array Cluster were always bustling with footsteps, so Lin Sanjiu was used to the noise. But the knock startled both of them. They exchanged glances, suspicion and worry rising between them.

Had Gisa not held out? But that didn't make sense. How could the duoluozhong exhibit organizers have found the guide's home so quickly?

"Wh-who is it?" Bee Sting asked, her voice tight.

"Miss Bee? Did you send a message earlier looking for an item-dismantling craftsman?" a stranger's voice replied from outside.

Before Lin Sanjiu could ask what an "item-dismantling craftsman" was, Bee Sting's shoulders relaxed, and color returned to her face.

"I almost forgot," she said, embarrassed. "I sent out a message on the comm channel asking for a craftsman to help unlock those iron chains on you. I didn't evenremember I'd left my address. I thought we'd get home right away, but we got delayed by the duoluozhong. This guy's slow too, only just arriving now. I'll send him away."

"No, wait," Lin Sanjiu said, sitting cross-legged on the floor. "I actually need someone like that. Can he disable Special Item effects?"

"I'll ask him." Bee Sting opened the door.

The item-dismantling craftsman was clearly better off than the tour guide. The young man standing at the door seemed out of place in the cramped, cell-like room. When the door opened, even he appeared slightly taken aback.

"Ah, yes," the young man responded politely after Bee Sting asked her question. "It depends on the Special Item, but my success rate is pretty high. Over 70%."

That rate seemed impressive. Bee Sting nodded approvingly. "Are you affiliated with any organization? What should we call you?"

"My surname is Wu, and I'm with the Sea Crab Group," he replied, handing her a small token that seemed to be some kind of credential. After checking it, she asked for the price. Seeing that Lin Sanjiu had no objections, they quickly made an arrangement: Bee Sting needed to return to her tour group to handle the aftermath, while Lin Sanjiu could take Wu along to remove the Special Item's effect. They would part ways for now, but a bond had been formed. Once things settled down, they could meet again.

1

Before the guide left, Lin Sanjiu had one last request.

After asking Wu to wait in the hallway, she closed the door and steadied herself. The guide looked puzzled. Making this decision was hard. As Lin Sanjiu held out the small pocket dimension cube, her reluctance, doubt, and hesitation almost made her refuse to let go.

Just as Bee Sting had once taken a chance and trusted her, Lin Sanjiu was now taking a chance on Bee Sting.

"What?" Bee Sting asked in surprise. "Why are you giving this to me?"

"I want... you to use it to attack me," Lin Sanjiu said slowly, each word a struggle. "Ah Quan altered and blocked many of my memories. The only way to recover them is to be attacked by the pocket dimension again. The me you see now isn't the real me... or rather, it's just a small part of who I used to be. I think it's time."

Summoned for the second time that day, Ah Quan smiled faintly when he saw that the target was Lin Sanjiu.

It was as if two old friends had arranged to meet. She was late, but she had finally arrived.

Regaining her memories wasn't as shocking as she had expected. It was like wandering in a dark, narrow space, thinking it was a safe corner. When her lost memories lit up one by one, and the false memories receded to the horizon, she blinked and found herself standing on a vast grassland. The way home had always been right there.

2

"Fortunately," Ah Quan said, sighing softly when it was over, "you didn't become a permanent entry in the memoir."

1

He must have felt fear and regret too. After all, given the outcome of his memory alteration, expecting her to willingly re-enter the pocket dimension was contradictory.

Bee Sting casually handed the pocket dimension cube back to Lin Sanjiu. Realizing she couldn't delay any longer, she said a gentle goodbye while Lin Sanjiu was still dazed.

After Bee Sting left, Lin Sanjiu remained standing in the cramped, shabby room. In the fading light filtering through the window and the waves of memories crashing like tides against the shore, she stared blankly ahead.

'What have I done?' she thought with a bitter smile.

When she snapped out of it, she carefully checked her card inventory. Her supplies had suffered considerable losses in the Playing House pocket dimension. Aside from a small amount of clean water and some canned food, she left a bag full of red crystals, a [Four Generations Living Under One Roof Refrigerator], a small lighting tool, and a few books she had read to the grand prize and found interesting herself.

Once she felt everything was in order, she realized she had spent at least half an hour in the room, including the time needed for the pocket dimension to take effect.

But she also knew half an hour was nothing.

When Lin Sanjiu opened the door, the craftsman was still waiting in the hallway outside.

"Let's go," she said softly, looking at Wu Yiliu.

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