A Satisfying Way to Die

At noon, the sun was at its brightest.

The pure golden sunlight was brilliant and dazzling.

It made people want to squint involuntarily.

Ling Wuyuan, dressed in sportswear, stood inside the pavilion atop the mountain and gently let out a breath.

He first glanced at the few scattered hikers on the winding mountain road below, then turned his gaze toward the clear sky filled with white clouds.

However, although he wanted to properly admire the scenery in the sky, the overly bright sunlight forced him to silently withdraw his gaze after only a few more looks.

It could not be helped.

The light was truly too glaring.

If he kept staring, his eyes might instinctively start tearing up.

"Climbing a mountain once in a while really isn't bad~"

As he softly remarked, Ling Wuyuan turned to look toward an area not far behind him.

Although this mountain was somewhat famous locally and its facilities were not particularly impressive, it generally had everything it should. After reaching the summit, climbers could buy something to eat or pick up souvenirs if they wished.

Right now,

he planned to buy a cup of milk tea and settle his lunch while he was at it.

However,

before he could even take a step,

he suddenly noticed something was wrong.

On the ground before him,

the glittering golden sunlight cast freely upon the earth by the blazing sun overhead had, at some unknown point, taken on an unusual crimson hue.

And that crimson tint was becoming increasingly obvious at an astonishing speed!

"?"

At that moment,

although he had no idea what was happening, Ling Wuyuan instinctively sensed danger.

A sudden palpitation rose in his heart!

Without any hesitation,

he immediately raised his head again and looked straight toward the very top of the sky!

Then, despite the blinding light, he effortlessly saw the source of the anomaly.

It was a conspicuous crimson point of light hanging above the vault of heaven!

Though it was incomparably tiny compared to the sun that dominated the sky and had endured since time immemorial, the radiance it emitted remained impossible to ignore. Not even the sun's brilliance could completely conceal it.

Under Ling Wuyuan's gaze, its size visibly increased within an extremely short time, and the crimson radiance it gave off grew ever more pronounced.

About three seconds later,

cries of alarm gradually reached Ling Wuyuan's ears.

At this time,

it was not only Ling Wuyuan. The others around him had also gradually noticed that something was wrong.

But Ling Wuyuan had no mind to care about them now.

After observing for a while,

he had roughly figured out what that object emitting crimson light was.

That was... a meteorite!!

A gigantic meteorite drawing closer and closer to this place!!

Behind it, layer upon layer of visible sonic boom clouds were spreading wildly!!

Witnessing this scene, a series of thoughts instinctively surfaced in Ling Wuyuan's mind.

Judging from its trajectory, its impact point is probably this mountain.

I remember this mountain is around nine hundred meters tall, less than a thousand meters...

At the same time, Ling Wuyuan instinctively compared the meteorite's remaining time before impact with the time he would need to get down the mountain.

The former had roughly twenty-odd seconds left.

The latter... would be impossible without several dozen minutes.

Even if he stood at the edge of the cliff right now and jumped without a second thought, the time it took him to fall straight to the foot of the mountain might not be much faster than the meteorite striking the ground.

Thus, the current situation presented him with a rather bleak conclusion.

I'm probably dead for sure.

"...What rotten luck..."

"Just when I'd finally earned enough money and gained some material comforts that could be called decent..."

Faced with this tragically foreseeable outcome, the twenty-five-year-old orphan looked at the crimson meteorite growing ever larger, already at least a hundred meters in diameter. After a fleeting moment of sorrow as he recalled his life, he felt more helplessness and acceptance than fear of facing death.

After all,

in a situation like this, all he could do was accept his fate.

There was no other way.

Then, having realized that he was doomed, some rather strange thoughts emerged in his mind.

"Still, this way of dying... is really cool~"

"Honestly, I'm pretty satisfied~"

Yes.

Perhaps it was simply his way of finding joy amid suffering.

