Chapter 1244: I'll Lend You a Hand
Lin Sanjiu wasn't foolish. After experiencing two doomsdays on the same planet, she had formed a speculation in her mind about this place.
If one were to look down from high above, they would likely see a network of intersecting roads, crisscrossing the land and dividing it into irregular fragments. People were safe on the roads; she had already verified this twice. On either side of the roads of the highway were developed pocket dimensions from the past—now integrated with the characteristics of the doomsdays, and even people could come and go with visas.
So, since the left side of the road was lava, who's to say the right side wasn't another doomsday?
Since the plan's already set, let's go for it!
Lin Sanjiu clenched her teeth, twisted her body, and leaped towards the right side of the road's barrier. Bonnie Bunny seemed to curse from afar, and almost immediately after, Lin Sanjiu heard the sound of the unfortunate soul, controlled by Bonnie Bunny, tumbling towards her.
With her momentum rushing forward, Lin Sanjiu grabbed hold of Yuan Xiangxi and, with a single push, vaulted over the guardrail, stopping just before crashing into the bushes. Bonnie Bunny, apparently aware of the significance of leaving the road, hesitated for a moment. The target, no longer under her control, fell to the ground like a dismembered doll, as if its body had turned into unrelated fragments. With the fall of the target, the lava vanished instantly.
"You crossed the highway!" Yuan Xiangxi whispered, covering his mouth. His brows furrowed tightly, as if he dared not open his eyes to see the terrifying world beyond the fence. He seemed content to stay where he was, like a trapped goose awaiting its fate.
Lin Sanjiu released him and stood up behind the fence without saying anything, meeting Bonnie Bunny's eyes from a distance. For a moment, neither of them moved.
After a while, Bonnie Bunny gritted her teeth and smiled. "Because of you," she said, her anger evident and almost palpable in her tone, though she didn't raise her voice intentionally. It was enough to cut through the air like a knife. "I lost one person."
Or, to put it more accurately, she lost one potential target to send to the hospital?
She used a mission target to chase after Lin Sanjiu, probably hoping for a one-for-two exchange. Now that she had lost the target, she wouldn't be satisfied leaving without confronting Lin Sanjiu.
"How many are left?" Lin Sanjiu asked, crossing her arms.
Bonnie Bunny was taken aback.
"How many more people do you need to send to the hospital before you can leave the lava?" Lin Sanjiu asked with a forced smile, hoping to divert Bonnie Bunny's attention from the guardrail.
To her surprise, Bonnie Bunny actually responded. The other party sneered and, with a smile, said, "There are 219 people left. Compared to the total, I am almost at the end. What? Are you surprised? I'm different from low-level people like you."
"Why don't you go back and continue hunting players?" Lin Sanjiu said, subtly extending her foot to nudge Yuan Xiangxi's clothes slightly away from the concrete guardrail. They had very limited space to maneuver, probably no more than half an arm's length. She silently hoped that Bonnie Bunny wouldn't detect anything amiss on their side of the road. "Do you want to catch another person and throw him on this side of the road? You should realize we're already in another pocket dimension, and the lava is ineffective here."
From a practical standpoint, it wouldn't be sensible for Bonnie Bunny to squander another target on them. But rationality often bows to emotion, and this woman seemed to harbor deep grudges. If she chose to attack again, Lin Sanjiu might have no choice but to scale the actual fence.
Yuan Xiangxi's eyes snapped open, a sudden startle rousing him. He rose from the ground with a low exclamation. "Eh?"
'Whatever you do, please don't say anything you shouldn't,' Lin Sanjiu thought, quickly turning to give Yuan Xiangxi a stern look. He gulped, swallowing the words he was about to utter. His gaze wandered, too afraid to settle on anything.
Bonnie Bunny observed them with a raised eyebrow, suspicion mounting on her face.
Lin Sanjiu was well aware that from Bonnie Bunny's perspective, she and Yuan Xiangxi were indeed standing outside the road's barrier, with the forest behind them. If there was another pocket dimension beyond the road, then they were undoubtedly standing in that pocket dimension.
However, from her own perspective, the real barrier of the road was just a fist's distance behind them, concealed by the sparse green shadows of the forest. At this moment, she was standing on the asphalt road surface, not the gravel-strewn ground covered in weeds. In other words, she was still on the road, but an illusion of the gravel ground had been cast over it.
Just now, in a critical moment, she had invoked [How to Render], distorting and folding the light and shadows of this section of the road. In a spot half an arm's length away from the actual road barrier, she had projected an illusion of a fence that looked convincing enough, including the image of the sand and the forest behind the fence, shifting them a few steps away.
What Lin Sanjiu had just jumped over was this distorted illusion of the fence. She tried her best not to touch the actual barrier and pulled Yuan Xiangxi to her side, standing on the narrow stretch of road between the real and fake barriers. Otherwise, if she reached out, Bonnie Bunny would notice that the barrier seemed to pass through her hand.
She whispered to Yuan Xiangxi, "Don't touch it."
