World destruction, world destruction: prologue.

"... Was that you speaking?" Ye Yanran murmured. "It wasn't my imagination, it was you speaking to me."

She gazed at the "Living Dead" and saw the silence and indifference in its eyes.

"You're not Living Dead," she said, the doubts that had been lingering in her heart finally dissipating.

In fact, she felt uneasy more than once. She had spent too much time with the Living Dead and always felt that this individual, who looked similar to the Living Dead, was a different being. The eye contact she had with him before leaving the hospital only deepened her suspicions.

Ye Yanran finally realized. "You are different from them."

Ye Jiang tacitly agreed with her words. Ye Yanran glanced at her, but had no interest in guessing what kind of being she was. Her heart was already dead; her curiosity had been completely worn away by the scenes of death, leaving only endless regret and self-blame.

"You're right," Ye Yanran, "They're all dead."

Tears that had long since dried up began to flow again.

"We were wrong, I was wrong."

"Our brethren are dead; what still drives their bodies is a demon."

"They killed so many people, so many..."

Nothing can hold them back now; this city is just the beginning, and they won't stop.

Why did it turn out this way?

"If..."

"If, as the citizens suspect, we hadn't tried to save them from the beginning... we could have just killed them." The human's voice was hoarse with tears streaming down his face.

But humans won't do that.

Even if it happened again, it wouldn't be like this.

Ye Jiang watched as the human fell into deep self-blame, repeatedly admitting his mistakes, his eyes filled with sorrow. Those words were not for Ye Jiang to hear, but for himself, consumed by remorse.

"Do you want to correct this mistake?" Ye Jiang suddenly asked.

Human was consumed by self-reproach, and it took her a long time to realize what she had heard. She looked at Ye Jiang through teary eyes.

Ye Jiang raised her hand, and a small, dark red energy ball appeared in her palm. Ye Yanran blankly at the ball.

Ye Jiang raised her eyelids to look at her, and the latter slowly shifted her gaze from the energy ball to her face.

"You..." Ye Yanran's lifeless eyes flickered, "Who exactly are you...?"

"Want it?" Ye Jiang simply asked. "It can help you kill those Living Dead."

Ye Yanran's eyes slowly widened.

"But..." Ye Jiang said, her voice flat and cold, "You will die."

"You will not hear people cheering for you; they will only be confused, even fearful. You will not become a renowned swordsman."

"..."

"... Is that all?" the human asked.

Ye Jiang looked at her, Ye Yanran, "There's no other price to pay, just the lack of praise?"

Ye Jiang's eyes flickered, and she suddenly realized that the human in front of her, who loved stories of heroes, had never thought of becoming a hero.

Touched, Ye Jiang's voice held a touch of emotion. "Mmm."

She said, "Because the others have already been paid for."

This is a deal: on one side, the monster bestows its energy; on the other, humans provide instruction and... naming services.

The energy ball left Ye Jiang's hand and slowly merged into the human's body. In an instant, the human was swallowed by light and disappeared. After the light faded, a huge alien appeared. She had completely lost her human characteristics and was like a monster or a sacred dragon. Some fleeing humans ran to the hospital and screamed in terror when they saw this scene. A trace of sadness flashed in the alien's eyes. Without looking back, she flew towards the Living Dead in the city.

one.

two.

Three

All the Living Dead were torn to shreds by her claws. The centipede Living Dead was breathing fire when she crushed it under her foot, its eyes wide open in death.

People stopped screaming and stared at her in astonishment, their eyes filled with doubt and hidden fear. She gave them a deep look, then turned and left. She was going to fly away from the city, but her body never stopped growing. She was several times larger than she had been in front of the hospital.

Uncontrollable energy tore at her body, and just before she was about to fly away from the city, she crashed down from the Sky.

She became incredibly strong, yet also incredibly vulnerable.

Amidst the swirling dust, she writhed in agony, yet with her last shred of clarity, she escaped the city, her enormous body, head to tail, embracing it.

Her body continued to grow, expanding to its limit before bursting open piece by piece, her flesh melting and flowing, staining the ground beneath her red, and the energy-rich flesh distorting the surrounding magnetic field.

The citizens stared in stunned silence at the towering mountain.

Having just been hunted by terrifying Living Dead, they couldn't help but wonder what this strange creature was when they saw it killing the Living Dead.

Ye Jiang stepped past the silent crowd and stood before the alien, which was on the verge of death. Just as Ye Jiang had said, she would die; humanity could not withstand such a powerful energy bestowed upon her, and she would be torn apart by it.

