Apocalypse Forecast

Chapter 415 - 357: The Image of the End_1

The world was doomed.

Huai Shi had never felt this so profoundly.

He looked up to see snowflakes fluttering down from the sky, landing on his nose—soon forming a gray layer.

They were tiny specks of dust, invisible to the naked eye.

Specks of black snow.

For a week now, this black snow had been falling from the sky, continuing as if it were the ash from something that had burned out, until everything was completely covered.

Like earth shoveled onto a coffin at a funeral's end, it buried everything with a relentless, measured pace.

Now, as Huai Shi looked up, he could see the land below the pallid sky had turned pitch black.

On the pitch-black earth, a swirling mist was gathering, rising slowly.

Faint laughter echoed from behind him.

Accustomed to these oddities, Huai Shi continued walking forward, following the direction of the wind. Beside him, a village's silhouette faintly emerged through the mist; vague figures within the gentle glow of firelight beckoned him, gesturing for him to come closer.

Huai Shi glanced back; the mist wailed, shattered, and the illusion dissipated.

He had seen too many of these visions in the past two days. After the world was covered by ashes, it seemed to have entirely transformed into this infuriating state.

Everywhere seemed to be mysterious traps and cages, waiting for people to fall into them.

And then Huai Shi flattened them without hesitation.

Not a single tile was left behind.

However, there still seemed to be plenty of others who had been crushed this way.

As he continued forward, Huai Shi paused, noticing the vast ravines around him and the deep imprints they left.

When he climbed a ridge and looked down, only then did he see that the ravines, several meters deep, were orderly imprints, almost like… huge ruts.

But even calling them ruts seemed an understatement.

It was as though a city, fitted with treads and wheels, had slowly made its way past here, heading south against the blowing gales.

Huai Shi tried to look ahead to where the ruts led but saw nothing; clearly, whatever made them had passed by long ago. Yet even the incessant black snow could not bury the traces they left.

Realizing this, he couldn't help but feel inexplicably happy.

Even the signs of destruction could not submerge the evidence that something had once existed.

Something had to be left behind.

Even if it were only wreckage and ruins.

That would be proof of life once lived.

He continued on his journey, the fierce wind blowing at his back.

After all, there were no main missions left to do now; it was like having cleared the game and wandering aimlessly in a sandbox world. He had no particular destination.

He had been walking in this direction for the past week because when the black snow started falling, the gale-force winds began.

At first, the currents were distant and barely noticeable, but as he moved with the flow of air, the wind grew increasingly fierce.

The wind swept up the black snow, completely obscuring the path ahead.

He wanted to know where these winds were blowing.

With nothing better to do, why not get some exercise? And so, Huai Shi decisively hit the road and had been walking for a week...

After seeing the markings of the ruts, he walked on for another week.

In the end, the wind at his back had become like a natural disaster, constantly lifting huge stones into the air.

Yet, Huai Shi continued forward as if nothing were amiss.

Like a planetary engine from some story, he nibbled on stones when hungry, crunching away with a satisfying sound, and it was quite filling.

With one meal, he could tunnel from one side of a mountain directly to the other, satiated for a long time. But apparently... he had no problem even without eating.

If he grew thirsty... well, he wasn't sure what to do.

Water sources had become increasingly scarce. However, after he had drunk an entire lake in one gulp last time, he never felt thirsty again, not even a hint of a dry mouth or parched tongue.

Moreover, his size continued to grow, so much so that he had lost all realistic sense of his own dimensions.

The gusting winds couldn't move him at all, as if he were a small mountain. The tallest mountains around him now seemed like mere walls that he could scale with just a few clambering movements.

He had not encountered anything larger than himself.

With every step, the earth roared and thundered. Many mounds collapsed as he approached, and more often, he had to tread carefully, lightly, lest he sink into the ground.

"Isn't this a bit too unscientific?"

Huai Shi turned around and asked the souls singing hymns within the halo of light, "In the end, won't I break through the atmosphere? But then again, do you even have something like an atmosphere here? The sky seems endlessly high, without even the concept of outer space..."

"Holy is He!"

The souls of the Lizard Men chorused in praise.

Huai Shi scratched his head and asked, "Do you have any clue?"

"Holy is He!"

The souls of the deceased praised more fervently.

"..." Huai Shi's canine head twitched, and he couldn't help but sigh, "Can't you say anything other than 'Holy is He'?"

"Holy is He! Holy is He! Holy is He!"

The souls in the halo sang with increasing fervor, as if inspired by Huai Shi, who felt exceptionally powerless.

"...Alright, you keep singing. It can serve as BGM, right?"

