Wu Yiliu did not lie.
When the giant rats bent over and twisted their bodies to look, he didn't take the opportunity to run away. Instead, he just sat still on the large rock. When the giant rats finally realized something was wrong, one of them nearly swept him off with its long tail, exclaiming like a crying child, "What's going on? But I don't feel pain!"
It didn't look like something that would hurt.
For example, the flesh above their tails now looked like a cucumber that had been left in the fridge for too long: the color had become pale and deepened, turning slightly transparent. It seemed mushy and unable to maintain its original shape, feeling as if one could poke a hole in it with a finger. The giant rats hadn't noticed this gradual decay at all.
"It's because of this mini-doomsday; I suspect that this rainforest causes organisms to decay rapidly!" Wu Yiliu quickly shouted, hoping to calm them down. "It has a limited range. Just run out, and you'll be fine. I know the way out!"
"Hurry up." He didn't even know if the giant rats had heard him. They were panicking, screaming at each other, "You have it too... it's this place, it's this place!"
Wu Yiliu hadn't expected them to break down like this in their terror. They even forgot about their prey, wildly swinging their tails and kicking, as if trying to shake off the rot. When one of the giant rats finally couldn't bear it and ran headlong into the forest's depths, the others followed in shrieking panic.
The rat that had been sitting beside Wu Yiliu, who seemed to be the only one who had heard him, bent down and opened its mouth, filled with human-like teeth, spraying foul-smelling saliva as it asked, "Where? Where's the exit?"
Wu Yiliu wiped his face and stood tremblingly, still crouching, trying not to touch the surrounding plants. The rat reached out an arm and grabbed him, running with him in its grasp.
His shock was immense. He had planned to at least get the giant rats to leave first but found himself caught and taken along. Caught between the foul smell, coarse fur, and wrinkled skin, Wu Yiliu struggled violently but couldn't break free and almost vomited.
"Which way? Which way?" The giant rat screeched as it ran, leaning forward like a human, its legs crossing back and forth. "How come I can't see the ex—"
Its words were cut off.
Wu Yiliu had pointed in the opposite direction of the consular officer, and they soon reached the edge of the Wilderness Forest. They could see the distant buildings beyond the layers of deep green shadows. The boundary between the rainforest and the regular world was both abrupt and neat. One side was grassy woodland, the other a concrete surface, drawn as if with a ruler, without a single leaf crossing the line.
"Hey, over here!" the giant rat said, calling out to its companions, and ran toward the boundary.
Wu Yiliu cringed. The sensation of being enveloped by coarse hair and bare skin was nightmarish. Thankfully, he didn't have to endure it for long.
Indeed, within a few breaths, the giant rat was knocked down with a "thud," tumbling with its legs in the air. Wu Yiliu quickly took the opportunity to wriggle out from under its arm and dashed towards the boundary without looking back.
Each mini-doomsday created by a posthuman is limited in range: now that the Flynn and the consular officer have met, and the two are basically in the same location, their pocket dimension ranges should also overlap. When the boundary of the Wilderness Forest appears before their eyes, it signifies that the boundary of the gray rat's activity is right in front of them.
Even Wu Yiliu himself couldn't believe that he had smoothly jumped over the dividing line this time.
He wasn't caught by the giant rat, the pocket dimension range didn't expand towards him, no sudden accidents occurred; it seemed his luck had saved him once again, allowing him to smoothly escape into the normal side of the world that hadn't been covered by the mini-doomsday.
Wu Yiliu looked back to see the giant rat nearing madness, repeatedly crashing beyond the dividing line; its screams, shock sounds, and blood-filled eyes became the last image that lingered in his peripheral vision and memory. After that, he never looked back again.
As he limped towards the central control room, Wu Yiliu gradually realized another layer of truth.
If A creates a mini-doomsday, and B, who comes into contact with A's doomsday, also subsequently produces a B doomsday. If A and B are separated, the mini-doomsdays are also separated, and that's fine; but if they do not separate, like the consular officer and the Flynn, and the two mini-doomsdays almost entirely overlap, what will happen?
Either the Flynn rots first in the rainforest, or the consular officer gets killed by the gray rat first, and the remaining mini-doomsday will undoubtedly be the more dangerous one.
