A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

Night fell without a sound, but a faint red afterglow still lingered on the horizon.

It cast its light from the horizon, shrouding the dead, silent train station.

Directly above Platform 7, Ember hovered in midair with her head bowed. Her black gothic dress fluttered in the wind, the black roses on its hem swaying gently.

”Rain Crow is... Dad?”

Ember stared blankly at the unbelievable scene before her as a thought flashed through her mind—a possibility she had never considered before.

The ability to control crows, the hoarse cawing, the dark red deep within those pupils... without a doubt, these traits belonged exclusively to Rain Crow.

It could be no one else.

The next moment, Ke Mingwei slowly raised his head and looked up into the face of his uninvited guest.

His gaze caught on her expression of pure disbelief.

Father and daughter faced each other in silence.Ember stared at him. In this moment, she felt as if her entire world had been split in two.

The girl’s pupils shrank slightly. Reflected in her eyes were the cruel, bloodstained crow feathers on one side, and Ke Mingwei’s dejected, gloomy face on the other. It was a face she knew intimately, yet it wore an expression she had never seen before.

A second later, the figure in the gothic dress swayed.

Tottering in midair, she shook her head gently as a thought took hold:

’How is it possible... How could this scum who used my brother and almost got him killed be Dad? That bastard nearly got my brother killed.’

She lowered her head, her hair falling forward to hide her eyes. Her cheek twitched slightly.

’No... absolutely not. Dad would never do something like that... He’s Dad! How could he do this! Why is this person pretending to be Dad?!’

The instant that thought settled, the girl in the gothic dress gritted her teeth.

Blackish-blue magic power diffused outward from the soles of her feet like swirling ash, forming ripples that washed through the air and blew away the fluttering crow feathers.

The next instant, the girl dropped her right arm, aiming the tip of the magic umbrella Cinderella squarely at Ke Mingwei from midair.

”Who are you?” she asked in a low voice. ”Why are you pretending to look like this?”

Ke Mingwei didn’t move. His face was expressionless, still as a statue. The tide of crows was receding, gradually revealing more of his features.

Ember stared blankly at Ke Mingwei’s snow-white temples. An uncontrollable anger surged from the depths of her heart, and she pressed her trembling right hand against the trigger.

”Answer me,” she snapped, ”or I’ll shoot!”

Ke Mingqing covered his face and sighed. He waved a hand at the sky. ”Could you not be so impulsive, big sis! Let’s talk this out. Can you just put the gun down first?”

It took a long moment for Ke Mingwei to shift his hollow gaze away from Ember’s face. He turned to look at Ke Mingqing and asked casually, ”A’Qing, this person... why is she here?”

”Because she’s Xiao... Xiao...”

At this point, Ke Mingqing suddenly realized that blurting out the truth would only anger Xia Zili. It would be better to wait for her to lay her own cards on the table; that way, he wouldn’t offend her. He shrugged and corrected himself, ”Sigh... just pretend Mom sent her to rush you for dinner. Just think of her as the dinner messenger. Let’s hurry up and go home.”

Ke Mingwei frowned. He hardly thought Xia Wenna could turn into a magical girl at her age, much less while Ember had a gun muzzle pointed directly at his head.

The reason he could be so relaxed was that he simply didn’t take a magical girl of this caliber seriously—even if Ember fired at him from point-blank range, Ke Mingwei was confident he could dodge her magic missile by swapping places with a crow.

Seeing that his dad didn’t understand his sense of humor, Ke Mingqing clicked his tongue and said, ”She-she-she-she... sigh, she’s my girlfriend, alright? We used to meet at this train station a lot, which is also why I didn’t want you to come here. This is our secret base.”

Ke Mingwei fell silent for a moment. ”So that’s how it is. That Japanese girl named Kuroki Hitomi is the magical girl Ember?”

He paused, then murmured thoughtfully, ”No wonder you seemed so close to this magical girl, and she even went to the underground bar to save you that time. Thank her for me.”

Ke Mingqing scratched his head, looked up at the sky, and sighed. ”Whatever, just pretend that’s how it is.”

In midair, the gun barrel of the magic umbrella Cinderella suddenly began to tremble.

Ember was both shocked and furious. To think that even the voice coming from his throat was exactly the same as her father’s.

”Who on earth are you? Don’t speak with his voice! I’m warning you, if you keep this up, I’ll shoot!” she said, emphasizing almost every word, her gun muzzle still aimed squarely at the side of Ke Mingwei’s head.

”Listen... I know you’re very unhappy with me. After all, I used Blue Pigeon as bait to draw out Clock Maker.” Ke Mingwei’s eyes shifted. ”But I had no way out back then, and I had no idea...”

