A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

”Brother... didn’t we agree that you wouldn’t open my present before tonight?”

Cold sweat broke out on Ke Mingqing’s forehead at the voice behind him.

He didn’t turn around. Instead, he lowered his eyes, staring silently and motionlessly at the floor.

The bedroom curtains abruptly dropped, shutting out the sunlight from the street below. The room plunged into darkness. The light seeping in from the corridor was eclipsed by the figure behind him, casting a long, thin shadow across the floor.

Shadow enveloped Ke Mingqing’s face, obscuring his expression.

”We agreed that you absolutely, absolutely weren’t allowed to do this.” The girl’s voice suddenly trembled slightly.

Ke Mingqing made no reply. He kept his head bowed, silently watching the shadow on the floor.

An instant later, the shadow’s neck seemed to snap. With a crisp crack, the silhouette’s head twisted ninety degrees to the right.

Its head hung motionless in the air like a broken reed. Judging by the shape of the shadow, the thing behind him was no longer human.

Ke Mingqing closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly turned his head.But when he finally looked back, the witch’s figure was gone. His eyes met nothing but empty air.

He stood in silence. A faint laugh suddenly echoed from the window, prompting him to turn back around. This time, he saw her.

The figure stood motionless in the corner of the room, cradling the vase fashioned from flesh and blood.

Ke Mingqing met her gaze. He remained silent for a long moment before speaking.

”Let’s stop playing for today,” he said softly.

The stick-figure girl hid her face behind Kiyono Sakura’s severed head, staring at him in silence.

”I still have to go back to class this afternoon. It’ll be troublesome if the teacher starts asking questions,” Ke Mingqing continued in a casual tone.

The girl shook her head. ”It’s fine. I already called you in sick, brother.”

”Besides, you’re a superhero, brother. Why do superheroes have to go to class?” the stick-figure girl said, rubbing the texture of the vase with her fingers.

Suddenly, Kiyono Sakura’s head opened its mouth. A blue pigeon flew out, flapping its wings as it soared out the window.

Ke Mingqing watched the bird fly away. He remained silent for a moment before asking:

”Is the person in the vase... the real Kiyono Sakura?”

The stick-figure girl, keeping her face hidden behind Kiyono Sakura’s head, ran around the room with the vase.

After a while, she suddenly let out a ”Wah!” and poked her head out from between Kiyono Sakura’s severed arms. She glared at Ke Mingqing with puffed cheeks and said,

”You didn’t keep your promise, brother, so I won’t tell you.”

”Answer my question.”

”Do you really want to know?” The girl fell silent for a moment before suddenly breaking into a grin. ”Even if it’s not the answer you want to hear?”

Ke Mingqing gave a silent nod.

”Because you didn’t keep your promise, brother. You opened the vase before tonight. If you hadn’t, she wouldn’t have died.”

Ke Mingqing raised his eyebrows slightly and asked in a low voice,

”Why?”

”No reason.” The witch shook her head. ”Just because you didn’t keep your promise!” With that, she indignantly hoisted the vase in protest, the two arms attached to it swaying with the motion.

”What if I had waited until tonight to open it? What would have happened then?” Ke Mingqing asked softly after a moment’s pause.

”You would have gotten my flowers. I picked them all by myself in the train station tunnel,” the stick-figure girl said softly. ”That day, after I helped you kill the man playing with the pocket watch, I went to the tunnel by the station and picked lots and lots of wildflowers.”

She paused, her tone suddenly dropping. ”I wanted to give you... a surprise.”

Ke Mingqing’s face remained expressionless. When Xia Zili had recounted the events of that day, he had already guessed that it was her witch personality who killed Clock Maker in the sewers.

Otherwise, there was no explaining who else in Leijing could have pulled that off.

”So, this only happened because I opened the vase’s ’packaging’ early?” he asked.

”Yes.” The witch nodded. ”If you hadn’t opened the vase early, Kiyono Sakura would already be back at school right now. It’s all your fault for worrying about her so much!” She puffed her cheeks out. ”Isn’t there a saying that goes, ’worrying too much about something makes it happen’? You’re so mean, brother. You must have wanted something bad to happen to worry that much...”

”We need to clean up her body and the blood in the room. Can you do that? It’ll be a disaster if anyone else in the family sees this. We have to finish before they get back.”

Ke Mingqing said in a low voice. Taking a deep breath, he casually shut the door.

The stick-figure girl nodded and shuffled two steps forward, but then she suddenly clutched the vase and quickly backed away.

”But I haven’t punished you yet, brother,” she said, curling her lip.

”How do you plan to punish me?”

