Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 13: Sleepwalking in Dreamland

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What kind of luck was this?

Lin Sanjiu had been lying around enjoying herself half the day, and Celestial Park hadn't budged an inch. But the moment she set foot on it, the park started to drift away as if it disliked her and didn't want her to enter, seizing the opportunity to move outward. If not for her long legs, she might not have had time to wait for those clinking, clattering humanoid items to run close.

Even with the best split, she could at most form a human bridge. In the end, it was through sheer Higher Consciousness that she managed to drag herself over.

Lin Sanjiu stood close to the boundary line, just a palm's length away from the thick, rolling grey fog. Although she wasn't the one who had run frantically, the struggle in the air was rather frightening. She stood in place, catching her breath for a while, staring at the grey fog, pondering a question: if she tried to throw something out now, could she still get it out?

She acted on her thought and raised her hand, a card transforming into a pack of paper in mid-air before the grey fog, seamlessly melding into it and vanishing without a trace. She quickly took a small step back.

Lin Sanjiu didn't dare to stray too far from the boundary, fearing that she might accidentally bump into an invisible memory owner. She called out the three humanoid items to surround herself, and also released the fat, old man from her seed ability. These memory owners, constructed as if they were special material human-shaped signs, couldn't move on their own and required her seed ability to push them, truly testing her practically non-existent skills.

"With my rotten luck," Lin Sanjiu complained. "I might just miss the memory owner."

"When a problem arises, you shouldn't blame the external world first; you must look within yourself..." The Life Coach sometimes seemed to switch into counseling mode at the oddest phrases, and Lin Sanjiu glanced at him.

The biggest difference between the Life Coach and those human know-it-alls who spout wisdom was that as a Special Item, his purpose was to genuinely assist his master—even if it was just a pep talk, it was still psychological help, not self-satisfaction. Considering that he was a Special Item...

Lin Sanjiu suddenly cursed under her breath.

"My [No coincidence. No story] is still on."

The Life Coach clapped. "You see, you've found the reason."

She remembered now that when she and Yu Yuan left the spaceship, she had turned on [No coincidence. No story] to find the traces of the Queen more quickly. Was this ability also responsible for them being pulled into this space? Had the Queen, a planetary reserve, passed through here without triggering human memories? Maybe the Queen had passed through unscathed, but the three who had followed were now stuck between memories, unable to leave.

It seemed she would have to wait until they got out to investigate further. So far, Lin Sanjiu's opportunities to meet and part with friends had been rare, while her moments of fleeting acquaintanceship and subsequent loss had been many. Every time she parted with a friend, she had to be prepared never to see them again—whatever their fate, she would never know, left only with the memory of their shared experience. Even that memory was unreliable, fading and wavering like a cloud's shadow on water.

Perhaps this was the very purpose of this space?

To preserve memories in their entirety before they could fade or change?

After closing [No coincidence. No story], Lin Sanjiu was sweeping for mines, lost in thought. The park's visitors were not living people but merely animated backdrops, so they could only move back and forth within a five or six step range. She quickly discovered this and realized that the visitors had thus effectively divided the area into small segments without other people. While sweeping for mines, she only had to push the fat, old man along the edge of the regions, saving at least half the effort.

However, even with half the effort, it was still a tedious and boring chore.

"It's been nearly ten minutes." Lin Sanjiu sighed, looking back. "I've only moved two meters from the boundary line. What year and month will I find what I'm looking for? How about this, the three of you go ahead and look around, keep an eye out for anything suspicious."

This instruction might have been too vague, but she had no idea what clues an invisible memory owner would leave behind—or if they would leave clues at all. Besides the Life Coach, the other two humanoid objects looked bewildered before leaving, and it was hard to muster any hope by looking at them.

Sure enough, when they came back, the report she received was confusing and messy.

The smartest one, the Life Coach, found nothing and even looked rather smug about it. Caster, who understood and followed the commands to the letter, seemed to have only understood "go ahead and look around." Therefore, she went the furthest but was of no serious use, even reading the palm of a gatekeeper, for free.

Surprisingly, the most useful one turned out to be the Artist. He drew a sketch of the park's terrain, and since it was just simple lines, the drawing did not have any special effects. Lin Sanjiu looked at it and found the terrain very complete, with clear representations of the front and back doors and walls.

"It's so complete." Lin Sanjiu put down the sketch and then picked it up again, a vague feeling nagging at her mind. "Too complete."

"Is something wrong?" the Life Coach asked promptly.

"This is the first time I've seen such a complete terrain," Lin Sanjiu said, hesitating. "Wu Yiliu's forest seemed vast, but the distant peaks were just shadows in his memory. His actual memory territory was not that large, limited to the parts of the forest he had been to. Similarly, the memories of the bookseller and the black flute were restricted to the streets they frequented... They were only backdrops for certain experiences. This celestial park is not small, probably taking an hour to walk around. Why would the entire park be a backdrop?"

She pointed to a young girl nearby playing on a skateboard and said, "For example, if she were the memory owner and the memory content was her playing on the skateboard, her memory territory should only be a small plaza under this planet. Places she couldn't see during this experience wouldn't become her memory backdrops, right?"

The Life Coach thought for a moment and nodded.

"So, there are two possibilities. Either the memory owner walked the entire park when the memory was formed, or they were in a place where they could see the whole park," Lin Sanjiu slowly said. "If it's the former, I'm out of luck and stuck with this labor. But if it's the latter... maybe they are still there."

"What place could provide a view of the entire park?" the Life Coach asked quickly.

Lin Sanjiu looked up.

Above the park, there floated many artificial celestial objects. At the highest point, there was a large orange-red planet, surrounded by several small asteroids, orbiting it in circles.

"I wonder... are these planets operated by someone?" she murmured, looking up.