Chapter 98: Starfall

There are ten people still alive now. Besides the six of us, there are four others. The Azure Dragon Gang is destroyed. Until yesterday they were still a force of more than three hundred, and after one battle with the zombies we lost half our men. Then, just at this moment, Leng Wushuang emerged, and with one glance he annihilated our whole force. Some of them didn’t even know how they had died. It is absurd. We had once hoped to use this strength to vie for dominance over the world. Who could have imagined it would end like this? In life, the things that go against your wishes are nine out of ten. I feel I have run into every single one of those, damn it.

At last, Yu Jing and I dug together more than two hundred pits, each about a meter deep. I did not do as actors do in films, replacing tools with my hands. I simply cracked the earth open with my qi and moved the soil away. Through that digging, I found that I too possessed telekinesis, though it is weak—I can barely move out a little gravel and earth at a time. I sat on the ground smoking, handed one cigarette to Yu Jing, and this boy even held it in a practiced way.

After one cigarette, I went back to digging graves. I could not let our brothers’ bodies rot in the wild. Though some corpses had already been torn apart by high-tier zombies, in the end, through our efforts, we recovered the bodies and buried them. No coffins, not even a reed mat. The comrades who had followed us through life and death would sleep forever in this nameless place, without even a grave marker. To die in an alien realm—what a miserable fate. Azure Dragon Gang, you were formidable in your own right. On the day I, Li Yunfei, rise again, I will move your remains. I will light a cigarette at each grave. The nine of us bowed deeply before the mounds, and I carried Qin Tian as I led everyone toward Fenglan City.

No one spoke along the way. Our footsteps were steady, and from beneath our boots on the land scorched by celestial fire came sharp cracking sounds. We walked so long I could not tell how far until the sun stood high overhead, and then one of the Azure Dragon men spoke: “I can’t do it. I can’t walk anymore. Go on.”
It was Wang Gui. His lips were split and dry, and he collapsed in a limber, powerless heap. It was obvious dehydration. I checked my Spatial Ring and, with regret, found no water left. If only I had stored more water in it beforehand—such a huge ring and I’d wasted it. We now faced a water crisis. If we kept going, Wang Gui would not be the only one—any of us might die of dehydration. I told him, “Hold on a little longer. Maybe there is water ahead.”
I said it only to lift his spirits, a hunger-of-thirst trick to awaken his will to survive. It worked. Wang Gui struggled up from the ground and, with painful steps, followed us.

I hoped there would be water ahead. But reality was cruel. After the scourge of heaven-fire, the land was blackened, dead branches and rotten leaves lay everywhere. If not for water, then at least I saw no living creature at all in all that time; it was the quietest scene I had seen in days. Suddenly, a buzzing rose from above and broke my reverie.
I looked up and saw something like a meteor, moving with unnerving slowness, about the speed of the planes we are used to. It was the source of the sound.

“Is that finally here?” Murong Xue said, in an oddly phrased way.

I stopped and stared at the object in the sky. The light it gave off was nearly as strong as the sun, though it flickered like a twenty-first-century neon sign. Is it an alien spaceship? No, no—that would be a flying saucer, and a saucer does not look like this. I shook my head in self-mockery.

“This is the true body of the fireball,” Murong Xue said, lifting her head and squinting at it as the wind tossed her hair. I had seen that image somewhere, but I could not remember where.
What shook everyone then was not only me. After a pause she said, “It is a celestial body that contains the energy of Heaven and Earth. Its power is enough to destroy the universe. When it falls, a calamity is likely to come.”

“On what basis do you say that, Miss Murong?” I asked. Even if a star packed with endless energy fell, at worst it would draw a swarm of blood-scented scavengers to tear at each other. Nothing so severe, I thought. In my mind, the word ‘catastrophe’ means a human disaster, perhaps a total destruction.

Murong Xue walked with her head bowed, then suddenly looked up at me.
“You have surely wondered why the fireballs from the past few days disappeared. This is the answer. What we saw were merely the high-temperature layers from its surface. As it spun through space, they gradually became a true body.”
She pointed to the burning shattered stones not far away.

“That star-body,” she continued, “was under Heavenly observation more than a thousand years ago. At that time, one Heaven-born god skilled in calculation had already computed that it would fall to the mortal world after a thousand years. In Heaven it is called Mingxu.”

“Mingxu?”

Murong Xue nodded. “The name was given by a highly ranked Heaven god, for no Heaven-born being has entered this Mingxu star-body for hundreds of years. So the star remained a mystery.”

“You mean that planet called Mingxu is really about to fall?” The great fireball of recent days was only the superheated surface layer of that star. The true end had only just begun.

Murong Xue nodded gravely. The others, who live in other realms, could not fully grasp how vast a planet is. But I, who have passed through a civilized world, know this clearly: even if it were the smallest planet in the universe, if it crashed down like this, Earth would be turned upside down beyond recognition.

“Did the calculating heaven god of yours have any idea what would happen after it falls?” I asked urgently, desperate for any way to survive. If one can live, who would choose death? A human life cultivated through a whole lifetime is not easily won; even an ant will steal a moment to live.

“I want to know too,” Murong Xue said as she kept walking. “But that important celestial council was attended only by high-tier Heaven gods. With my level and my rank, I had no right to be there, so naturally I could not know.”
I glanced at the strange planet and followed in her footsteps.

P.S. A word from the author: Time has flown, and Volume Two is already close to its ending. At this point, Xiao Qu bows deeply to everyone who has supported and encouraged him for so long.