The Yellow-Haired Villain in Soaring Phoenix's Novels Also Desires Happiness
Chapter 1014: 1. Prelude to Doomsday
The sky was shattering.
The earth was collapsing.
Death-bearing astral winds surged from the pitch-black cracks, and flickering heavenly lightning hooked up with earthly fire, plowing inch by inch across the homeland they depended on to survive.
The man struggled to open his eyes.
Flowing blood dyed his entire vision red. Everything he saw was as tragic and desperate as doomsday. He heard the wails of his wife and daughter. They were struggling in agony within the flames. He heard the roars of many people. Those were his clansmen making their dying counterattack... yet before that irresistible, terrifying natural disaster, those roars soon turned into miserable screams.
The man turned his body. On one side was unbearable pain, and on the other... he felt nothing at all.
So-called turning his body was, in truth, only turning his head. The only things he could still move now were that head, and one hand that was still relatively intact.
His vision slowly shifted with it, and then...
A tower collapsed thunderously before his eyes.
It was a high tower.
Compared with the stone buildings beside it that had already turned into ruins, this tower was so grand and magnificent. Intricate patterns and carvings adorned the eaves of every level, wave-like designs rising layer upon layer. At the tower’s tip, a round crimson creation hung like a blazing sun, radiating light bright enough to illuminate this entire “world.”
“No...”
Seeing the tower collapse, and seeing that light scatter, the corners of the man’s eyes instantly split open. He could actually still force a hoarse sound from his throat.
It seemed that whether it was the deaths of his wife and daughter, or the deaths of his kin, neither was nearly as terrifying in his heart as the collapse of this tower.
Because this was his life’s work.
It was also the life’s work of his entire tribe.
For several hundred years, they had gathered those lost things bit by bit, collected those faint ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) powers bit by bit, and finally, not long ago, completely opened this long-lost channel.
Sunlight! Warm sunlight!
This tribe that had eked out survival in darkness for several hundred years had finally regained the blessing of sunlight.
And yet, before they could even carefully feel that warmth... disaster had arrived.
“Why... We did nothing wrong... Why...”
The man wept bitterly. He struggled to stretch out his hand, trying to touch the round creation that had rolled to the ground after the tower collapsed.
It no longer gave off warm light. It was like an ordinary spherical ornament carved from wood, but the man still wanted to touch it, because only by touching it, after touching it, could he...
Crack.
But in the end, he still failed to touch it.
Because a jade foot stepped down, completely crushing that wooden ball into residue.
“...Why?”
The man froze. Countless thoughts rapidly flowed through his chest, finally brewing into unimaginable rage!
He glared furiously at the newcomer, even forgetting that she was the source of all this disaster.
“No reason.”
But the one who had come merely replied coldly.
That jade foot moved again.
Her black gown dragged across the ground, draped with layer upon layer of exquisite thorn-like patterns. Her crimson hair spread out like the flame that had annihilated this world.
One or two delicate scales were scattered across her shoulders and neck, making her skin seem even fairer. As for the hands and bare feet extending from the black gown, even in this “world” that had become so dark after losing the sunlight, they gave off a faint, mesmerizing jade hue.
She came beside the man, and as her lowered eyes shifted slightly, the red eyeshadow there seemed about to set the night aflame.
“Because you must die. That is all.”
“Die... Why? We only wanted to live... We never did anything wrong... All these years, everything we did was only to pursue that touch of warm sunlight. Why did you have to hunt us down for several hundred years?”
The man wept, grief-stricken and furious... and then cursed.
“Hamreign, someone like you, born beneath the sunlight, what right do you have to decide our life and death?! You butcher! Calamity! Destroyer! You have destroyed so many races and civilizations. Are you still unwilling to stop?”
“Heh? You ask what right I have? I am stronger than you. That is my right.”
The dragon crowned with the name of calamity did not care about those curses at all. She merely gave a cold laugh.
“As last words before death, these words are far too laughable. Besides... warm sunlight? Was what you pursued really only warm sunlight?”
“Wh... what do you mean?”
The man froze again.
But Hamreign was already too lazy to say anything more to him. She simply pointed casually at his eyes.
Those pitch-black, hollow sockets, which did not have any pupils at all, were ignited by a spark of fire.
He saw it. Or rather, he finally saw it on another level.
He saw his wife and daughter struggling in agony within the flames. In his memories, his wife was gentle and beautiful, his daughter charming and adorable. But what he saw now was only two twisted freaks, one large and one small, shrieking in the fire.
They had sharp bone spurs, writhing wrist-tentacles, and vertical mouthparts filled with jagged teeth. Those mouthparts opened and closed, yet gave off childish cries.
“Daddy, Daddy... Daddy, save me...”
“...”
The man shuddered, but he could not control himself from turning his head again. He saw his kin who had died in the disaster. Originally, they had died fighting for their homeland, yet what he saw were clumps of malformed rotten flesh devouring one another at the edge of death.
Finally, he looked at himself.
One side of his body was agony. The other side was emptiness.
The side in agony was because half his body had been directly crushed by some terrifying force, pale bones mixed into bright-red meat paste.
