Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The never-ending darkness continued to shroud the cemetery. All furniture stood quietly in the dark, their undulating outlines merging together and creating a strange shape. The commotion they caused should have been loud enough to notify the highest god. However, Lin Sanjiu had no idea why he did not show up.
It was impossible that he did not hear it. This furniture cemetery was created by him to trap and cause trouble for the posthumans, so how was there any possibility that he would be affected by something that came out of his own hand?
Why wouldn’t he show up?
While it would not have taken long for the grand prize to solve the mystery, Lin Sanjiu had to waste more time before she finally reached the answer. The highest god’s target was never her alone. For the highest god, the wounded Puppeteer was clearly a better target.
With that thought in mind, she threw a surreptitious gaze at the shadow that belonged to Eggy.
The boy’s emaciated body created a strange and eerie silhouette in the night. His chalky white complexion, scaly skin, and pair of bulging eyes gave Lin Sanjiu the vibe that he was a duoluozhong rather than a child.
Lin Sanjiu gulped silently as the image of Wang Sisi came with unbridled clarity into her mind.
She looked at Eggy again.
The boy had been wandering in the Olympics for so many years. He did not get transferred away since he wasn’t a posthuman and did not own any abilities. However, Lin Sanjiu had no idea whether a visa could work on an ordinary person or not. If she could confirm this point, then she would be able to tell whether Eggy was lying or telling the truth. Be that as it may, she had felt a pulse when she grabbed his ankle, so the probability of him being a duoluozhong was pretty…
The boy did not know the things that were going on in Lin Sanjiu’s brain. He nestled in a single sofa. His stomach rose and fell with labored breaths.
From his description, the person he saw was no doubt Puppeteer.
Puppeteer had long finished his evolution, but he did not regain his consciousness because he was too severely injured. After Polva carried him into the furniture cemetery, they did not come across any medical appliances, and neither of them knew how to treat a wound of such severity, so how was there any possibility that Puppeteer would suddenly awake? And where was Polva now?
“That person you saw,” Lin Sanjiu pitched her voice low and asked, “Can you tell me which direction he went?”
Eggy opened his lips, and the stench in the air thickened. He swiveled his two large eyes around before saying haltingly, “He… He…”
Lin Sanjiu squinted her eyes so that she could better see his figure in the dark. “What is wrong with him?”
“He is dead, sister.”
“He is dead?” Lin Sanjiu rose to her feet. “What do mean he is dead?”
Eggy gave a little start and began to stutter again. “The people here… They walk around after they die. I, I have seen a lot of them…”
Lin Sanjiu was stunned for a second.
“How could a dead man walk around? By the way, why are you so sure that he is dead?”
Eggy climbed down the couch. It seemed that the two questions were too hard for his little brain to process. After he hummed and hawed for a brief moment, he then continued in a low voice, “Because he walked like this…”
With those words, his large head suddenly dropped to his chest. His neck seemed broken. And as he dragged his feet across the floor, he released a harsh grating noise into the air.
The hair on Lin Sanjiu’s head horripilated as she took a step back. When her back bumped into a chest of drawers, Eggy raised his head, and his figure returned to normal.
“He walked like this,” said Eggy. Since he had no idea how to express himself, he just kept repeating the words. “Some of the dead men are not like this, but he was like this. His feet were like this.”
As he spoke, he twisted his toe and pressed the back of his foot on the floor.
Lin Sanjiu looked at him through squinted eyes full of suspicion. She remained silent for a long while, clutching tightly to her card until its sharp edge left a print on her palm. Only then did she begin to speak again, “I don’t care if he’s dead or alive. Just tell me where he went.”
“Alright, then.” With that, Eggy raised his finger and pointed to a direction. “That way.”
Following his finger, Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help but feel a tingling sensation that spread across her head. As she tried to ignore the fear that suddenly ballooned in her chest, she pressed on, “Are you saying he went behind that wardrobe?”
“No, not there. It’s inside. He went into the wardrobe,” the boy in the dark replied, looking at her straight in the eye, “He opened the wardrobe and walked into it.”
The darkness suddenly seemed heavy. It was at this moment that Lin Sanjiu felt her heart clench.
‘He went into the wardrobe?”
“He did not come out anymore,” Eggy continued to say in a low voice. “Are you going in too, sister?”
The wardrobe was nearly two and a half meters high. Its shadow was huge in the dark. Standing in front of the wardrobe, even though their surroundings were pitch-black, Lin Sanjiu could still feel the boy’s intense gaze bore into her body.
Lin Sanjiu stretched her arm forward to reach the wardrobe. Then she rested her palm on the handle but did not open it. “Other than the man, who else did you see?” she asked, staring straight at Eggy.
“Many. Most of them were dead and always walk around here. But that man… This is the first time I saw him here.”
The entire furniture cemetery was quiet like a pool of dead water. Lin Sanjiu could hear nothing but the whistle of the wind.
“How come I didn’t see any dead people?”
“They’re not always outside,” Eggy replied, “Sometimes they crawl under the furniture, just like how you did before.”
Lin Sanjiu felt goosebumps all over her skin. Her brain was a quagmire of confusion, and she did not know what she should ask.
‘Is he talking about duoluozhong in the Olympics?’
“Okay, I get it,” Lin Sanjiu answered dryly, “Then, I won’t be going in for now. I will look around outside for my other friends.”
Eggy did not reply.
Even though Lin Sanjiu did not fully believe in Eggy, she could not ignore the wardrobe.
She summoned a small knife and used it to draw a mark on the door of the wardrobe. Throughout the entire process, she studied the boy through the corner of her eyes. After that, she leaned her body to one side and inched past an aquarium that was as large as she was.
Eggy tried to follow, but with his poor physical health, it did not take him too long before exhaustion began to set in and his pace grew slower and slower.
“You sit here, and don’t move around,” Lin Sanjiu intervened, “I’m just going to check and see if I can find my friend.”
The boy then gurgled something that Lin Sanjiu did not understand. He remained standing in his spot and saw Lin Sanjiu off.
Lin Sanjiu did not walk too far away. After she squeezed herself through the center of a few tables, she found more and more furniture blocking her path. She could still see a road when she first came here, but now the road had disappeared, drowned out by the sea of furniture that laid haphazardly about the area. As Lin Sanjiu navigated herself by slotting her feet between the crooks of the pieces of furniture, she did not let down her guard behind her. She did not know where she was heading aside from knowing that she was getting further and further away from the wardrobe. The silver beam from the [Ability Polishing Agent] was out of her sight. She had no idea whether somebody took it, or if it had been consumed by the perpetual darkness.
Then, she arrived in front of a stack of dining tables. Several huge cabinets of unknown usage filled the rest of the space. There were some lamps, telephones, and whatnots slotted in between the slits of some furniture or above a cupboard.
There weren’t any paths around, save for the mawing dark hole underneath the dining table.
