Chapter 1523: Difficult to Send the Gods Away
The hall was dead silent.
Many years ago, back in the days of a normally functioning modern society, Lin Sanjiu had once witnessed a similar silence.
She was waiting in line to pay at a cashier, looking around out of boredom, when she saw an old man standing by a shelf, holding a chocolate bar. His back to the busy aisle of customers, he hung his head low and ate the chocolate bar bit by bit—once finished, he nonchalantly tossed the wrapper to the floor.
"Hey!" Lin Sanjiu yelled out from the queue. "What are you doing?"
The man hardly seemed surprised, looking back at her with a numb expression, almost as if he knew someone would see.
"Why are you stealing such a small advantage?" Lin Sanjiu yelled, subconsciously examining his clothes, expecting to see a homeless man—but he was cleanly and even decently dressed. "You have to pay for what you've eaten!"
The man, with his eyes cast down, didn't make a sound or show any emotion. No matter what she said, he was like a dead man, not even twitching a bit. With that same numb expression, he silently turned away and left.
Sitting in the round hall now, Lin Sanjiu felt the same kind of silence.
She waited for nearly five minutes, not making a sound, and the other six game makers remained just as quiet. It was an insect-like silence, lying low on the branch of life, motionless before being snatched by a predator, perhaps still silently sucking on tree sap.
If not for the fact that she actually had no good way to deal with the game makers, Lin Sanjiu would have almost wanted to laugh.
Edgar Allan Poe suddenly leaned over, saying, "Uh, ma'am... Shall I bring them out for you?"
Huh?
"I've thought it through for you," he said, bending down beside Lin Sanjiu. "If you go door to door, and they have set up words outside... Ah, of course, you don't have to be afraid, it's just more troublesome to handle. I'm different, I can open the doors for you, drag them out, I don't mind the trouble."
Lin Sanjiu turned to look at him. His thin, bony face seemed to retreat into the shadows, yet his eyes burned with light, as if pushing forward.
"You know I can't open these doors?"
"No, no, I don't mean that." Edgar Allan Poe shook his head quickly. "Although you don't have the authority, Master Zhang isn't dead, so you can open the doors. What I mean is, the less trouble the better, isn't that..."
His eyes suddenly flickered, and then he smiled. "Oh, they're cursing me."
"I think it's fine," Yu Yuan interjected. "You better call those words out now, don't waste time."
What words?
This confusion flashed across the faces of both Edgar Allan Poe and Lin Sanjiu, but Edgar Allan Poe was the first to react.
Without waiting for the other game makers who were watching them to recover, he waved his hand, and one after another, giant characters appeared in the hall. "Personal Freedom," "Liberation," "Restoration," and so on quickly filled the hall, standing up to the ceiling like a cold, imposing forest.
"Call out the character '松' as well," Yu Yuan began instructing one by one, probably having the list of characters on the computer memorized. Only after Edgar Allan Poe indicated that he had called out the maximum limit, a total of ten words and characters, did he nod and said to Lin Sanjiu, "The words that can restore freedom are unique. Once someone calls them out, others can't use them."
"So, you're planning to..." Lin Sanjiu understood as well.
"His idea works," Yu Yuan said. "I'll give him some tools to catch people and make him stronger and faster than others. That can be done. I'll go with him, and you just wait for us to bring them back."
The binding tool he provided for Edgar Allan Poe was undoubtedly top-notch in the post-apocalyptic world; without the aid of characters, the game makers couldn't escape the binding of the tool, and the offensive characters they released had no effect on Edgar Allan Poe, so naturally, they could only be dragged out. Moreover, Edgar Allan Poe didn't waste his newly raised combat power and dragged the people into the round hall.
Lin Sanjiu sat in her chair, watching him vanish down the corridor with ease. Just as she began to doubt whether he might run away, Edgar Allan Poe reentered the hall, sweating profusely, dragging a long net containing a human body. Through the large holes in the fishing net, she recognized the person inside – it was Short Bangs.
When the game makers were face-to-face with Lin Sanjiu, they dared not call out offensive words.
Though she couldn't actually do anything to the game makers, they didn't know this. Especially since Edgar Allan Poe demonstrated his loyalty by voluntarily removing his protective characters, Short Bangs hurriedly withdrew his as well, glancing repeatedly at Lin Sanjiu as if afraid that if he were a second late, he would be strangled by the words.
