In the next few days, Lin Sanju tried to make herself as busy as possible.
She went to Black’s Market and stocked up plenty of repairing tools and raw materials. After that, assisted by Yu Yuan, she began fixing Exodus. She also drenched the entire cell over and over again with bleach, to the point that the air in Exodus was laced thick with a pungent smell. It often took her nearly a day each time she went out for check-in. This was because she tended to while away her time at Black’s Market or Mokugyo Forum. Once she was done with all her chores, she would use the rest of her time to master her piloting skill.
However, no matter how packed her daily schedule was, she had to return to her room at night and face the [Hey? Sis] alone.
She hadn’t been in touch with Ji Shanqing ever since she left the Data Streams Library. She had no idea why, but the longer she waited, the more edgy she got and the harder it became for her to call him. She’d summoned up her courage and reached for the card several times, yet she still couldn’t bring herself to call out to him. There was one occasion where she had already activated the communication device, but she turned it back into a card the second the connection was established.
The atmosphere of the room was cozy. A warm spray of light shed on the communication device. It glistened back, giving Lin Sanjiu a glimpse of her own reflection on the shiny surface. Her hair was wet and her face was blank.
‘The grand prize must be worried sick,’ Lin Sanjiu thought. ‘He wouldn’t know I hadn’t turned the communication device back into a card for the past few days, so he must be waiting for me to call him. If I really contact him…’
Just as her mind wandered at sea on what action she should undertake, somebody rapped on her door and pulled her out of her thoughts.
“Come in.” Lin Sanjiu rubbed her wet hair with a bath towel before tossing it aside. She wasn’t offended by Yu Yuan’s intrusion; in fact, she was quite relieved that he appeared at this moment and saved her from making any decision. When Yu Yuan walked into her room, she asked, “What brings you here? Why haven’t you slept yet?”
“I can’t sleep,” Yu Yuan answered as he threw himself onto a chair. The royal blue of his tattoos was a stark contrast to his fair skin. He chuckled, “I was living hand to mouth for the past few years. Maybe I still need some time to adjust to my new role as a fat cat.”
Before Lin Sanjiu threw the man out of Exodus, she rummaged through his body and experienced the delight of foraging from others. At the end of the day, she found three Special Items, each of them pretty powerful in their own right, and the red crystals she paid to buy Exodus. She was confident that she was not the first victim, and the man’s wealth was clearly far greater than this. He must have scattered most of his properties across the Twelve Worlds, but it had nothing to do with Lin Sanjiu anymore.
To show her gratitude, she gave Yu Yuan a Special Item and half of the red crystals. Woyu had taken the glove away with him, so there was only one Special Item left for her—[The Power Of Word Picture].
Pushing the communication device aside, Lin Sanjiu offered him a grin. “Do you have anything in mind that you want to buy?”
“Visa,” Yu Yuan answered. He peeled his eyes away from the communication device and looked at Lin Sanjiu. “You haven’t contacted your brother yet?”
“Not yet.” Lin Sanjiu did not wish to stick to this topic, so she nodded and changed the subject. “Indeed, the visas to the Twelve Worlds often have a relatively greater demand compared to the visas to other worlds. If you really want to…”
Before she could finish her sentence, Yu Yuan interrupted, “No, I don’t want to come back to the Twelve Worlds.”
Lin Sanjiu was dumb-struck. “Then, where do you want to go?”
Yu Yuan brought his two eyebrows together, looking a little bit flustered. He had always been cool-headed and calm even if he was in an emergency situation. This was Lin Sanjiu’s first time seeing such an expression on him.
Lin Sanjiu snapped her mouth shut. She looked into Yu Yuan’s eyes and didn’t say anything. There were a few seconds of awkward silence before Yu Yuan sighed and spoke up. “I want you to know that I didn’t mean to pry into your affair.”
“What do you mean?”
“The next world that I want to go to,” the young man said, “is the Salvation of God or the Olympics.”
It was never in Lin Sanjiu’s wildest dream that Yu Yuan wanted to go to the Salvation of God and the Olympics.
‘Does he not know how dangerous it is in the Salvation of God? Why does he still want to go there?’
“Why… Why do you want to go to those worlds?”
Yu Yuan rubbed his face and let out a nervous sigh.
“Even though you didn’t tell me the whole story about parting ways with your younger brother, I more or less guessed it anyway.” Yu Yuan clasped his hand together, his eyes fixing on his shoes. “You said that after you flew through the atmosphere of the Salvation of God, you arrived at the Olympics. You had spent a total of 14 months to travel both worlds, but when it was time for you to be transferred to the next world, your brother was left there… Am I right?”
Lin Sanjiu gave a slight start. She tried to control her expression, but to no avail. She could feel Yu Yuan’s intense gaze boring into her body. “He went to the same world with you, but he still stayed in that world after 14 months.” Yu Yuan paused for a second to catch a breather before continuing, “Am I right?”
