Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 12: New Game Launch [Complete]

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."