Doomsday Wonderland - Chapter 250

Chapter 250: The Five Books

Under the looming shadows of a tall bookshelf, there were three people crouching silently. They stayed motionless as they stared in Siri’s direction. They stuck so close to the bookshelf that they almost seemed to have merged with it. It was difficult to even detect their breathing. They were indeed Lin Sanjiu and the siblings.

“Well, that is all the rules. You are the fifth and last team of readers today. When you reach the bookshelves, I will announce the names of the five books that you have to find.” Siri’s calm voice did not change even one bit despite the people in front of her. She simply spoke in an almost inorganic tone, “Now, please enter the books section.”

When she said that, the three people staring from the bookshelves immediately became tense.

As they had decided very hastily, they were now hiding among the bookshelves directly facing Siri. They were less than twenty meters away from Team 5. If they walked in their direction, a close-quarters battle would be unavoidable once the book search event started.

Team 5 only consisted of a man and a woman. When the man heard those words, he turned to look at the bookshelves behind him. The faint yellow light from the waning sun peered through the window, illuminating him. As he turned, light reflected off his golden blond hair. Yet, the golden rays on his hair were not as eye-catching as the man’s looks.

Silvan looked behind and smiled at Siri, “I got it. Thank you. It must be tough to work here alone.”

Siri returned to her seat expressionlessly and wore her gold-rimmed spectacles.

“You don’t have to be this polite to her,” the woman beside him commented, sounding a little unhappy. She had dyed flax-colored hair and they couldn’t see her face, “That is just a robot. She won’t understand your kindness. Hurry, let’s go.” After that, she touched Silvan’s arm lightly as if she couldn’t help herself.

Silvan was very tall. When he heard what the woman said, he lowered his head and looked into her eyes. Then, he said to her gently, “Okay.”

Lin Sanjiu noticed the tips of the woman’s ears turning red. It took a long while before the redness faded.

“You have another five minutes. After five minutes, I will announce the names of the books.” Siri said monotonously. Silvan tugged the woman once and they both ran for the staircase at the east wing of the library. Lin Sanjiu and the siblings quickly let out a sigh of relief.

“That is the guy your mentioned previously, Silvan?” Rena’s voice trembled a little when she asked that question after the two people left. “You didn’t tell us that he looks… looks so…” She didn’t have a word to describe what she saw because “good-looking” and “handsome” just wasn’t sufficient to describe even a tenth of his looks.

“Nothing bad happened to me, why would I even bring that up? Is it really that important to know if someone is good-looking?” Lin Sanjiu said critically in her mind. Even though she did find Silvan handsome, she didn’t find the relevance in the matter.

However, even Reno was apparently “conquered” by Silvan’s looks.

“He seems like a nice guy. I hope we don’t have to fight against him,” the teenage boy concluded. He seemed to have come to this conclusion just judging the man by his looks.

Lin Sanjiu was speechless. “These two kids are probably just temporarily spellbound?**” she thought to herself. After all, they were now in a life-and-death situation and she knew that they were aware of their priorities. Her mind was occupied with a fleeting question about the whereabouts of the other members of the Munition Factory for a second and then she didn’t think about it much longer.

They discussed their book searching strategy for some time but they really didn’t have a clue. In the end, they just exchanged information about the Special Items they had and accepted that as the end of their discussion. As Lin Sanjiu’s possessions were all locked within her corpse, she was naturally the ‘poorest’.

Five minutes passed quickly and Siri’s voice suddenly sounded from the speakers without any warning. “I will announce the names of the five books now. The first book is A World History of Art.”

Lin Sanjiu quickly scribbled the name on the paper she prepared.

“The second book is A Girl’s Sorrow.”

The siblings stood up a little nervously when they heard this. They started scanning the books around them. “What if the books are just nearby?” they thought to themselves.

“The third book is A Detailed Guide to Forensic Reconstruction of Dinosaur Fossils.”

Reno, who had started looking through the shelves of books, suddenly froze and immediately drew out a book in a fluster. When he took a closer look, he was very disappointed. The book he took was “A Sorrowful Girl.”

“The fourth book is The Heart-Stealing Consort Escapes With a Baby.”

Lin Sanjiu’s bony fingers paused for a moment and one of her words nearly became crooked. “There is quite a variety of books in this library.”

“The fifth book is How to Render: The Fundamentals of Light, Shadow and Reflectivity.”

Siri spoke very quickly and when she had finished reading out that entire long title, Lin Sanjiu had only written: “How to—”. She wasn’t slow at remembering things but she had not heard a single English[1] word in almost three years since she found herself in these apocalyptic worlds!

The siblings stopped all of a sudden. They looked at each other in dismay, a little stunned by the situation. They heard some disturbance from some unknown spot in the library. The noise became soft echoes from the ceilings. Apparently, the posthumans from the other teams also had the same trouble.

“What did she just say? Should we go over and ask Siri…” Before Reno finished his words, Siri’s voice rang out, “The book titles would only be announced once. It will be announced again during verification.”

That is to say, they had no choice but to try to remember that extraordinary long title of that English book. Lin Sanjiu tried to recall what Siri said over and over again, trying to identify the words. She did managed to grasp a few words but she really couldn’t be sure if it was right.

“Regardless, don’t we already have the titles of four books? Why don’t we just look for the four books first?” Rena said anxiously before looking through the titles of the books on the particular shelf she had been searching.

Lin Sanjiu sighed and quietly copied the book tiles for the siblings on two pieces of paper. The bookshelves were very tall and they were at least 15 meters in length. There were at least 20 shelves and every shelf was packed with books. The top of the bookshelves almost reached the ceiling.

“There are so many books…”

“Please start searching now,” Siri said.

[1] This is obviously a Chinese novel, so let’s assume all the titles are Chinese except this one.