Chapter 1088: 75. The Revived Figures
The surrounding environment began changing before Muen’s eyes.
The broken ruins returned to their former glory. Exquisite carvings and murals displayed the beauty they ought to have possessed. The disorderly green vines faded away one after another, and white jade pillars stood between orderly walls and plazas.
Even that enormous lake had vanished at some unknown point. Muen stood amid a complicated, clamorous street, staring in astonishment as the surroundings transformed.
Figures appeared from those houses that had originally been deathly silent. They pushed open doors, walked onto the streets, bathed in the sunlight, and then brushed past Muen.
These people’s faces had no particular features. They were so ordinary that one would forget them after a single glance, but the clothing on their bodies had obvious differences from the styles Muen knew so well.
Unfamiliar streets, unfamiliar houses, an unfamiliar city, unfamiliar crowds.
Everything was so unfamiliar, yet in terms of his general perception, this place gave Muen a lingering sense of familiarity that would not go away.
“This is... the ancient city of Tars before its destruction?”
Muen abruptly turned toward a spot not far away. Miss Dragon was standing there at this moment, standing in the very center of the city’s busiest street. Her golden eyes quietly watched the people coming and going around her, and even that terrifying pressure seemed to have faded quite a bit. Muen could actually read an indescribable trace of nostalgia from it.
Nostalgia.
This dragon who, in legend, destroyed everything actually felt nostalgia toward something she had destroyed herself?
“Yes. This is Tars. Tars before I destroyed it. Tars from eight hundred years ago.” Hamreign gave a slight nod.
“Then we went back to the past? No...”
Just relying on a clock from that old hag in a little girl’s body, one that carried the power of time, there was no way it could send the two of them eight hundred years into the past. Not to mention, one of those two was the mighty natural disaster Hamreign.
To use time reversal on a powerhouse like this, the price that had to be paid would be unimaginable. Muen did not think that some wicked old hag who even treated selling him off as “making a deal” would make such a huge sacrifice.
She seemed to hate Miss Dragon quite a bit. After all, she clearly looked down on every other woman, including Liya, yet only when staring at Miss Dragon’s chest would Muen feel her unwillingness and resentment.
In other words...
Muen’s eyes flickered, and he suddenly understood.
“This is also an illusion of the past, just like when I handled the operation involving Ariel before, and when that old hag showed me the scene of the Demon God from a thousand years ago.”
To verify it, Muen reached out and took the initiative to touch those figures.
Sure enough, when those figures came into contact with him, there was no real sensation of contact at all.
They were only illusions.
“Of course it is only an illusion of the past. Tars’s destruction, whether in the past or the present, is something destined. Who would deliberately change such a destined thing? However...”
Hamreign unexpectedly turned her head. “The scene of the Demon God? I did not expect that person to show you even Him.”
“...Only for one glance.”
Muen gave a bitter smile. “And even that one glance almost caused a major problem.”
The Demon God.
The first Evil God.
The most terrifying existence Muen had ever seen.
Even the Withering King, the Silent Moon, and the other Evil Gods he had once faced in person could not bring him that kind of pressure.
Back then, when that old hag had shown him that remnant image from the past, it was clearly only an image, yet that image had suddenly turned back and looked at him across a thousand years.
The terror and shock he had felt at that time were impossible to erase from his soul no matter what. Even now, the memory was still vivid.
“If nothing truly went wrong, that proves your life is tough enough. After all... it was that one.”
Hamreign looked Muen over again, carrying a trace of surprise.
This human before her—she had already given him high enough expectations, but she had not expected him to still exceed her expectations in certain aspects.
...From the perspective of a small-fry human, this fellow was indeed not bad.
A thousand years had passed. That flat-chested little brat was useless in other aspects, but her eye for people remained as vicious as ever.
“Since you know what this is, I do not need to explain it to you again. We can move straight to the point.”
Hamreign raised her hand. The ancient clock was still ticking nonstop, and the hands on it reversed at an extremely fast speed.
When the hands reached a certain point, they suddenly stopped.
And that city that should originally only have existed in a corner of history finally appeared completely before Muen’s eyes.
“So beautiful.”
Muen could not help sighing.
Houses, walls, sculptures, jade pillars.
Every creation here appeared before Muen in the posture most filled with beauty. Muen did not understand art, but he could feel the divine charm hidden within every brick and tile.
Pale pink petals drifted everywhere with the breeze. From time to time, they landed on those beautiful carvings and paintings, bringing a refreshing fragrance to the nose while also making Muen understand why Miss Dragon had sighed like that earlier.
Before this city... Saint Blancfazesiya really was trash.
“So... what do we do next?”
Muen looked around, admiring the city frozen at its most perfect moment.
Even now, he still did not know what the so-called “point” was.
