Chapter 752: Genial Peanut Town

Imagine that you were in a deep sleep but your mind was wide awake. You sat up in your body and pinched your arm as hard as you could but didn"t feel any pain. You looked around you and started to get confused about what was dream and what was reality. 

…This was what Lin Sanjiu was feeling right now. 

She lifted her hand and touched her face. Nothing. The lip-shaped water bag that fit perfectly with her lips was gone. 

A blanket of silvery mist was licking at every surface. She squinted her eyes, or so she thought, and tried to look around. At that moment, she realized that there was no one around. She was alone. 

Just as she stood up and walked two steps forward, a soft female voice erupted out of nowhere and made her jump. 

"Please don"t stand up. The libretto is being generated."

Lin Sanjiu hesitated for a moment and then sat down as the voice told her. After waiting nervously alone in the mist for a while, just as she thought the voice had already left, it rang out again. "Thank you for your cooperation. The libretto has been generated. The following is the description for your libretto."

With her bland opening remark, the mist began to clear up, revealing the sky that was as clear as a sapphire gem. The westbound sun was giving off its final heat before the night took over. The air felt dry and the place smelled like autumn wind and dry leaves. 

Lin Sanjiu lowered her head and found her hand on a steering wheel. It wasn"t long before she realized she was sitting inside a Volkswagen, driving along a straight highway as trees and houses sped by outside the window. 

The second she realized she was driving, she was so shocked that she stomped on the accelerator hard and almost rammed herself into the serrated edge of the road. After she hit the brake, the soothing female voice echoed. "You are on a road trip and you have traveled across half of the country. You have been driving for the whole day and now you are tired. In the evening, you entered a town called Peanut Town, looking for a place to settle. Today"s temperature is 51-degrees Fahrenheit, and the population of the town is 799." 

"This is really a small town," Lin Sanjiu thought inwardly. She figured that she did not have to meet all 799 people in the town since this was just a dream. However, there was something strange. The moment the female voice went silent, she suddenly felt a chill waft upon her face. She reached for the heater and turned it on. 

She waited for the voice with bated breath. However, it didn"t ring out again. 

"That"s it? No more?" Lin Sanjiu reignited the vehicle and began her journey once more in puzzlement. 

According to the description, it seemed that she had to find a place to settle down for the night. As such, she looked out of the window and looked around. To her dismay, all of the shops were closed and she couldn"t see any sign of a hotel even after driving for ten minutes straight. 

She turned a corner and drove into a residential area. She wound down down the window and hollered out to a woman who was walking her dog, "Hey there. Could you please help me?"

The woman turned her head over. Her frizzly blonde hair draped over her shoulders and looked as if she hadn"t dyed it for so long. There were bags under her eyes and she wore a weary expression, but Lin Sanjiu didn"t know whether it was because she was exhausted from being dragged here and there by the pit bull or something else. She gave Lin Sanjiu an affable smile as she replied in a friendly manner, "Sure, how can I help you?"

"I"m looking for a hotel to stay in. Can you show me the way to the nearest one?"

"Oh, unfortunately, we don"t have a hotel here." The woman shook her head. "We never have visitors in this town. Old Borg used to run a hotel before, but it"s already closed down." 

Silvan had mentioned that each person had only one libretto, and each libretto contained only one story. Lin Sanjiu did not expect that she would meet a dead-end so soon. 

"Guess I have to spend the night in my car, then." She smiled bitterly. 

The woman understood her circ.u.mstances, but there was nothing she could do. She nodded apologetically and then walked away. 

"She walked away just like that?" Lin Sanjiu was slightly stunned, but she didn"t want to trouble the woman again. Even though this was a dream and that woman was probably not a real human, she still couldn"t bear to trouble others. Besides, it was just a small matter that would not cost her life. 

"Please note that not everyone who appears in your libretto will necessarily be fake," the female voice popped out again. "In this pocket dimension, all partic.i.p.ants" librettos are randomly connected." 

"In other words, I might b.u.mp into another posthuman in my dream?"

While she mulled over the thought, she finished circling Peanut Town. As expected, she did not come across any hotel or B&B.

"Hi there." She suspected that the woman had given her a hint, so this time, she halted a man who was carrying a shopping bag. "Can you tell me the way to Old Borg"s house?"

She knew it was kind of weird for a stranger like her to inquire about the home address of somebody she didn"t know. However, the man hardly hesitated long before replying to her swiftly, "Turn right at the junction in front, then go straight and you will find Old Borg"s house as the third one on your left."

As she began leaving, the man smiled kindly at her.

Following the man"s direction, Lin Sanjiu soon found Old Borg"s house. She hesitated a moment and then knocked on the door. After several minutes, the door pushed open from inside and a silver-haired older man with ruddy cheeks appeared in her vision. 

"I"m sorry, but my hotel has already gone out of business," he laughed dryly as he explained to Lin Sanjiu. "Goodbye."

Then, the door was slammed shut. It almost hit her nose.

"This is a dream and not a game," Mrs. Manas suddenly said. "Perhaps there isn"t any hint at all."

