Chapter 372: Zoo

“This is… a zoo?” The moment Zhang Wenda uttered the words, he seemed startled by his own guess and took an involuntary step back.

And yet, the bizarre zoo before him showed no signs of vanishing. The chirping of birds, the roaring of lions, and the sounds of chewing—of both plants and flesh—persisted.

Pinching himself hard, Zhang Wenda felt a sharp sting. It proved he wasn’t dreaming.

Everything had changed too quickly, too drastically, as if he’d been transported to another world in an instant. But as the battle-hardened Zhang Wenda, he still forced himself to calm down and think rationally.

‘Calm down, calm down. Don’t panic. Can this situation be any worse than when I was on the verge of death? I need to get a grip and figure out what the hell is going on.’

He reached out and touched the bark of a tree beside the path. Its rough texture proved this place was real, not some illusion.

‘First, this zoo is definitely real. Second, it’s absolutely not a normal zoo!’

Zhang Wenda stared at the giraffes behind the fence eating with their chests, and at the white rabbits crawling and leaping at high speeds with unnatural, rigid movements.

He hadn’t just teleported back to some normal place; he had arrived somewhere far more grotesque.

‘Second, where did all this come from? Why am I suddenly here?’

The mention of a zoo immediately brought that fool to Zhang Wenda’s mind—the fool who had fed him a mushroom. He had said the swamp contained three worlds, and one of them was a zoo.

‘So, that fool wasn’t a fool at all? Was he just playing dumb, a genius in disguise?’

‘But that raises a question. If the fool’s mushroom could really grant me access to this zoo, why didn’t it work before?’

‘The so-called “mushroom key”… Wang Shaojie ate one and it nearly killed him. I ate one too, but I didn’t come here right away. Instead, my body just had a severe poisoning reaction.’

Recalling his final moments, the image of Yellow desperately clutching his clothes, its face filled with fear and terror, surfaced in Zhang Wenda’s mind.

He also remembered the flash of yellow light that flared before his eyes as he clutched it tight, right when he was surrounded and attacked by the three 03s.

‘Could it be… Could this be the ultimate ability Yellow possessed? Is this a world he created? He’s not useless at all… on the contrary, is his power actually the greatest of all?’

As the realization dawned on him, Zhang Wenda raised his small, childlike hand in shock, staring at the faint yellow glow shimmering on its surface.

‘Is he really that powerful? My Yellow can create a world? No, wait… is this creation, or transformation?’

But then he thought of Rakov and Qianxi, and it seemed highly plausible. They appeared to have similar abilities, even if they manifested in different ways.

‘I used to wonder why, even after becoming a 03, my power was always a notch below theirs. Was this the reason? Is this what I was missing?’

For now, Zhang Wenda could only come up with these two possibilities; he couldn’t think of a third. Compared to the theory about the fool’s mushroom, he leaned toward the second one, because everything around him felt just like being back in Thought Wave One.

‘But if this world was created by my Yellow, why was the fool able to see it ahead of time? That’s a problem.’

‘Or… does this world already exist, and Yellow merely guided me into it?’

But Zhang Wenda decided to put these trivial details aside until after he got out. His priority now was to find a way to leave. Hu Maomao, his Three Colors, his Hippocampus, the Clown, and Little Black Cat were all still out there.

“ROAR!” The lions roared at Zhang Wenda, clearly desperate to tear a chunk of flesh from his body.

Fortunately, tall iron bars enclosed the lion exhibit, keeping them trapped inside.

Zhang Wenda didn’t know what would happen if the lions in this zoo ate him, but he had absolutely no desire to find out.

Zhang Wenda began to explore the zoo cautiously. He had to be careful. He was just a child now, and none of his various abilities worked here.

The entire zoo was sectioned off by winding tourist paths paved with fine sand and gravel, separating the different animal exhibits.

Each animal exhibit was surrounded by low, wooden fences painted a bright, goose-yellow. The inner enclosures, however, varied in height depending on the type of animal they contained.

In addition, there were brightly colored cartoon animal signs and green-painted, wrought-iron benches for visitors to rest on.

The more Zhang Wenda looked, the more unsettling it all felt. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but something about the place was just… off. Incongruous.

The zoo was huge, but there was no deliberate zoning. The lion and zebra enclosures were right next to each other, and all sorts of bizarre animals were penned up together haphazardly.

Eventually, Zhang Wenda found himself outside the giraffe enclosure, watching the creatures inside devour bushes with the gaping maws on their chests.

He wasn’t there because he liked giraffes. He was there because he remembered something that fool had said: “In that world, the mosquitoes are giraffes.”

‘Is that a literal mapping? Or a metaphor?’ Zhang Wenda plucked a handful of leaves from a nearby tree, crumpled them into a ball, and tossed it over. The giraffes were obliging enough to leap up and catch the bundle with the mouths on their chests.

‘If the giraffes are mosquitoes… then does that mean the monkeys that ran away are all people from the Big Circle?’ Connecting the dots, Zhang Wenda felt it was increasingly likely. A new idea began to form in his mind.

‘Even though I’m a kid again with no powers, they’re not much better off. At least I’m still human. They’ve been turned into monkeys that can only screech and chatter.’

‘If I kill all the monkeys here… does that mean the threat I’m facing in the other world will be eliminated?’

The more Zhang Wenda thought about it, the more excited he became. He immediately began searching the entire zoo for monkeys. The process, however, was not easy. The monkeys from Monkey Mountain had all scattered; some had even wandered into other exhibits and been eaten by the other animals.

He would occasionally spot a few stragglers, but they would scurry away before he could even get close.

After a few failed attempts to catch them, a winded Zhang Wenda stopped, panting. “This doesn’t make sense! There’s no way I’m slower than them. There must be something wrong with this mapping.”

But just as Zhang Wenda was complaining, the sight of an open cage nearby made him swallow his words.

Not fifty meters to his left, the gate to one of the exhibits stood wide open. Someone had opened it at some point, and all the animals inside were gone.

“HISS…” Seeing this, Zhang Wenda felt a cold chill shoot straight up his spine. ‘The things kept in there were no pushovers. If they’ve escaped, what hope is there?’