There were no lights on in the second floor. The only light source came from the swaying flame that spilled through the windows on the wall, which were distant from one another, causing the entire corridor to fall into a limbo of light and dark. Peering outside through the window, the sky was red, looking as if somebody had spilled an entire bucket of red paint onto a canvas.
Both of them moved with bated bait up the stairs.
The door had been restored to its original condition. It seemed as if the fight had never happened here previously. Carefully and quietly, Lin Sanjiu pressed herself tight up against the door. She put one eye right up to the slit. First, she looked around, fearful that Mayor Orlean might somehow be watching her.
But the room was empty; there was no one there. Aside from the massive lifelike depiction of the black mountain that took up the entire wall, she could not see Mayor Orlean anywhere.
Lin Sanjiu turned over to Yu Yuan, frowning. Both of them then looked into the corridor at the same time and scanned over the row of office doors starting from the one furthest away from them.
Yu Yuan mouthed something, to which Lin Sanjiu replied with a nod of assent. She gripped her rifle tightly, the barrel feeling hot underneath her palm.
Yu Yuan cocked his rifle and nudged a door open. The door hinge was apparently well-maintained, being oiled from time to time. It glided off smoothly without making any noises. Inside the room, there was a huge couch and a coffee table; the floor was carpeted. They both examined the room for a second and realized that this room was connected to the office next door.
They continued their search down the rooms. When they arrived at the second to last door, both of them stopped.
There was a faint, almost indiscernible rattling noise, which sounded like marbles spilling onto a concrete floor behind the door.
It did not sound like anything like a human being, but more like the clattering of the wind when it blew through an unlatched window. Lin Sanjiu gestured to Yu Yuan to standby at the door. After that, she pushed the door open and scurried into the room.
The office was small. There was no window in there, and the entire room was occupied by row after row of massive filing cabinets that reached the ceiling and blocked out the light. The air was filled with dust motes, and the slight rattling noise continued to ensue.
Following the sound, she walked forward and went around a desk in the corner. Compared to the desk in Mayor Orlean’s office, this one looked small like a cage covered with four wooden plates. Then, as she raised her rifle, her gaze met with a man’s eyes.
The man was the largest man she had ever seen and she wondered how he managed to squeeze himself into such a narrow space. The man’s teeth were chattering, and it was now clear to Lin Sanjiu where the rattling noise was coming from.
Something flickered on the man’s face. Lin Sanjiu squinted her eyes and realized he was crying.
As the man shuffled underneath the table, Yu Yuan poked his head inside and asked, “Did you find anything?”
“Yes, there is a man over here,” Lin Sanjiu replied, her eyes fastened on the man. She had no idea why, but the way he squirming his body under the table gave her the impression of a sausage squeezing out of a sausage casing.
“Are you a staff member here?”
“Yes, yes..”
He had a face full of jowl, just like the other people in Peanut Town.
“Where is Orlean?”
“Mayor Orlean… is gone…” His watery eyes swiveled around in their sockets. When he caught sight of Yu Yuan, who was standing at the door, his face turned even paler and he shifted his gaze back to Lin Sanjiu. “But I don’t know where he went…”
He looked very scared, but something inside him prevented him from begging for his life. Rivulets of sweat were streaming down his face and pooling on the floor. He burped as he stared Lin Sanjiu down. There was something more complicated than fear flitting behind his eyes, and when Lin Sanjiu looked again, it disappeared.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Lin Sanjiu asked in a harsh voice, casting away the suspicion she had. The town hall had only two floors, and since they couldn’t find Mayor Orlean here, there was a huge probability that he had already run away.
“This morning. After our strolling session ended,” the man answered. He darted his gaze between Yu Yuan and Lin Sanjiu, who was holding him at gunpoint. He gagged from time to time, but he fought back the urge to puke. “I… You… ”
Yu Yuan walked into the room and began examining him, his brows furrowed. It was at this moment that Lin Sanjiu realized something was amiss. She took a few steps back and asked vigilantly, “What did you eat?”
The man refused to respond to the question. He pressed his mouth into a deep drawn-in line as he swallowed his saliva. Huge droplets of sweat oozed out profusely from his body and dampened his shirt in the blink of an eye.
Yu Yuan suddenly had a bad feeling as he shouted out, “Quick! Get out of here!”
“Mayor… made me… eat this…”
The man’s eyes rolled back. When he saw Lin Sanjiu and Yu Yuan rushing towards the door, all his fear evaporated and his face contorted into a rage.