The stick-figure girl thought for a moment, letting out a long ”Hmm...” before finally flashing a smile.

”Hug me, brother.”

”Why would hugging you be a punishment?” Ke Mingqing asked casually.

”Because you’re really afraid of me, aren’t you?” the stick-figure girl stated matter-of-factly, a hint of grievance in her voice.

”I can do that.”

Ke Mingqing paused. ”But before I do, you need to promise me one thing: you can’t let Xia Zili know what happened today. Understand?”

”I can promise you that, brother. But why?” the girl asked quietly.

”You just can’t.”

”Mm... okay.”

”Then it’s settled. We have a deal,” Ke Mingqing said softly. ”If she finds out about this, I’ll...” Trailing off, he suddenly took a step toward the witch.

The girl backed up two steps, still holding the vase, and tilted her head to look at him curiously.

Suddenly, Ke Mingqing raised his index finger. Guiding a spark of lightning over his fingertip, he dragged it across his own neck, carving a distinct line of blood. The blood sprayed right before the witch’s eyes, splattering the two arms on the vase red.

The witch fell utterly silent.

”Brother?” After a long moment, she trembled and lowered her head, staring at the vase now stained with fresh blood.

The smile on the girl’s face gradually vanished. Her pencil-drawn features began to shrink. If she had previously resembled a stick figure, now she was nothing more than a few crude dots.

The room was dead silent, save for the girl’s heaving sobs. She buried her head behind the vase and wept. After a long while, she finally asked,

”Bro... brother... why did you hurt yourself?”

Ke Mingqing remained silent. His drooping bangs shadowed his eyes. The wound on his neck continued to drip, staining his collarbone red.

”I’ll be obedient... Please don’t hurt yourself, brother.”

”Who exactly are you?” Ke Mingqing asked as he walked over. Raising his head, he stared coldly into her eyes. ”You aren’t Xia Zili. So who are you?”

The stick-figure girl froze.

Ke Mingqing paused, then added, ”My sister is Xia Zili. Not you.”

The witch’s eyes spun like whirlpools, shimmering with tears, just like a cartoon character.

”Why can’t I be your sister?” she asked.

”I said, my sister is Xia Zili, not you,” Ke Mingqing said.

”But I am her.”

”No, you aren’t her.” Ke Mingqing shook his head, speaking with absolute certainty. ”What is your name? I still don’t know who you are.”

”I can’t remember.” After a long while, the witch shook her head. ”Maybe... Cendrillon?” she offered, suddenly speaking a French name.

Ke Mingqing lowered his eyes slightly, thinking for a moment.

He had heard this name before.

Cendrillon. It was the name of the protagonist in the fairy tale Cinderella, which also translated to ”the little girl in the ashes.”

The witch personality had inherited a portion of Xia Zili’s childhood memories, so she naturally knew the fairy tale—not to mention that Ember’s magic umbrella was also publicly known as Cinderella.

”Then I’ll call you ’Little Ash’.”

The stick-figure girl considered it. ”Little Ash... I like that name. Brother gave me a name.” She looked up at him, her eyes shining as she asked,

”So am I your sister again?”

”I can treat you as my family,” Ke Mingqing said.

The corners of the witch’s mouth curled up into a smile.

”But on one condition: you cannot hurt the rest of my family,” Ke Mingqing continued.

The witch’s smile drooped into a frown.

”Little Ash didn’t hurt them.”

”No...” Ke Mingqing shook his head. ”Think about it. If Xia Zili knew she—no, if Xia Zili knew you used her body to kill Kiyono Sakura, how do you think she would feel?”

He stepped up to the witch, took the vase from her hands, and set it on the table. He turned his head, staring blankly at the twisted human face molded into the pottery.

The stick-figure girl stayed silent, merely burying her head as she sobbed.

Ke Mingqing gently opened his arms and hugged the bewildered witch. Looking over her back, he lowered his eyes and said, ”Little Ash, promise me... never do this kind of thing again.”

The witch froze.

She buried her face in his shoulder. After a long while, she nodded gently. ”I understand... brother.”

Her fingers, wrapped in dark blue magic, gently brushed across his neck. The wound miraculously healed, and even the smear of blood on his collarbone wiped away.

Ke Mingqing looked down at his unblemished skin and raised an eyebrow.

To this day, he still didn’t understand exactly what Xia Zili’s witch form’s ability actually was. Why did she possess healing powers as well? Could it be that a witch’s power wasn’t purely destructive?

By the time he snapped out of his thoughts, the witch Cinderella had closed her eyes and fallen asleep on his shoulder. The vase had vanished as well.

