A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

Standing on the rust-mottled tracks, Ke Mingqing bowed his head and drew a deep breath.

Slowly, he raised his eyes.

At that moment, the world to his left was turning upside down. The medieval town came tumbling down like scattered building blocks, the burning Cross vanished, and the townsfolk raising their arms in angry shouts disappeared with it, leaving behind nothing but darkness and void.

At the same time, the wooden door leading to Little Grey’s mental world split apart until only a scattering of woodchips remained on the tracks.

Ke Mingqing slowly looked away, turning his gaze toward the other door at the end of the tracks.

It was a familiar door—so familiar it brought back the very scent of home.

On the second floor of the Xia-Ke house, the doorframes of the bedrooms had barely changed, still looking just as they had ten years ago.

However, during spring cleaning every year, Xia Wenna would ”refurbish” them with mysterious alien technology, so the door before him showed almost no trace of the passing years.

Ke Mingqing stared quietly at the door.

Growing up, he had seen it more times than he could count. Every day, when he stepped out of the bathroom toweling his hair dry, when he walked out of his own bedroom, or when he climbed the stairs from the first-floor living room—he would instinctively look up and glance at the door to Xia Zili’s room.Without a doubt, this door was the entrance to Xia Zili’s mental world.

He had no idea what Xia Zili had gone through inside that Western-style mansion in Terminus Night, nor what state she was in right now. All he knew was that she needed him.

Little Grey and her older sister were already gone. To pull the witch bound to the Umbrella Sword in the outside world back from the brink of self-destruction, this was the final step—and the most crucial one.

”Not fake... real family,” Ke Mingqing murmured, lowering his eyes. ”Could the future me get any more ridiculous—”

Honestly, he still hadn’t recovered from the shock. His mind remained a tangled mess.

All he knew was that he wasn’t ready to face his family. After all, for a very long time, he had treated them as threats—as stepping stones along the path he had to walk.

Yet that Triple-Crowned Witch from the future had crushed everything he thought he knew underfoot, leaving him at a loss for how to face them from here on out—

”I still don’t know if what that Triple-Crowned Witch said is true or false—but if what I just saw was an illusion, who could have cast it on me?”

”The System? No—the System wouldn’t do something that works against its own interests, and neither Little Grey nor her sister seems like the type to do that either.”

”So if someone staged all of that to mislead me, who could it possibly be?”

”Or maybe—there was never anyone behind it at all.”

Ke Mingqing murmured softly to himself. After a moment, he let out a long breath and walked forward along the tracks, soon arriving in front of the door.

The instant he pushed the door open and stepped inside, a dusky yellow sky met his eyes.

Blood-red clouds drifted slowly overhead. Birds alighted in a small park where children scrambled up and down a slide, while a little girl sat on a swing, gripping the rope with one hand and rubbing her reddened nose with the other. Just then, a boy walked over and sat down silently beside her.

”All right, stop crying. It was your big brother’s fault,” the boy said softly after a moment.

”Meanie—why don’t you go back to your own house?” Puffing her cheeks in anger, the girl looked up and shouted, ”I don’t want to live with you anymore, and I don’t ever want to see you again!”

The boy froze for a moment, then shook his head.

”I don’t have a home anymore.”

”You clearly do have a home, so why do you keep staying at my house? You’re so annoying—just looking at you makes me mad.”

The boy scratched his nose and fell silent for a while before asking quietly, ”You... want me to go back to the orphanage?”

”What does orphanage mean?” the girl asked, blinking in confusion.

”It’s where kids without a home live. If you kick me out, the orphanage is the only place I can go back to.” The boy shrugged.

”You’re an orphan?”

”Yeah—I’m just an orphan.” The boy lowered his head. ”Are you happy now?”

The girl said nothing, frozen in place.

”Forget it. You’ve never thought of me as family anyway—” As the swing swayed gently, the boy stared down at the footprints in the sand. ”Every time we fight, you say you’re kicking me out and won’t let me live in your house anymore—”

He paused. ”Since all you want is for me to get lost and go back to the orphanage, fine, I’ll leave.” With that, the boy stood up from the swing and walked away across the soft sand.

Stunned, the girl looked up at his receding back.

A moment later, she sprang forward off the swing like a little rabbit and wrapped her arms gently around his back.

The boy stopped in his tracks. His expression dark, he said nothing, his jet-black bangs shadowing his lowered eyes.

