Chapter 280: The World of Annihilation.
“What the heck happened to me?”
Jie Jie felt as if he had been flung off somewhere, dizzy and disoriented, his whole body burning up afterward.
When Smoky Snow Weasel landed on the Lava Field, even his thick fur couldn’t resist the heat and started to singe.
Struggling with his transformation into Flame King Dragon, the fiery sensation finally subsided, but the sight before him was far from comforting.
Before him stretched a hellish landscape of flowing magma.
If this were the Dragon Crystal Land, such scenery would be familiar underground. But raising his head, he saw an ominous sky filled with black clouds pressing down.
This wasn’t deep below the ground—it was above it. As far as his line of sight extended, there was only endless darkness above, occasionally illuminated by flames licking through the clouds.
Back in the days when the old Flame King Dragon fell, the sky’s fiery hues were bright and vivid. Now, these dark clouds blocked out all light.
Looking around, there was no doubt—this was a true vision of hell.
There were no monsters or plants in sight. Even breathing in brought the feeling of volcanic poison gas burning inside.
It seemed like the world had shrunk to just him, with no sign of the companions who promised to come along. This made Jie Jie suspect he’d been exiled here without explanation, which only fueled his irritation.
“Come out already! Where are you?!”
“I didn’t agree yet! I was just asking!”
“What about our promise to go together?!”
He roared loudly at the sky, but there was no response.
The hellish world remained devoid of life.
Flapping his wings, he took to the air, choosing a direction to fly.
Lava, molten rock, volcanoes—everything looked the same, offering no positional reference.
No complex ecosystems of flora and fauna appeared. The only living thing he could see was a Steelhide Dragon nearby.
A Steelhide Dragon with a poor physique and constitution. Its shell wasn’t neatly stacked but rather haphazardly piled like that of a Rock Dragon.
Steelhide Dragons rely on bacteria-assisted reactions with minerals to sustain their activities, while feeding insects to provide for bacterial decomposition and development.
In this symbiotic relationship, bacteria do the work, while Steelhide Dragons pay the price.
But in this desolate world, the Steelhide Dragon couldn’t afford its end of the deal and thus languished here.
Upon spotting Jie Jie in the air, it buried itself like a young Rock Dragon, exposing only the rocky mountain of its back.
Descending from the sky, Jie Jie approached this solitary living thing, despite its impending demise.
He lingered beside the Steelhide Dragon for so long that it eventually peeked out one eye to observe him.
By staying near this sole discovered creature, his thoughts became clearer, confirming several things.
At least the first living thing he saw was a monster—not something entirely unfamiliar—and this destroyed world likely belonged to the same planet, just in a different state of time.
“So, did this planet explode under the weight of forbidden powers?”
Considering what the Black-Clothed Dragon Person had said, this might be a counterexample of humanity’s boundless potential?
But he still hadn’t found any ruins of intelligent life.
He needed to keep searching.
Saying goodbye to the Steelhide Dragon, Jie Jie continued flying toward a chosen direction.
Finally, he found ruins, like Pompeii from another life, encased in thick layers of volcanic ash, including the humans within.
Beyond the shattered city walls, he spotted broken Strike Dragon Guns.
There were signs of battle, massive claw marks trampling over fortresses, lava gushing from cracks left behind.
He seemed to have found the main culprit.
Following the path taken by the main perpetrator, he saw enormous rivers of molten lava cascading like waterfalls from the fractured crust.
Then, he came upon the ocean—a chasm of dried-up magma.
Lowering his flight altitude to investigate, he found some water away from active lava flows, but it was toxic.
Not far from there lay a colossal skull, its horns hinting at its former self—a Great Sea Dragon, now reduced to a lava-encased skeleton.
It had only one horn, but there were others nearby, including smaller ones resembling juvenile Great Sea Dragons.
Baby Great Sea Dragons.
With growing irritation and hunger gnawing at his belly (thankfully sustained by geothermal crystal energy), Jie Jie kept flying.
After seeing countless ruins and skeletons, he found another battlefield.
Once an island rising from the ocean, it was now a molten rock island, sunk into a deep valley, its surface littered with trampled marks.
A wooden ship’s remains showed only its dragon bones and steel parts. The dragon bones clutched the foundation of the molten rock island like a hand using its last strength not to fall into the seabed devoid of water.
Among the surviving steel parts, the ship’s front-mounted Strike Dragon Gun stood out prominently, though half-melted.
The Flame King Dragon’s descent stirred a faint breeze, causing the steel spear to glow fiercely once more, its scorching heat still lingering.
On the battlefield, scattered pieces of lava with peculiar color and hardness caught his attention.
Stepping on the lava with a slight strain, Jie Jie noticed the ground breaking beneath his footpads, with the lava embedding itself into the cracks.
His gaze swept around, revealing hunters’ weapons and skeletons fused into the lava.
Raising his head, Jie Jie saw the lighthouse that had once repelled the Tempered Black Dragon blazing furiously on the horizon.
He flapped his wings toward the lighthouse. What was once a bustling port now lay in desolation, ravaged by tectonic shifts. Yet, unlike the previous fortress, there were no human traces here—they had retreated. But where could they have gone?
The entity responsible for all this destruction could only be the Tempered Black Dragon.
Clearly, the people of this world failed to slay the returning Tempered Black Dragon.
Judging from the experience so far, with the oceans baked dry, the devastation wasn’t limited to regions—it was likely the entire planet. How did the Tempered Black Dragon achieve this?
What about the New Continent? Had it also seen his activity?
Throughout his journey, there were no signs of living civilizations or lush ecosystems. Jie Jie increasingly felt the loneliness of “being the only one alive in this world.”
What were the intentions of the “Black Dragon” who sent him here?
He wanted to return. He didn’t want to stay in such a world.
Faced with the perpetrator of such calamity, Jie Jie’s anger began to rise.
He flew back in the direction of the continuous trail left by the Tempered Black Dragon.
Chapter 281
