Doomsday Wonderland

Rena explained that over the course of two years, they had endured countless moments of anxiety and failure.

Even without detailed explanations, Lin Sanjiu could imagine how overwhelming it must have been to put such a plan on track—the preparation, personnel, facilities, resources, and coordination required. The sheer complexity of it all felt suffocating to consider.

Although they called it a vaccine, it was entirely different from a traditional vaccine. The endless variables and unknowns involved made it far more complex than any real vaccine could ever be. How could one resist teleportation? Even that first question alone left Lin Sanjiu feeling as though she were lost in an ocean of uncertainty.

The corridor before her contained only five people in biohazard suits, but Rena said that countless others had been involved, both before and after. They had poured in immeasurable amounts of manpower and effort. Frustration and setbacks were daily occurrences. Progress often felt impossible; many times, they had to change direction, recover from losses, or even retreat entirely. Even though Rena had ensured that every researcher had the necessary visas, they still lost many people to the Great Deluge, individuals she had painstakingly gathered from across the doomsday world.

Some had suffered accidents while experimenting on themselves. Others had lost their lives during the research process. Most simply vanished without a trace during various missions. Even Rena didn't know what had happened to them. All she could do was recruit more people and keep sending them into what seemed like an endless black hole with no clear answers.

But today, they finally had an answer—or at least, they had never been closer to one.

"The guiding principles of this research were established years ago. They've been repeatedly tested and revised until the theory is now complete and viable," Rena said, her voice trembling slightly. She might not even have realized she was speaking. "As for the technical challenges and complexities, I can't explain them clearly... You probably wouldn't understand even if I tried."

Lin Sanjiu nodded, wanting to say something. But when she opened her mouth, she felt as though she had just stepped off a storm-tossed ship, dizzy and disoriented. If even she felt this way, how much more intense must it have been for Rena?

"This..." She hesitated for a long moment before finally finding her voice. "Is this real? Did you truly accomplish something this monumental?"

Back in the pocket dimension of the vacation villa, Lin Sanjiu had learned that the grand prize had once removed a participant's teleportation. That teleportation had been what brought her into the modern world. When they reunited later, she had asked the grand prize about teleportation, only to receive an unsurprising but still disappointing answer: even the Veda could not counteract the teleportation affecting humans.

The reasoning was simple. To remove someone's teleportation, the Veda first had to analyze that individual. This required knowing exactly when the person would be teleported, a nearly impossible task given the chaos introduced by the Great Deluge. Additionally, the Veda would need to identify the precise moment within the person's body when the teleportation reaction occurred, an entirely separate concept from the teleportation date. Finally, the teleportation itself needed to last long enough for the analysis to be completed.

Even if these conditions were miraculously met, there was a critical limitation: every time the person was supposed to teleport, a Veda would need to be present to repeat the process flawlessly. Any slight error would result in the person being thrown back into the endless doomsday world.

"That time with Crane, his teleportation lasted for several days, so I had plenty of time to intervene," the grand prize had explained to her, sighing. "But ideal conditions like that are far too rare. One in a million at best, and impossible to replicate."

That was the only time Lin Sanjiu had considered that teleportation might be preventable. After that, she had never entertained the thought again. Sometimes she couldn't even muster the energy to think about visas, feeling as though the Great Deluge had blanketed everything with an overwhelming sense of futility.

Yet from that foggy, gray wasteland of hopelessness, Rena had torn through the haze and found a path forward.

1

From the fragments of what Rena had shared so far and the implications of calling it a vaccine, it was clear that the solution found by the Shark Nexus didn't involve turning people into something else to prevent teleportation. After all, even transforming into a duoluozhong could temporarily prevent teleportation during its early stages, but that wasn't a meaningful solution.

What the Shark Nexus had accomplished was extraordinary: they had developed a way for a posthuman to resist teleportation without giving up their evolved abilities, without transforming into a non-human entity, and without altering their core will. They could remain powerful, remain themselves, and yet no longer be subject to teleportation.

2

The deeper Lin Sanjiu thought about it, the more astonished she became. If the vaccine truly worked, then the Shark Nexus had essentially combined the best aspects of posthumans and ordinary humans. Was this... was this really possible?

"In truth, the principle behind it isn't as difficult to understand as the process itself," Rena murmured, still sounding as though she were in a dream, even as the biohazard-suited workers returned to their tasks.

"What's the principle?" Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but ask. "And how is it connected to the factory's procedures? You might not know this, but I once sneaked into one of your factories and worked alongside a group of ordinary people—"

The fleeting expression on Rena's face made Lin Sanjiu stop mid-sentence.

She realized then that Rena knew. No wonder she had timed everything so perfectly. Just as Lin Sanjiu had been about to act against the biohazard-suited workers, she'd fallen into the Brain in a Vat scenario.

1

"When did you—"

Before Lin Sanjiu could finish her question, Rena shook her head, laughing softly. "That's not important right now. I told you to give me a chance to explain everything, didn't I? Let me start with the principle behind the teleportation vaccine."

It was clear that the Shark Nexus had explained this to others before. Rena led Lin Sanjiu to a room where she stepped into a vivid and realistic projection environment.

Even though it was only a projection, Lin Sanjiu could tell that the dark cloud suspended between two distant skyscrapers was a pocket dimension. Not all pocket dimensions were so immediately visible, but for various reasons, those that were easy to spot had still captured countless people.

"In the doomsday world, posthumans face two greatest risks: teleportation and pocket dimensions."

The unfamiliar voice startled Lin Sanjiu at first, but she quickly realized it was a pre-recorded message. The Shark Nexus had gone so far as to create a replayable projection presentation, like something out of a pre-doomsday corporate business pitch.

A question popped into her mind: Who was this presentation for? And what kind of people had seen it?

"After evolution, stable, settled lives became little more than a dream. But does that mean dreams can't be realized? When we began to consider how to resist teleportation, we had to focus on those who was immune to it—the ordinary humans unaffected by the Great Deluge. And then we discovered..."

As the voice continued, an ordinary-looking woman appeared from between the two skyscrapers in the distance, walking calmly and turning a corner, her expression unchanged. In stark contrast, a posthuman who had just walked past her vanished into thin air.

"Not only are ordinary humans unaffected by teleportation, but they are also generally not trapped by pocket dimensions. Even in the rare cases where pocket dimensions can capture ordinary humans, they are so few and far between that we haven't collected enough data to prove their prevalence. In the doomsday world, such pocket dimensions, if they exist, are negligible. The two unique dangers that posthumans face—teleportation and pocket dimensions—simply don't exist for ordinary humans. Given this shared trait, if we can't experiment on ordinary humans using the Great Deluge, can we use pocket dimensions as a substitute?"

1

At that moment, fragments of a conversation Lin Sanjiu had overheard in the factory suddenly resurfaced in her mind.

"As you know..."

She couldn't even remember who had spoken, but this line was etched into her memory.

"Pocket dimensions usually don't react to us ordinary humans..."

3

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!