The Fire-Chasing Herrscher Who Destroyed the World

"The catkins are scattered by the wind, and the green salt is scattered. The sky and the earth are vast, and there is no way back."

Walking one foot deep and one foot shallow, in the bitterly cold snowfield, wearing only a light coat, Mikael suddenly paused, raised his head, and spoke in complete detail.

Hua grabbed his trouser legs with both hands, struggled to pull his calves out of the knee-deep snow, and stood behind Mikael with difficulty, holding his back and taking a rest.

With a chance to breathe, she couldn't help but tighten her scarf, watching the white breath she exhaled mixed with Mikael's and floated up into the air, blurring the slowly falling fine snowflakes, which really looked like a mess. The grains of salt are scattered, but they are more like catkins flying in the wind.

It was only then that she belatedly remembered that the language Mikael used just now was not the common language, but the dialect of the Chinese region. The ups and downs and abstract and distant artistic conception in the words are exactly the same as the ancient poems her father once read to her.

As if sensing that Hua was exhausted, Mikael stretched out his hand to her and pulled her up a hill in front of her in twos and twos. Looking down from the top of the hill, a blurry black line appeared between the snowfield and the sky. Hua took the telescope that Mikael had constructed casually and took a look:

That blurry black line was clearly an endless white birch forest, and outside the white birch forest, there was a lonely village. A few wisps of smoke rose up from the village, intertwining into a thick green smoke and flying diagonally into the sky. Like a leaning pillar standing alone between heaven and earth.

The size of the village is not large, with only twenty or thirty houses in total, distributed in a ring shape, as if surrounding something - like a square?

There is something standing on the square, but the height of the hill is not high, and the view is blocked by a house, so the situation in the square cannot be seen at all.

"Is that our target...ah!"

A sudden gust of north wind carried the dog-skin hat on Hua's head and her subconscious scream far away.

Mikael chuckled lightly and reached into the void with his hand. The dog-skin hat that had been blurred into a small black dot in his sight suddenly passed through the rift in space and appeared in his hand.

He gently pushed the hat back on Hua's head.

"As I said, don't use highly militarized words like target! That's a vacation spot! Vacation!"

"Uh...Mikael, your excuse is really..."

She originally wanted to say "Too bad", but she was afraid that such direct words would hurt people, so in the end she hesitated for a long time and only said:

"That sucks."

"..."

Mikael covered his forehead.

"Anyway, if my memory is correct, it should be here."

"memory?"

"Yes." Michael nodded, "I have been here before, with...Alicia. That was five or four years ago. I can't even remember the time."

When Mikael said this, Hua remembered that he and Alicia had a trip a long time ago, and they happened to pass by her house.

Home……

"So, what exactly is our mission this time?"

Hua looked at Mikael's profile in confusion.

It can't be, it's really just an aimless vacation, right?

Although judging from Mikael's style during this period, it is indeed possible... But Hua knows that this is just an appearance.

Mikael has been looking more and more unreliable recently. If I had to say it, he should be more and more similar to Ellie, but Hua can feel the difference between the two.

Alicia's liveliness is based on optimism, while Mikael's liveliness is based on pessimism and confusion.

The more pessimistic and confused she is, the more she needs to put on a lively appearance to cover it up - Hua doesn't understand why she understands so thoroughly, but she can just see it.

"Okay...don't think so much, just think of it as a vacation..."

Mikael rubbed the thick dog-skin hat on Hua's head, and a trace of guilt flashed through his heart for no reason.

He felt that Hua should stay in the Fire Moth.

On the night we left half a year ago, no one expected that the two teams would meet.

But when they meet, they meet again. They are nothing more than hyperbolas and asymptotes. After being infinitely close, they start to embark on non-intersecting trajectories again.

But the mistake was that Mikael raised his head and looked at Hua for no reason.

He still doesn't understand why Hua ran wildly in the dark streets to keep up with him.

He could only guess that the girl needed somewhere to go.

The home is gone, and the coalition government doesn't even plan to rebuild it. Of course, even if it plans to rebuild, it's useless. There will no longer be her father in the empty martial arts hall.

Fire Chaser... Yes, there are Carol, Himihu, and even new acquaintances Mei and Kevin there, but the person who gave her a sense of security in the first place is no longer there.

…

"I shouldn't have raised my head in the first place."

"Chi...Hua, I'm not lying. If this trip goes well, you can really treat it as a vacation. Well, although it's a bit cold here, the scenery is still very good...ah sneeze!"

"So why don't you wear more clothes?"

"I won't be cold...ahhhh, sneeze!"

The sneeze was blown away by the north wind as soon as it came out.

"..."

The village was clearly in sight, but walking in the snowfield was difficult. It took them a full afternoon until the wind and snow stopped, and the westward sunset was revealed among the dark clouds, and the two of them walked to the door of the small village. .

In order to show himself to the villagers as a normal person, Mikael reluctantly put on a heavy coat.

There is a thick wooden wall around the village, but it seems to have little effect. There are gaps in many places that have been damaged by violence, and it seems that the people in the village have no desire to repair it.

"This gap..."

Mikael stood in front of a larger gap, with memories in his eyes.

"It seems that when we came here many years ago, Ellie and I walked into the village through this gap."

"?" Hua said he couldn't understand. Is there no one to repair a gap that has existed for N years?

Not to mention the Honkai Beast, even if a beast like a grizzly bear comes to this birch forest, these villagers... may not be able to deal with it, right?

Wait a moment!

Her breathing quickened suddenly, and she involuntarily pressed against Mikael:

"With such a gap, ordinary animals..."

Mikael knew what she was going to say and nodded slightly.

"But, it's impossible? If there were Honkaiju here a few years ago, why didn't the people here move away? Or, how do they survive until now?"

Hua asked quickly, but Mikael did not respond directly.

He just raised his head and looked in the direction where the thickest torch in the village was floating - in his memory, at this point, every family would start working on dinner.

Although it is not a delicious thing, Mikael still can't forget the kind of black bread that was frozen hard and stuffed with sawdust and dirt...

It’s simply delicious food from hell, I*!

So he confidently ate up all the bread without leaving any piece for Ellie, just because he was afraid that she wouldn't be hungry.

"Let's go to the village chief's house first."

Entering the road inside the village, the snow was not that thick, and the two of them walked faster. Of course, this is not because someone is plowing snow on the road, it is simply because people are coming and going. With more people walking, it becomes...

There was no road at all, it was just that the fresh snow there was looser and shallower.