Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 13: Sleepwalking in Dreamland

1605: Wu Yiliu in 'the Door'

Unexpectedly, the plan actually worked. Wu Yiliu felt a hot, trembling sensation in his chest, a mix of lingering fear and relief.

At first, this plan wasn't really a plan—just a vague idea, something that seemed like it could be useful. It floated in the back of his mind, and even though Wu Yiliu didn't know what it would turn into or how it would be useful, he couldn't bring himself to let it go. Now, looking back, he realized just how lucky he had been.

The seed of this idea came from something "Abby" had said. That player probably hadn't realized how important that little detail was: "In our soul state, we moved through a landscape completely different from the normal one, and we followed the light of the camping cabin to find you all."

"Abby" quickly moved on to talking about other events, but Wu Yiliu couldn't shake off her words. He kept thinking about them, analyzing them over and over. The more he thought about it, the more he realized there was a lot of information hidden in that statement.

For players in their soul state, the world looked entirely different, as Abby had admitted herself. But what exactly did they see? What did she mean by a "completely different landscape"?

From the central zone, it took four players—testers from the pocket dimension—over ten hours of high-speed driving to cover nearly a thousand kilometers and reach the small camping cabin in the woods. Since most organization bases were located in the central zone, it was safe to assume that the pocket dimension's location was also in the central zone. That meant the bodies of those four players should still be nearly a thousand kilometers away from the cabin.

But from what Abby said, it sounded like once they entered the soul state, they just followed the light and found the cabin right away—even arriving around the same time as the others. She didn't even mention the nearly thousand-kilometer distance.

Could the players have left early?

Wu Yiliu quickly dismissed that idea. Leaving early would mean they knew their destination ahead of time. If they already knew where they were going, why would they need to "follow the light of the cabin" to get there?

Based on his pocket dimension experience and the warning message from the cabin's TV, he could infer something else: if the lights in the cabin hadn't been turned on, the players in their soul state wouldn't have been able to find it. This suggested that, at first, they didn't know where they were going and needed the light to guide them.

There was also a bigger possibility: when the players entered their soul state, they appeared near the woods to begin with. But even though they were nearby, they still needed the cabin's light to see and find it. Isn't that interesting?

To maintain both conditions—that "the cabin's light can definitely be seen even through the woods" and "the cabin is completely invisible if the light isn't on," combined with what that player said about a "completely different world"—Wu Yiliu couldn't help but form a theory.

Could it be that the world the players saw was actually dark?

They couldn't see the woods or the cabin; everything around them was just a mass of chaos. Only when the light appeared in the flat, endless darkness could they follow it to the cabin and spot the prey inside.

Of course, Wu Yiliu understood that this was just one possibility, but it was the only theory he had that was supported by evidence.

He remembered that not long after the players found the cabin, he had been mesmerized by a whisper and unconsciously started putting on a pair of women's hiking boots. It wasn't until Cuining reminded him that he snapped out of it and tossed them aside.