Chapter 186: What Kind of World Destroyer Has No Money

The Emperor closed her eyes, calmly accepting the sensation of her own death.

The curse that Rika and her parents had left her would one day become a blessing she would give to her friends.

Even a rotten world that had already been destroyed still needed its savior.

Originally, in the Emperor’s mind, it would have been enough if the Curse Realm’s curses simply did not spread and harm other worlds.

When that group of people had been wiped out by the Magical Girl Mujin, she realized the people of the Curse Realm could not escape.

The so-called fleeing was really just a way for the living planet of the Curse Realm to expand its domain, infect more innocents with curses, and turn them into the planet’s forlorn ghosts.

Whether through having children to share the curse or by discovering the Death Note and seeking a new home outside the world,

it was all just the living planet manipulating its ghosts to widen its infection range.

That was why she had given up searching for a new home outside and planned to seal off the Curse Realm, which cost her the people’s loyalty and led to her being overthrown by Kaka and Lily.

Now that the Curse Realm was destroyed, although there was some melancholy, it was ultimately something she had long predicted.

Moreover, the curse her parents left her would persist alongside the Calamity Dragon forever.

Having the Calamity Dragon itself become proof that the Curse Realm had once existed was almost the best outcome she hadn’t dared to hope for.

She watched Lily and Kaka, her parents, and many others who had once traveled with her surround her at the center and clap continuously. Her parents were the first to beam and say:

“Congratulations, Your Majesty.”

Then Rika and the others followed in sequence, saying, “Congratulations, Your Majesty.”

Finally, the Emperor revealed a gentle smile.

She was not a cruel person, nor hysterical in nature.

Lazy, casual, even a bit slow-witted, that was her original self.

She had disguised herself for so long that even she had nearly forgotten who she used to be. Now, amid everyone’s congratulations, she found herself again.

Tilting her head, she offered a bright smile. “Thank you, thank you everyone.”

Amid that radiant smile, she suddenly noticed a little black dragon that didn’t quite fit in.

Because the Golden Calamity Dragon King’s appearance and the Nascent Soul Black Dragon were worlds apart, she couldn’t connect them at all.

The Emperor racked her brains but couldn’t figure it out.

When in her life had such an existence appeared?

Isn’t this my lantern of passing scenes?

“Mom!”

When the creature, wearing a wild dragon head but using a little girl’s voice, shouted that word,

the Emperor’s smile froze.

She racked her brain desperately.

When did she have such... a child?

From childhood to adulthood—let alone marriage—she had never even spoken to a man!

She hadn’t heard of any curse that made one pregnant.

Even if pregnancy were possible, she’d never experienced childbirth;

things like that don’t just happen without anyone knowing, do they?

Or did someone mess with her corpse after she died?

And why is it a beast...

Isn’t this taking things a bit far?

While she was spiraling in absurd thoughts, the black dragon pounced into view.

“Mom, you really are my biological mother!”

One-handed, the black dragon picked itself up, waving its tiny limbs as it spoke in a crisp voice.

Admittedly, it was kind of cute.

Even a little handsome—calling a Disaster Beast handsome wasn’t wrong.

After all, Disaster Beasts usually look somewhat abstract. One that has a nose and eyes and is shaped into a proper, classic flying-dragon form is rare.

But thinking that this thing was born from her...

Ugh, it made her queasy.

The Emperor forced a smile. No matter what, the child was innocent...

“Thanks to you, Mom, I wasn’t taken away and I survived! Otherwise I would have died here. Your blessing is unbelievably powerful! I didn’t expect even the world’s death could not affect your blessing!”

“No, that’s actually a curse...”

After all, in the Curse Realm blessings did not exist. To bear all curses and live forever was the cruelest fate one could imagine.

Although applied to the Golden Calamity Dragon King, it instead preserved its curse power and its life...

Wait.

The Emperor suddenly realized something and looked at the little black dragon in stunned silence. “You are... that purple-haired Magical Girl?”

“She’s my boss.”

“...” The Emperor felt a little dizzy. “I heard that Magical Girl’s cry for help because she didn’t want to die. I thought I saved her.”

“Come on, Mom, you’re overthinking it. With my boss’s nonhuman power, the mere force of a world’s death could never match her battle-hardened body. Don’t worry, even if my mom died and the whole world died, she still wouldn’t.”

“Why are you calling me Mom...”