Lin Sanjiu stared fixedly at him. She had no idea when she had given herself away.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Yu Yuan smiled bitterly and said, “You trust me so much that sometimes you inadvertently leave some clues here and there. I captured them, linked all the dots together, and worked out the entire story on my own. I know it is rude to stick my nose into somebody’s affairs, especially if it is something that you are reluctant to tell, but if it wasn’t much of a big deal, I probably wouldn’t have brought the topic up. I would have just pretended that I don’t know anything.”
Yu Yuan knew where to stop and where not to cross the line. Lin Sanjiu found it extremely hard to be angry or lie to him.
She finger-combed her hair to the back of her head and let out a sigh. “I didn’t want to lie to you,” said Lin Sanjiu through a muffled voice. “Yes, you are right. He remained in that world even after 14 months passed. He… he is not my brother. We are not related by blood, and to be honest, I don’t even know whether or not I should use a masculine noun on him…”
“So it is real!” Yu Yuan’s eyes glowed. “I—I hope I can become like him!”
“The place he stayed is not one of the Twelve Worlds. You might not like it, and you probably wouldn’t want to pay the same price as him…”
“You don’t understand,” Yu Yuan suddenly closed his eyes and threw his body back into the chair, “I have been fraught with fear ever since I met you, and the feeling is becoming more and more intense lately.”
Lin Sanjiu raised her head. She blinked her eyes, unable to understand. “Why?”
“Because of that woman,” Yu Yuan lowered his head and examined his own fingers, his voice laced with an apparent trepidation, “The woman that asked me to bring you a message.”
‘Nüwa? What has this got to do with her?’
“I’ve only told you half of the story. Now it is time to tell you the other half,” the young man said. Suddenly, a blank expression graced his face as if he was tangled up in his own memories. “It is a conversation between her and someone else, which I happened to overhear. The topic of their conversation was very complicated and vague, to the point that I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming at the time. Hence, I put it to the back of my mind and didn’t think too much about it.” Yu Yuan paused. He then raised his head and held Lin Sanjiu’s gaze. “Until I met you. It’s only then that I realized what she said might really come true.”
Lin Sanjiu didn’t rush him. The communication device shimmered softly under the embrace of the light.
“The deluge is coming.”
‘The deluge?’
Yu Yuan then closed his eyes. His eyelashes fluttered as he spurted out everything he heard.
“Humans are a kind of germs to a planet, and we spread across the universe like a tumor. Doomsday is not the end of the world. It could, at most, be counted as a disaster, as there are always survivors. Evolving abilities are the ‘drug resistance’ produced by humans. They escaped the initial antibiotic and evolved into some kind of superbug.”
His memory was good. He could even reproduce Nüwa’s soft yet cold voice, which caused Lin Sanjiu to shudder. It felt like a forgotten nightmare that had once again returned to torture her.
“Then a youthful voice that sounded like a young man’s asked her, ‘Aren’t you human as well?’ His voice at that time wasn’t harsh, and he did not sound like he was angry or what.” Yu Yuan shook his head. “She said… I was born as a human, but I won’t be dying as a human being. My mortal body is merely the carrier of my consciousness.
“Then, she talked about the deluge.” Yu Yuan took a few deep breaths, as if reminiscing the entire topic had put a huge stroll on him. “She said a great flood is coming, and by then, no superbug will survive. That is the real end for all humans.”
“What kind of flood is it?” Lin Sanjiu asked blankly. Judging by Nüwa’s temperament, she knew that it couldn’t be an ordinary flood.
“I don’t know. I remember that she said something about the universe, but I couldn’t understand a thing, nor can I remember it now either.” Yu Yuan buried his face in his palm. His voice sounded muffled from speaking through his palm, “When I first met you, I didn’t think too much. However, as the days went by, the conversation began to resurface little by little in my mind. And now, I cannot stop thinking about it. Call me a coward, but I am telling you, that woman… she is different.”
He raised his head from his palm and stared at the communication device, “She said that she is not a human, and I believe that. Perhaps, beneath the layer of skin is another creature.”
After that, Yu Yuan did not talk further. For a long while, neither of them spoke. Then, as the words began to sink in, Lin Sanjiu found her voice.
“So you believe that… Soon enough, the apocalyptic worlds will be gone as well?”
Yu Yuan nodded silently.
“If we can escape from the loop, then maybe we can escape the deluge. Actually, I suggest you do the same thing as well,” Yu Yuan said. He grasped his hands together so tightly, they were turning white. “We are the superbug, and we can only be found in the apocalyptic worlds. Can you see the connection here? If we exclude ourselves and hop out of the system, then there is a high possibility that we can avoid the deluge. So, in order to achieve that, we have to go to the Salvation of God. From there, we can fly through the atmosphere and reach the place where your little brother is. We can stay there!”
After Yu Yuan exited her room, Lin Sanjiu did not move even an inch for 30 minutes.
No matter what kind of experiments Nüwa did on humans, either she completed them, or she felt that there was no need to go on.
Slowly, her trembling fingers fell on the communication device.
