The pots buried deep in the castle's foundations - thousands of pots sealed with green liquid - were ignited at the same moment by some kind of fuse.
I don't know when those clay pots were buried, maybe a few months ago, maybe a few years ago, maybe they were buried in the foundation when the palace was built.
They were like seeds that had been sleeping for an unknown length of time, waking up at the same time, expanding at the same time, and pouring out their anger at the same time.
The first wave of flames shot out from under the ground in the center of the foyer.
The red flames wrapped around the green edges, like a blooming flower with strange colors, squeezed out from the gaps in the floor tiles, and then exploded violently.
The marble slab was thrown into the air by the impact of the explosion, spinning and hitting the ceiling, colliding with the falling plaster pieces in mid-air, making a dull crashing sound.
The heat wave of the flames spread out around the explosion point, and wherever it passed, all combustible objects were instantly ignited - the long wooden tables, velvet curtains, woolen carpets, and the black and white robes on the corpses all turned into burning torches.
Then the second wave. The third wave. The fourth wave.
The explosion was not a one-off event, but a series of explosions.
The Wildfire clay pots buried at different depths and locations were detonated one after another. Each explosion was like someone beating a huge war drum under the foundation.
The ground of the palace began to sink as a whole, and then arched upwards due to the pressure of the explosion, like a giant beast trapped underground struggling desperately to break out of the ground.
In a matter of seconds, the cracks on the wall turned into a rift that ran through the entire wall. The corridor on the second floor collapsed together with the murals on it, hitting the ground on the first floor, stirring up dust and gravel all over the sky.
The stone pillars that once supported the palace were broken one by one, and the carvings on the pillars - those intricately carved patterns depicting the glory of the Lys city-state - shattered into powder when they fell to the ground.
"Boom--"
That loud noise can no longer be described as "sound".
It is a physical impact, a force that can penetrate the body, shake the internal organs, and cause the brain to hit back and forth inside the skull.
Dawg Lars couldn't hear anything at that moment. There was only a sharp, continuous buzzing in his ears, as if a thousand bees were building a nest inside his skull.
His vision was also shaking violently, not because his body was moving, but because his eyeballs were shaken back and forth in his eye sockets, and the images he saw turned into blurry, overlapping fragments, like oil paintings soaked in water.
But his body - his body had already reacted before he even thought clearly about what was happening.
He didn't run out.
It's not like he never thought about running away.
The door was not far away, and the sun shone in from outside. The beam of light was clearly visible in the dust and smoke, like a passage leading to the sky.
He saw several soldiers rushing in that direction the moment the explosion occurred. Their faces were full of fear, their mouths were wide open - they were probably screaming, but Dawg las couldn't hear - their arms were swinging wildly, like drowning people paddling desperately.
Then a burst of flame erupted from the top of the door frame, engulfing the soldier running in front from head to toe.
The soldier didn't even have time to scream.
His body stood in the flames for less than a breath, and then began to collapse - first his clothes turned into ashes,
Then the skin blisters, turns black, and peels off, then the muscles shrink, scorch, and peel off from the bones, and finally the bones themselves become brittle, break, and collapse into a pile of gray-white powder in the high temperatures.
The whole process takes no more than three breaths. A living person, a person with a name, a family, and a story, turns into a pile of ashes whose shape cannot even be recognized within three breaths.
Dawg Lars didn't see the scene - his view was obscured by the rising dust - but he heard the sounds of the soldier's fellow soldiers.
It was not a scream, not a scream, but a more primitive and instinctive cry, like that of an injured animal.
That sound penetrated the roar of the explosion, penetrated the buzzing in his ears, and pierced his heart like a red-hot iron needle.
If you run outside, you will die. This idea was not something he came up with through thinking, but something his body felt instinctively.
His legs did not take a step towards the door, but instead moved in the opposite direction - deeper into the palace, towards the center of the explosion, towards -
In the direction of Redd.
Redd is still standing on the stairs. To be precise, Redd is standing in the middle of the stairs, holding one hand on the railing and raising the other hand slightly, as if to block the oncoming heat wave.
His expression remained calm, so calm that he did not look like a man at the center of a series of explosions.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, looking through the diffuse dust and smoke, and landed on the flames spurting out from the cracks in the ground, with a calm, almost curious look.
King Ghidorah responded faster than anyone else.
The giant beast turned its three heads into the palace at the same time as soon as the explosion occurred.
Its body twisted violently on the square, its wings spread out, and its huge body was like a moving mountain peak, rushing toward the palace.
But it was so big that it was impossible to enter through the front door - that door couldn't even accommodate its head.
It could only unfold its right wing outside the door, and stick the giant wing covered with golden scales with a wingspan of more than fifty meters through the door, like a huge shield, blocking the space between Redd and the center of the explosion.
The moment the flame shock wave hit the dragon wing, King Ghidorah let out a low roar.
Not pain, but anger - anger that is offended, provoked, and scratched by the "toys" buried in the ground by humble humans.
The scales on the surface of the dragon wings became brighter under the high temperature, and the golden light intertwined with the red-green flames of Wildfire, casting strange light and shadow inside the palace.
Those flames cannot burn through King Ghidorah's scales - there is no flame in this world that can burn through dragon scales - but their heat is still conducted through the air, causing the temperature under the dragon's wings to rise to a level that can cause human skin to blister within a few breaths.
Dawg Russ rushed under the dragon wings.
He didn't know how he got here.
There was a gap in his memory between those few breaths, and he only remembered that he threw away the sword in his hand - the sword he held on to for the entire battle without letting go - and then started running.