Damn.
He had gone too far.
Not only had he gone too far but also inadvertently harmed himself.
Wu Yiliu buried his face in his blood-soaked palms, the slippery sensation slowly flowing down his cheeks and neck like liquid.
Perhaps he had entered a strange mental state under extreme tension and exhaustion, as he had none of the emotions he should have felt at the moment, but instead wanted to burst into laughter. The more he thought about it, the funnier it became. He was about to burst, his shoulders began to tremble—Wu Yiliu suddenly lifted his head and finally started to laugh loudly. The laughter soared high into the towering green trees, scaring away several flapping birds.
"What's so funny that it's made you laugh like this?" asked a giant rodent squatting beside him, bringing its sharp nose closer, its coarse and short black whiskers quivering with each movement of its nostrils.
Wu Yiliu even laughed until tears came out, and when he put down his hands, his cheeks were smeared with blood and tears, but he still couldn't stop laughing, shaking all over. He was sitting in a circle of giant gray-black rats as tall as two people, their bodies blocking out the daylight.
The stench of blood hung thick in the air, and occasionally there was a sound of teeth being ground, quickly passing behind his neck. The fur below their chests became more and more sparse, by the time it reached their thighs, it was as smooth as a human's. On their distinctly rodent-like long faces were human eyes, almond-shaped, with clear black and white divisions. Four or five pairs of human eyes were now focused on Wu Yiliu.
The second posthuman, the one who had just rushed back to stop the consular officer, who after being infected, produced mini-doomsday with these giant beings that were neither human nor rat.
The consular officer was special; he could generate corresponding pocket dimension content according to the destination on the visa—like "Wilderness Forest," which swallowed Wu Yiliu into a dense rainforest.
Ordinary posthumans, who could not produce visas, seemed to have pocket dimensions reflecting their own homeworld after being infected with the personal pocket dimension.
When this group of giant rats slowly crept out of the bushes, Wu Yiliu heard very clearly: the posthuman who came to stop the consular officer, standing in the distant forest, let out a cry of surprise.
"What's going on? How is this like my hometown?" he panickedly demanded, seeming to recall a long-forgotten nightmare. "These things, how can they appear here? Am I hallucinating?"
Perhaps the first world a posthuman experiences, no matter its rating, is always one of the deepest fears.
A giant rat squatting opposite Wu Yiliu lifted its head and sniffed in the direction of the voice—though it was an animalistic behavior, it seemed pretentious, like a human deliberately playing the part of a rat.
The giant rat laughed, revealing a row of square human teeth from its rodent mouth. "Isn't this Flynn? An old friend, nice to meet again."
The posthuman, who had never shown himself, suddenly let out a belch as if he had been so startled that he choked. Wu Yiliu had calmed down by this time, very tired, sitting in place, asking, "Even these creatures, have you dealt with them in your homeworld?"
That is to say, the personal pocket dimension he had created and released could visualize every posthuman's hometown world, turning them into pocket dimensions around them. Not only were they infectious, but they could also overlap with each other; one after another, various small doomsday worlds tangled and interwoven, like a kaleidoscope, like overturned oil paints, turning the place where he grew up into a chaotic world.
Just a little thought made it clear that this was not the worst situation.
What would happen if Wu Yiliu evolved now?
If he were to become a posthuman, then he would also become infected. If infected, a mini-doomsday would occur around him—but the first apocalyptic world he experienced in his life was this chaotic world.
In other words, the only mini-doomsday he could create would be a miniature version of this chaotic world itself. So, within the chaotic world, another chaotic world was added... Every evolving local ordinary person, besides him, represents the potential creation of a shrunken chaotic world. All these varied, interlocking apocalyptic worlds, blooming like countless mushroom clouds after an explosion on this planet, isn't it funny?
Moreover, even trying to clarify the twists and turns on paper is enough to make one's head ache, let alone surviving within it.
He had exerted so much effort, struggling and crashing for so long, one could say he single-handedly pulled the transforming world under the water—but in the end, Wu Yiliu found that he seemed to be accompanying it in its burial.
