Cataclysm: Undead Dragons and Zero Empire

After the second meeting began, the company representatives stared indifferently at the ever-increasing number of green standby indicators on the screen, waiting for the plan to be completed.

The representative who proposed the plan said casually, "In a little while, those resource-intensive civilizations will revert to the Stone Age."

"Not only that," the representative on his left said casually, watching the "Purifier" array enter the launch countdown, "Winter will freeze them to death. This land will ultimately belong to us—if we want to come back later."

Inside the ground command center, an alarm suddenly sounded, and red warning lights rotated on the dome:

"A nuclear fusion strike en route has been detected."

Howard sprang to his feet, his gaze fixed on the dense red dots that had suddenly appeared on the screen, each marked with the symbol for "nuclear radiation".

"General, it's an unknown type of nuclear missile," the staff officer's voice trembled slightly, no longer the almost mechanical response of endless work. His fingers flew across the keyboard. "Trajectory analysis complete. This strike will cover all major cities on the surface."

"Order all bases to activate missile defense systems," Howard commanded. In this moment, he had to remain calm. "Use all available resources; stop as many as you can."

As the leader issued the order, following satellite signals, a large number of reconstructed military bases entered a state of emergency. The missile silos hidden under the permafrost unveiled their thick camouflage one by one, and the interceptor missiles shot into the sky like meteors flying backwards, leaving trails of flame.

Struggling to survive in the dead of winter, the Death Knights had a very limited number of missiles, far from enough to intercept so many nuclear missiles. Howard knew this very well. He stared at the live feed on the screen, where the blue trajectories representing interceptor missiles and the red trajectories representing nuclear missiles were rapidly converging, and the countdown numbers were jumping wildly.

"Sensor tracking normal, countdown... the warhead has changed course! Recalculate parameters!" The technical officer's voice was tense and restrained. Just as the blue trajectory on the screen was adjusted, a black and red light suddenly appeared on the lunar surface.

A huge phantom on the moon's surface solidified slightly, and its three pairs of eyes slowly lit up, like a blazing sun in deep space.

Lin Ziming glanced at the meteors flying towards the Earth's surface, and a torrent of psionic energy swept across the entire planet's gravitational field at his command. Both the command post on the surface and the densely packed monitoring arrays in the space station collapsed at the same time, turning into a chaotic waterfall of numbers.

The thousands of meteors seemed to be grasped by an invisible hand, instantly twisted into an amorphous metal mass, and the nested nuclear bomb inside was detonated outside of the pre-planned sequence.

The interceptor missiles that were climbing were even worse; the moment they were swept by psionic energy, they collapsed into a cloud of dust, which drifted through the atmosphere like a drizzle.

The people working on the ground were unaware of the impending danger. It was only after being reminded by their children that they looked up at the sky and were surprised to see a twinkling point of light hanging in the sky like a bright star in broad daylight.

Pure light and heat should have diffused in the atmosphere, but all of this energy was enveloped by psionic energy, like a butterfly held in the palm of a hand, unable to fly.

Inside the conference hall of the "Ark" space station, a piercing alarm sounded, and malfunction warnings for the weapon systems filled all the screens. The signals of every "Purifier" nuclear missile disappeared at the same time.

"What's going on?!" The host lost his usual composure, instinctively questioning the space station's intelligent system. The central control system's electronic voice didn't respond, instead continuing to broadcast the report: "Error! Unknown energy impact detected!"

The representatives were urgently contacting the giant companies behind them and calling on their respective intelligent systems, but in an instant, all the commotion stopped.

Everyone stood frozen in place, still in the same position as they had just been, as if the passage of time had been paused.

The chairs in the conference room were thrown to the ground, and the company representatives knelt down in unison, as if an invisible weight was pressing them down so that they could not get up, and that getting up would only result in their spines dislocating from their bodies.

They all witnessed a terrifying sight: in the eternal darkness of the universe, a colossal skeletal dragon head hovered among the stars, with three pairs of dark red suns coldly watching over them. They were like a group of mortals thrown onto the surface of a star, scorched and vaporized by the heat radiated from the solar prominences.

No words or phrases in the knowledge base could describe what was before them. The detectors had never recorded such a terrifying energy form, which had exceeded the known physical laws and technological understanding of mankind.

The illusory black and red flames ignited without warning in the conference hall, not from sparks flying from the outside, but bursting forth from within each person's body.

The flames did not burn their flesh, and their clothes remained intact, but the company representatives writhed on the ground in agony, trembling as they clearly felt their consciousness crumbling bit by bit, as if they were being slowly sliced ​​to pieces. The wealth, power, and ambition they had once been so proud of were reduced to worthless ashes in the flames.

These people will never understand what kind of force they encountered until their death. The flames burned them until they were completely scorched. In their last moments, they realized that this was the purest will to destroy, enough to burn everything in the world.

The flames died down quietly, just as they had come quietly. Silence returned to the conference hall. The delegates lay on the floor, their bodies intact, their clothes still neat, and even their expressions unchanged from when they were alive. But their eyes had lost all their luster, leaving only empty darkness.

The souls have been completely incinerated, leaving only unconscious shells, including the entire "Ark," none of which survived.

The space station's central control system began automatic detection, and a red scanning beam swept back and forth in the conference room. "No authorized personnel with vital signs detected," the electronic voice echoed in the empty cabin.

"The ecological cycle system maintains minimum power consumption, weapon systems are shut down, navigation systems are locked to the current orbit... Silence protocol activated."

The holographic projection in the casino was still playing a fantasy of a tropical beach, but at this moment, the "Ark" space station was like a giant who had died suddenly, silently hanging between the Earth and the Moon. Its outer shell still gleamed with a metallic luster, and its internal facilities were intact, but it was no longer alive.

This refuge, once considered a "paradise," eventually became a luxurious tomb floating in space, silently telling the story of those who attempted to control everything but were ultimately judged by the great power.

The piercing alarm in the ground command center gradually subsided. Howard loosened his tightly clenched fist and looked at the restored screen. The red and blue colors had disappeared without a trace, as if it had never been launched or intersected. All that remained in the system was the error message.

He looked up at the sky, but could only see the metal ceiling of the command post, and remained silent for a long time.

The technical officers checked the system logs, but to no avail. Humans were unable to decipher the power, as powerless as ancient people living in caves who witnessed a thunderstorm with lightning and thunder, and the treetops suddenly bursting into flames.

The communication came through at that moment, and it was Terence's voice, filled with an irrepressible fervor: "The Lord has made his judgment; those who shirk their responsibilities will ultimately not escape the judgment of death."

Howard walked to the viewing window and wiped away the frost flowers on the glass. He knew that this was a day of judgment for humanity.

They still have a chance to survive on this redeemed land and continue to write their own future, but the space station in deep space will forever remember the dragon's gaze and that power that far surpasses the deepest fantasies of humankind.