Pressing her slightly puffed cheek against his back, the girl mumbled, ”Big brother—let’s go home.”

The boy stiffened slightly. The afterglow of the setting sun spilled across his face, and after a brief pause, he turned around, silently took the girl’s hand, and walked slowly into the distance.

Standing in a corner of the sandy playground, Ke Mingqing watched the backs of the boy and girl in silence.

Only when their figures were swallowed by the dying sun on the horizon did he slowly turn his head—and catch sight of a little paper figure not far away.

Beside the paper figure was a doorframe standing upright in the open air. Planted on the sand, the little figure clung to the frame like a human hugging an elephant’s leg, staring unblinkingly at him.

Ke Mingqing raised an eyebrow and walked over.

The door swung open. Without a sound, the little paper figure stepped through the wooden doorway, and Ke Mingqing followed right behind.

The moment he crossed the threshold, icy rain and damp wind lashed against his face. The scene shifted, and Ke Mingqing found himself walking down a bustling avenue.

A torrential rain was pouring from the sky.

Through the curtain of rain, he tilted his head back. Across the facades of towering buildings and the electronic signs lining the street, giant screens were playing one eerie scene after another.

On some, a girl in a gothic dress aimed the tip of her umbrella straight ahead, unleashing a violent beam of magic that blasted a four-armed monster into a cascading spray of blood; on others, the camera focused on a girl in a school uniform lying hollow-eyed in a pool of blood, her gaze fixed on her own scattered organs, with her name written right on her uniform—Xie Lin.

Ke Mingqing froze for a moment, then slowly lowered his gaze from the giant screens toward a corner of the avenue, where the girl named Xie Lin lay.

”Save me—” Barely clinging to life, Xie Lin tilted her head back, the corners of her mouth twitching as she looked up at the girl in the gothic dress high above.

The little paper figure walked up beside the girl and murmured, ”I’m sorry—”

”Please save me—” Xie Lin rasped as the beam of magic lit up the ferocious face of the girl in the gothic dress.

Crouching down beside the girl, the little paper figure said in a trembling voice, ”I’m sorry.”

Xie Lin’s head slowly drooped until her cheek rested in the pool of blood, a wash of crimson reflected in her hollow pupils. Rainwater carried her blood into the storm drain. Her lips were still moving faintly, but no sound came out anymore.

Like a freeze-framed photograph, everything suddenly came to a dead halt—both the girl panting heavily in the rain and the blood trickling down the skyscrapers.

Then a monochrome filter, like that of an old black-and-white film, settled over the world.

A single spotlight fell from the sky onto Xie Lin’s motionless form. High above, the girl in the gothic dress hung her head, staring down at the corpse with reddened eyes.

Ke Mingqing glanced up at the snow-white threads of rain frozen in midair, then looked toward the girl in the gothic dress hovering in the sky.

Just then, the little paper figure stood up beside Xie Lin’s corpse, reached out with its stubby hand, and closed her eyes.

Turning around, it tottered off into the distance.

Watching the little paper figure’s back, Ke Mingqing hesitated for a moment before following after it without thinking twice, until he spotted a wooden door tucked inside a side alley off the street.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, and the scene shifted once more. This time, under a brilliant starry night, a high-speed train came roaring out of a tunnel at breakneck speed.

In the distance, a prosperous city blazed with lights, red and green neon glittering between its towers. On the roof of the high-speed train sat a boy in a hoodie and a girl in a gothic dress.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder, their hair whipping in the gale, they whispered together beneath the clear moonlight.

”I’ll protect you—” As the boy spoke, he raised a finger and pointed toward the distant Super Hero Company building.

The girl in the gothic dress remained silent, while the little paper figure teetering in the wind said, ”Liar.”

”I won’t let you turn into a witch, and I won’t let them hurt you either.” Raising his finger again, the boy pointed toward the Magical Girl Company building in the distance.

The girl in the gothic dress kept her head bowed without a word, while the paper figure swaying in the wind said, ”Liar.”

”If you turn into a witch, then I’ll become an arch-villain.” As the boy spoke, his outstretched index finger suddenly twisted at an unnatural angle, as though someone had snapped it.

Clutching her head in her hands, the girl in the gothic dress curled into a ball as a line of tears slipped from the corner of her eye.

