A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

July 31, 23:30. Port 3.

Even after nightfall, the most prosperous port in Leijing remained brilliantly illuminated. Crews of workers hurried back and forth while massive cranes transported heavy machinery.

Meanwhile, in a seaside corner of the port.

The four members of Team Blue Pigeon leaned against the railings, letting the cool sea breeze wash over them as they waited for the two submarines transporting the Comet Fragments to surface.

"Come on, the subs still aren't here? This is way more boring than I thought... Looks like nothing's happening tonight."

Invisible Giant clasped his hands behind his head. The sea breeze drew a yawn from him, leaving tears in the corners of his eyes as he muttered listlessly.

Top Hero crossed his arms and shook his head. "Stay alert, Bro. It's too early to draw conclusions."

Shadow Woman leaned back against the railing, quietly eating chocolate candies. Every so often, she would turn her head to check the turbulent sea under the night sky out of the corner of her eye.

Blue Pigeon, usually a chatterbox, was uncharacteristically quiet. He leaned forward over the railing with his eyes cast down, watching the rising and falling waves.

Little Red Riding Hood sat sideways atop her Christmas Sleigh, toying with her phone. Every now and then, the two reindeer let out cries and dropped a few snowflakes, bringing a trace of cool relief to the stifling summer night.

She sent Blue Pigeon a video over WeChat, but he didn't reply.

Ember stood atop the lighthouse, her black Gothic dress swaying gently in the wind. The girl turned her head slightly toward the west, her gaze as clear and cold as an aurora as she took in the brightly lit city.

From time to time, she would glance at the blue-suited figure in the distance. Sakurahime stood beside her, fanning her own face with a folding fan.

"When someone cares about another person, it really shows. You can't hide it at all," Sakurahime said suddenly, covering her mouth with her fan and smiling faintly.

"What are you getting at?"

Ember didn't look at her, merely asking with a blank expression.

"Nothing. Just admiring the bond between you two siblings," Sakurahime said, shaking her head.

"He's too weak. I have to protect him," Ember said. "That's all."

"Senior is always like this. Super possessive, but she loves to pretend she doesn't care," Little Red Riding Hood drawled.

Ember tapped her foot lightly against the ground, and a ripple of magic instantly spread outward, lifting the hem of Little Red Riding Hood's Christmas dress.

"Ah, Senior is being a pervert," Little Red Riding Hood muttered flatly, holding down her billowing skirt.

Aside from them, there was one last security team at the port: the rising stars from Super Hero Company, Team Diamond Man.

Diamond Man, Swamp Woman, and Vending Machine Specialist were stationed at another corner of the port, very close to the construction zone.

They looked rather relaxed—they had even gone to a nearby McDonald's to bring back several orders of medium fries and burgers.

As Blue Pigeon watched them, Top Hero suddenly leaned in close and asked,

"Hey, Bro, how come you aren't talking much tonight?"

"Nothing to talk about. Just sleepy."

Blue Pigeon shrugged. "You know, normally I'd be fast asleep in bed by now. Being a superhero isn't easy."

Top Hero fell silent for a moment. "Yeah, I've actually thought about that too. Like maybe being an ordinary person would be better."

"Oh? What were you doing before you became a superhero?" Blue Pigeon asked casually.

"Uh... I'm from Mississippi. My grandpa was a farmer, and my parents are dead. From the day I awakened my power and showed it off to my grandpa, he kept trying to talk me out of it. He told me to be an ordinary person and forget the whole thing."

Top Hero paused, then suddenly smiled. "But I wasn't willing to accept that, so I left. After that, I fought like hell for a long time before I finally got my superhero license."

Blue Pigeon listened quietly.

Top Hero scratched the bridge of his nose. "But after I got this status, I wasn't ecstatic at all. I just suddenly remembered my grandpa... I really struggled so much over the years, and no one recognized me back in America. Even after coming to China and working so hard to get my license, compared to you, I'm nothing at all. Just a nobody."

"I'm a special case. Don't envy me," Blue Pigeon said, mocking himself. "For all we know, Clock Maker might drag me off to be dissected tomorrow."

"I know. It's an honor to know you, Bro." Top Hero clapped him on the shoulder. "But I still can't help wondering... Back then, when my grandpa tried to stop me and said, 'Forget about any superpower, there's nothing special about you,' was he actually just trying to protect me?

"Maybe if I'd stayed in Mississippi as an ordinary farmer, doing a little rap every day, I would've lived a more comfortable life. Maybe the meaning of life isn't about getting yourself covered in scars just to show off, right?"

He paused. "People without talent—is their whole life just wasted from the start? When I first came to China, I huddled in my rental apartment every day, always thinking about this question."

Blue Pigeon leaned against the railing, resting his arms flat along the metal as he spoke slowly:

"Don't you think giving a big long speech like that sounds a bit like one of those movie death flags? Where a guy dies in the big battle and gets brought up later for cheap tears. It's just very... you know what I mean..."

The moment his voice faded, a spray of blood suddenly splashed over, striking his helmet and dyeing his bird beak red.

Blue Pigeon froze for a second, then snapped his head around.