“Look at what you just said!” the black dragon immediately retorted righteously. “When I was nearly dead, you saved me, pulling me back from death.”

“You practically gave me a second life. Who else but a mother gives a second life?”

“Besides, Mom, you did so much for me!” The black dragon’s expression turned heartbreaking, its red-pupil eyes like seeds, tearful as it looked at the Emperor. “You gave me the new chair when entering the realm, showed me the clear path through the curse, prepared my favorite Disaster Beast dumplings, fed me the stomach-settling digestion tablets. A person like that is a mother, a mother!”

“You don’t remember feeding it anything.”

“That kind of thing matters! Someone as heavenly as you nearly lost your life!”

The danger had passed, but her new mother seemed to have her soul shocked, becoming dazed and not remembering.

It turned out the greatest pain for a Disaster Beast wasn’t dying together, but surviving and watching day after day the injuries their mother had suffered to save them.

As it spoke, dragon tears streamed down. “I nearly died, Mom nearly died, and now we have returned from death to recognize each other—what is this? Destiny!”

“This is deathly recognition of mother!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not like those ungrateful lechers. I will repay you dutifully. Children sustain parents in old age... no, it should be children sustain parents against death. I will risk everything for our mother in the future!”

“Even if we are small Disaster Beasts.” The black dragon wiped its tears and snot on the Emperor’s sleeve, resolute. “One day we’ll be slain by the righteous purple-haired Magical Girl!”

“I am not a Disaster Beast.”

“You are now.”

The Emperor felt dizzy from the black dragon’s nonstop recital.

She collapsed onto the ground and massaged her temples.

“Well, I didn’t really want a child, especially not one like you...”

“It’s fine, Mom, children don’t despise an ugly mother, dogs don’t mind a poor household.”

“Is that how the proverb goes?”

“The meaning’s what counts.”

“I am not ugly.”

“Hah, same thing. Even as a terrifying Disaster Beast, I have a heart of gold, grateful and repaying kindness...”

“I am not ugly!”

Seeing the Emperor exude murderous intent, the black dragon finally quieted down and nodded repeatedly. “Not ugly, not ugly. Mom, you are beautiful.”

...

Although she tried hard to make the other correct itself, when it did, it felt even more suffocating.

The Emperor bit her lip in anger.

She even regretted rescuing such a creature.

It was going to make her die of rage...

“In any case, your great kindness, I, Old Black, will never forget!”

“I never wanted to save you in the first place.”

The Emperor said coolly. “I only thought a Magical Girl was calling for help, so I did everything I could to pass on the surviving curse. And don’t call me Mom. I don’t have you as my daughter.”

“Mom, I really don’t mind. No matter what you intended, what you did saved me beyond doubt.”

The black dragon spoke righteously. “So you are my reborn parent, my mother!”

“I said don’t call me that!”

“All right, mother.”

The Emperor covered her face and sighed deeply.

“I really regret saving you.”

“It’s fine. Even if you regret it, Old Black doesn’t care. I’ll repay you, mother!”

“Enough already, and don't call me mother either, nothing at all!”

“All right.”

This black dragon reminded the Emperor of the sycophants back when her empire still stood.

Headache-inducing.

She stared into the endless black space, sitting on the ground, knees hugged to her chest, leaning her head on her knees, her dull black-red hair hanging listlessly. “I thought I could save her, leave her a deep impression, then die so she would never forget me or forget the Curse Realm. Now this—saved some useless little thing who probably has no idea what I was doing...”

At the thought, the Emperor felt mortified.

She wanted to bury her head in the ground.

Wait, but she was already dead, right? Is this a new curse?

Is Death’s final whisper chasing me to show how foolish I was before dying?

She could hardly breathe.

She hated how much she had talked at the time.

If she had said less, that Magical Girl might have believed she’d sacrificed herself to preserve her power.

Now she only appeared ridiculous for dying over such a trifle.

A little comedic.

Her dignified, harsh life ending in such a ludicrous way...

“That sort of thing, never...” the Emperor couldn’t help but exhale to the sky.

“What’s never?”

Immediately a cold voice made her whole body stiffen.

She raised her head and found the surrounding space suddenly brightening.

Purple extinguishing light began to burn all around.

Above that, a purple-haired girl sat on the Golden Throne, looking at her indifferently. “What are you screaming about, ghost?”

