Doomsday Wonderland

Chapter 1513: The Retrograde Milan Kundera

The man in the blue shirt was named Zhou Xian, or at least that's what he called himself.

If you walk straight along one of the nine corridors in the round hall, you'll find that the concrete space gradually gives way to a bamboo forest. Among the bamboo, a winding path leads to a large house with green tiles and white walls. As you pass through the main gate, there stands a silk screen, behind which one can faintly see a desk, facing a redwood window.

From the outside, it would be impossible to guess that the space inside was quite small. It seemed that the size of the room that game makers could be allocated was also a matter of random luck.

"You can transform the space yourself, turning it into whatever you want. You know that already, right?" Zhou Xian said as he walked around the screen.

Lin Sanjiu nodded, her eyes falling on the redwood table. In a place where brush and paper should be, there was a computer. She pointed to it and said, "That's..."

"Oh, yes, that's it," Zhou Xian said, apparently misunderstanding her. "I think typing on a computer is the most convenient way, better than anything else. What's yours?"

What?

Lin Sanjiu was taken aback but suddenly recalled Lord Tremors' typewriter and the paper that had fallen from it. She understood. Zhou Xian was writing games on this computer. So, each person's equipment for writing games could be chosen?

"Mine is paper and pen," she mumbled, thinking that there was no going wrong with pen and paper. "I've never used a computer. I'm afraid I won't get used to it."

"Are you from a post-apocalyptic era?"

"N-no, not really." Her speech had to be intentionally stammered now and then, which was quite tiring.

"How are there still be people who've never used a computer?" Zhou Xian seemed half surprised, half pleased. "It seems your home world isn't that great."

"Yes, it's quite poor, quite backward," Lin Sanjiu immediately said. "So, I don't have as much experience as you."

Zhou Xian seemed to want to laugh, but his face was swollen and misshapen, so he just patted her on the shoulder and said, "Don't despise youth and poverty. Everyone has their day to shine! See, you've entered the apocalyptic world and even managed to get healing Special Items, right?"

Lin Sanjiu, not a sly person in the traditional sense, understood at least this much and quickly took out Yu Yuan's healing Special Item. She handed it to him, saying, "I got this by luck. You can try it and see how it is."

"Since you've kindly offered, I won't refuse, especially as I might need it when I go out." Zhou Xian seemed not to hear the "try it" part and casually put it in his pocket. He asked in return, "You can invoke words, right? You've set the method?"

'The way to invoke words can be set?' No wonder she had observed several people and could not figure out their means or signs of invoking words. Each person was different, making it difficult to defend against.

"Alright, I won't teach you then," Zhou Xian said at her nod. He sat down, pointing to the computer screen, saying, "You want to understand the situation; being with me is a good opportunity. I didn't have your luck. When I first came here, I truly had to find my way alone, without any predecessors to show me an example."

Lin Sanjiu expressed her gratitude with great emotion, and only then did Zhou Xian flick the mouse, waking up the computer screen. As the screen brightened, the light shone on his face, highlighting a large area of greenish bruising that looked even more uneven and prominent. One of his eyes could only be half-opened, evidently quite uncomfortable.

"What are you staring at? Have you seen it?" Zhou Xian suddenly urged, seemingly even more eager than Lin Sanjiu, his eyes glowing. "Don't look at me. Look at the game I've written."

It seemed that he was very proud of this game, and now that he had an opportunity to show it off to someone else, he could hardly contain himself.

Lin Sanjiu turned her head, and as her eyes fell on the document on the screen, she was instantly taken aback. Detecting her genuine surprise, Zhou Xian nodded.

This was the first time she had seen a text-based game from the perspective of the game maker. On the document in front of her, which looked like a blank sheet of paper, Zhou Xian had filled it with lines and lines of text. Logically speaking, she knew what she saw with her eyes were indeed lines of text; yet what her mind perceived was an entirely different world, complete with scenery, sounds, and comprehensive rules.

It was as if she had suddenly been thrown into a 3D movie. Lin Sanjiu stood there stunned, looking down to see the undulating deep blue sea beneath her feet, with snow-white foam rising with each wave's break. The sky above was filled with dark clouds, so low they seemed almost to touch the waves.

She was standing on a floating platform marked with the number 1. Looking around, there were countless similar floating platforms on the nearby sea, forming several paths. Each path began with a starting point for a game player, and the numerous floating platforms stretched all the way to the horizon, undulating gently with the waves, the endpoint nowhere to be seen.

"Not bad, eh?" Zhou Xian's voice sounded from close by. Lin Sanjiu turned her head to see the same bruised and swollen-faced man, sitting in a mahogany chair, his eyes shining eerily. She turned back to the computer screen and immediately found herself back above the cloud-covered sea, as if still moving with the undulating waves.

It felt like a 3D environment being switched back and forth.

"I put a lot of thought into it," Zhou Xian said with some difficulty, probably because she had hit him too hard earlier. "Let me tell you, when you start creating a game, you first need to outline the skeleton, or the main structure."

"How do you play this game?" Lin Sanjiu interrupted, bewildered.

Nobody dislikes talking about themselves or their achievements—even the most humble person occasionally likes to mention just how humble they are. Zhou Xian promptly replied, "You'll know if you keep watching for a little while longer."

This was indeed a very peculiar experience.

Her eyes were reading line by line, but as her gaze moved, the scene she perceived in her mind began to change. Since this was not a released game, Lin Sanjiu was the only "test player." Suddenly, the seawater in front of her split open, and something rose from the turbulent water. She started to step back but caught herself in time, subconsciously thinking she was standing on a floating platform with only the ocean behind her.

Zhou Xian gave a "tch" sound, half-laughing through his nose.

Lin Sanjiu didn't turn her head. Her eyes stayed fixed on a large screen that had risen up. She still had no understanding of this game—she had originally thought it was a physical game where you had to jump from one floating platform to another, so why was this newly risen large screen showing her a short TV drama?

It must be a short drama, right?

In a room as small and dimly lit as a storeroom, a woman was half-hunched over, sitting on the dusty floor next to an open box and a skinny little girl who looked no older than seven or eight years old; they must be a mother and daughter. The mother was preoccupied, absent-minded, taking things out of the box one by one; if you looked closely, you would notice her eyelids were tinged with red.