The bloodstains on the floor were completely gone, as if swept away by a tornado.

Ke Mingqing stood there for a long time. Finally, he carried Xia Zili back to her bedroom, tucked her in, and kept watch by her bedside for a while before leaving the house.

He caught a bus at a sweltering station, hurrying toward Lijing No. 3 High School.

Upon returning to school, he requested the afternoon off for Xia Zili, telling her Class One homeroom teacher that she had passed out from a fever. The teacher didn’t make things difficult; after calling Xia Wenna to confirm, she let him go.

What do I do... I don’t even know where the rest of Kiyono Sakura’s body is. I’m not sure if the witch disposed of the corpse completely. If she left clues behind, the probability of Xia Zili being pinned as the murderer is still very high...

Ke Mingqing walked down the corridor with his head lowered, approaching his classroom with a grave expression.

He was only halfway there when a deafening boom suddenly erupted from the distant sports field. In the next instant, he and all the students in the nearby classrooms turned their heads to look.

Ke Mingqing raised an eyebrow, witnessing an unimaginable scene: a small mountain as tall as an apartment block was rumbling toward them.

Looking closer, he realized it was a monster, one seemingly covered entirely in cracked earth. Its long tail plowed a trench through the ground, casting a massive shadow that blotted out the sun.

The earth shook. Ke Mingqing was stunned for a moment before he finally reacted.

”What the hell is that? A kaiju?”

Before he even had time to check the opponent’s super-human species panel, a youth with snow-white hair, wearing a silver-white skirt suit, shot over from the distance and entered his line of sight.

[Codename: Magical Girl Winter Hunter (Danger Rating: A+ Rank)]

Magical Girl Winter Hunter lowered his eyes and drew his ice bow. The phantom of a bright moon materialized above his head. He released the string, firing a silver-white arrow at the monster’s head.

The arrow flew like a beam of moonlight, piercing the monster’s body and melting a crater into its surface.

”Moonlight? An ability like Big Brother’s?” Ke Mingqing leaned against the railing. ”Looks like this male magical girl is no pushover either.”

Bizarrely, the crater on the monster’s body healed itself in no time.

Such strong regenerative powers? Ke Mingqing thought. Looks like this is an all-you-can-eat buffet for me.

The students in the classrooms were already rushing out into the corridor, shouting in a panic. He squeezed through the crowd, slipped into the empty stairwell, climbed up to the school building’s rooftop, and approached the fence.

A fierce wind blew against his face. Ke Mingqing leaned against the chain-link fence, his bangs whipping in the gale.

He stared at the giant beast, and a black super-human species panel slowly popped up in his vision.

[super-human species Codename: Monster 007]

[Type: mutant]

[Danger Rating: B Rank]

[Description: One of the failed test subjects of the Hero Control Bureau’s mutant project ”Z91231”. Escaped the experimental base in 2022.]

[Weaknesses: 1. Once the energy crystal on its chest is destroyed, Monster 007 will immediately revert to human form. 2. When the energy crystal on its chest starts blinking, it means its energy is nearly depleted.]

”Come on, are you Ultraman or a kaiju? Oh, wait, it feels more like Ben 10.”

Ke Mingqing muttered his complaints, his school jacket collar flapping in the wind as he locked his gaze onto the chest of that massive mountain of flesh. The next moment, he raised a finger and aimed it at Monster 007.

Magical Girl Winter Hunter was still circling in midair, occasionally drawing his bow to loose another arrow at Monster 007. He completely held the monster’s attention, giving Ke Mingqing the perfect opportunity to aim.

”This angle should do it,” Ke Mingqing muttered.

In a flash, a streak of pitch-black lightning shot from his fingertip. With a thunderous boom, the bolt shattered the red crystal on the monster’s chest.

Monster 007 roared at the sky. Its massive body seemed to blur as it shrank down exponentially before his eyes. Moments later, it reverted into a naked young man.

The young man lay unconscious and unmoving at the bottom of a deep crater. A hideous, bloody hole had been blasted open in his chest, blood pooling across the earth.

”Well, that’s a plus. No morning exercises for at least a month,” Ke Mingqing murmured, shoving his hands into his pockets as he gazed at the ruined sports field.

”Lightning... could it be?”

Witnessing this, Magical Girl Winter Hunter was momentarily stunned. Tracing the trajectory of the pitch-black lightning, he immediately spotted the distant rooftop.

By then, Ke Mingqing had already turned and vanished behind the rooftop’s iron door.

”...Blue Pigeon?”

Magical Girl Winter Hunter stared blankly at the receding back, his snow-white hair dancing in the wind.

