Doomsday Wonderland

She put the [Ability Polishing Agent] on the shelf. Then, using the silvery light, she looked through the windbreaker.

The tag and washing label was worn out beyond recognition. There were a moldy paper towel and a piece of chewing gum wrapping paper inside the pocket on the left. The chewing gum wrapping paper was dotted with rust; Lin Sanjiu surmised that it got the rust from the key. In another pocket, she found an employee card in a yellowed plastic holder. The lanyard had long broken, and perhaps that was the reason why the person kept it inside the pocket.

The plastic holder was brittle and blotted, and several of the words were smeared. Lin Sanjiu suspected that nature had caused the damage. She squinted her eyes and barely made out several letters such as “company”, “keeper”, and “Li”, which seemed to be part of a name.

Suddenly, she had a brainwave and everything made sense to her. She took a deep breath and said, “He is not a posthuman.”

“No wonder why I kept feeling that something is wrong,” continued Lin Sanjiu as she rubbed the center of her forehead. When she raised her head and looked into the warehouse again, everything seemed different. “What makes me suspicious is not what is in the pocket dimension, but what should have been in the pocket dimension.”

She was confident that there must be more than one, perhaps hundreds or thousands of posthumans, who died in this pocket dimension, yet all she found was a small pile of broken bones and hair. Where had the other people’s corpses gone to?

Many had died here, but their bodies were nowhere to be seen. The pocket dimension must have done something to those dead bodies, as it did not want the dead bodies of those posthumans to affect Lin Sanjiu’s decision in looking for the clue. The pocket dimension went through all the trouble of disposing of all the dead bodies, yet it deliberately left out the pile of broken bones. This could only mean one thing; the pile of bones was the clue and combined with the hint she received just now, it was sending a message to Lin Sanjiu—firstly, somebody died here, and secondly, the victim was a staff member at this warehouse.

Hence, it was likely that the person died before the doomsday came. After all, nobody would still attend to their work faithfully after the world’s demise.

“You might be right. Besides, I don’t see any living material or household waste around,” Mrs. Manas agreed, “So he couldn’t have used the warehouse as a shelter.”

“He was murdered in a normal society.” Lin Sanjiu raised her brows as she looked at the hole at the back of the jacket. “So is this a murder case?”

“Hold, hold on a second,” Mrs. Manas stammered. “Are you telling me that the locked room pocket dimension happens to be the crime scene?”

“I am not sure, but there must be some connection between these two things,” Lin Sanjiu said as she put the jacket down. She reached out for the jeans, and a string of jangling sounds rang out when she lifted it up.

Piqued by her curiosity, she stretched her hand into the pocket and was surprised by what she pulled out.

It was a bunch of keys.

She didn’t realize there were keys inside the pocket of the jeans when she went through the mass of garbage the first time. It now occurred to her that a new clue would be unlocked as she progressed further in clearing the locked room.

“There are five keys here,” Lin Sanjiu muttered, “But how should I find the right one from these when there are no doors for me to test?”

Unlike the previous key, these five keys were much heavier and more solid. They were cylindrical in shape, and the keyring was slightly loosened. Lin Sanjiu took out the tiny key and realized it could fit into the keyring as well. It seemed that the key got loose and fell from the keyring, so the owner just shoved it into the jacket pocket.

“Let’s see what we got in here…”

She laid the keys, the paper towel, the employee card, and the windbreaker on the ground. Her eyes hopped from one to another as she said, “Looking at the size of the jacket and jeans, the victim should be standing at about 175 cm tall and has an ectomorphic body. While for his age, as a man who doesn’t really care about what kind of clothes to put on his body, it is really hard to guess.

“The employee card must belong to the victim, and that could only mean one thing. He is one of the working staff here, so could it be the “keeper” here means “warehouse keeper?”

If he was the warehouse keeper, then everything would make sense. Lin Sanjiu did not forget that the ground inside and outside of the door frame was the same. If this warehouse was just a part of the building, then it explained why they would use the same flooring inside and outside the door. It also threw light on why the warehouse keeper had more than one key. After all, as a warehouse keeper, it was his duty to hold the key.

“A warehouse keeper who was stabbed to death in a warehouse,” she parroted, “But why is the jacket so clean?”

She remembered that she discovered the jacket and jeans in the deepest part of the warehouse whereas the find-spot of the pile of broken bones and hair was in the middle of the warehouse.

There could only be two explanations for this kind of situation. One, the bones and the clothes belonged to two different people, and two, after the warehouse keeper was dead, someone stripped him naked and hurled his clothes into the deepest part of the warehouse.

Be that as it may, Lin Sanjiu was more inclined towards the first explanation.

Frowning, Lin Sanjiu sank into deep thought. If the clothes and the bones were from two different people, then all her speculations would end up for naught.

After a long while, she forced herself back to reality and sighed dejectedly.

“And I am still very confident in my speculation,” she mumbled. After that, she stuffed the chain of keys and the employer card into her pocket. “Forget it. Guess I still have to rebuild the main entrance first—”

Before she could even finish her sentence, she caught something in the corner of her eyes. The [Ability Polishing Agent] suddenly flickered, and it seemed as if a huge shadow had passed through the light. She then heard something fall to the ground. She jerked her head, her chest tightening and muscles pulling taut. However, when she saw the scene, she relaxed. There was a time frame for the thing created using the [Power of Word Picture]. Hence, once the time limit was reached, the rack disappeared and the [Ability Polishing Agent] fell down. That was the reason why the silvery light flickered for a second.

She created the wall, the rack, and the goods at the same time. If one rack disappeared, the other would soon follow. Lin Sanjiu summoned the [Power of Word Picture] once more, and as she was repeating the description and detail, another two racks disappeared.

“Student Lin,” Mrs. Manas called out to her suddenly. Lin Sanjiu had no idea why, but her voice was a little shaky. “Lin Sanjiu.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I… I’m not sure either… It’s just that I felt something. I think you better turn around and have a look.”

Lin Sanjiu froze. She stood straight as a ramrod as she activated her hypersensory. However, she couldn’t sense anything. Even the air had stopped moving as well. The feeling was not pleasant. It felt as if she was being buried under a coffin.

“You… can you walk one step forward?”

Lin Sanjiu followed. She lifted her leg, took one step forward, and then put her leg down. The slight click when her boot connected with the ground was exceptionally clear in the deadly silence.

Mrs. Manas did not have a corporeal body, but she “gulped”.

“I recall that you have a mirror, don’t you?” she asked in a very low voice. “The one prepared by your grand prize…”

Without giving any response, Lin Sanjiu pulled out a small mirror. Grasping the handle tightly, she raised it up and used it to look behind her.

Then, she finally saw it.

The spot where the rack should have been was now shrouded in darkness, out of the [Ability Polishing Agent]’s reach. In the darkness, there was a humanoid shadow. Even though it was very far away, the chill of death emanating from its body crept onto Lin Sanjiu’s skin without any problem.

In the mirror, the humanoid figure’s head held so low, its neck made a 90-degree angle with its chest. It was leaning against a rack, and it took it a lot of energy just to stand straight.

“Turn… turn a little to your left,” Mrs. Manas stammered.

Holding her breath, Lin Sanjiu turned the mirror slightly.

It was then that Lin Sanjiu saw the humanoid figure’s long and thin limbs. The white vest on his body had become black. He wore only a checkered boxer, and the remainder of his legs were hidden in the dark.

Using the rack as its only support, it took one large stride forward and came closer to Lin Sanjiu.