When the river washed her out of the pocket dimension and into the next process of the factory, she would probably trigger the "Posthuman Alert" just like the last time, right?
It was about time.
Lin Sanjiu wasn't a good swimmer, so she simply gave up on struggling to swim. She allowed the rapid waves to envelop her as she bobbed and spun. Her vision alternated between darkness and light, but she couldn't see anything clearly. After a few long minutes, she felt that the river was getting shallower and weaker. Finally, she was pushed by the waves and landed on a flat land.
Panting, she raised her head and wiped the water off her face. She looked around.
It was a man-made riverbank. The waves that were slowly washing the flat ground were no longer as turbulent as they had been a moment ago. The river had suddenly stopped.
The flat land that was paved with cement extended out from Hanoi at a slanted angle. Even though there was still a blue sky behind her, the concrete floor in front of her was now filled with factory roofs. Rows of incandescent lights were lit high above the concrete floor. The two buildings were connected soundlessly and seamlessly. Even Lin Sanjiu couldn't tell where the roofs were connected to the sky.
She wasn't the only one looking up at the sky. Every now and then, the river would wash a few ordinary people onto the concrete land. Almost all of them would raise their heads to look back and forth after they had calmed down. Some of the people in the distance were standing or sitting on the ground, looking at the newcomers. Perhaps they had arrived earlier than her, so they had already recovered from their shock.
"What … What is this place?" a young woman in front of her asked a few people sitting by the river.
"We don't know."
"I was just washed up here."
"Go and ask the people inside."
The answer she got was pretty much the same.
Lin Sanjiu walked deeper into the factory as she observed her surroundings.
The concrete land was square. Aside from the river behind her, the other three sides were made of tall, stucco walls. Together with the roof, they formed an airtight room.
There were no doors or windows. Other than turning around and jumping into the river, which would probably wash them up again, there was nowhere for them to go in this room that looked like a giant warehouse.
Strangely, the deeper she went into the "warehouse", the more people she saw. It was as if they were all gathered together, waiting for something. Even the air was filled with anxiety and urgency. As she reached the end of the storeroom, a fragment of a half-sentence caught her attention.
"Let's wait. I don't know how long it will take …"
Lin Sanjiu turned around and looked at the source of the voice. She walked up to the old man and asked, "What do you want to open? What are you guys waiting for? "
The old man was stunned, as if he was startled by her aura. He stammered, "W-wall …"
Lin Sanjiu frowned and looked at the high wall on the left. The stucco wall was flat and she couldn't tell where it could be opened. "How do you know it will open?"
"I'm not sure. I heard it from someone else. That wall will open …" Maybe it's a message left behind by the people who rushed in earlier. "The old man calmed down a little and asked," You, why do you seem a little different … "
The ordinary people who had been temporarily given the ability to evolve were also confused when facing the evolved. Lin Sanjiu did not explain. She quickly thanked him and walked towards the wall on the left. The people gathered in the deepest part of the storeroom seemed to have heard the same news, but no one could confirm whether it was true or not.
"You're also the winner of the dungeon, right?" The young man, whose face was half covered by a light brown fringe, said, "I just asked around. The people in this place are all. I don't know where the people who failed went. So, behind this wall should be the exit for the winner … "
"I've been waiting for half an hour." When asked how long she had been waiting, the slightly plump middle-aged woman replied, "This is nothing. I heard that someone has been waiting for two days … Who are you asking? I don't know. "
"No, no," the plump man panicked when he heard what Lin Sanjiu said, "Let's not talk about whether you can break the cement wall or not. We don't even know what's going on. You're being too reckless. What if the storeroom releases poison gas? We're done for."
The people in the storeroom were all from Fan Jia City. Moreover, they were the winners of the dungeon, so there wasn't much competition between them. The atmosphere was much friendlier than in the dungeon. It was easier for them to strike up a conversation with strangers. Information, guesses, rumors … They circulated in the storeroom without any hindrance. Lin Sanjiu couldn't tell if they were trustworthy or not.
It seemed like there was no other way but to wait and see.
She was surprised that the posthuman alarm hadn't sounded in the factory yet. Could it be that the alarm went off somewhere else and the people in the storeroom couldn't hear it?
"The pocket dimension that you escaped from," Lin Sanjiu continued to ask the plump man, "What was it about?"
Everyone liked to be asked about their achievements and victories. The four to five people she asked just now were the same. The plump man was no exception.
"It was a courtroom pocket dimension. Everyone was assigned the roles of lawyer, prosecutor, suspect and jury," the plump man said happily. "Everyone had their own goals. I was the defense lawyer of the suspect, so I had to try my best to find excuses for his crimes … Luckily, I've read a lot of things before the apocalypse. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to escape."
He rubbed his nose and smiled, "It's a pity that I wasn't born before the apocalypse. I think I have the talent to be a lawyer. Huh? What? The reward … There's nothing special about it. You can keep the 'Eloquence Points' that you've accumulated in the courtroom pocket dimension. "
Lin Sanjiu nodded slowly.
Everyone she asked in the storeroom came out from the same type of pocket dimension. One of them even won the 'Battle for the Right to Speak'. Obviously, it was from the previous batch of people. Considering that she had spent almost a day in the 'Battle for the Right to Speak', the people in the storeroom should have been waiting for that long.
'Could it be that the entire river is the same type of pocket dimension?'
"No," the next person she talked to, a man with slightly unfocused eyes, answered, "Even though I'm from Fanjia City, I'm good at swimming. I was once recruited to build a 'Water Paradise in the Sky'. It's a recreational facility for posthumans with money. I learned how to swim there … I'm going too far. What I want to say is that when I was washed out of the pocket dimension, I swam upstream against the current. At that time, I happened to see that the pocket dimension on the other side of the river had also ended. A bunch of people fell into the river one after another … "
He paused for a moment and looked around. "They didn't seem to know how to swim. After they fell into the river, I followed them. In the end, I lost my target and was washed here. When I went ashore to look for them, I realized that they weren't here at all. Not a single one of them. "
In other words … … the river behind the instance dungeon served as a sort of 'categorization'. It separated the winners and losers of the other instance dungeons and the winners of the other instance dungeons into something akin to a 'battle for the right to speak'.
Lin Sanjiu thanked him and walked away as she mulled over the matter. The buzzing of the crowd's conversation reverberated under the high ceiling. Lin Sanjiu walked to the wall on her left and looked up at it.
Perhaps it was just a spur of the moment or an instinctive impulse, she couldn't explain why she activated the [Planar World] subconsciously the moment she placed her hand on the wall.
The next second, the storeroom was still there, but the wall on the left had disappeared.
— — Digression — —
Recently, even getting my salary can't make me happy. When I took a look at my hand, I thought to myself, 'I have to suffer so much in exchange for this little bit of money. What's there to be happy about? After I spend all my money, I'll just be a grandson again.'
After thinking about it, the thing that made me happy recently was that my chilies bore fruit. So the little green beads I mentioned last time weren't chilies but flower buds. There were two pots of chilies, and there were many small white flowers blooming. Then, small chilies poked out from the flowers … At first, they were light green, then purple, then orange-red … After planting them for so long, they weren't edible yet. Maybe it was because there wasn't enough sunlight.
。 [Mobile version:]
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