“Wait.”
Hamreign only breathed out one word.
“Wait for what?” Muen froze.
“Destruction.”
She pointed overhead.
Muen blinked in confusion and followed her direction, raising his head to look toward the sky.
Tick.
At that moment, the frozen time began to flow once more.
The ancient clock in Hamreign’s hand also began to move.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
And in Muen’s field of vision, a pitch-black point rapidly expanded.
He did not know what that thing was. He only knew that the patch of black occupied a portion of the sky at a speed visible to the naked eye, including that warm sun. In a brief single breath, it covered half the sky.
No.
Wrong.
That thing was not getting larger!
Only at this moment did Muen abruptly become alert.
That pitch-black point was not expanding.
It was... approaching!
BOOM!!!
The pitch-black point... no, at this moment, it should ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) be called a pitch-black beam of light, instantly swallowed Muen’s body and, with him at the center, violently spread toward the surroundings!
Muen’s pupils abruptly constricted.
The instant the pitch-black beam touched him, he nearly wanted to run away on instinct. But just as his feet shifted half a step, the black beam passed completely through his body at a speed he could not dodge, and only then did he react...
It was not real.
Or rather, it was not a scene happening in the present.
Tick. Tick.
The clock in Hamreign’s hand was still moving normally. This remnant image of the past was completely reenacting everything that had once happened here!
The pitch-black beam rapidly spread, devouring the city at a speed far beyond the limit of ordinary human eyesight. It was like some terrifying orbital weapon descending from the heavens. The people here did not even have time to wail or feel fear before they were completely turned into ash.
Very soon, the beam vanished.
An enormous pit Muen was familiar with appeared before his eyes. Only, at this moment, there were no emerald waters and rolling waves, nor was there any moving scenery. It was only a pit displaying cruel reality. Only the trace left after destruction and slaughter. Nothing more.
Half the city had been erased just like that. From the moment Muen discovered that pitch-black point, only five seconds had passed.
“But... only half?”
Muen noticed something was wrong. The might of that pitch-black beam just now had been so terrifying it was difficult to imagine. If he had to describe something capable of matching it, it would probably only be the spear Hamreign had once thrown in the Abyss at Shenyi when he was possessed by the Demon God’s blood.
With a blow like that, the entire city should have been directly vaporized. Why...
“Because even ants on the ground will resist with all their strength when they encounter a catastrophe that will annihilate them... let alone ‘them,’ who had prepared for this long in advance,” Hamreign said coldly.
Bzzzz—
As soon as her voice fell, some kind of dull sound suddenly echoed from deep underground. Muen watched in astonishment as something resembling a cannon rose from beneath the earth, all the way to the very top of the cliff.
Then... a scorching torrent of magic power blasted from the cannon mouth, aimed at the sky where disaster had arrived!
BOOM!
The earth shook and the mountains trembled.
Amid the flames that exploded in the sky, Muen saw a familiar figure.
A dragon.
A black dragon.
Muen glanced out of the corner of his eye. Miss Dragon was still standing there perfectly fine. Even after seeing another version of herself appear, her expression did not change at all. She simply watched quietly, watching the disaster she had personally caused reenacted before her eyes once more.
As if she was not shaken in the slightest.
...The giant dragon in the sky moved.
Muen hurriedly returned his attention to the illusion of the past.
The giant dragon circled and danced in the sky.
That dragon’s dance was graceful and mesmerizing, carrying some kind of bewitching quality that drew one in.
But with every movement of the black dragon’s dance, terrifying destruction descended from the sky.
That enormous magical cannon was easily destroyed by the dragon.
Those points of light that rushed upward, intending to resist, were mercilessly extinguished by the dragon.
The black dragon danced in the sky, and on the earth below, humble lives were swiftly harvested one after another.
Until finally, the remaining half of the city also returned completely to deathly silence.
Every figure in this city was fully killed, crushed, and left without even a corpse by the giant dragon, until they had completely turned into ash.
Everything ended.
Yet Muen felt that his heart could not calm down.
Although Miss Dragon had already personally said just now that she had destroyed this ancient city, the cruelty glimpsed through a few words and the cruelty seen with one’s own eyes were as different as a water channel and the ocean.
Damn it. What should he do if he wanted to take back all that show-off nonsense he had said earlier? Waiting online. Kind of urgent!
“Was it beautiful?” Hamreign suddenly asked.
“Beau... beautiful?”
Muen wiped away a handful of cold sweat. “Beautiful, I guess. It should be beautiful... probably.”
“Yes... of course it was beautiful. After all, it was the end of something so beautiful. Of course it would be beautiful enough to make one’s heart ache and one’s breath stop.”
Hamreign sighed softly, as if that heartache and suffocation were something even the current her could not forget.