She hoped Bonnie Bunny wouldn't notice anything strange. She glanced at the other side of the road, only to be slightly surprised.
The girl was gazing upward, her eyes passing over them to the mountain forest beyond. She seemed fixated on something, her expression distant, as if she had forgotten Lin Sanjiu's presence. It was only when Bonnie Bunny shivered and returned to the present that she looked at them with a complex smile and said, "Alright, you've got guts, and luck was on your side. I won't chase you anymore."
Lin Sanjiu resisted the urge to glance back at the mountain forest. When Bonnie Bunny declared she was giving up, she did so decisively, turning and vanishing down the slope on the other side of the road. They watched the spot where she disappeared for a long while, not seeing any further movement. Their tense hearts gradually relaxed, and they exhaled a long breath.
"It seems like she really left. Not that persistent, huh?" Yuan Xiangxi said, looking around. He seemed to have forgotten the danger just a moment ago and smiled at Lin Sanjiu. "What did Gardenia want to tell me?"
Now was not the time for idle chatter.
Lin Sanjiu slowly turned around and looked at the vast mountain forest behind her.
The scent of leaves, grass, and soil seeped coolly into her nose and skin. The varying shades of green extended all the way to the dark blue-gray sky at dusk, stretching infinitely along her gaze. In the distance, the forest silently rose and fell with the terrain, wrinkled, sparse, and dense, as if it always stood outside of time, unconnected to humanity.
She didn't notice anything unusual. And even if Bonnie Bunny saw something in this forest, she probably wouldn't be able to reach her, right? After all, she was still standing on the road, not having crossed the barrier yet.
"Let's go. We'll talk while walking," Lin Sanjiu said, dispelling the illusion created by [How to Render]. She took two steps toward the center of the road and beckoned to Yuan Xiangxi. "If we continue along this road, we should reach my two companions' camping site before midnight."
"Can I go even though I'm dead?" Yuan Xiangxi asked.
He was undoubtedly someone very easy to fool. Not long before, he had still believed he wasn't dead. But after Lin Sanjiu mentioned it a few times, he had quickly come to terms with his fate. Brushing away his long hair, he pointed to his pale face and asked earnestly, "Are they afraid of ghosts?"
"No, they aren't," Lin Sanjiu assured him. "You've taken it well."
"I can still talk, walk, and sing," Yuan Xiangxi said nonchalantly, slipping his hand into the pocket of his robe and kicking a pebble as he trailed after Lin Sanjiu. "If this is what being dead is like, it's not so bad."
'Let's forget about the singing.'
As they walked, Lin Sanjiu touched the fence lightly with her hand and continued, "Gardenia said that one night, when the two of you couldn't get a room, you decided to camp in a corner of the hospital. That night, you were ambushed... She said she was sorry for what happened, and afterward, when she discovered you were no longer among the living, she hesitated to tell you."
Yuan Xiangxi said nothing.
"After you two were separated by an accident, she had always hoped to find you again. Eventually, it became her greatest wish," Lin Sanjiu said, lowering her voice, trying not to remember Gardenia's expression and tone before her death. "She knew you were discharged from the hospital, so she did everything she could to get discharged as well. Understanding that you were no longer alive, and not bound by the lava's rules, you might have gone outside its range. She was willing to do anything to complete her mission so that once she left the lava, she could find you. She never imagined that you were still trapped in the lava, surviving round after round."
Lin Sanjiu sighed deeply. "When I told her I had seen the name 'Yuan Xiangxi' on the register, her reaction... I don't know how to describe her expression at that moment. I realized then that I would probably agree to any request she made next. And indeed, I agreed."
Yuan Xiangxi remained silent throughout.
"She... in the end, she said that you've died and are free from the burdens of life, so she hopes you can do whatever you want with the time you still have," Lin Sanjiu said, pausing in her walk to turn to him, her voice gentle. "You told her you always wanted a road trip, didn't you?"
Yuan Xiangxi bowed his head, his long hair veiling his expression. In the growing twilight, he seemed even more ethereal, like a faint white shadow drifting between heaven and earth. After a moment, he gave a slight nod and whispered with a voice tinged with a thick nasal tone, "Gardenia is dead, isn't she?"
"If you still want that road trip, come with us. Gardenia would be glad to know," Lin Sanjiu said.
"Okay." Yuan Xiangxi nodded again, lifting his face that bore naturally delicate features, now devoid of life's spark as if he wanted to say something. Lin Sanjiu felt a sudden tightness in her chest, but before she could respond, an immense force erupted from the opposite side of the road. It smashed through the fence, surged across the road, and slammed into them both, carrying them through the fence and tumbling into the forest.
As they rolled through the underbrush, branches and tree trunks snapping in their wake, pain radiated through Lin Sanjiu's body. When she finally came to a halt among the trees, Bonnie Bunny's voice, relaxed and sweet, reached her ears.
"You wanted to cross the fence, right? I came back to help you out. How's that for a surprise? As I said before, I really enjoy these unexpected twists."