Chapter 183: Bamboo Grove Mountains
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
Get down… what?
Lin Sanjiu stared vacantly at the newspaper in her hands, unable to recover from her shock even after some time.
“Please tell me it’s not what I suspect.” She felt drained. She plopped down on the seat and uttered quietly to herself, “Didn’t this train protect me from those group of children and that teacher?”
But, she wasn’t sure. After all, this world was really too strange. Lin Sanjiu wasn’t even sure what sort of apocalyptic world it was. “I think I heard the name of this world somewhere…” Lin Sanjiu frowned, but she couldn’t recall where she heard that name before even after thinking about it for a long time. At wit’s end, she mumbled, “Should I use my Consciousness Mimicry?”
“Maybe, Nuwa could understand this world in a split second.”
With this thought, she realized that that ability was indeed quite an incredible cheat.
“No, no.” Mrs. Manas’ voice suddenly sounded in her head without any warning. Lin Sanjiu was already high-strung, so when she suddenly heard that voice the silent train carriage, she leaped up in fright. “Lin Sanjiu, you don’t have sufficient higher consciousness now to imitate Nuwa’s thought process.”
Lin Sanjiu didn’t know she could feel this fortunate just being able to speak to someone…
Even if Mrs. Manas wasn’t a real person or a normal one, Lin Sanjiu felt comforted. Cherishing every word Mrs. Manas said, Lin Sanjiu asked needily, “Why is it insufficient? I managed to activate it previously. Can my higher consciousness get lesser and lesser? And, what happened in the classroom that time?”
Mrs. Manas hemmed and hawed for some time and avoided answering her questions, “Well, even though your situation is very strange, there are matters I have to settle using your higher consciousness… Anyway, if you activate your ability and imitate Nuwa, you would enter a comatose state after using it for a few seconds.”
Lin Sanjiu instantly gave up on that idea. There was no way she could allow herself to lose consciousness in this strange place. She wanted to talk more to Mrs. Manas. She wanted that teacher to explain everything to her properly. Sadly, she found that her mindscape was now empty. No one answered her.
Once again, she found herself enveloped by loneliness. After she evolved, and after that experience with Nuwa and those ‘Neuhumes’, she rarely felt this emotional.
Before she met up with B.Rabbit and his gang, there were days when she felt so calm and rational that even she thought that it was abnormal.
Yet, this was one of those rare occasions where she felt very jittery. The extraordinary calmness that she once displayed had disappeared without a trace during her time here, but Lin Sanjiu missed it. If she could just calm herself down, if she wasn’t so high-strung, she would have thought up of a strategy to deal with this a long time ago.
The tear on the green cover of the seat made it uncomfortable for her to sit. The train carriage was very quiet and empty—but this felt like an illusion, as if someone had purposely held his or her breath to create this false sense of “peace”.
Unfortunately, there was no one around, except Lin Sanjiu.
She was a little scared and anxious. On top of that, she was also troubled by the large warning written on the newspaper. She decided to flip through the newspaper so that she could make some noise to create a slightly livelier atmosphere in the train. The picture which scared her belonged to a ‘ Tenebraelogist 1 ‘— this was obviously a word only used in this world.
To calm herself, Lin Sanjiu compulsively forced herself to ignore that warning and started reading the article. Thankfully, the newspaper was also in Chinese. Even though she was unfamiliar with some words and sentences, she got the main gist of it. It turned out that this Tenebraelogist called Le Bon had a great reputation and received many accolades internationally in the past. That was until he published a paper which shocked the whole world and created mass hysteria for some time.
However, even after a few years, Le Bon’s prediction did not come true. Other tenebraelogists stood out to question his theory. In the end, he became a joke. The angry mob destroyed his house, and he was fired from work. When the forty-plus-year-old Le Bon appeared on the television again, he looked like a slightly deranged old man. Even this article which featured an exclusive interview with him was written with the intention to mock him. The article ended with the famous line he uttered on tv that scared everyone.
“The dark matter invasion will occur. It is just a matter of time. When the world ends, I will only rescue my believers!”
The words on the newspaper were very clear and the newspaper had not even turned yellow. Lin Sanjiu closed the newspaper and sighed. The apocalyptic event had already descended upon this world, and that Le Bon was probably right. Lin Sanjiu wondered if he was really still alive somewhere in this world…
“But, what did he mean by ‘dark matter invasion’? “
Lin Sanjiu had never even heard of the many terminologies used in the article. Naturally, she couldn’t fully understand the article. After putting down the newspaper, there were still many unanswered questions in her head, but she felt a little less anxious.
The train continued traveling with the same familiar sounds as it ran on the tracks. It swept past the scenery of the city and the residential buildings… Other than the fact that no one was around, everything seemed very normal. Gradually, there were fewer and fewer buildings around. Lin Sanjiu spent two uneventful hours on the train before it finally arrived at Bamboo Grove Mountains Station.
After the train doors opened, Lin Sanjiu stood at the side of the doors and looked outside. Her heart quickly fell back to its normal pace. There weren’t any buildings near the station and there weren’t any people with weird expressions… The train station was clean. There were a few stalls selling souvenirs and snacks. Looking through the glass walls of the train station, she could vaguely see a mountain in the distance.
Apart from the odd silence, and the fact that no one was around, the train station seemed to be a normal station at a sightseeing location. After thinking for some time, Lin Sanjiu finally stepped out of the carriage and onto the platform. The reason why she alighted wasn’t due to the warning on the paper—those words were too contradictory and came with no explanation so she couldn’t rely her judgement over her situation based on that information. To Lin Sanjiu, staying on the train wasn’t a long-term plan. Additionally, she had enough of the cold and wanted to look for a winter coat as soon as possible.
Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help feeling uneasy as she turned back to look at the train carriage behind her. After all, the train provided her some protection previously and it was certainly difficult for her to leave that safe spot.
“I hope I made the right decision.”
There was no way an empty train could respond to her. The train doors closed and the train rumbled off into the distance after a whistle. She was left alone on the platform. She looked around and easily spotted the exit. It led to a road outside, so Lin Sanjiu wasn’t worried that she couldn’t get out. Unfortunately, it was unbearably cold outside. She quickly ran to the stall near the exit and grabbed a few vests with the words ‘Bamboo Grove Mountains’ and wore a few of them on her body. However, that didn’t really warm her. They were too thin and her arms were still exposed to the frigid wind. Lin Sanjiu shivered uncontrollably as she wrapped up the food and beverages she found in the stall and converted them into a card. Then, she ran out of the train station. The scenic landscape waited for her silently.
