The protagonist self-destructs. The end!

"Come on, come on! Today, either you die or I do. Face death!"

"If you can't kill me, don't call yourself Golden Cicada!"

The one shouting was a flower head with a human face. Anyone who had eaten sunflower seeds would recognize it: this was a sunflower.

But it was no ordinary sunflower. It was an innate Spirit Root, a sunflower that had fused with the first light of creation, one of the Innate Divine Beings with impeccable origins.

Its opponent was a huge golden insect with six wings as thin as a cicada's.

It was the foremost of the Five Insects of the Primordial World, the renowned Six-Winged Golden Cicada, who would later become Golden Cicada.

It had formed from the most evil and most greedy Qi between heaven and earth. With heaven and earth newly opened and Sha Qi filling the world, its intelligence had been swallowed up.

Simply put, it had lost its mind and acted on instinct. Most fierce beasts were like this during the Fierce Beast Calamity.

So the Six-Winged Golden Cicada did not respond to Xiang Dong's taunts. In its scarlet compound eyes, there was only pure hunger.

It fed on the living beings of the six paths, and its appetite was a bottomless pit. Thus, it needed to forage constantly, then form a cocoon and transform.

In this era without Sages, it was undoubtedly at the top of the Primordial World's food chain, a fighter jet among lunatics.

Yet now, it and Xiang Dong had been fighting here for an unknown number of primordial cycles.

Not years. The Primordial World did not count time in years.

But a single primordial cycle was roughly 129,600 years.

As for why this flower and insect had started fighting, the story began when Xiang Dong transmigrated here.

An innate Spirit Root sunflower, fused with the first light of creation at that—with such origins, how could it be anything but a heavenly start?

If he had also had a system, a panel, a diary, or some other golden finger, he would have been slaughtering left and right.

Unfortunately, he had none of those, leaving Xiang Dong in an awkward position.

Because he did not know how to cultivate, he still could not even take human form.

There was no one here to teach him cultivation either. Forget people, he did not even have a neighbor.

As for the innate divine beings, every last one of them was either lying low and cultivating or hiding in some remote nook or cranny, keeping out of the way of those mindless fierce beasts.

So when Xiang Dong had nothing to do, he could only talk to himself and sing to relieve his boredom.

Alone, he silently endured the endless loneliness that came with a long life.

But the problem was that innate divine beings all had one thing in common: their lifespans were nearly limitless, so, heh heh...

On top of that, the Heaven-Opening Sha Qi filled heaven and earth, accumulating day after day.

Xiang Dong's mental state became extremely stable.

Yes, stably insane.

He began fighting himself and even played both roles in comedy routines, telling himself jokes to make himself laugh.

He laughed and laughed, then burst into tears!

Since his lifespan was limitless, he would go looking for death, courting death.

And so, one day, Xiang Dong shook his enormous flower head, reflecting the sunlight to serve as mood lighting.

He curled a leaf into a microphone, held it to his mouth, and sang at the top of his voice.

"Come on!"

"Have some fun!"

"After all, there's plenty of time, plenty of scenery..."

A passing Six-Winged Golden Cicada was dazzled. Hmm, someone had their high beams on!

Oh, no, that was wrong. It was the exceedingly vigorous presence of an innate living being. That presence was so enticing that it could not help drooling, so it immediately turned around and swooped toward Xiang Dong.

What followed was a long and grueling battle!

By now, Xiang Dong was a spent arrow. Part of his flower head was already missing, and it could no longer heal fast enough.

Xiang Dong's original intention had simply been to seek death, but his mental state was unstable.

After fighting for so long, his temper had flared, and he had long since forgotten what he had originally intended.

Moreover, the primordial Qi of greed that surrounded the Six-Winged Golden Cicada affected all living beings, magnifying the greed and evil thoughts in their hearts.

After so many primordial cycles, Xiang Dong's mind had long since been affected. So this was what he thought now:

Even if he died, he would not let the Six-Winged Golden Cicada off easy. No matter what, he would make it pay a price.

I'll make you remember me forever. I'll make you remember me to the bone.

Xiang Dong deliberately dispersed the divine light protecting his body. The brilliant smile on his flower head was dazzling, and one look was enough to tell he was up to no good.

But how could the Six-Winged Golden Cicada think that far? It had long been ravenous, and now was the time to feast. How could it miss the chance? It immediately pounced on the flower head and began gnawing.

What greeted it was Xiang Dong's laughter.

"Ahaha, do you know what art is? Art is... Patrick Star!"

Boom!!!

Xiang Dong detonated his own life source, dealing the Six-Winged Golden Cicada a heavy blow.

With his own life, his own source, he set off the first firework in the Primordial World.

The entire sky over the Primordial World was dyed gold by the violent energy.

When everything finally fell quiet, the Six-Winged Golden Cicada crawled out of a deep crater.

Even though it had been at the center of the explosion and taken the full force of the self-destruction, it had not been killed. Its injuries were not even particularly severe.

Just then, drops of golden rain fell in the heart of the blast.

No, those were not raindrops, but seeds.

To be more precise, they were sunflower seeds. Xiang Dong's Innate Origin had broken apart and returned to its original seed form.

The sunflower seeds gave off a fragrance the Six-Winged Golden Cicada had never smelled before. It opened its mouth and inhaled, drawing in a great number of seeds.

The seeds melted in its mouth, turning into the purest source power and flowing through its body.

It felt warm all over, and even its perpetually muddled mind became much clearer.

It felt that something was wrong with its condition, but it could not say exactly what.

It soon found out what was wrong. It had eaten something bad, and its stomach was churning like rivers and seas overturned.

The Six-Winged Golden Cicada did not know that its Sha Qi had been purified. It only wanted to find a safe place to deal with the problem, so it fluttered its wings and flew away.

Peace returned to heaven and earth, while the golden rain of seeds continued to drift down.

After an unknown length of time, life returned to this deathly silent land. A tender green shoot quietly poked out of the ground.

It unfurled two tiny, plump cotyledons, so green they seemed ready to drip, and turned toward the Sun Star hanging high in the sky.

It swayed in the wind, growing toward the sun!

There was not just one such shoot, but hundreds upon hundreds all around.

Time flew. The fierce beast era of the Primordial World gradually drew to a close, and much of the Sha Qi between heaven and earth dissipated.

The shoots flourished, growing into seedlings, then flowering and maturing. Golden flower heads appeared one after another, forming a strange sea of flowers.

And among that sea of flowers, a face appeared on one sunflower's head.

It was Xiang Dong, who had slumbered for a long time after his self-destruction.

ε=(´ο｀*))) Sigh.

"Sure enough, even dying isn't easy. As long as there's light, I won't die. This undying trait is a little like a Sage's. Could it be that only a Sage can kill me?"