Nowadays, the consciousness and souls of all the Lizard Men were contained within Huai Shi's body, their Source Substance coursing through his veins.

Simply put, Huai Shi was like a small box holding the last vestiges of the Lizard Men's consciousness... Although this metaphor might sound strange, it was essentially correct.

Their consciousness lay dormant within Huai Shi's bones, while the remnants of their instincts and beliefs formed this halo of light, constantly extolling Huai Shi's sanctity and greatness.

Expecting a response from them was too much to ask; it was already quite something that they could sing him a song.

At least there was some sound, so it wasn't too lonely.

Listening to the Lizard Men's single on repeat, Huai Shi continued forward.

Finally, he stopped in his tracks.

He lifted his head, staring into the distant sky.

It was then he realized where the winds originated from… above, a massive hole had been torn open in the sky.

All air was escaping from that enormous gap, vanishing into the unknown darkness.

Huai Shi tried throwing a piece of iron into it, but as soon as the metal entered, it quickly disintegrated. The only sensation relayed back was one of utter emptiness and intense cold, making it impossible for anything to exist there.

One could imagine, if the air kept escaping at this rate, the whole world would soon become a vacuum, wouldn't it?

While he stood there scratching his head, he noticed tiny lights had begun to sparkle in the sky above, through layers of black snow.

The stars seemed to have grown a bit larger.

Then, they grew larger still, and yet larger…

Until at last, Huai Shi reacted, his eyes widening in astonishment.

He finally understood.

—The stars were falling.

「Four days later,」

The blazing Six Winged Immortal Bird descended from the sky, landing on the parched desert, and saw Hydra, who had been waiting there.

"Didn't you say you'd wait for me by the sea?" asked the Phoenix, puzzled.

"That's what I said."

Hydra's nine heads responded emotionlessly, "Two days ago, this was the seaside."

"…" The Phoenix fell into a long silence, then asked in a raspy voice, "What was it that you wanted to show me?"

"Follow me."

Hydra turned its immense body and slowly walked towards the depths of the dried-up ocean.

They walked for three days and then stopped in front of the immense Mountain of Steel.

That crude chunk of black iron fell from the sky, smashed a whale's skeleton, crushed countless barnacles and corals, and after gouging a deep trench into the seabed, lodged itself firmly into the shattered ocean floor.

On the giant iron chunk, faint glimmers of blue fire were still burning slowly, like a candle flickering in the wind.

"Didn't you want to see the falling stars?"

Hydra raised the tip of its tail, pointing, and said amidst the Phoenix's grim expression, "These are them…"

In the distance, on what looked like a desert of dry seabed, countless chunks of iron, large and small, had sunk into the mud and sand, their once majestic and splendid forms no longer visible.

This was the final resting place of the stars.

"Gather everyone."

After a long silence, the Six Winged Immortal Bird spread its massive wings and soared into the air. "This isn't something one person can solve anymore…"

Huai Shi stood amidst the black snowflakes that had ceased to fall.

This should be the edge of the Country of Mist, where he once immersed himself in illusions, where he had even played cards with two guys from who-knows-where.

But now, nothing remained here.

Only dead silence remained.

At the heart of the dissipating mist, Huai Shi found a few skeletons huddled together. They had embraced each other in slumber before Doomsday arrived.

They had been freed from fear and despair.

Huai Shi remained there blankly for a long, long time. Lifting the tip of his tail, he dug a small pit and carefully placed them inside, then covered them with dirt.

Not knowing their names, Huai Shi didn't even know how to erect a tombstone for them.

"I had intended to bring you all with me…"

Scratching his head, Huai Shi sighed despondently, turned to leave. After a few steps, he turned back and sincerely thanked them, "Thank you for your stew."

No one responded.

In the swirling mists, the aged outline of Cat Grandmother seemed to appear, waving at him before disappearing again.

Huai Shi didn't know where else he could go.

It seemed like the whole world was ending.

Throughout his journey, he had not encountered a single living being, only finding decay and deformity in an ever-worsening depth index.

The entire world was slowly dying, as if it had truly become the world after death.

It had become Hell.

And as Huai Shi pondered, he felt a slight tremor in the sky above him.

Thinking it was an illusion, the sky trembled again.

When he looked up, he saw that in the very center of the Sky Dome, the light from the great fireball rapidly dimmed—as if an old lightbulb, with a final burst of effort, flickered twice.

It went out.

The world plunged into darkness.

The sun was gone.

Huai Shi's mouth fell open in a daze.

He began to feel fortunate that he still carried a huge light bulb with him.