49 Apocalypse Rules

Baqizi arrived in the outer hall to find Mu Tian City pacing back and forth, looking agitated.

Upon seeing Baqizi, he immediately hurried over. "Baqizi, Lord Divine Son didn’t contact you to reprimand you, did he?"

"?"

"Apparently not." Seeing Baqizi’s confused expression, Mu Tian City nodded. "That’s good. I was worried Lord Divine Son would take his anger out on you over the failed operation."

"..."

Baqizi knew about the plan Mu Tian City had orchestrated: an operation to travel to the Andai Kingdom and seize the two fragments from Shadow.

Without the general location she had provided for the fragments, the operation would have never found its target.

"I really thought a surprise attack would be effective. I never expected..." Mu Tian City sighed. "Alas, it seems I still underestimated Shadow. But it’s no wonder. Since he’s called the ’World’s First Ascender,’ he was bound to be a tough opponent."

Mu Tian City paused for a moment before continuing, "Now that we’re his enemies, this grudge won’t be easily resolved. I heard Shadow already blew up the royal palace in the Andai Kingdom as payback. If he gets a chance, he’ll definitely come after the Sakura Prayer Kingdom too. We need to start preparing."

Baqizi remained silent. After a moment, she asked, "Is there anything else?"

Mu Tian City shook his head. "I’ll draw up a new plan. We’ll act again after the current rule ends."

With that, he hurried away. Suddenly, Baqizi felt a stir, and Fragment 5 materialized in her palm.

She "saw" it. The location of the two fragments. They were already on the island.

"..."

Baqizi considered for a moment, then put the fragment away.

Half an hour later, she was alone, having left the Shrine and arrived at the foot of a mountain at one end of the island.

Guan Tong was standing on the mountaintop. Thanks to its excellent line of sight, he had designated it his "operations center."

He had originally planned to send his shadows out as a vanguard to eliminate some of the enemy forces. But before he could even act, the fragment holder left the Shrine and began moving toward him.

He quickly identified the visitor through the surveillance shadows he had positioned nearby.

It was just a single woman in her twenties, all alone. Not the large contingent he had been expecting.

He found that strange.

Still, since the fragment was moving with her, she had to be the holder.

He controlled a materialized shadow to accompany him down to the foot of the mountain.

And so, the two of them met under rather inexplicable circumstances.

Guan Tong, his body encased in Shadow Armor, watched the woman who had come to face him alone.

In terms of appearance, aside from a pair of bizarre, snake-like vertical pupils, her other facial features were entirely unremarkable.

But her entire body was bundled in thick clothing, and Guan Tong noticed that the skin on her neck had a somewhat scale-like appearance.

"You must be Shadow," Baqizi said, breaking the silence.

Guan Tong couldn’t figure out why this woman had come to him alone. "What do you want?" he asked.

"I don’t want you to attack our station. It would be a pointless battle," Baqizi said.

"’A pointless battle’... Is that why you came alone? You plan on taking me out by yourself?"

"No." As she spoke, Baqizi took out the Puzzle Fragment she was holding. "I know this is what you’re here for. If you want it, I can give it to you."

"Don’t play games with me," Guan Tong said. "You’re well aware of its drop condition. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have tried to kill me with a long-range missile."

"..."

"I won’t spare the planner or the one who carried out the attack. If... What are you doing?"

Before Guan Tong could finish, he suddenly saw the woman toss the fragment toward him.

Startled, he manipulated a Shadow Line to catch it. He confirmed it was, without a doubt, Fragment 5.

"What’s the meaning of this?"

He truly hadn’t expected this woman to just hand the fragment over to him. ’Why would she do this?’

"I hate killing people just to squabble over things," Baqizi said.

"So if someone tries to take something from you, you just hand it over?" Guan Tong couldn’t quite wrap his head around the woman’s logic.

"Once you see the contents of the fragment, you’ll understand that it’s all meaningless. All of this."

"..."

’Everything is meaningless? What’s that supposed to mean?’

Dubiously, Guan Tong accepted the fragment.

[You have obtained: Qimo Star Chronicles - Fragment 5]

The prompt from the Fire Thief was indisputable, proof that this was no forgery.