"You might be right." Lin Sanjiu paced back to her car and opened the door. "Silvan also told me that the key to survival is to guess where the plot is going and then arrange an ending that is best for me according to the plot. If there isn"t any hint, then I really have to think nicely and thoroughly about my next step. But anyway, it seems that I"ll have to spend my night in the car tonight." 

The moment she went into the car, the radio came to life.

"The cold snap that was forewarned two days ago is arriving tonight," the broadcaster announced. "Temperatures are set to plummet below zero, so please be prepared for the cold…"

"Cold snap? What bad luck." Lin Sanjiu sighed and looked out through the window. 

The day had completely darkened, and the houses began to light up one after another; the orange lights that filtered out of their windows failed to chase away the umbra that filled the outside to the seam. The streetlights stood by the roadside like a rank of soldiers, their shadows on the ground. Although it was just 6.30 pm at night, there weren"t any pedestrians on the street anymore. 

Even though the heater was operating, due to the draught that slipped through the slit of the windows, it still felt deadly cold in the car. Thanks to the attentiveness of her grand prize, Lin Sanjiu rummaged through her card and successfully pulled out a fur-lined parka, also putting on a pair of winter socks to s.h.i.+eld herself against the air currents.

"I wonder why he never contacted me," Lin Sanjiu puffed out a blob of white smoke as she examined the [Hey, sis?] in her hand. "Could it be that he"s having some trouble facing the Veda?"

"Or he did that on purpose," Mrs. Manas interrupted coldly. "He intentionally did not contact you in order to make you worry about him and want to go back for him. And then, he will trap you forever there."

"How—how could you think like that?"

"I"m not the one who"s thinking like that." Her voice still sounded cold, unlike her usual self. While Lin Sanjiu was in this dream, she was constantly a.s.saulted by a sense of pressure that made her feel really uneasy. "I am your consciousness, or you can say, I am your inner voice. This is what you think."

In the dream, her inner voice seemed to become clearer and more straightforward.

It felt as if she was pressing her finger against the tip of a blade. The subconsciousness was known as the inner speech of oneself for a reason. 

Lin Sanjiu did not know what to say. There weren"t any concrete thoughts in her mind, and all she could do was stare blankly at the row of streetlights. The dark seemed to have thickened and the cold wind continued to ravage through everything outside of the window. She didn"t know how long she had been sitting inside the car, and it wasn"t until a sharp alarm sounded and snapped her back that she realized she had fallen asleep in her dream.

The alarm came from a house. After the first alarm rang out, more and more followed after. Lin Sanjiu glanced at the clock as the digit jumped from 8:59 to 9:00.

After a short while, the doors to the houses opened one after another. Lights spilled into the street, and there were silhouettes of people rus.h.i.+ng out of their houses. 

"h.e.l.lo, everyone." The radio once again came alive by itself along with the broadcaster"s airy voice. " Welcome back to my channel! It is now 9:00 pm, and I bet everybody is still awake. Today is the first day of the enforcement of the new law, so I hope everyone hasn"t forgotten to do what you should do. If any of you see a neighbor that is still in his or her house… haha, well, see you all later. I have to get ready for the town hall, too."

After that, he ended the broadcast with a hearty laugh.

"What the h.e.l.l was that for?" As Lin Sanjiu had no idea what was going on, she looked outside the window. There, she saw cars that ignited one after another. Their smoke came out white in the freezing night. The street suddenly became lively. Cars full of people zooming here and there, and houses, which were filled with ambient orange lights, were now dark. As the cars left one by one, the liveliness seeped away little by little until there was none left. Silence returned and the street turned dead. 

Lin Sanjiu hastily followed after the stream of cars. However, her car began to tremble wildly after several minutes. She smacked the steering wheel, and as she s.h.i.+fted her eyes to the display board, the car stopped moving. It had run out of petrol.

"Jesus! Does [No Coincidence, No Story] only bring me bad luck?" Lin Sanjiu pushed the door open and went out of the car exasperatedly. She ran towards the string of vehicles before she suddenly realized something. 

She was now inside of a dream, so her enhanced abilities had become rather volatile. Sometimes she felt powerful but other times she felt weak. After doddering along the road for a few minutes, she felt a burning sensation spreading from her chest.

The stream of vehicles soon vanished from her sight. Having no other options left, Lin Sanjiu dashed towards a car that was parked on the roadside. She knocked on the window and raised her voice. "I"m sorry, can you wind down the window? I need you to tell me where the town hall is."

In the driver"s seat was a middle-aged man, and next to him was his wife. There were two kids in the backseat that were looking at her with googly eyes. The man stared at her but did not wind down the window. Lin Sanjiu repeated herself again, and although he seemed to understand what she was saying, he refused to open up the window. He gave a regretful smile and made the gesture of a cold sign by wrapping his arms around his body.

"I know it is cold, but—"

Before Lin Sanjiu could finish her sentence, the engine roared to life. The car stormed forward, and to prevent herself from falling down, she jumped back. She raised her head and saw the vehicle, which was a Citroën, turn right in a corner and leave her sight.

Then, the soft, familiar woman"s voice rang out above her. "Connection to the libretto of the second posthuman is being established. Please be prepared."