The sun was setting over the ridgeline to the west, turning the sky a rich, orange-red color.
The light shines on the roofs of city buildings, on the streets, and on the shoulders of pedestrians, coating everything with a layer of warm, tired gold.
The adults had already started cooking, and the smoke rose from the chimneys of each house, straight upward in the windless evening air, and then dispersed at a certain height, turning into a thin layer of mist, suspended over the city.
The sound of the spatula hitting the iron pot, the sound of oil sizzling in the hot pot, the screams and laughter of children playing in the alley, mixed together to create the most noisy and peaceful moment in the city in a day.
No one looked up at the sky, because it was not completely dark yet, because the sun set every day, and because there was nothing worth looking up at.
Several children ran out of the alley, walked through a narrow path with vines covering the walls on both sides, and ran towards an open space on the edge of the city.
There are several crooked-neck trees growing in the open space. The grass under the trees has been trampled bare, revealing the gray-yellow soil underneath.
They are the most naughty group on the street, ranging in age from seven or eight to eleven or twelve years old. They wear patched shorts and open-toed cloth shoes, and their faces and hands are stained with dust from nowhere.
"Hurry up, hurry up!" the child running at the front shouted back.
He is the oldest of the group of children, eleven years old, with black hair and bright eyes. When he runs, he swings his arms very fast.
"Almost there... that's it..." Another child followed him panting.
He was half a head shorter than the child in front of him and ran with difficulty. He bent down with his hands on his knees and took a few breaths, then pointed to a corner of the open space.
"That's it."
"What on earth is it? You didn't say anything along the way."
The third child caught up from behind. His eyes narrowed to a slit, and he frowned as he looked at the open space dyed golden by the setting sun.
"You'll know it when you see it." The second child straightened up and walked towards the open space.
"I can't understand either."
Several children followed behind him, their footsteps echoing in the open space, making a thin, crackling sound when they stepped on the dry grass stems.
The setting sun slanted over from the west, stretching their shadows very long, like several slender giants drawn on the ground with black ink.
They walked to the corner of the clearing and squatted down next to the roots of the crooked-neck tree. There was light there.
It was not the light of the setting sun, but a small cluster of fire-like light emitted from the ground.
But the color was wrong - it was black, as dark as if a small piece of the night sky had been cut out and pasted on the grass.
The black flame danced silently, with an extremely fine lavender halo around its edge that could only be seen when the light was right.
It has no temperature and is not hot to the touch, but it is there, burning, consuming something invisible.
"Is this it?" The child with the scar on his face frowned. He stretched out his hand and stopped his finger above the cluster of black flames.
"It's really not hot?"
"You will know after you try it." The second child encouraged him.
The child with the scar on his face took a deep breath, stretched out his fingers, and slowly, bit by bit, pointed towards the cluster of black flames.
His fingers passed through the edge of the flame. There was no burning, no stinging, no feeling at all. It was like reaching into a ball of nothing air.
"Ah!" He suddenly retracted his hand.
"Haha--I told you it's not popular!"
The second child laughed. The children were about to retort--a sharp, piercing siren sounded in the distance.
It's not the kind of drill siren with one long blast and two short blasts. It's a real siren that is sounded only when the city faces a huge threat. It's like a long blast of countless people screaming at the top of their lungs.
The huge alarm bell over the city was sounded.
The sound of bells spread from the bell tower in the center of the city to the surrounding areas, wave after wave, from the square to the streets, from the streets to the alleys, and from the alleys to here.
The children stood up suddenly and raised their heads.
In the western sky, the setting sun is still sinking, and the light has begun to dim.
But above the setting sun, higher up, and beneath the clouds, something was shining.
It wasn't the sun, the sun was behind them. The thing was purple and ridiculously big, so big that even from such a long distance, they could clearly see its outline.
Purple light emitted from its body, dyeing the surrounding clouds into an ominous, weird color between blue and purple.
The children stood there motionless with their mouths open and their heads raised.
No sound came out of their throats, and their minds went blank. Only their eyes were still receiving images - the purple, huge thing flying towards the city was constantly magnifying, magnifying, magnifying on their retinas.
The King of Monsters hovers over the city.
It's looking for a place to stay. The voice in its head is still ringing.
It's not language, it's not words, there's only an increasingly stronger, more specific, invisible force that seems to be coming from a certain direction, pushing its body.
Aiyileiyas's eyes changed from purple to bright purple, and the dark purple flames on his body burned more intensely.
It opened its mouth, and a purple, high-speed rotating light lit up deep in its throat. The light poured out from its throat, condensed, compressed, and shaped in front of it, turning into a huge sphere with purple flames flowing on its surface.
The sphere was suspended and rotating in front of it, and every rotation would sputter out tiny, Mars-like purple light spots in all directions.
The light spots fall on the roofs, on the streets, on the faces and hands of those who are still looking up at the sky. They are not hot, but will leave a small cold wet mark the moment they fall, as if they were licked by something.
The sphere slowly detached from Aiyileiyas and began to fall downwards.
The speed is slow, like a ripe fruit falling off a tree, with a heavy, irreversible sense of fate after being captured by gravity.
People's eyes followed the purple sphere.
Their bodies couldn't react at all - their legs couldn't move, their arms couldn't move, and their throats couldn't move. Only their eyes were moving, following the light, turning downward bit by bit. The light became bigger and bigger as it fell.
The distance is shortening, death is approaching, and human reaction speed seems tragically slow at this moment.
It's not that they don't want to run, it's that their brains haven't completed the information processing from "seeing danger" to "commanding the body to escape".
Maybe it will take a second or two, maybe they don't have a second or two.
Then - a more intense red light beam appeared.
It's not emitted from a purple sphere, it's light, pure, intense, like the light on the surface of the sun that's been compressed to the extreme.
A crimson red color, darker than the color of the sunset and darker than the color of blood. The beam of light flew from the western skyline so fast that the air was torn in front of it, emitting a continuous, sharp sonic boom as if something was crying.
The sonic boom came down from the sky and shattered the remaining glass windows on the ground.
The crimson light beam and the purple sphere met in the sky.
There was no explosion, no shock wave. The moment the purple sphere came into contact with the crimson light pillar, it seemed like it was pressed onto the snow by a red-hot iron, and it began to collapse, shrink, and disappear from the center.
The light beam did not stop, passed through the center of the sphere, continued forward, and hit Aiyileiyas's chest.
Boom--
The body of the King of Warcraft suddenly bounced back in the air.
Its four wings instinctively flapped forward in an attempt to stabilize its body, but the impact was so great that even its wings flapped in front of it, making only empty sounds in the air.
Its body rolled twice in the air and then - stabilized.
It didn't stabilize itself, it used its wings to brake abruptly, and the wing membranes rubbed in the air, making a sharp and harsh sound, like the sound of rubber rubbing on a high-speed rotating wheel.
Aiyileiyas Stabilize your body and raise your head.
On the ground, a child pointed to the sky blankly.
"Heaven... high..."
"There are, two... suns?"