He considered giving chase but ultimately shook his head. Descending at top speed, he scooped up the young man in the crater and quickly flew away from the Lijing No. 3 High School sports field.

Ke Mingqing dodged the stairwell security cameras and walked methodically down the school corridor. At the same time, a notification box popped up in his vision.

[Detected that the player has killed a B Rank super-human species. A total of 2,000 experience points have been acquired.]

[Current Level Progress: Lv.22 (3400/11000 EXP)]

[Weekly Task 1 Completed: Kill a super-human species. (Reward: 1 freely distributable Attribute Point)]

The teenager raised a finger, opened his personal panel, and allocated the single Attribute Point he had just received.

[Congratulations. You have consumed one Attribute Point. Your ”Strength” attribute has upgraded from B Rank to B+ Rank.]

[player ”Ke Mingqing” current attributes are as follows: Strength: B+; Agility: B++; Spirit: B]

Looking at his attribute panel, Ke Mingqing stretched his arms.

Using the handful of players in Leijing as a sample size, Ke Mingqing had already left the rest of the current player base far in the dust.

He was essentially operating in a completely different tier.

After all, according to Kuroki Hitomi, the overall stats of other players right now hovered somewhere between C Rank and B Rank. But Ke Mingqing’s attributes had all been upgraded to B Rank or higher, with one even approaching A Rank.

”Just how am I supposed to accomplish the grand Extinction of superhumans with these worms?” Ke Mingqing scratched his head. ”Forget it, at least there hasn’t been a constant stream of ’good news’ lately.” He figured that not waking up to player obituaries every morning was already touching enough; he shouldn’t demand too much from these muggles.

That very afternoon, a video shot at Lijing No. 3 High School was uploaded to the internet by a student.

In the footage, a blurry figure in a blue-and-white school uniform stood at the edge of the rooftop. Raising an index finger toward the colossal, mountain-like beast, he fired off a streak of lightning that resembled a pitch-black arrow.

The video failed to capture the student’s face clearly, but it provided more than enough material for an earth-shattering headline: [The national-level hero active in Leijing, China—”Blue Pigeon”—is actually a student from Lijing No. 3 High School.]

This explosive news rapidly spread across the internet at an astonishing speed. It was highly likely that the number of applicants for Lijing No. 3 High School would double next year, though their parents would definitely do everything in their power to stop them.

That same night, another sensational news story broke.

”The Japanese transfer student enrolled at Lijing No. 3 High School—’Kiyono Sakura’—has been confirmed dead. A body missing both arms and its head was found in the private apartment she recently rented.”

”The victim has been verified as ’Magical Girl Sakurahime’, previously active in Tokyo, Japan. The murderer remains unknown. Given the victim’s immense social influence as a core spokesperson for the Japanese Magical Girl Company, the Japanese faction is aggressively demanding an explanation from the Leijing Magical Girl Company.”

Ke Mingqing sat on the sofa, silently watching the solemn expression of the news anchor on the television.

This rich girl really racked her brains just to play the role of an ordinary transfer student, he thought. She even rented an apartment. Wouldn’t it have been safer to just stay holed up in a mansion and hire a few bodyguards?

Then again, there aren’t many bodyguards in Leijing who could stop Xia Zili’s witch personality anyway, he realized on second thought.

Ke Mingqing shook his head, dispelling his messy thoughts.

He resolved to take this secret to the grave. If the Magical Girl Company ever found out how Kiyono Sakura died, Xia Zili could forget about ever stepping foot outside a laboratory again.

Moreover, given Xia Zili’s personality, learning the truth would cause her to rapidly break down, accelerating the process of Witchification.

But the question is, can it stay hidden? Thinking this, Ke Mingqing raised his head and glanced toward the empty staircase.

A young girl was sitting all alone on one of the steps. Hidden in the shadows, she leaned against the wall in a daze, a hand pressed to her forehead.

It was as if she was trying to recall exactly what had happened that afternoon.

Ke Mingqing stared at Xia Zili’s figure. His eyes shifted slightly as he slowly withdrew his gaze.

He grabbed the remote from the sofa, turned off the TV, walked over to the stairs, and gently touched Xia Zili’s forehead.

”Still running a fever?”

”Tell me, what exactly is wrong with me...”

Ke Mingqing didn’t speak. He just pulled her head to his chest.

He had made his peace with it. Xia Zili turning into a witch was an inevitable certainty, and the Tiamat Comet would not take away a witch’s power.

This meant that in four months’ time, he would ultimately have to kill his own sister with his own two hands.

”At least until then, I’ll protect you...” Ke Mingqing murmured silently. ”Just like you’ve always done for me.”