Wu Yiliu couldn't help but shudder.
At present, the mini-doomsday hasn't spread on a large scale, but when it blossoms everywhere through human-to-human transmission, there will inevitably be overlaps between doomsdays. With this in mind, his earlier guess was not entirely correct.
In the beginning, the personal equals pocket dimension would indeed overlap and intertwine like a chaotic explosion of fireworks; but as the relatively weaker doomsday creators were eliminated one by one, what remained in the end would be only a few—a dangerous and deadly minority of apocalyptic worlds.
Like a selected king of insects.
Not long ago, the place he and Professor Qiao had to flee from, is now left with the door wide open. In less than an hour, it seems everyone realized something was wrong. When he entered the hall, he found it empty, not even a single person was left.
"Professor Qiao!" Wu Yiliu shouted, his voice echoing faintly beneath the ceiling. "Where are you?"
He peered into each room as he passed; the Changelings had indeed all gone, and before leaving, they hadn't forgotten to take the computers and rummage through drawers, leaving every room in a mess. He quickly found the surveillance room, which was also empty.
Some of the monitors were black, some were smashed, some were completely gone, leaving only a few still barely working; Wu Yiliu looked and found that several posthumans were now running towards the center of the fake pocket dimension - meaning soon each one would become a mini-doomsday. Time was running out for him and Professor Qiao.
Where had Professor Qiao gone?
Logically, no posthuman should have had the time to deal with her at this moment... even Huanzi was stuck at the entrance.
Wu Yiliu's anxiety deepened as he searched the entire building, finding a small staircase behind the room where they had collected the Special Item. Following the stairs, he reached the flat rooftop of the building.
Although it was a flat roof, this building was still half higher than the other facilities in the fake pocket dimension. Standing at the edge of the roof, he could see most of the fake pocket dimension due to the open flat surroundings; at this moment, he could still see the Wilderness Forest released by the consular officer in the distance.
Countless densely packed green trees huddled together, rising high from the middle of a group of buildings, like grass poking out from stones, abruptly reaching up to touch the heavy, overcast sky.
Wu Yiliu walked to the edge of the rooftop, stopping a few steps behind the old lady. "Professor Qiao..."
Professor Qiao's arm rested on the railing, and she sighed softly. Just then, a gust of wind blew her hair, dispersing the sigh; her silver-white, sparse curls fell back into place, seeming as tired and listless as she was.
"I knew you would escape the danger," she said, looking at the dense rainforest that rose high from the cluster of buildings and smiling faintly. "Did you do that?"
Wu Yiliu suddenly felt a bit embarrassed and said softly, "I... I took advantage of their [Pocket Dimension Setting]."
After he briefly recounted his experiences, Professor Qiao slowly nodded, her gaze still unwilling to move away from the distant forest. Wu Yiliu joined her side, casting his eyes out as well. By now, more posthumans had arrived near the Wilderness Forest, and with a blast, another burst of white light exploded near the rainforest, although it was unclear what the contents of that pocket dimension were.
He turned to look at the old lady and said softly, "Professor Qiao, we should go. If we don't leave now, I'm afraid those 'mini apocalypses' will spread wider, and we won't be able to escape..."
Professor Qiao did not respond to him but continued to gaze into the distance, seemingly mesmerized.
In the space between heaven and earth, one apocalypse pocket dimension after another bloomed like fireworks. Those environments, which did not belong to this world, enveloped in thick black smoke, wind tangled with thunder, skyscrapers suddenly rising from the ground. It seemed as if they had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and now they had finally broken through the restraint of "normality" to invade this world, like a boisterous laugh released after breaking free from a cage.
"So, that's how it is," Professor Qiao said softly, almost inaudibly. "Doomsday... So, this is what it is. I'm glad I could see it at the end."
Just as Wu Yiliu was about to stress the urgency of their situation again, he looked down and his eyes fell on the grassland below the rooftop, right next to the building.
A bird lay on the ground, belly up, the tip of its long tail feather still tinged with black. Its claws reached into the air, trembling slightly from time to time.
It seemed both unwilling and perplexed by its imminent fate, still struggling and refusing to give up. Its wings fluttered a few times, but it never managed to lift itself off the ground.