Cataclysm: Undead Dragons and Zero Empire

Lin Ziming opened his "eyes".

He finally broke free from the initial chaos of awakening and regained his consciousness.

His first instinct was to flap his wings and unleash a storm of lightning once more to dispel the filth in the universe, for his last memory remained on the vast Zerg battlefield, where danger lurked everywhere.

The response he received was no longer a bright blue lightning bolt, but an extremely rich black and red, like a paintbrush dipping into a new color on a palette, giving it a completely new meaning.

The spiritual energy belonging to death ignited and erupted instantly upon Lin Ziming's awakening, as if it had been waiting for countless years before returning to the world.

The meaning of death is vividly presented in the present universe: water cannot float the lightest feather, fire cannot burn anything to ashes, and the soil is so heavy that what is buried can never be turned over.

Everything lost its ability to move, and no longer possessed any color. Silence, vanishing, and the principle of the end led everything to a decisive conclusion.

However, just before death was about to engulf everything, Lin Ziming heard a nearly hoarse shout. The language was similar to, yet different from, the language of his hometown in his memory, which made him stop in his tracks.

"Lord! Humanity cries out to you! Prays to you! Repents before you! Look down upon us! Have mercy on us! Forgive our sins! Grant us the covenant of peace!"

Human beings... such a distant yet familiar word.

Lin Ziming realized that he was no longer on the battlefield. He quickly gathered information about his surroundings, and his senses swept across the entire Hengxing system, even venturing into subspace.

The feedback left him momentarily disoriented. A deep blue ocean covered seventy percent of the planet's surface, and the human race, with its incredibly familiar appearance, was depicted, along with cities and cars. It was as if he were seeing his homeland.

Lin Zimo focused his senses on his surroundings and immediately saw himself, now a black skeleton, and the molten liquid that was constantly flowing and enveloping him.

All this information tells Lin Ziming that, firstly, he is already dead, and secondly, he is located at the Earth's core.

Resurrected? No, he is still dead, but is existing in an unknown way.

Lin Zimo knew that he could be called an undead, perhaps the first or even the only undead dragon in the universe, unprecedented in his inherited wisdom.

By inferring time from the background information of the universe, he roughly estimated that after his death, the world would undergo tremendous changes, and the time that would pass would be counted in hundreds of millions of years.

Lin Ziming turned his senses toward the voice calling out to himself. He commanded the psionic energy belonging to the subspace as if it were his own arm. The surging psionic waves washed over the ancient strata once again, and the mineral veins, which had been exposed to psionic radiation for a long time, were gradually stained with pure black, just like amber solidifying in the earth.

At the desolate and empty top of the pyramid, the flowing waterfall of fire resembled a paint bucket being stirred by a giant hand. New vortices appeared, forming three pairs of simple eye lines against the sky, and dripping increasingly thick, lava-like flames downwards.

Lin Ziming saw the group of humans kneeling on the ground. At the same time, his gaze appeared above the death festivals all over the world. The strange phenomena brought about aroused the fervor of the believers. The exciting atmosphere arose in the silence of death, like flames dancing upward. In the process of burning, there were always tiny, light things rising from the silence and stillness.

"Lord! Most High, Most Sovereign, Most Powerful Father! We, Creator, who walk in shadow and glimmer of light, cry out to you:"

The authority of death, the ultimate rest, the final judgment all belong to you, from the beginning of antiquity to the end of the end, all things return to absolute zero, absolute nothingness.

May your will roam the heavens, may your kingdom descend to earth, may your wings protect us, and guide us from the desire for illusion and eternal life, and from the fear of death and meaninglessness.

Such is the end! May our prayers, through sight and fire, ascend to the throne of silence!

Are they... offering their faith to me?

Lin Ziming stared at the people who were gradually becoming hysterical, watching them raise their hands high and shout loudly, almost screaming.

Throughout the world, as psionic waves sweep across the earth, even those without Dragon Dream Syndrome will witness the dragon of death.

Human civilization as a whole was put on pause. No matter what they were doing at that moment, whether they were fighting for their lives on the battlefield, working hard in the factory, or resting at home, everyone covered their eyes and knelt on the ground, as if the sky was pressing down on them.

This was a collective outbreak of dragon dream syndrome, to the point that people walking on the road fell down, drivers drove onto the side of the road, and the gunfire and explosions on the battlefield suddenly stopped.

The vast psychic energy is like a violent key, tearing a hideous scar on the door of the human mind, opening up all that is unwilling to be opened, and driving the ignorant out of the protection of ignorance.

To the followers of the death religion, this was the culmination of countless years of waiting, the awakening of the supreme Lord from His eternal slumber. They were almost frantic, rushing to offer their devotion to the Lord and begging for His glance.

Lin Ziming had fully understood the current situation and noticed the most dazzling one among all the people, who was the source of the shouts directed at him at the beginning of his awakening.

The person kneeling before the crowd of believers had the most vibrant flame and the calmest demeanor, standing out exceptionally in the atmosphere of fervent faith. It was as if a great undertaking had been accomplished, without excitement or agitation, only a sense of peace and relaxation.

Lin Zimo lowered his gaze to the man and saw him kneeling on the ground, his forehead pressed against his palm, tightly against the ground of the black stone pyramid, as if responding to his gaze and not daring to meet his eyes.

After waiting for a while, and seeing that this person did not make a wish like the others, he withdrew his gaze and turned his view back to overlook the entire planet.

If Lin Ziming chooses to flap his wings and soar directly, stirring up the Earth's core with his four wings, he will rise straight up, easily pierce through the strata, and then see the light of day again.

For him, the planet's density was too low; traversing the mantle and crust would be no more difficult than an ordinary person walking through the air on the Earth's surface.

This also means the destruction of the planet, just like a fledgling bird breaking open its eggshell and seeing the outside world; the eggshell naturally collapses and no longer has any value.

In order to protect the humans living on the surface, Lin Zimo chose to escape into subspace and travel through it. In an instant, he arrived in the distant deep space and returned to the embrace of the universe, as free as a fish in the sea.

The starry sea that Lin Zimo saw was still the same as before, with twinkling stars on the boundless dark curtain, but the stars must have been replaced. He wondered if there were any familiar stars in this universe.

Are his parents, the Heavenly Dragons, still alive? What was the outcome of the war against the Zerg? Does the civilization that nurtured him and for which Lin Zimo sacrificed himself still reign supreme among the stars?

Upon awakening, he was filled with doubts and eager to ask questions of the universe.

As Lin Ziming left the Earth's core, the planet immediately lost a significant amount of mass. Core material moved towards the center to fill the void, shaking the strata that had been stable for countless years. The geological movements were so intense that it felt as if the planet had returned to the time when it was first born.

The atmosphere suddenly appeared as bright as a glittering coin to people's eyes. The magnetic field disorder caused the aurora to reappear in the sky. What awaited them was the impending second global earthquake, far larger than the last disaster, accompanied by unprecedentedly strong storms.

The earth shook, the strata cracked, and a waterfall of fire enveloped the black stone pyramid, swaying like a small boat on a wave during the great earthquake, on the verge of capsizing.

"We have contained the disaster to a minimum, and that is a success, no matter the cost."

Terrence said to Howard, his face almost burned, his skin crackling with firelight, as if it would never go out and would smolder forever until the next fire.

He looked up at the now-vanished Eye of Flame and silently prayed for human civilization.