Doomsday Wonderland

With their lack of caution, Lin Sanjiu could have easily grabbed them. However, she wasn’t here to catch children. Instead, she said soothingly, “Yes, it’s water. You can try putting your hand in.”

The girl with ponytails seemed to have a bit more courage or, rather, rash. She put her hand into the water ball, startled, and then giggled. “Oh my God! It’s like… my clothes are still dry!”

Her friend couldn’t resist and also reached in, instantly exclaiming, “Ah! I… huh? It feels like soaking in a hot spring.”

When Bohemia was homeless, this little thing seemed to comfort her. She enjoyed the feeling of being in water and almost lived in the bathtub while on Exodus.

“It also feels like a swimming pool and the sea,” Lin Sanjiu said. “Do you like this gadget?”

The two children laughed and nodded, reluctant to take their hands out of the water balloon.

“I can give it to you.”

‘As for who it belongs to and whether they’ll fight over it, who cares.’

The children were stunned.

“On one condition,” Lin Sanjiu said, pretending to take the tape recorder from behind her back and not out of her card inventory. “You have to repeat a few words I ask and record them.”

After the two little girls left with the water sensory ball, which would expire in half an hour, Lin Sanjiu jumped down from the flower bed and entered a nearby old residential area. She walked with her head down as if searching for a wallet on the ground. Every time she approached a manhole cover, she glanced around to see if there were passersby. If the road was busy, she moved on, but if it was quiet, like now…

Raising her foot, Lin Sanjiu concentrated her force into her heel and stomped on the manhole cover’s edge. The cover, designed to withstand great pressure, was slightly misaligned with the road surface around its edges, occasionally emitting loud sounds under passing vehicles. Her heel’s concentrated pressure was akin to the impact of a falling truck, shattering the cover. Lin Sanjiu’s eyes and hands were swift, and with a bend of her back to grab the manhole cover, the manhole cover was fished into her hand as it fell, and immediately transformed into a card.

Worried about walkers potentially falling, Lin Sanjiu summoned her metal gauntlet, gripped the manhole’s ladder, and yanked it hard. She then lodged the cover’s broken piece into the ground as a makeshift warning. After prying open several more manhole covers, fatigue set in. Leaving the crime scene, she found solace sitting on a flower bed’s edge in the residential area, pausing to wipe a bead of sweat from her brow.

The buildings in this residential area were quite old, tightly packed together, with almost no design to speak of. There were quite a few people who had washed their clothes and pulled a rope outside their windows, hanging colorful clothes in a slither; some of them hadn’t even dried yet, dripping water down.

There were a lot of black clothes.

Lin Sanjiu rose and surveyed her surroundings before nonchalantly following an old man carrying groceries into the building, making her way to the top floor. There, she adeptly leaped across rooftops as if navigating an oddly shaped mall. When she spotted black clothing in the right size, she bent down and cast down a stream of Higher Consciousness; gripping the clothing and yanking it downward, she quickly took it into her hands. It didn’t take her long to gather enough black clothing to cover her from head to toe.

The day’s work of thievery and deceit was almost complete when the sun began to set and dusk approached. Knowing there were many more places where she needed to use Higher Consciousness tonight, she must ensure that Mrs. Manas recovered as soon as possible.

“Oh… yes, just like that…” Mrs. Manas said, almost groaning, as if getting a massage for her sore muscles. “Compress it, try to compress… Let the empty space generate new Higher Consciousness.”

This cultivation method purified and condensed Higher Consciousness, making it not only more flexible and agile but also increasing her reserve of it. During the practice session, Lin Sanjiu realized that her Higher Consciousness was initially a bit loose.

After concentrating for a few hours, Mrs. Manas finally let out a long sigh. “I feel much better.”

“I guess I haven’t been practicing much lately,” Lin Sanjiu said, scratching her face embarrassedly.