Return to Familiar Ground!

(First update! Thanks to reader Guanhu Yinxian for the rating vote! My deepest thanks! Please bookmark, recommend, and keep supporting!)

This Great Calamity lasted a full three days. When the floating island finally stopped shaking, Er Dongsheng, Little Lulu, and the others climbed out of the caves!

Everywhere they looked, a ruined, desolate, apocalyptic landscape spread before them!

Lava flowed across the earth through a crisscross of channels, churning and surging. Waves of unidentified black-gray gas mingled with boundless steam and rose into the air, forming thick layers of volcanic cloud that shrouded the entire sky!

The sky was gray and murky. An occasional thread of sunlight pierced through, making the scene seem all the more bleak!

Er Dongsheng looked up. From beyond the thick volcanic clouds came a summons that felt both strange and familiar. It carried a trace of Destruction, like the deepest darkness, and drew him in!

"So the Destruction Layer is up there?" he wondered silently. He touched the unusually active Ink Spirit Flame at his chest. It seemed the mysteries that had troubled him for so long were about to be unveiled!

He turned toward the people behind him. Residents were emerging from their caves and gathering around him of their own accord!

More and more arrived, standing quietly on a stretch of level ground battered by the shock wave. They gazed at the king above them. At that moment, Er Dongsheng was the pillar they leaned on. The road ahead rested entirely on his decision!

"Sibya, come here!" Er Dongsheng said after a moment's silence.

"Yes, my lord!" The Lesser Imp stepped forward respectfully. His strength had barely improved these past few years, but he had grown remarkably fat. He wobbled as he walked; to look at him, no one would have guessed