”Liar, liar, liar, liar—” Rasping the words under its breath, the little paper figure sat down beside her and curled into a ball too, looking from afar like a white paper crane.

”If the whole world becomes your enemy, then they’re my enemy too!” the boy declared loudly.

The very next instant, with a sharp ”crack,” his head drooped and was blown away into the distance by the wind. His body slowly toppled over, falling onto the tracks below to be crushed into a mist of blood beneath the high-speed train.

The girl in the gothic dress went completely still. After a moment of silence, the little paper figure opened its mouth and whispered, ”Every time I needed you most, you were never by my side. Not once.”

Ke Mingqing’s eyes flickered, his expression conflicted as he watched the scene unfold.

A moment later, he stepped forward. ”Xia Zili—” The name had barely left his lips when a fierce gust plunged from the sky, scattering the figure of the girl in the gothic dress like a handful of loose sand.

Ke Mingqing’s pupils contracted slightly.

At that exact moment, the high-speed train plunged into a tunnel and was swallowed by bottomless darkness.

”Where’s the door—where is it?” Ke Mingqing muttered.

The little paper figure gave him no answer. The train hurtled onward at full speed, its deafening roar echoing endlessly in his ears.

The world was collapsing around him. Cracks spiderwebbed across the entire tunnel as the dim yellow wall lamps went out one by one. Inside the carriages, passengers howled in madness, smashing the windows with fire extinguishers before diving out one after another onto the tracks, where they were ground into mangled flesh and blood.

”Xia Zili!”

Stunned for a moment, Ke Mingqing shouted her name as he paced back and forth atop the train, searching left and right, yet the wooden door leading to the next layer of her mental space was nowhere to be seen.

Looking toward the little paper figure seated on the edge of the roof, he leaned down and asked, ”Where is Xia Zili?”

The little paper figure sat motionless and said nothing.

Ke Mingqing fell silent for a moment, then let out a long breath and sat down on the edge of the carriage roof. Lowering his gaze, he slowly picked up the Black Umbrella left behind by the girl in the gothic dress.

Unhurriedly, he raised the umbrella and pressed its tip against the side of his head. Suddenly snapping out of its daze, the little paper figure whipped its head around to look at him and shrieked, ”No!!!”

But it was already too late. With a sharp ”click,” Ke Mingqing pulled the trigger on the umbrella’s handle.

”Bang!!!”

The gunshot was deafening, instantly drowning out the clamor engulfing the entire world. Inside the carriages, the frenzied passengers suddenly fell quiet, raising their heads one by one to stare blankly at the ceiling.

A bloody hole opened in the side of Ke Mingqing’s head. Closing his eyes, he swayed like a kite with a snapped string before letting go of the umbrella and collapsing spread-eagled onto the roof of the carriage with a heavy ”thud.”

After that, he sank into darkness for an unknown stretch of time before slowly opening his eyes.

Resting a hand against his forehead, he waited as his blurry vision gradually cleared, like windshield wipers sweeping away the fog on a car window.

He blinked.

Focusing his gaze, he saw a clean hallway before him. Jack-o’-lanterns left over from the previous year still hung from the ceiling, their warm glow illuminating the side of his face.

It was New Year’s Eve, and the crackle of firecrackers echoed from outside. Through the half-open iron door leading to the rooftop, burst after burst of fireworks bloomed across the night sky, while the sounds of children chasing each other and playing drifted up from the street below.

Ke Mingqing glanced down at himself. His palms were small, his skin looked young and tender, and his legs were noticeably shorter.

It felt as though he were twelve years old again.

Resting a hand on the stair railing, he looked down toward the living room.

Down below, Xia Ningzhi—still in her middle school uniform with her hair worn loose—was stretching her arms wide on the sofa. Beside her sat a short-haired Ke Linye, reading a book in silence with a faint smile on his lips. Xia Lingxue, her hair tied in a ponytail, had a lollipop in her mouth as she watched television with a blank expression. Meanwhile, Ke Mingwei walked out of the kitchen, pulled a chair over to the floor-to-ceiling window, and sat down, smoking a cigarette as he gazed out at the sky.

Resting his chin in his hand, Ke Mingqing leaned against the banister and watched the scene in silence. ’So my oldest brother had short hair in high school, and my second sister used to wear a ponytail back then?’ he thought.

