Doomsday Wonderland

"How did you end up like this?" Cyrus asked, his tone tinged with disbelief.

Lin Sanjiu looked every bit like a disaster survivor straight out of a movie. Wrapped in a thick blanket and clutching a steaming cup, she hardly resembled her usual self. But this wasn't a gesture of comfort but an emergency measure. Beneath the blanket, she was clutching two portable heaters Cyrus had somehow scrounged up.

The aircraft wasn't large, but it was well-equipped and remarkably comfortable. In Cloudwalk Heights, it could even be considered a luxurious mode of transportation. Lin Sanjiu sat pressed close to a floor vent, letting the hot air blow into the blanket's interior, yet it still wasn't enough.

Even without a mirror, she knew her face must be pale and bluish, her lips purple. Though her skin temperature was gradually recovering, the cold seemed to seep from her very bones, leaving her shivering uncontrollably. She could barely manage a coherent response to Cyrus.

The cold winds she had endured high above were nothing compared to what she had faced after plunging into the depths of the smoky haze.

"I... I didn't expect..." Her teeth chattered so hard she nearly bit her tongue. "There... there were things in the haze... they freeze... to hunt..."

Those creatures froze their surroundings to trap prey, and Lin Sanjiu had fallen straight into their lair. Even recalling that agonizing half-hour, blurred in her memory from sheer trauma, made her mind feel as if it were icing over again.

Cyrus still looked incredulous. "So why didn't you just run?"

Try running when you're frozen solid in ice. Let's see how far you get.

Countless retorts swirled in her mind, but her frozen lips and stiff tongue wouldn't cooperate. Swallowing her frustration, she endured his remarks. Cyrus wasn't particularly nurturing, but fortunately, he had plenty of resources to keep her warm—hot water, heaters, and blankets. After all the effort, Lin Sanjiu's color finally began returning to normal. Even her damp hair, wet from the ice and snow she'd been forced to use earlier, had dried.

"So, in summary..." Cyrus said after listening to her account and thinking for a moment, "you went missing for so long, went through all that trouble, and still didn't figure out why the Shadow Hall teamed up with the old ladies to capture ordinary people."

His blunt words were a harsh reminder. She'd almost forgotten how unpleasant he could be.

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Lin Sanjiu scratched her face and shifted the topic. "Are you sure the Shadow Hall is working with the old ladies? What if they just happened to show up in Chimeric City?"

"I'm pretty certain about it," Cyrus replied, sitting in a chair and looking completely at ease compared to the disheveled Lin Sanjiu on the floor. "While you were sneaking back into Chimeric City, I wasn't idle either. Did you know there was recently a duoluozhong exhibit at the Twelve Worlds Centrum?"

Lin Sanjiu hadn't expected to hear that name here and now. "Not only do I know," she said with a wry smile, "I had a stroke of bad luck there. Didn't it already shut down? I heard about it on the broadcasts."

After she briefly recounted her experience, even Cyrus looked stunned. "It seems like bad luck follows you everywhere in the Twelve Worlds Centrum."

"Honestly, it's not just the Twelve Worlds Centrum," Lin Sanjiu admitted.

"In any case," Cyrus said with a wave of his hand, not knowing what else to say, "I learned from my insider sources that the Shadow Hall struck a deal with the duoluozhong exhibit. After the exhibit closed, they rented those duoluozhong and introduced them to Chimeric City, scaring off the local posthumans for good. At first, I didn't understand how they managed to control the duoluozhong. But now it seems each one likely had a Shadow Hall agent inside. That would explain why their actions were so restrained and didn't escalate into chaos. After retrieving the duoluozhong, they sent several ships to Chimeric City. Based on the timing, it happened right before you encountered the old lady. Shortly after your disappearance, the entire Chimeric City was sealed off. No one could enter or leave."

So the old ladies had arrived with the Shadow Hall.

Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment. "I just don't get it. They spread rumors, artificially created mutants, and even rented duoluozhong to drive out Chimeric City's governing organizations. They went to all that trouble just to capture the four or five thousand ordinary people in Chimeric City? But why?" Ṙä₦Ŏ₿Èȿ

Cyrus shrugged. "That's a question I was hoping you could answer for me."

"What about the people left in the city?" Lin Sanjiu, feeling better, crawled out of the blanket and turned off the heaters.

Cyrus's response shocked her. "There's no one left in the city."

"What?"

"I contacted Eight-Heads De," Cyrus explained. "There's still a subspace in the city holding some mutants, so I needed to warn him. Eight-Heads De barely escaped with his life—it's a long story, and I'll tell you later—but he said there's not a single ordinary person left in the city now."

"Not even one...?"

"He told me that after barely recovering enough mobility from his injuries, he immediately gathered all the ordinary people in the city into one place. He thought that keeping everyone together would allow them to look out for each other, and for a day or two, it worked. But when he woke up yesterday morning, he found himself alone at the gathering site," Cyrus said slowly. "He told me that every single person in the city had vanished. He wandered through Chimeric City searching for anyone, but the entire place was empty. Even the broadcasts he sent out disappeared into silence, with no responses."

They were probably all taken to the factory.

The Shadow Hall and the old ladies displayed an almost insatiable greed for ordinary people, not sparing even one.

Lin Sanjiu sat dumbfounded on the floor, her mind involuntarily conjuring a vivid image: an old lady walking through a crowd of sleeping people, each step she took causing one person to vanish. By the time she completed her circuit, the only one left behind was the still-unconscious Eight-Heads De.

Cyrus sighed. "I'll admit, I had my suspicions about him before, but now, I just feel sorry for him."

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Lin Sanjiu stared blankly for a while before Cyrus continued, "Eight-Heads De also asked me to tell you that he's done everything he could to send out the missing-persons messages you asked him to broadcast. He's spread them through every channel he could think of. He said he doesn't know if the people of Chimeric City will ever make it back safely, but he hopes that you, at least, will be able to find your missing friends and family."

2

Lin Sanjiu exhaled shakily, immediately pulling out her Beacon-Wolf Signal personal terminal. It wasn't that she didn't trust Eight-Heads De, but hearing the broadcast herself was the only way she could believe the flicker of hope in her chest was real.

The thought of returning to Exodus and possibly seeing Yu Yuan and the grand prize waiting for her made her feel as though a tight knot in her heart had suddenly loosened, letting blood flow back into it. Biting her lip, she could barely hold back the urge to rush back to Exodus at once. "What's our next move? I want to go back to the spaceship and check..."

If nothing else, she hadn't forgotten that Pete was still locked up on the ship. By now, it had been nearly ten days since she left. Even as a posthuman, Pete couldn't survive indefinitely without food. Eventually, he'd starve to death.

Cyrus fell silent for a moment.

"These past few days, I've been getting repeated messages from the organization, urging me to return immediately," he said at last. Seeing the look on Lin Sanjiu's face, he smiled faintly and added, "I know very well that once I go back, I probably won't get out again... So, since we've temporarily lost the factory's trail, I'll go with you for now. Didn't you mention needing a dismantler? I can take you to hire one."

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