As for the empty side... there was nothing there anymore, so naturally he felt nothing.
So all he had left was one head and one hand.
Yet he was still alive.
“How... is this possible...”
The man’s head split open. A mouthpart filled with dense teeth wriggled open and shut as he spoke in disbelief.
“How could we...”
“There’s nothing impossible about it. In the darkness, you could not see each other’s appearances clearly, but once this ‘sunlight’ lit up, what you could see was not what you should have seen either.”
Hamreign waved casually. Heavenly lightning fell, completely ending those unpleasant, ugly shrieks.
“You were deceived from beginning to end by the ‘sunlight’ you pursued. You believed yourselves bathed in warmth, yet you did not even understand the true nature of that warmth. Truly... pitiful.”
“No—”
The man roared, but the sound he made was not a human tone at all. It was a shriek no different from those monsters.
“No! This isn’t right! I... our pursuit for several hundred years couldn’t possibly have been wrong! Absolutely not! Hamreign! You’re lying to me, you’re lying to us! You...”
“So noisy.”
Hamreign was too lazy to say anything else. Her jade hand clenched in the air.
And so the man’s head instantly shriveled, like a punctured balloon.
But he still stared fixedly at Hamreign, his hollow sockets filled with obsession and incomprehension.
“It can’t be wrong... What we pursued absolutely cannot be wrong. We are the correct ones. We are the real ones... But... if that is so... then your... your sunlight, what is it?”
“...Our sunlight? Who knows.”
Hamreign did not answer. Or rather, answering a dead man was meaningless.
Her crimson hair drifted and spread. Dense black mist suddenly surged from behind her, rapidly enveloping this space.
Very soon, everything here entered decay.
Malformed plants withered. Festering flesh rotted. The traces left behind by a former civilization were all completely drowned in ruins and dust.
Death and doom descended. All things fell silent.
This was... the calamity, the Dragon of Death and Doom.
“So beautiful...”
Heavenly lightning and earthly fire, chaos and extinction. This tiny world located in the cracks between spaces ultimately moved toward destruction beneath the great power called “calamity.”
And the aftershock before that destruction was as splendid as fireworks, so beautiful that even Hamreign could not help praising it... if one ignored the hatred and malice that still remained on those “people’s” faces after death.
Unfortunately, this desperate scene of destruction was also as brief as fireworks. She could only admire it for a moment before having no choice but to devote herself to her official “work.”
“Count: one hundred three thousand thirty-six people.”
Her majestic golden pupils flashed, quickly sweeping across the space. Every trace of death was recorded.
“In such a narrow place, they could actually develop this kind of population. These people were not simple.”
Hamreign murmured lightly, showing no concern at all that all one hundred thousand people had died by her hand.
And their so-called “not simple” resistance had not even touched the corner of her clothes.
After the count was complete, she beckoned lightly. A cracked boulder was summoned by her, then cut apart with a gesture of her finger, becoming a neat square.
All traces of death were engraved onto the square stone. This was both to search for any fish that had slipped through the net, and to let this race that had once existed leave behind a slight trace in this world.
Even if it was a trace of death.
“Light-Chasing Tribe.”
After a brief moment of thought, Hamreign left the final words on the square stone.
“—Pursued light their entire lives, even if that light was false.”
Boom.
The enormous square stone was tossed lightly by Hamreign and fell to the very bottom of the space, pressing all the dust and ruins of that civilization beneath it.
Like... a tombstone.
“It’s time to go to the next place.”
After completely burying this tiny race and civilization, Hamreign did not linger at all. She swept into the sky and turned into a majestic black dragon.
The giant dragon spread wings that blotted out the sky and crossed endless space in an instant.
Then, she stopped in a strange place and changed back into human form.
Her black skirt swayed. Flawless jade feet stepped upon a divided boundary.
On one side were strange blocks of color, as if paint had been overturned and every color had mixed together.
On the other side was deathly, profound gray.
Hamreign stood on the land dyed by strange blocks of color and gazed at the other side. At this moment, a trace of solemnity actually appeared on her flawless, coldly indifferent face.
“The boundary has retreated again.”
If one merely lowered one’s head and looked, the mixed colors and that gray seemed evenly matched. But if one drew their gaze higher and farther, one would discover that these mixed colors were completely wrapped inside the deathly gray.
And as the gray churned, the colors on this side were constantly retreating.
“The situation is more serious than I imagined.”
Hamreign took out a small clock. The clock’s design was peculiar, and it did not belong to this era. Strange letters flickered across it.
The last two characters were clearly flashing faster a few times.
The Doomsday Clock had accelerated its countdown.
But the Doomsday Clock would not accelerate for no reason. Every smallest time mark upon it had been carefully calculated, and under normal circumstances, it would absolutely not be wrong.
Unless something major had happened that would affect the future direction of the world.
In other words... someone was stirring up trouble.
“Heh. Humans always do love destroying themselves.”
Hamreign sighed softly, then once again turned into a giant dragon and flew into the sky, passing through the shattered spatial cracks.
“So... I hate humans the most.”