At least, he didn't know how to escape from the side of this giant grey rat, to escape from the Wilderness Forest.
Wu Yiliu felt the desire to laugh rush up again, but this time, it dissipated before even reaching his face.
"Flynn, why aren't you coming out?" said the giant rat, as several others around it turned, legs still curled, their upper bodies upright, looking in the same direction. "You see an old friend, and you don't plan to say hello?"
Wu Yiliu heard a faint noise, and before he realized what it was, he saw several huge grey rats turn in unison—the consular officer's shadow flashed between a few trees, seemingly just catching sight of these grey rats and quickly backing away several steps.
The consular officer was evidently very familiar with the Wilderness Forest and instantly realized something was wrong; these giant rats were not a part of the Wilderness Forest. As he turned and ran, calling for help on the communicator, his voice sounded panicked. "Come quickly; the situation is messier than I thought, there was a posthuman that appeared here too—"
From the dense forest that obscured most of the sightline, Flynn's angry shout echoed, chasing after him, "It's you who did this, right? What did you activate? Turn it off!"
Flynn and the consular officer collided, and no one cared about an ordinary person at the scene, which should have been the best opportunity for him to escape.
A massive rodent face hung down beside Wu Yiliu's ear, grinning.
Behind the row of neatly arranged blocky human teeth, it "giggled" a few times; when the mouth opened, one could see a pink wet tongue, just like a human's, coiling, tapping the teeth.
"While they're busy, let's get along well. I just love ordinary humans," said the giant rat, insincerely, "so delicate, whimpering..."
Since their appearance—in Wu Yiliu's mind, these giant rats were not "it," but "they"—he had not changed his sitting position, remaining cross-legged on the thick moss.
The ferns around were lush and dense, extending in all directions, dripping with moist beads; the air seemed laden with countless layers of damp cloth, stifling. The giant rats were so large that every turn of the head, sweep of the tail, or bend of the body would push apart some of the green plants; when they stopped, the myriad interweaving branches and ferns would close around them again.
"You were created because of Flynn," Wu Yiliu said slowly. "This is not your native world, you know that, don't you?"
Perhaps because he had seen and experienced so much in the past month, he now found that he wasn't that afraid. Moreover, this way of dying did not suit his aesthetics; he had come so far, he absolutely did not want to die at the hands of something so ugly.
Several giant rats turned their heads at his words. Their appearance was certainly repulsive, but they had one thing: they clearly had intelligence like humans, and that was something he could use.
"Don't you want to know where you've ended up?" he asked.
"What place?"
"What does it matter..."
"You talk too much," the giant rats each had different reactions.
"Wilderness Forest," Wu Yiliu said slowly, maintaining his composure. "The place you appeared, happens to be a mini-doomsday called Wilderness Forest."
"So what?" the giant gray rat squatting beside him asked with interest.
After he was enveloped by "Wilderness Forest," and before Flynn appeared, there was a brief time when he was alone — the consular officer clearly knew where he was, but simply didn't come over.
This was very strange, as at that time, consular officer's rage was nearly palpable, and even enveloping Wu Yiliu in the mini-doomsday was far from enough to quell his anger.
So, Wu Yiliu naturally began to ponder: Why didn't consular officer come to find him?
As soon as he had a suspicion, he acted quickly — he found a large stone in a sparsely vegetated area, climbed onto it, and since then hadn't dared move an inch. Even when these giant rats slowly crawled out of the bushes, he didn't jump off the rock to run away.
"Take a look at each other's backs," Wu Yiliu said, managing to force a smile. "I saw it when you turned around earlier."
One rat's face remained towards him, but it immediately pushed its eyeball to the corner of the eye. As the eye rolled, a large red thread of blood vessels appeared.
"There's nothing there," it said, looking at its companion's back.
"You are too tall," Wu Yiliu said softly, "but I'm different. When I look straight ahead, I can clearly see near the base of your tails... it's already starting to gradually rot away."