At this genuine moment of crisis and despair, an incomparably bizarre sense of satisfaction suddenly arose within him...

Satisfaction existing amid fear~

As an orphan,

an orphan with no attachments and no one to rely on,

Ling Wuyuan had once imagined countless times how he would meet his death.

Would he die from illness?

Would he be hit by a car while crossing the road?

Would he die naturally of old age?

Yet among all these utterly different ways of dying, he had always held one thought.

That he would most likely die in obscurity...

Perhaps there would not even be anyone to collect his body.

So, many times, he had harbored a strange wish.

If possible, I hope that when I die, my death can be a little cooler. The cooler, the better...

There was no particular reason.

It was merely a simple hope.

Thus, at this very moment,

as he watched the meteorite draw nearer and nearer, Ling Wuyuan briefly felt that this was truly a blessing amid misfortune... He deeply felt that his manner of death was sincerely cool beyond anything he had ever imagined!

"Wow~"

"Not bad at all~"

While he was deeply satisfied,

all kinds of utterly chaotic scenes were unfolding one after another in the surrounding area.

Not only were the people on the mountain crying to heaven and calling to earth as they desperately sought a way to survive, but the city around the mountain had also fallen into extreme chaos. Countless horns, shouts, and wails blended into one.

Only Ling Wuyuan remained rather calm, even somewhat satisfied with the situation...

Not long after,

roughly ten seconds later.

"Rumble—"

A tremendous roar, like a super thunderstorm and even more like a nuclear explosion, began reverberating across the heavens!

This was powerful proof that the gigantic meteorite was moving far faster than the speed of sound.

Under the influence of some force, these thunderous booms blanketed a vast area in advance at a speed beyond normal sound transmission, like some kind of Shockwave, causing countless panes of glass to shatter on the spot...

Merely hearing it from afar made Ling Wuyuan's eardrums rupture automatically, blood continuously seeping from his ears...

It was accompanied by searing heat.

Even before formally crashing down, it had caused the average temperature within dozens of kilometers to abruptly rise by more than ten degrees.

By this point in time,

the crimson radiance it emitted had begun to gradually cover the golden sunlight in the nearby region, dyeing the world blood-red. The entire atmosphere became exceptionally ominous, like a nightmare ghost realm.

This made the surging crowds already fleeing madly become even more frantic, so panicked that they chose neither roads nor means.

It was also at this time

that Ling Wuyuan, now alone atop the mountain, quietly stepped back a few paces.

Because he discovered that the meteorite's impact point was right near him.

So, in order to be hit squarely on target, he tactically adjusted his position.

Only after confirming that the meteorite would strike him directly head-on did his obsessive-compulsive urge finally settle, and he inwardly said with heartfelt satisfaction:

"Now this finally feels right..."

In the end,

amid the steadily rising temperature and emotions even he could not clearly describe, one second before the crimson meteorite fully struck the ground, Ling Wuyuan forcefully swung his fist at the crimson meteorite descending from the sky, carving a scarlet trail through the heavens like the Spear of Odin...

Perhaps it was his final unwillingness to yield?

No matter what,

it could only be said that it was undoubtedly an act of a mantis trying to stop a chariot.

The next instant,

Ling Wuyuan's body was completely erased!

Then, amid the colossal explosion, the entire mountain beneath his feet exploded with a thunderous crash!

The sight was like a cake struck head-on by a high-speed iron ball.

Hundreds of millions of tons of mountain rock and earth either evaporated or blasted outward!

A gigantic circular Shockwave spread more than dozens of kilometers away in an extremely short time, bringing catastrophic devastation upon the surrounding region!

When everything finally settled, all that remained on the ground was an ominous crater roughly three thousand meters deep at its deepest point, around forty thousand meters wide in diameter at its opening, with vast quantities of scorching magma still churning endlessly within...

And terrifying scenes like this occurred more than a dozen times across the planet at the same time...