Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 8: Heaven Underworld (pt. 2: 856-1023) [Complete]

947: Advancing into the Sky

If Hu Changzai had also come along, it would have been perfect.

Lin Sanjiu steadied her breath and finally stopped, leaning against the wall behind her. The surroundings were pitch black. The railroad tracks beneath her feet were submerged in darkness, and the raised edges clearly pressed against her boots. One of her hands still tightly grasped Twelve's arm, specifically holding onto the broken part of the bone. She was so wary of this person that she hadn't even forgotten to envelop her palm in the [Defense Forcefield].

"Is this... a train station?" Twelve asked weakly. The broken bone continued to tug, rub, and collide within his flesh, just the thought of it was unbearable. But beyond his pale face and drenched in cold sweat, Twelve seemed to be quietly enjoying this pain.

"No one will come here for now," Lin Sanjiu said coldly. Although she had taken all defensive measures, Twelve had been quite cooperative all along the way, not even attempting to escape once, which made her secretly alert. "Gong Daoyi especially won't be able to find this place... I doubt he can even leave the Munitions Factory gates now."

Twelve sighed without any hint of regret, leaning against the platform behind the two of them.

"You should be well aware of why I brought you out," Lin Sanjiu felt disgust even though she held his arm through the [Defense Forcefield]. "I can turn twelve personalities into eleven now... You better have a good reason to stop me from doing so."

"Hah," Twelve chuckled softly and ambiguously. But before the second half of his sentence left his lips, it was suddenly interrupted by a faint glow around his neck. The crescent-shaped halo quietly floated in the darkness, illuminating half of Twelve's face from below: his chin, the tip of his nose, the depths of his eyes... It gave his appearance a completely different look.

Lin Sanjiu kept her face tense but breathed a slight sigh of relief in her heart.

With the help of an additional Special Item, she could finally relax a little.

"I have two things to remind you of," Twelve lowered his eyelids, retracted his chin, and looked at the halo around his neck. He spoke softly, "First, I haven't resisted at all, and I haven't tried to escape until this thing started working again. It's because I didn't want to run. I chose to stay voluntarily. After all, I am a personality. Although I have matured to be similar to an ordinary person now and am subject to the same constraints... I still have a way, something that ordinary people like you don't have."

He obviously didn't finish his sentence, and Lin Sanjiu tightly pursed her lips without asking "why."

"Secondly, you can't turn twelve personalities into eleven—at least, you can't maintain that number for long."

Those words made Lin Sanjiu feel like she didn't understand.

"Are you saying that your personalities can die and be reborn?" After a few seconds of thought, she cautiously asked. Septimus had mentioned that a personality only had one life, but she wasn't confident in his words.

"No, they can't."

What puzzled her was that Twelve's answer came too decisively, without any uncertainty. Upon careful consideration, it seemed there was something illogical about it. If all twelve personalities were still present, how would they know that they only had one life?

"Mature personalities and a normal human being, essentially, are not much different... except for the fact that we can return to the host personality's body."

This point matched the basics of what Septimus had said earlier, and Lin Sanjiu made a mental note of it.

"So when we suffer fatal injuries, we die like ordinary people and cannot be revived." Twelve smiled suddenly as he continued, "You knowing that I will die doesn't matter because I truly... don't care about dying at all."