“You—” He screamed, a mindless and rage-ridden scream that pierced through their eardrums. Lin Sanjiu couldn’t hear what he was saying because the moment they pounced into the corridor, the room behind them exploded.
Both of them were thrown into the wall by the blast. Shrapnel of wood and broken bricks hurled onto their bodies, causing them a lot of pain. Lin Sanjiu’s eyes went black for a moment. She couldn’t hear or see anything, and even her brain had gone on a strike and stopped working. There was only her soul, which kept trying to get out of her battered body.
No matter how fast they were, it was impossible for them to run away unscathed from a point-blank explosion.
When Lin Sanjiu finally felt the pain, she quickly rolled over to grab Yu Yuan. Even though they couldn’t feel much pain in the dream, she could still feel a splitting pain coursing across her entire body. Just as she was digging at the pile of rubbles, a hand shot up and grabbed her wrist.
“I… I am here.” Yu Yuan’s voice wafted out from below the half-destroyed wall, followed by his bloodied face. Even though he was not in good shape, he was still alive.
“What happened?” Lin Sanjiu opened her mouth and asked. A plume of dust saw its chance to rush into her mouth and nostrils, almost making her gag.
After she dry-heaved a few times to ease away the discomfort, she then continued to finish her question. “Did he eat a time bomb?”
“It seems so.”
She was stunned for a good while before realization dawned upon her.
If Mayor Orlean planted the bomb at a random location, there were two complications he needed to solve. First, he needed to know the exact time to detonate the bomb, and secondly, he had to make sure that both of them were in proximity of the blast when the bomb exploded.
However, things would be different if he used a human bomb. After all, he was certain that Lin Sanjiu and Yu Yuan wouldn’t let go of any person they found if they wanted to know his whereabouts.
“Are you alright?” Lin Sanjiu massaged her temple to lessen the dizziness. Truth to be told, she was quite surprised that both of them survived the explosion.
“Still alive.” Yu Yuan helped himself up by using his right arm. “Even though we are in a dream, we are still posthumans.”
Although they had lost their evolving abilities, their awareness of being posthumans had saved their lives. There was no way they would be injured by this kind of bomb if the explosion happened outside of the dream world. Hence, when they came across something they thought wouldn’t cost their lives, they wouldn’t die.
Enduring the throbbing pain that spread across her chest, Lin Sanjiu dug her hand underneath the rubble to fumble for her rifle. Just as the tips of her fingers touched a cold object, a deep and husky voice slid into her ears.
“Don’t move.”
Both Lin Sanjiu and Yu Yuan remained stunned for a long while. They looked into each other’s eyes, nodded, and slowly turned their heads back.
Due to the explosion, there was now a large hole in the wall of the last room. Right now, Mayor Orlean was standing behind the hole.
He pulled a pair of white barrels that resembled air cannons and put them on. There was no smile on his face as his words tumbled off his two fleshy lips. “Since neither of you is going to stand on my side, I think it is safe for me to say that you are against me?”
Neither of them replied. A dead silence ensued.
After a short while, Lin Sanjiu spoke, shattering the silence. “So you have been hiding in the last office room? As simple as that?”
“As simple as that?” Mayor Orlean harrumphed and narrowed his slanted eyes. “It might seem simple, but I knew that my plan was going to succeed. I already knew you were here the moment you stepped into this building. Also, I knew that you would start searching from the first room.”
The Reverie Libretto treated all its participants equally. Just like how it gave Lin Sanjiu a hint about the daily schedule of the police officers, in the same way, it also leaked their location and plan to Mayor Orlean.
“I don’t care about your storyline.” A ruthless and cruel expression crawled upon his face, and something danced behind his gaze, but Lin Sanjiu couldn’t be sure of what it was. “But don’t you dare interfere with my town.”
Lin Sanjiu raised her brows and asked, “What?”
“I said,” Orlean shook his head and blinked his eyes hard, “Don’t you dare interfere with my storyline.”
“What are you going to do if we interfere with your storyline?” Yu Yuan asked coldly, sitting in the pile of rubble. “Kill us?”
“It would be great if it were that simple, but unfortunately, no. I can’t kill you two yet, as I still need your librettos to finish my storyline.” A smile danced around Mayor Orlean’s lips. “However, I do have an idea on how to make you two give me less trouble.”
Then, he pointed out the two white barrels at each of them.
“You’ve seen this thing before, so you should be very familiar with it. All I have to do is dismember you. Without your arms and legs, there is nothing you can do.” The smile on his face grew significantly. “Moving forward, Peanut Town will evolve into its ultimate form and I will accomplish my mission.”
