Kisaragi Station || Apocalypse Paradise #3

193: After the Horror of Death Settles

Her corpse stiffened and fell to the ground beside the train doors with a thud, her lifeless face reflecting in the train window as it moved in sync with the train's motion. Lin Sanjiu never imagined she'd end up in this situation today.

"Are you stupid?"

Mrs. Manas's voice cut through the train's rumble, sharp enough to pierce the roof. Her furious yelling drowned out the train's noise. "I shut myself away so you could use your [Defense Forcefield] longer, yet you ended up like this. What are you going to do?!"

As a translucent form, Lin Sanjiu squatted beside her own corpse, watching it grow stiffer. She had no idea how to answer Mrs. Manas. But another puzzling question nagged at her: how could she see the scene before her?

She recalled the moment just before her death. Her body felt freezing, muscles frozen. As her consciousness waned, her survival instinct kicked in. Her remaining Higher Consciousness surged out like flood water flowing through sluices and enveloped her brain, protected it.

When her corpse slipped off the train seat, only the part protected by her Higher Consciousness, now in a translucent form, remained in place. In essence, Lin Sanjiu had become a translucent, floating brain... spirit.

"It's strange. How can I still see and hear?" Lin Sanjiu asked Mrs. Manas.

A grayish-white translucent brain, unrecognizable as Lin Sanjiu, shook slightly. "Since I'm dead, how are you still here?"

Mrs. Manas remained quiet for some time as if she was trying to control her anger. After a few minutes, trying her best to remember her responsibility as an educator, she finally replied with a strained voice, "Right now, your... spirit is formed from your concentrated Higher Consciousness. Did you forget it can be used for detection? Without it, how would you have developed your observational skills?"

The brain nodded. It spun in the air, surveying the surroundings. Everything unseen in life was now laid bare before her.

It was the same scene she saw before her death. Every seat was occupied by a person with a dead, ashen face; their chests rose once only after a very long time, during which two streams of white gas would escape from their noses. It was quite creepy.

"No wonder Kisaragi Station World is so cold!"

The Teru Teru Bozu looked different from Lin Sanjiu's memory: a girl with a lifeless gray face clung to it, dangling from its strings, her white dress flowing over her body. From where the girl hung, her dress reached Lin Sanjiu's neck as she sat on the train seat.

Seeing the very thing that had strangled her to death, Lin Sanjiu couldn't articulate her feelings.

Now without a body, she no longer felt the cold, and with her enhanced vision, fear was absent too.

However, considering her current form, she didn't even know if she could continue existing in this manner tomorrow, let alone seek revenge for herself.

"So... I'm dead?" The grayish-white brain floated down to her corpse. "Does this mean I can only continue living as a brain-shaped spirit?"

This wasn't an easy question for Mrs. Manas. "Wait," she replied before disappearing for some time. Lin Sanjiu waited anxiously until she spoke again.

"I've had suspicions about this," Mrs. Manas began, instantly grabbing Lin Sanjiu's attention. "No matter how powerful Higher Consciousness is, it can't defy true death. Your current state might be related to the nature of this world."

The grayish-white brain drifted a bit, "I have the same thoughts. This world is connected to urban legends and the supernatural, so spirits exist here. But I think I'm a little different from them."

The grayish-white brain floated beside the old lady. Lin Sanjiu would have poked the old lady's nose if the brain had a finger.

The gloomy-looking old lady's expression remained unchanged. Her saggy, half-opened eyes, hidden under the layers of wrinkles, showed almost no awareness of Lin Sanjiu's presence. She cocked her head slightly, ignoring Lin Sanjiu as if she weren't there.

"Well, they've retained their human forms, but you're just a brain," Mrs. Manas observed.

"No, that's not what I meant. Um, how do I put this? I still have my thoughts and can act according to my own will. That's probably because of my Higher Consciousness, right? If I didn't have my Higher Consciousness, what would happen?"

Mrs. Manas wanted to reply, "Then, you'd die," but she suddenly thought of Douglas and found herself speechless. She knew how valuable Higher Consciousness was to a user who could utilize it, but she had never mentioned this specifically to Lin Sanjiu. Moreover, this ability was exceedingly rare, making it improbable that Douglas was also using Higher Consciousness to persist and move around after his demise.

"So, my theory is that... after this world was invaded by dark matter, everyone either perished at the hands of or merged with the dark matter. They all became part of this eerie supernatural world or transformed into a unique type of duoluozhong exclusive to Kisaragi Station. They're not alive. That's why Douglas could hear the sound of my Higher Consciousness."

Lin Sanjiu marveled at her calmness. It was remarkable that she could logically piece together these thoughts despite their bizarre circumstances. Lin Sanjiu's intention in sharing this wasn't so much to explain herself to Mrs. Manas as it was to organize her own thoughts.

"I constantly felt an intense cold, which may indicate that I was being corroded by dark matter. Once it more or less consumed me, these unique duoluozhongs easily killed me." Lin Sanjiu floated downward, gazing at her widened, lifeless eyes. The brain shivered in midair. "But they couldn't have anticipated that I could exist in this form. I didn't survive their assault yet didn't transform into a duoluozhong either."

"Exactly... Given your current state, who knows what will become of you after 14 months?" Mrs. Manas sighed. The grayish-white brain remained silent, hovering over the corpse.

"At the end of 14 months, will you be teleported to another world? Would you die instantly if sent to a world devoid of dark matter? Huh?... HOLY SHIT! Where's your body?!"