’The two of them look hilarious. It’s like they turned into completely different people once they started college—’

”A’Qing, New Year’s Eve dinner is almost ready. Bring your sister down with you,” Xia Wenna’s languid voice suddenly called out from the kitchen.

Ke Mingqing stayed silent for a long moment before lifting his elbow off the handrail.

”Coming, coming. Who knows what that lazy pig is doing cooped up in her room.”

Answering her as he turned around, he looked toward the wooden door. Still taped to it was the little slip of paper that read, ”No Ke Mingqing or Dogs Allowed.”

—Boom!

—Boom, boom!

—Boom, boom, boom!

Amid the deafening blasts, the flickering light of the fireworks illuminated Ke Mingqing’s face.

His heart trembled and thrummed like the fireworks blooming one after another across the night sky. After a moment, he stepped forward, reached out, and turned the doorknob.

The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped into a dark bedroom with all its lights turned off. Light from the hallway spilled inside, illuminating a corner of the room and stretching Ke Mingqing’s shadow long across the floor.

Looking around, he quickly spotted a girl curled up silently between the bed and the floor-to-ceiling window, her arms wrapped around her knees.

”Get out—” she said after a moment without lifting her head.

Ke Mingqing lowered his eyes and said nothing.

”Get out,” the girl said again.

”You tell me to get out, but where am I supposed to go?” Sighing, Ke Mingqing hung his head and sat down beside Xia Zili.

The two of them sat in silence in the dark.

”That girl—was her name Xie Lin?” Ke Mingqing asked after a while.

”Yeah.”

”You never said anything, so I had no idea you had such a close friend—”

”She was killed by Ghost Hand Asura—brutally. I told you about it before.”

”You never told me her name—or what kind of person she was.” Ke Mingqing paused, then said softly, ”Xia Zili, that wasn’t your fault.”

”I could have saved her—if I hadn’t lost my mind back then, I still would have been in time to save her—”

”What are you thinking? She was already dead—no ordinary person could survive injuries like that. Thinking you could save her was just an illusion.”

”Little Red Riding Hood died too—”

Ke Mingqing fell silent.

The girl buried her head in her knees. ”I got another friend killed—my most important friend.” She paused, a sob catching in her voice. ”Let’s just end it like this—I’m so tired—”

”If you give up now, then what did she die for?” Ke Mingqing asked after a brief silence.

”It doesn’t matter anymore—”

”It does matter. Little Red Riding Hood told me she didn’t want to see her friend become a sinner.” Ke Mingqing paused. ”Besides, could you really bear to let me die? If you don’t change your mind, everyone is going to die—not just me, everyone else too.”

”None of it matters anymore—I’m exhausted. I just want to disappear so I won’t have to think about anything—”

”Idiot.”

Letting out a long sigh, Ke Mingqing suddenly turned and gripped her by the shoulders. Startled, the girl raised her head just as a floral burst of fireworks exploded across the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling window, its bright glow lighting up the boy’s eyes.

”Stop running away. I’m right here beside you,” he said softly.

Xia Zili looked quietly into his eyes, where the fireworks outside flickered bright and dim within his pupils.

”Everyone knows I’m a witch now—even if I leave this place, what’s the point?” she asked hoarsely.

”Dad is Rain Crow. He’ll have your back—would the Magical Girl Three Giants really dare go head-to-head with the Roundtable?”

”It won’t work.”

”It will.” Looking straight into her eyes, Ke Mingqing said loudly, ”And you have me right here beside you too. I told you I’d protect you.”

”You say that every time, yet you’re never there—”

”Come on, I just had bad luck before, but aren’t I right here now?” Ke Mingqing paused. ”Every time, you were so far away. Whenever I wanted to see you, I could never find you—”

With that, he leaned gently forward, wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and held her close for a long time, eyes lowered as he patted her shoulder softly.

”All right, little sis—let’s go home,” the boy said softly.

The rims of the girl’s eyes suddenly turned red. In the darkness, the two of them held each other close, like two young animals huddling together for warmth.

”Can I really still go home?”

Brother and sister looked at each other silently in the dark for a moment.

”Yeah. I promise I’ll take you home.”

”Liar.”

”If I’m lying, I’m a puppy.” Sticking the ”No Ke Mingqing or Dogs” slip of paper onto his nose, Ke Mingqing barked twice: ”Woof, woof!”

