Doomsday Wonderland

Cyrus couldn't have known that just a day before he reunited with Irezumi, Lin Sanjiu had also reconnected with her long-lost friends. After all, the odds of her finding Yu Yuan and the grand prize were much higher than Cyrus encountering his old acquaintance. Both of them were in the same world, and Lin Sanjiu had been relentlessly sending out messages to locate them.

For Yu Yuan and the grand prize to find her again was, logically, only a matter of time.

But Lin Sanjiu couldn't see it as inevitable; all she felt now was overwhelming joy, gratitude, and a lingering sense of fear. Standing on the sidewalk about ten meters away from the rental agency, she clutched her Beacon-Wolf Signal personal communicator tightly. The sweat in her palm made the small white device slippery.

When she learned that Yu Yuan had finally contacted Eight-Heads De, her initial shock lasted only a brief moment before relief washed over her like a tidal wave. It was such a blessing. This time, their separation had lasted only ten days, not an indefinite stretch of who knows when they'd meet again.

Lin Sanjiu was so overwhelmed that she momentarily forgot what she was doing. It felt as though her entire being was focused on waiting for the communicator to ring, to hear their voices again. How was the grand prize? Had he recovered? How had Yu Yuan landed safely after falling from the sky? Were they both okay?

1

Bee Sting, although unaware of who Yu Yuan and the grand prize were, noticed the importance of the situation from Lin Sanjiu's expression. She obediently leaned against the roadside railing and waited with her. After standing around on the street like a pair of vagrants for quite some time, Lin Sanjiu finally felt embarrassed and invited Bee Sting to a nearby tea house meant for travelers to rest and drink tea.

"You see these pricier teas here," Bee Sting said, scanning the menu, "it's said that after you drink them, the soul of the tea leaves will appear and provide a range of benefits... huh? You've tried it before?"

Not only had she tried it, but she had no desire to try it again. Lin Sanjiu could still recall the round tea leaves chatting, laughing, grumbling, and rolling around in her cup. Even after they disappeared, no matter how many times she drank tea, the leaves that appeared were never the same batch again.

When two ordinary drinks, an iced oolong and a hot milk tea, were set down on the table in front of her, Lin Sanjiu suddenly felt the communicator in her hand buzz.

No words could describe the way her heart pounded in that moment. She opened the white device as fast as she could and found a message from Eight-Heads De.

"Yu Yuan says you should have a specialized communicator for contacting someone named Ji Shanqing, right? He needs you to activate it."

In her haste, Lin Sanjiu nearly dropped the communicator as she scrambled to pull it out. Since pushing Yu Yuan and the grand prize off the ship, she had tried using the specialized communicator countless times, but it had always remained silent, like a useless piece of stone.

Now that it was working again, did that mean the grand prize was okay?

She forced herself to suppress the shadow of doubt lingering in the corner of her mind. If the grand prize was fine, why was it Yu Yuan who reached out instead?

What if, as a Veda, Yu Yuan didn't see saving the grand prize as his responsibility and simply hadn't bothered to rescue him?

Lin Sanjiu pushed the thought deep into the back of her mind.

Five minutes later, when Lin Sanjiu finally saw Yu Yuan's face again after so many days, the thought she had pushed deep into her mind surged sharply to the surface, impossible to ignore.

Yu Yuan had clearly made some modifications, as the communicator now displayed a live video feed of their conversation. Apart from looking a little fatigued, the Veda appeared almost exactly the same as before.

But Ji Shanqing wasn't in the frame.

Lin Sanjiu leaned forward, and the bustling noise of the tea house around her faded into a dull hum, like the buzzing of bees.

"Yu Yuan... where's the grand prize?" she heard herself ask, her voice trembling.

Yu Yuan's expression remained as flat as the gray wall behind him. "You've returned to normal after leaving the pocket dimension?" he asked, scrutinizing her.

"Yes... yes," Lin Sanjiu replied, her voice strained. She thought back to those days when she had been unrecognizable, then gestured toward Bee Sting beside her. "Thanks to her, I recovered."

Yu Yuan's gaze shifted briefly to Bee Sting before returning to Lin Sanjiu, his expression unchanged. It was as if he wasn't even surprised that, in such a short time apart, Lin Sanjiu had found herself another companion.

"Where's the grand prize? What happened to him?" she asked urgently.

"I have bad news for you," Yu Yuan said bluntly, showing no inclination to soften his words. "You won't be seeing Ji Shanqing again."

1

Her vision darkened for a moment.

If Lin Sanjiu hadn't already known rationally that the Ji Shanqing here was only a fragment of his being, while his true form floated somewhere in the depths of the dark universe, she didn't know how she would have reacted.

"What... what do you mean? What happened to him? Don't tell me you didn't—"

Yu Yuan cut her off. "When you pushed me down, I was holding the projection item that had trapped Ji Shanqing. I had no reason to let go of him, so I didn't."

So, he had saved the grand prize after all?

"Then where is he?"

Lin Sanjiu knew she should probably give Yu Yuan a chance to explain everything from the beginning. But the gnawing anxiety and fear inside her were unbearable. If she didn't say something, do something, she was afraid she wouldn't be able to handle it.

Yu Yuan thought for a moment, then suddenly bent down and disappeared from the screen for a few seconds. When he reappeared, Bee Sting, who had been watching the screen out of curiosity, couldn't hold back a half-stifled gasp, drawing the attention of several tea house patrons toward their corner.

Lin Sanjiu quickly waved her hand, using her Higher Consciousness to pull the curtain shut around their seats. Her eyes were locked on the screen, where a naked, flesh-colored human body was now visible—hairless, featureless, without any sexual characteristics or facial features. She shifted uneasily in her seat.

"What... what is this? What's going on?"

"You already know that the Ji Shanqing who's been traveling with you was just a sliver of his consciousness and energy," Yu Yuan said. He held the flesh-colored body by its arm, its limp head slumped forward onto its chest like a poorly made mannequin. "Even before you started traveling together, he was always running on low energy. The only reason he lasted longer than expected was probably his own willpower. Because returning this small fraction of himself to his main body would mean ending the time he had with you."

1

Lin Sanjiu was speechless.

"I won't comment on your actions that day. You already know what you did."

Even though the Veda had no emotions, she could almost swear there was blame in Yu Yuan's expression.

"After you pushed me off the ship, I landed safely and immediately started working on freeing Ji Shanqing from that projection item. But I quickly realized it wasn't possible."

"Why?"

"He was already barely holding onto a physical form. After that impact, he completely..." Yu Yuan paused, searching for the right word. "Dissolved."

Dissolved?

"At that moment, he completely broke apart, becoming nothing more than a pure mass of data in its most fundamental form." Yu Yuan seemed to struggle with the explanation. "Without consciousness or energy, it was just floating data—unstructured, inactive, belonging to no one."

Lin Sanjiu's entire body trembled. Bee Sting glanced at her worriedly.

"For the first week after we were separated, I was focused on extracting this data mass from the item safely, without causing any damage." Yu Yuan hesitated for a second before continuing, "Once I managed to extract it, I examined it closely and found that Ji Shanqing's data didn't just contain himself. It also included a male named Han Suiping and a female named Nu Yue. Correct?"

Lin Sanjiu nodded mechanically.

"If it had only been Ji Shanqing's data, it wouldn't have mattered if it remained scattered. His main body wouldn't have been significantly affected. But if those two people's data were lost, they'd be gone forever." Yu Yuan gave the body in his hand a small shake. "So, I made a temporary vessel and stored all of the data inside it. You can't see Ji Shanqing anymore, but his data—and the data of those two others—are now housed inside this body."   

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