Doomsday Wonderland

The man raised his foot high then stomped down, stabbing the pointy nose of his boot deeply into Woyu’s stomach. The pain sent Woyu into oblivion for a moment, but he was pulled back to reality in the next moment. Blood was lining his lips, and he could sense his veins bulging.

Even though his stomach felt like it had ruptured, this was not the hardest blow he received.

“I am an old-fashioned man,” the man, who Woyu did not know by name, huffed out a sarcastic laugh, “I’m more fond of this old school method, whether or not you are posthuman.”

Suddenly, Woyu felt a rippling pain from his scalp as the man lifted him up by grabbing his hair. While air began to rush into his chest, his vision returned and the appearance of the man rammed into his eyes. The man had a square face, and to Woyu’s surprise, he looked even more decent than him.

“The pain tolerance of a person is predetermined by his physiological structure.”

The former commander spoke menacingly as he tightened his grip. Woyu could feel his scalp being torn from his skull, but there was nothing he could do. He was now under the man’s mercy. The man squatted down and pulled Woyu closer. He opened his mouth, tainting the air with the steak he consumed earlier as he hissed heavily into Woyu’s ears, “I can go and see how much you can take, or I can stop now and throw you out of Exodus, then you will never see me again.”

The man then stood up, his hand still grasping tightly at Woyu’s hair. He cast a downward gaze at Woyu and finished his sentence, “So, what do you say? The ball is in your court now.”

Woyu had tried to fight back even though he knew the man was completely out of his league. Even though his Evolving Ability [Natural Habitat] enabled him to quickly adapt to various environments, it did not help him at all at this moment. All the attacks he threw were effortlessly neutralized by the man.

However, that was not the main reason he was put in his current situation. The man was so angry because Woyu had asked for help from Silas.

“Do you think you are safe after having changed the passcode?” The man sneered coldly.

Suddenly, he tightened his grip, and the next thing Woyu knew, he was slammed onto the bar counter, eliciting a dull thud and evoking the most intense buzz in his head. Just when his body went limp and slid down the counter, the man followed up with a stomp to his head. He then ground his ear with the sole of his shoe.

The brutal pain seeped into Woyu like a bunch of tiny snakes gnawing on his skin. In those few seconds that felt like an eternity, all he could hear was a buzzing in his head and nothing more. It took quite a while before the buzzing slowly ebbed out, and the man’s voice became more clearer as his hearing gradually returned. “Exodus is a mother ship, and there are no weapons inside of a mother ship’s hull. It seems to me that you are not that familiar with the structure of a spaceship, huh? Let me ask you, have you ever seen a spaceship that points its guns not towards the outside, but inside?”

While he was speaking, he picked a few vital spots on Woyu’s body and gave them each a hard blow. He seemed pretty experienced in torturing people, as he not only left bruises but also caused Woyu to scream out loud in pain. Blood and brines were flowing down and played a wild game on Woyu’s face. His mouth opened and closed several times, and his breathing came out as ragged as a broken wind box.

“Frankly speaking, I have to thank you. If you didn’t shout just now, I wouldn’t have realized you had changed the passcode,” the man chuckled. He lifted Woyu’s head up by grabbing his hair once more and said, “So now, I will give you two options. One, either you tell me the new passcode, or two, I will beat you until you spill out the passcode. The choice is yours.”

Even though Woyu was weak, he wasn’t stupid.

The new passcode was the only bargaining chip that could keep him alive right now. He knew very well that the moment he spilled out the passcode, the man would throw him out of Exodus without any hesitation.

However, the pain was too unbearable. It seemed endless as if he was falling into an abyss without end. Until this moment, he never knew that it was so easy to crush a person’s will to live. Right now, he yearned for nothing but death. He wanted nothing to do with this mess anymore; he wanted to leave everything behind and liberate himself from this unceasing torture.

‘No… No… I can’t die like this. I must hold on…’ Woyu forced the dark thought out of his brain and looked up. Through his blurry vision, he locked his gaze on the communication device, which was lying obediently and quietly on the other side of the room.

Woyu bit the inner side of his cheek and tried to forget the crushing wave of excruciating pain by filling his brain with other thoughts such as “what is Lin Sanjiu doing right now” and “why won’t she call me now”.

Be that as it may, ten seconds later, Woyu was still brought back to reality by a splitting pain when the man crushed one of his ribs. Following which, the man raised his voice and shouted aloud, his face livid with rage, “Speak!”

“Fine… Fine…” Woyu finally gave in. He wheezed through his broken and bloody teeth, “Let… Let me take a breath.”

The man loosened his grip, and Woyu fell to the floor like a doll with its string cut.

After he had mustered up enough strength, Woyu then slowly opened his mouth. The man stared fixedly at him, his neck craned long, looking like a vulture from Woyu’s point of view.