Breaking into a smile through her tears, Xia Zili said hoarsely, ”Dummy—”

”Oh, right—there’s one more thing I meant to tell you,” Ke Mingqing said playfully as he peeled the slip of paper off his nose.

The girl blinked, gazing steadily at him. ”What is it?”

”Promise me first—you can’t get mad at me when I tell you.”

”Okay.”

”Really?”

”Really.”

In the darkness, the boy raised his eyes and lowered them again. After a brief silence, the corners of his lips curved up, and he said softly, ”I’m—a player.”

The girl’s eyes widened slightly. At that exact moment, the final round of fireworks burst across the sky, pouring a kaleidoscope of colors through the floor-to-ceiling window and into their eyes.

At the same time, in the real world.

Directly above the Leijing City Center, the dark-gold storm of magic still howled, blotting out the sky as ghostly blue flames began to ignite across the body of the witch bound to the Cross.

A grand sacrifice had begun.

Her magic expanded outward, closing over the towering buildings like the giant hand of a demon. Desks and chairs inside offices and the glass curtain walls of skyscrapers were gradually swallowed by shadow.

Meanwhile, the colossal phantom of the Christmas tree across the sky slowly faded away, and the giant projection of the girl vanished with it. The ring of little Christmas paper figures slowly dissolved into snowflakes that drifted down through the air.

As everyone on the roof of the Space-Time Train watched this unfold, their eyes dimmed slightly.

”Little Red Riding Hood—” Sakurahime murmured.

Xi Ziyue remained silent, her head bowed as black hair veiled her eyes, while a faint light flickered in Mizumio Akari’s gaze.

Owl Judge’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. ”A’Qing—”

”Look! What is that?” Winter Hunter suddenly cried out, white hair whipping in the gale.

Xi Ziyue froze, then snapped her head up to look. Amid the dark-gold magic storm, she witnessed an unbelievable sight: a boy’s figure was weaving like a fish through the overlapping waves of raging magic.

Opening his arms, he embraced the girl atop the Cross. Moments later, the overwhelming tide of dark-gold magic dispersed, leaving everything as quiet and peaceful as the dawn of the world.

A hush fell over the entire world.

Once again, the sun emerged from behind the clouds, casting a warm ray of sunlight across the roof of the train carriage.

The next instant, the Umbrella Sword forming the Cross slowly dissolved into motes of glowing light and scattered into the air. Holding Xia Zili tightly in his arms, Ke Mingqing plummeted straight down from hundreds of meters in the sky.

”A’Qing, Xiaoli!”

With that shout, Owl Judge leaned down, set Red Lotus onto the roof of the carriage, and kicked off the edge, shooting across half the sky like a bolt of black lightning to catch them both in midair.

The gale whipped up the tails of his coat as a pitch-black floor woven from moonlight materialized beneath him, giving him a foothold in the air.

Owl Judge came to an abrupt halt in midair.

After a long moment, he took a deep breath and slowly looked down. In his arms, Ke Mingqing was still holding Xia Zili tightly, their foreheads resting together, both of them fast asleep—

”Senior Ember turned back from a witch into—her original self?” Not far away, Magical Girl Winter Hunter spoke in a daze, staring at the girl in the orange hoodie resting in Owl Judge’s arms.

Without a doubt, the girl before their eyes was neither the magical girl Ember nor the Witch of Finale and Ashes, but Xia Zili.

The magical girl Sakurahime was stunned for a moment too before whispering, ”It’s actually true—turning back from a witch into an ordinary human. Does that mean back at the port, when we fought Death Crow, it was also our senior who saved us after undergoing Witchification?”

The roof of the carriage fell into absolute silence as the morning breeze brushed past everyone’s faces, lifting and settling their hair in the wind.

”It looks like—it’s finally over,” Mizumio Akari said softly.

Xi Ziyue said nothing, simply giving a nod.

”What do you plan to do with Xia Zili?” Mizumio Akari asked after a moment of thought.

”I’m not sure yet—” Shaking her head, Xi Ziyue looked up at the sky. ”Still, as long as it’s over, that’s enough. We’ll take it one step at a time.”

Just then, a single snowflake drifted down from the fading afterimage of the Christmas tree, landing in the palm of her hand before slowly melting into a fleck of white.

The girl in the qipao raised her eyes and lowered them again, as the world brightened and dimmed.