The alien with a human soul struggled to lift its eyelids when it saw her.

"... What did you do to me back then... that's why all those Living Dead ignored me... is that right?"

"Thanks."

The human-like alien thanked Ye Jiang.

She was in very poor spirits; her raised eyelids drooped heavily again, as if she were already dead.

She didn't. After a long while, her voice came again. She said, "What a pity... why didn't the Living Dead... live as humans..."

The humanoid alien was filled with melancholy. She kept saying that it would have been better to kill the Living Dead from the beginning, but now that she was about to die, she still wished that they could live as humans.

In this world, there is no one who respects life more purely than the young director of the Special Affairs Office.

That was the last thing Ye Jiang heard from this somewhat noisy human. After those words, the human-like alien closed its eyes forever.

Xiao Pei followed Ye Jiang, and upon hearing these words, her eyes were filled with complex emotions.

She now knew that three hundred years later, this enormous alien would be completely transformed into a skeleton, becoming a mountain range guarding a city.

There's a story in the mountains: A-Rank Polluted attacked, threatening to destroy the city. A hero arrived and killed it a second before it entered the city.

The truth has been lost in the annals of history; in reality, it was the hero who transformed into an alien, killed the Polluted, and protected the city with his death.

But it's also possible that it wasn't lost to time, but rather that it has been passed down this way from the very beginning.

Perhaps the enormous alien was never seen as a hero by the citizens she protected; in their eyes, she was always a destroyer, just like the other Living Dead, rather than a protector.

The wind picked up, the illusion began to crumble, the carefully constructed scene was collapsing bit by bit, and the story... came to an end.

Xiao Pei suppressed her complex emotions and quickly called out to Ye Jiang ahead, "Ye Jiang, if you want to leave the illusion, now's the time..."

The words caught in his throat before he could finish speaking.

The illusion is collapsing, but unlike the previous events, the collapsing illusion is not forming a new one. Instead, it is turning into visible energy particles that drift with the wind and all rush in one direction.

The particles passed by Xiao Pei, only lightly brushing against her body, yet she felt a powerful energy surging within her. Her ability screen spontaneously popped up, and her ability index on the screen jumped rapidly upwards.

These energies... they are actually...

What shocked Xiao Pei even more was that she saw all those energy particles surge into Ye Jiang's body.

Ye Jiang stood still, watching the illusion. The illusion hadn't completely collapsed yet, and the story continued.

The enormous humanoid alien was dead, and the energy that humans couldn't digest distorted the surrounding magnetic field, causing time and space to become chaotic.

Suddenly, a small black ball emerged from the blood-stained ground.

The newborn monster was a tiny ball of fluff. It looked around, seemingly sensing the rich energy around it. It stopped looking, and its body flattened into a pancake shape, forming a vortex, like a small black hole, continuously drawing in energy. The magnetic field became much more stable because of its action.

Ye Jiang's expression shifted slightly. She moved, took a step towards the Coal Ball, reached out, and grabbed the greedy little thing.

The little guy was disturbed and very unhappy. He turned around and bit her, then found that her hand had more energy, so he rolled over and wrapped his body around her hand and wouldn't let go.

The illusion ended there. As the illusion collapsed, the Coal Ball in his hand disappeared, and the remaining energy particles all entered Ye Jiang's body. A cave appeared before him, and the continuous "crossing" stopped. The outsiders fell into the cave and lay sprawled on the ground.

Ye Jiang simply stared at her hands for a long while before looking up at the silent young man standing in the cave.

Chapter 168 The Prologue to the Annihilation of the World.

Rong Yin her scrutinize him; a slight light flickered in his eyes, which seemed to have been silent for a hundred years, diluting the loneliness within. Ye Jiang was momentarily lost in thought, and only after a while did she slowly withdraw her gaze.

She looked down and opened her Ability System, seeing her superpower level on the system display interface.

SSS-Rank.

She leveled up again.

Calmly shutting down the system, Ye Jiang looked at the human warrior who had been staring at her. The latter looked conflicted, as if he wanted to say something but didn't know if he could. His brows and eyes were full of complexity and surprise.

When Xiao Pei noticed Ye Jiang's gaze on her, she licked her lips and said, "Ye Jiang, you... you..."

A suspicion had grown into a towering tree in her heart, impossible to ignore any longer: her friend was a monster, and not just any monster, she was...

Just now, as the energy particles formed from the illusion brushed past her, they transmitted a powerful, attribute-less force to her. She recognized this force; this was...