Then her voice abruptly turned indifferent.
“Unfortunately, in such a perfect ceremony, there are always some fellows who are unwilling to quietly pass away, completely desecrating something that had originally been so beautiful.”
“Huh?”
Muen was utterly baffled.
What did that mean now? Hadn’t Tars been completely destroyed?
“Keep watching.”
“Oh...”
Muen closed his mouth and continued playing the role of an obedient baby watching television.
Everything in the scene had already fully stepped into its end. That true City of Art, which left Saint Blancfazesiya eight streets behind, had become a scrap at the edge of history before the disaster they could not stop.
But time continued passing.
Tick. Tick.
Muen watched that giant dragon sweep across the sky, constantly circling above the city, again and again.
Then she landed, transforming into a familiar human figure within the black mist. Her black dress swayed as she walked through the streets and alleys that had already become ruins.
Two Miss Dragons brushed past each other several times across eight hundred years.
Finally, the Miss Dragon from eight hundred years ago arrived at the highest point of the cliff and silently looked down over this deathly silent city.
She watched like that, like a statue.
One day.
Two days.
Three days.
The city did not change in the slightest.
Five days.
Six days...
Thirty-eight days.
Just as Miss Dragon had said earlier, she guarded this place for a full thirty-eight days, confirming that every living thing here had been completely turned to dust by her.
On the thirty-ninth day, Miss Dragon left.
Forty... fifty... one hundred...
On the one hundred and ninth day, the Miss Dragon who had left suddenly returned again.
The firelight that had burned in this city had completely vanished. Not even a speck of smoke rose anymore from the ashes.
Miss Dragon left again.
Two hundred...
Three hundred...
Five hundred...
Another number of days too difficult to count passed. Muen watched Miss Dragon return several times, but the city still did not change at all.
One thousand days...
One thousand and five days...
Miss Dragon never returned again.
Everything was just as she had calculated. Everything that should have been destroyed had already been completely destroyed. Her caution had merely been the final finishing procedure.
Then, on the two thousand five hundred and sixty-eighth day...
Muen suddenly saw several twisted figures slowly stand up amid the boundless ashes.
That was right.
Stand up.
Like living corpses crawling out of a grave again... but in these ruins, where would any graves even come from?
“...What?”
Muen’s pupils abruptly shrank.
No way... had they seriously crawled back from the dead?
And only after so much time had passed?
That was not scientific!
“As expected.”
Hamreign’s face remained calm, but at some unknown point, her hands had already clenched tightly.
“Miss Dragon...”
Muen swallowed and looked at those strange figures reborn from the ashes. He only felt his scalp go numb. “What you have been searching for all this time... was them?”
“They are only one part of it. But among the many troublesome matters, they are indeed the most troublesome batch,” Hamreign said.
“The most troublesome...”
In the scene, those figures began moving.
They lay on the ground and constantly dug at something.
Digging.
Digging.
Digging...
They did not eat or drink, nor did they rest. They simply dug like that for who knew how long.
Until something was dug out by them.
Muen drew in another breath of cold air, because he was also extremely familiar with the thing they had dug out.
It was a clock.
A broken... yet ancient clock.
“How could...”
The charred figures raised the clock high. Their bodies were completely scorched black, making it difficult to see what they looked like. But in that split-open flesh, Muen seemed to vaguely see... a strange smile.
They were laughing.
Yet no one knew why they were laughing.
Tick.
The hand moved.
But this sound did not come from the creation of that old hag in Miss Dragon’s hand.
Instead... it came from eight hundred years ago.
That ancient clock had been turned.
The scene ended there.
The illusion of the past dispersed.
Sunlight pierced through the darkness and shone on Muen.
The gem-like lake appeared in Muen’s eyes again. Light rippled across the water. The beautiful scenery made the heart feel clear and refreshed, but Muen no longer had the leisure to admire it...
That scene from just now was still replaying in his mind.
“Those people... revived... then obtained a clock-like creation?”
Muen kept thinking and subconsciously asked, “What was that clock? Could it be that old hag again...”
“Eight hundred years ago, her Eternal Clock only existed on design paper,” Hamreign said.
“So... that was another ancient relic?”
“...You could say that.”
“...”
Muen was speechless.
Thinking could not bring him any answers. Instead, it faintly made him feel that... just as Teacher Mela had said, he was gradually being drawn into some incomparably cruel whirlpool.
“Let’s go.”
Hamreign did not pay any attention to Muen’s shock and confusion at all, and spoke once more.
“Where?” Muen still asked subconsciously.
“Where else?”
Hamreign gave a soft “heh” and said:
“Since many things have already been confirmed, there is nothing to hesitate over. We are going to kill those troublesome fellows... those fellows hiding in the cracks of time, one more time.”