“The woman who bought your house…” Woyu said. He wanted to point at the communication device, but he decided to forgo the attempt in the end and just rolled his eyes around in their sockets. “She… she already knows everything. She will call in at any time…”

Even though Woyu wasn’t talking about the passcode, he still made the man peel his eyes away from him and onto the communication device that laid on the other side of the room. There was a confident expression sitting comfortably on his face. Apparently, the man thought he had figured everything out. He then harrumphed, a prominent hint of annoyance and irritation lacing his voice, “So she is behind all of this? Gigolo is really such a dangerous job.”

Woyu kept his head low and gasped slowly as every breath felt like a blade scraping at his lungs. “She… she is coming for you…”

“What did you say?” The man was obviously startled. He crouched down and repeated, “Are you saying that she is in Exodus right now? But—but how? We are flying right now.”

“She has an aircraft…”

The lines on the man’s face scrunched up, and his expression contorted into a grimace. He cursed under his breath, rose to his feet, and strode towards the communication device.

“She has already found herself an aircraft? You’d better tell the truth.”

Seeing his chance, Woyu pulled himself up from the floor and inched towards the bar table. He pitched his voice extremely low and spoke to the holographic screen, “Silas, send me a pod. Right now!”

“All right,” Silas replied. Suddenly, the man jerked his head back and shouted angrily, “What did you say?” Then, he scooped the communication device up from the floor and doubled back to Woyu. Startled, Woyu began to crawl away from the bar table.

However, before he could go far, the man arrived and grasped his collar. Then, the man yanked his arm and threw Woyu on the floor like a bloodied cloth. “You want to go out, huh? Let me give you a hand then!”

As Woyu coughed and spat a wad of blood phlegm on the floor, the man slowly walked to the front and blocked the door. The light from the corridor leaked into the tea room and cast a white halo around the man’s black boots. Woyu stared at the floor and said nothing, for his brain was too tired to work out what the man had said.

“I will give you one last chance,” the man gritted his teeth and glowered, “Or else, don’t blame me if I—”

Before he could finish his sentence, a shadow was cast on the floor behind him. When Woyu saw the shadow, his eyes lit up and he shouted, “Don’t stop! Keep it going!”

“All right,” Silas followed Woyu’s instruction obediently. By the time the man realized something and jerked his head back, it was already too late. The pod rammed into him with a loud muffled thud. He twisted his pained body and rolled on the floor.

‘Now is my chance!’

Woyu forcibly pulled his wasted body up from the floor and lunged towards the pod. The door of the pod was already opened up and lowered to a comfortable height, so he could easily fit himself into the seat. Once Woyu was inside of the pod, he sensed somebody clutching his ankle, causing him to tightly grab onto the pod to prevent himself from sliding out of the pod.

“Silas! Start the car!” Woyu barked out his command. He could feel that the hand that was gripping his ankle was getting stronger and stronger, and he couldn’t hold up for long. “Silas! Hurry up!”

“This is not a car,” Silas responded gently. After that, the maglev pod suddenly accelerated as she continued, “Hold on tight.”

Woyu felt as if his body was almost being torn into half. He held on tight to the pod as if his life depended on it. The pod rocketed down the corridor at high speed, the wind lashing at his body like a whip. His legs were dangling outside the pod, with the man’s hand still fastened around his ankle. Woyu figured that he had to do something to shrug the man off, so he opened his mouth and barked out his second order, “Turn left!”

Sometimes his voice was loud, but other times it was just a whisper. Then there were times where blood came out instead of his voice. “Turn, turn again!”

Getting dragged along by a high-speed moving object was not a great experience. No matter if you were a normal person or a powerful posthuman, it was all the same. After getting bumped around several times, the man cursed aloud and finally let go of his hand. Once he couldn’t feel the tugging at his ankle anymore, Woyu let out a sigh. He quickly wormed himself into the pod and closed the door. Then he gasped, “S—Silas.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t let the man come close to me,” Woyu panted, “Close all the doors behind me.”

“All right,” Silas replied.

Woyu knew he wasn’t entirely safe yet, as the man was very familiar with Exodus and might still have some aces up his sleeve to restore his control over Silas. Putting everything aside, the fact that he only used a passcode to secure his identity as the true owner of Exodus was already very suspicious.

‘Why not use a fingerprint lock or an iris scanner? Wouldn’t that have been more secure?’

With his brain in a shambolic state, he couldn’t think of anything right now. He had no idea how many bones were broken, but he was surprised that he could still move and remained conscious. Nevertheless, when Silas was asking for his destination, he was already losing his cohesion.

“Go… Go…” He pried his mouth open and his voice came out as a whisper when a thought flashed into his mind, “Go to the open-air garden… Lin—Lin Sanjiu might be…”

Before he could finish his sentence, he passed out.