Before he could finish, Ember, her trembling finger resting against the trigger, cut him off with a low shout:

”Is that why you used your own son as bait? Is that why you sacrificed your own son to achieve your goals?”

Ke Mingwei’s eyes widened as if waking from a dream, his pupils trembling slightly.

Right... what an unforgivable thing he had done. Did he really think an apology to his son would be enough to smooth everything over?

The girl in the gothic dress lowered her head, her lips moving. ”He almost died, you know? So many times, he was just a hair away...”

”He... he always wanted to help you. He always looked up to you. Even if it meant sacrificing himself, even knowing he might die, he still wanted to help you!” At this point, she choked up, whispering hoarsely, ”But... but why would you treat him like this? What did he do wrong? What gives you the right to do this to your son!”

Ke Mingwei remained silent, merely reaching up to cover his dark red eyes.

Ke Mingqing didn’t speak either. He just turned his head, quietly watching the tracks in the distance. At that moment, the last lingering afterglow on the horizon vanished, and the station was thoroughly cloaked in darkness.

Ember raised her eyes from beneath her bangs, resentment pooling in her gaze. Staring unblinkingly at Ke Mingwei, she asked in a trembling voice, ”Why...”

Ke Mingwei still said nothing.

”Why? Say something.”

Ke Mingwei stood quietly, his head bowed.

”Why aren’t you saying anything? Are you admitting it...?”

The voice of the girl in the gothic dress grew heavier. ”You scum, is it... is it really so hard for you to just explain?!”

By the end, Ember was practically shouting through gritted teeth.

In an instant, the girl’s index finger pulled the trigger involuntarily. But the moment the trigger gave way, she suddenly froze, abruptly jerking her head up with wide eyes.

But at that moment, the bullet had already erupted from the muzzle. Accompanied by a ”Bang—!”, the pitch-black magic missile tore through the air, shooting straight toward Ke Mingwei.

With Rain Crow’s reflexes, dodging this sudden bullet should have been a piece of cake. Yet Ke Mingwei didn’t move an inch, as if he had absolutely no intention of avoiding it.

The bullet carved a crisp trajectory through midair, gradually receding within Ember’s pupils.

At this moment, time suddenly seemed to stretch endlessly, feeling as long as a century.

’Dodge it...’

’Hurry up and dodge! Aren’t you Rain Crow? Aren’t you the strongest superhero in Leijing? What are you doing?’

The lips of the girl in the gothic dress parted as she screamed hoarsely in her heart, a faint mist welling up in her wide eyes.

She looked at Ke Mingwei’s profile, and it seemed she suddenly understood why he wasn’t dodging:

It was because the person standing here wasn’t that omnipotent superhero... The person standing here wasn’t Rain Crow, just Ke Mingwei.

Just a father who had made a mistake.

Ke Mingqing sighed softly. He had anticipated that with Ember’s temper, she definitely wouldn’t be able to resist pulling the trigger, so he had reacted a half-second in advance.

In that fleeting half-second, he broke into a sprint toward Rain Crow while pulling his right hand out of his school uniform jacket pocket.

The youth’s pupils were illuminated by lightning as a layer of pitch-black electricity coated his fingers.

In the instant before Ember and Ke Mingwei could even react, a beam of black lightning shot forward. Amid a sudden roar, he arrived at Ke Mingwei’s side like a gale, thrusting out a palm to intercept the magic missile.

No one could clearly see what happened in that moment; they could only hear the buzzing crackle of surging electrical arcs.

Immediately following that was a sickening squelch.

In the father and daughter’s line of sight, a spray of blood splattered profusely through the darkness.

Platform 7 was dead silent. The sound of cicadas drifted through the dimness.

A splash of crimson now painted the floor, dyeing the pillars and the ground red. The flock of crows resting on the eaves fell silent for a moment, no longer cawing hoarsely.

It took quite a while before Ember and Ke Mingwei processed what had happened. Like puppets with cut strings, the two blankly turned their heads to look.

They saw Ke Mingqing’s right palm still suspended in midair.

Even though his fingers were cloaked in pitch-black lightning, his palm had still been torn open by the bullet, leaving a bloody hole.

Ke Mingqing took a deep breath and lowered his eyes to look at his right hand. The high-speed spinning magic missile slowly came to a halt, resting right there in the flesh of his palm.

Finally, the magic power clinging to the bullet’s surface vanished.

The youth expressionlessly clenched his fingers, embedding the bullet deep within his flesh and blood.

”Bro... brother?” Ember opened her mouth, her throat already too hoarse to make a sound.

Ke Mingwei blankly raised his eyes from the youth’s palm and stared at his face.

At this moment, Ke Mingqing finally reacted. He spread his fingers, plucking the bullet out from his mangled flesh. Only after a long pause did he look up and say coolly, ”Have you two had enough fun playing around...?”