Two magic throwing knives were embedded in Top Hero—one in his shoulder and one in his waist. The next instant, blue flames erupted across the surface of the blades. His left arm suffered a laceration and was ripped apart, dangling by a thread before dropping to the ground.

Blue Pigeon knew whose handiwork this was. Within Death Crow, only one person possessed such an ability:

—Black Magic Hand.

'Please... I told you not to raise any death flags,' Blue Pigeon thought in stunned silence.

Drip, drip...

Blood fountained into the air.

The Black kid didn't seem to have processed what had happened yet. He stared down at the arm lying on the ground, his face blank with shock as his lips trembled:

"Hey, Bro, is that my hand? Is that my..."

An instant later, Top Hero stumbled backward until his back hit the railing. A gash opened across his waist, and his internal organs spilled out along with a torrent of blood.

"Hold on... I'll get you healed." Blue Pigeon dropped instantly to the ground, speaking to him in a low voice as he turned his head.

Because the members of Death Crow were acting separately, Giovanni had arrived a step late and wasn't clear on the situation at the front lines. By the looks of it, the eight people who went ahead had already arrived—their speed was unimaginably fast.

And the moment he turned his head, Blue Pigeon suddenly noticed something wrong.

The world in his eyes had disintegrated. More accurately, everything he saw had turned into lines of text.

The ocean transformed into an archive of text piled high with the words "water" and "salt."

Dense elemental symbols filled the air, while the rows of green plants along the edge of the port turned into tree silhouettes built from monotonous text.

It was absolutely a world enough to make anyone with trypophobia scream. The words looked as though they had piled into countless crawling worms, squirming madly before everyone's eyes.

And within this monochrome world where only words flowed, Blue Pigeon stood entirely alone.

He looked down and could no longer make out Top Hero's body clearly. He could only see a jumble of words: blood... metal... organ... iron... helmet... eye... eyebrow... Words like these lay heaped on the ground, motionless, every character slowly rotting and fading away.

"I'm okay... I can hold on," Top Hero muttered hoarsely.

Blue Pigeon raised his head again. Nearby, Invisible Giant and Shadow Woman had already decayed into human-shaped outlines piled high with various organ-related words.

They rushed over, stopping abruptly at Blue Pigeon's side.

"Hey, can you see this...?" Invisible Giant stared in shock. "Everything I see has turned into text."

"What's going on...?" Shadow Woman spoke up. "Is this an ability?"

Blue Pigeon could hear Invisible Giant and Shadow Woman's voices loud and clear, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't see them as human beings anymore. When he turned his head, all he saw was a flowing mass of text.

And judging from their reactions, they were experiencing the exact same thing.

Words stared at words; characters reading "face" and "eye" met each other's gaze.

Immediately after, a series of words—"confusion," "fear," and "unease"—could be glimpsed emerging from the other's "head."

The next moment, Blue Pigeon understood what had happened.

He remembered when Giovanni joined Death Crow, Lorenzo had used an ability that broke down his perception of the world into a landscape of text.

At the time, Lorenzo had tapped his forehead lightly with a finger, leaving him with the false impression that this ability required physical contact to convert the target's perceived world into text.

Only now did he realize: this ability didn't require touching the target at all to activate.

Blue Pigeon looked up, peering through his goggles toward the far end of the port. Right now, a chaotic, eerie cluster of text was drifting slowly toward them like a black tide.

Those were definitely humans. But the words didn't form human silhouettes.

Watching the scene, Blue Pigeon raised an eyebrow, slightly taken aback.

He thought to himself, 'Looking at it this way, Lorenzo can also alter the text presented by any object to confuse his opponent's perception. Otherwise there's no explaining why the people from Death Crow look like a chaotic mass in this world of text.'

By now, everyone else at the port besides Blue Pigeon had been completely bewildered by this chaotic world of text.

The three members of Team Diamond Man looked at one another in dismay, exchanging stunned words as they stared at their companions who had turned into text. The fries in their hands had transformed into bouncing words like "potato," and they even tried taking a bite to see what text tasted like.

Atop the distant lighthouse, the magical girl Ember reacted quickly. She opened her umbrella, sending a gorgeous ripple of magic sweeping across the night sky, which seemed to slightly push back the influence of the text domain.

Sakurahime raised an eyebrow and swiftly snapped her folding fan open. A flurry of falling cherry blossoms danced around the girl's form, her miko dress fluttering in the wind.

The magical girl Little Red Riding Hood put away her phone and scanned her surroundings expressionlessly. She then rode her Christmas Sleigh over to group up with the other two magical girls.

The world in Blue Pigeon's eyes remained a chaotic mess.

Fortunately, Giovanni finally arrived just then. He and Bai Ziling were the last batch to enter the port.

Bai had complained that they were walking too slowly, so she used her Puppet Strings to pull them leaping and dropping between high-rise buildings, finally bringing them down into the port together in a clean, graceful landing.

Right now, Bai Ziling was riding on Giovanni's back, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. The two of them looked like conjoined twins who hadn't been separated for a single second.

Giovanni took a deep breath. "Stay close to me. Don't leave my side for a second."

Bai Ziling nodded gently and pressed her head against his shoulder. She didn't blink her red eyes once as she peered through her snow-white bangs toward the distance.

The girl's pupils narrowed slightly, observing the situation at the port like a predator.

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