"What... what are you going to do?" he asked, not accusingly, but rather pleadingly. "Stopping the new game launch conference won't do any good, really."
Edgar Allan Poe and Yu Yuan were quite efficient. Just as Short Bangs was racking his brains for words, a scream that almost blew the ceiling off came from the direction of the second game maker. Even Lin Sanjiu was taken aback. The whole round hall was then filled with shouts, curses, and thumps, wave after wave, as if it were going to squeeze people out of the space.
"What the hell are you?" the middle-aged woman wailed on the floor, her voice shrill and piercing. "How dare you touch me? I'll fight you; I don't want to live. I'm fucking done; just wait for me to get out—"
By the time she was dumped at Lin Sanjiu's feet, she didn't confront Edgar Allan Poe. Her face was flushed red, tears and snot covering her face, rolling, kicking, and flailing on the ground, her screams deafening. Her eyes were tightly closed, bulging out, as if nothing else existed in her world but her own wailing.
Lin Sanjiu had only seen this kind of crying in babies before. She recalled a phrase she once heard, "If a crying baby could destroy the world in that instant, it would."
She pulled Master Zhang from the table and pushed his half-dead face toward the middle-aged woman. When the woman bumped into Master Zhang's face during her thrashing, she was startled into a scream and sobered up considerably.
"I had you dragged out to leave you a way to live," Lin Sanjiu said calmly. "I don't want to kill more than necessary, but pulling out your tongue doesn't count as killing, does it?"
Although she couldn't lay a hand on her, the pressure of the disparity in combat strength made the woman shut her mouth firmly.
The next one to be dragged out, Queen Nocturna, remained silent, looking like a statue, only occasionally glancing at Lin Sanjiu. She obviously heard the words "leave you a way to live" and put on an honest appearance. Following her, Lord Tremors, whose face was sullen and angry, with even his jaw muscles bulging, joined the ranks of those who kept silent, although he looked like an unstable powder keg. The woman who was always somewhat aloof and kept her distance from them simply crouched on the ground, hugging her knees.
Zhou Xian was the last one to be dragged out. Perhaps misunderstanding the situation, he looked around and urgently shouted, "Isn't one person missing? The new guy isn't here. You can't just let him go!"
Lin Sanjiu pointed to herself, causing his face to pale, and he shut up.
"If we leave this place," Queen Nocturna said quietly after Yu Yuan and Edgar Allan Poe had herded the six together like sheep, "can you guarantee you won't hurt us?"
Other than being annoying, it was hard to say what these people had done wrong. Even the games they made probably weren't their fault; they were just individuals influenced by their environment and restricted by rules. They didn't necessarily have evil intentions. Lin Sanjiu had to exert some effort to nod, saying, "I won't hurt you."
Whether they believed it or not was their business. Yu Yuan told her that none of the people in this group had taken Ji Shanqing, so she could let them go. But to stay and continue making games? Absolutely not.
"Then, I'll leave now." Queen Nocturna whispered, seeming very savvy. "There is an entrance and exit in this underground facility."
Lin Sanjiu leaned forward. "What kind of entrance?" Without waiting for a response, she stood up and said, "Come on, everyone, let's go there."
Edgar Allan Poe was truly the perfect sheepdog. He alone was able to make the six individuals walk obediently, herding them to the entrance without any mishap. He took care of moving people around, Yu Yuan supervised, and Lin Sanjiu followed at the back. In an organized situation, a few people could firmly control the majority.
Queen Nocturna didn't lie; the so-called entrance and exit looked more like a massive transparent tube stretching between the ceiling and floor, large enough to accommodate two or three adults. Inside the transparent tube was just an empty passage, and according to Queen Nocturna, whenever new people were coming, a transparent panel would fall to carry them down. If they wanted to leave, they could do so at any time by pressing a control key next to the tube to call down a panel to pick them up.
After the panel came down, Lin Sanjiu coldly asked the six, "Who wants to go in first?"
"Then let me be the first," Lord Tremors said from the front of the group. He looked at the cowering woman. "I'm going; see you outside if we have a chance."
Then, he leaped forward, grabbed Yu Yuan's arm, and threw him into the transparent tube.