The moment its ownership transferred, the information from the mural contained within Fragment 5 flooded into Guan Tong’s mind, making him understand Baqizi’s reasoning.

Part of the mural’s content was just as he and the "Primordial Man" from the forums had deduced: The Mist from the ninth Apocalypse Rule spread across the entirety of Qimo Star, corrupting many Exotic Beasts and transforming them into Nightmare Beasts.

These Nightmare Beasts then attacked more of their former kin, the Exotic Beasts, creating a rapidly escalating vicious cycle. In a very short time, the entire Qimo Star was completely shrouded in Mist, leaving only a few deep subterranean caverns untouched by it.

A small handful of Exotic Beasts were lucky enough to escape into these caves, where they barely managed to survive.

But to Guan Tong’s surprise, the murals on the cave walls hadn’t been drawn by these Exotic Beasts. Of all the beings in the caves, there was apparently only one intelligent Exotic Beast, and it had only used a stone chip to draw a pattern resembling a plume of fire on the wall.

Seeing the flame-like pattern, Guan Tong instantly realized that the image drawn by this intelligent Exotic Beast was very likely a reference to the "Fire Thief."

This was because, according to the content of the previous murals, "fire" also held an important status within this Alien Beast Civilization. If the Fire Thief had descended upon that planet, it might have adopted a similar "name."

But the latter half of the mural was far more abstract.

It roughly depicted a black, pillar-like object descending upon Qimo Star. The surviving Exotic Beasts in the cave were all sucked into it and carried away from the planet. The mural also included a depiction of the planet from a great distance.

And at the very end of the mural, something like a multi-fingered mechanical arm was shown extending from the void, having completed the creation of the five murals on the walls of the five underground caves.

Only then did Guan Tong understand. The murals were painted by this thing that looked like a mechanical arm, the work of some unknown entity... ’Is it the Fire Thief? If it is, why would it first destroy all life on the planet, only to then create murals chronicling the planet’s past?’

He also noticed that each finger of the multi-fingered mechanical arm bore the image of a different planet. The very finger depicted as painting on the cave wall was inscribed with the image of Qimo Star.

This was enough to prove that countless planets and civilizations had already been destroyed.

’But for a destroyer, why paint everything you’ve annihilated with such affectionate brushstrokes?’

’Can you love something so much you destroy it? That phenomenon might exist in human society, but Guan Tong didn’t believe the Fire Thief could be as emotional as a human.’

After seeing all this, he could understand why Baqizi had just thrown the fragment to him.

"You believe that our Celestial Water Star is also destined to be destroyed by the Fire Thief, just like the countless fingers on that mechanical arm representing all the planets it’s already annihilated." Guan Tong looked at Baqizi. "So you think everything we humans are doing now is meaningless?"

Baqizi was silent. That was exactly what she thought.

Though she had never mentioned it to anyone, she had been a nihilist since childhood. After getting Fragment 5 and seeing its contents, her convictions had only grown stronger.

Even the Divine Son’s claims about her possessing the bloodline of the Ancient Gods, and his intention to specially cultivate her, couldn’t change the fundamental nihilism of her personality.

Guan Tong was silent for a moment before telling Baqizi everything he knew from Fragments 1 through 4.

When he finished, her expression was puzzled. She didn’t understand his purpose in telling her these things.

"Even if a civilization is destroyed, that can’t erase the joy recorded in Fragments 1 and 2—the happiness of those Exotic Beasts growing and playing freely in their world," Guan Tong said. "And even if humanity is also destroyed in the future, that can’t change the fact that we had a happy past."

"..."

Although Baqizi was moved, her expression and gaze remained resolute. A nihilist cannot be swayed by a few simple sentences.

’Still,’ he thought, ’if the officials of the Sakura Prayer Kingdom knew the person they were cultivating was secretly a nihilist, they would probably feel a profound sense of disillusionment.’

"I’m leaving," Guan Tong said.

He didn’t want to fight. Fighting a nihilist was, in itself, a rather meaningless act.

"What are you going to tell them about the fragment?"

"Does it matter?" Baqizi said.

"...If you ever want to contact me, you can do it through the Ascender’s Home website. Send a private message to the site admin."

"Why would I want to contact you?"

"Because this land has no place for nihilists."