Startled, the Emperor instantly fell prone on the ground. “I am already dead.”

The little black dragon immediately mimicked her and flopped over on its back. “Me too, I am dead.”

The Emperor couldn’t help but kick the little black dragon up. “Don’t copy me!”

The black dragon, aggrieved, hid behind Shion.

Watching the Magical Girl who had shown almost no expression the whole time and simply stared at her, the Emperor helplessly spoke, “I should have completely disappeared. The curse that formed me was transferred to you. Why am I still conscious...?”

“To preserve your curse intact, I simply absorbed you entirely as well.”

Shion said matter-of-factly. “I don’t want my power to be incomplete and later affect my advancement.”

......

“There are more things about the curse’s power that you need to explain. Want to die? Wait until you are useless.”

The Emperor couldn’t help smiling. “Can I take that as an invitation?”

“You may consider it a curse.” Shion tilted her head. “Isn’t the Curse Realm always fond of calling everything a curse? When in Rome, do as the Romans. You can treat this as a curse.”

“Before I drain you dry, you are not allowed to die.”

“Curses aren’t like that.”

The Emperor shook her head. “Without malicious hatred, even wishing someone dead is merely a dark blessing.”

“Think what you like.”

Shion was perfectly happy to let her think it a blessing.

After all, no company would turn down employees who willingly treated 9-to-9-6 as a blessing.

“May I know your name?”

“Shion.”

“Magical Girl Shion.” The Emperor murmured, “It sounds lovely, Shion. I have a favor to ask.”

“Don’t try to take advantage.”

“Can you throw this little black dragon away?”

“It’s not that I can’t.”

“Mom!”

.....

In the end, after the little black dragon’s whining and pitiful cajoling, the Emperor’s heart softened.

She didn’t actually throw the little black dragon out.

After all, that body still belonged to the black dragon. Throwing out the dragon’s consciousness would be tantamount to letting the Emperor possess it.

Besides, this creature had already found another mother;

recently her count of mothers was increasing.

So many mothers—who knew what they were for.

Actually, even if the Emperor hadn’t used her life to preserve the curse’s power, Shion had already thought of keeping it by taking the Witch form.

Although there weren’t many potions left, practice makes perfect. This time Shion merely needed a witch’s body to forcibly retain the living planet’s power—at most it would cost one black dragon Nascent Soul, a loss that was hardly painful now.

In the end the Emperor’s rescue was meaningless in some ways, but it saved a lot of trouble. In the future she’d have an old lady in tow, an extra elder to help with using the curse’s power.

This gain satisfied Shion;

the trip had not been in vain.

Having solved the Nascent Soul problem, Shion looked up at the world that was collapsing and contracting.

After the Emperor passed her final curse, the Curse Realm’s destruction accelerated. Even its independent spaces started to fail.

Everything was crazily compressing, about to vanish completely.

More importantly, the surrounding space became even more chaotic.

A moment’s inattention could get one lost in the spatial turbulence.

This was exactly why she had returned to her Magical Girl form.

Although the Golden Calamity Dragon King had risen in rank and its strength had reached the Peak Perfection of the Lush Leaves realm and was rushing toward Flourishing Branches, actually facing such spatial collapse and compression,

even tumultuous spatial flow was unstable. The precision of the Dragon’s mana limited Mujin’s Dao Seed’s effectiveness, easily causing them to lose their bearings.

After reverting to Magical Girl form, the purple mana flooded the sky and propped up part of the remaining space in the Curse Realm.

To make navigation easier, her immense mana even tore apart the compressing space, forcibly expanding it!

Because the Curse Realm was collapsing too rapidly, by the time she, as Shion, supported the remaining space, most exits had already been swallowed.

Even if she used massive mana to rebuild space, it wouldn’t match the old space.

No trace of the original paths could be found.

After all, the collapse had slightly exceeded expectations, but finding the way back was only a matter of time.

Shion planned to thoroughly scramble the surrounding space.

“Sect Master.”

Only after expanding the space far into who-knows-where did Shion finally hear a familiar voice.

She stopped recklessly intending to disturb the space further.

That same chill, now so familiar it could no longer be more familiar, guided her mana to a nearby frozen spatial breach.

“Over here, Sect Master.”

When she flew over, Bingtang grabbed her hand and pulled her into the independent space Kaka had previously occupied in the Curse Realm.

Back in stable space, they watched the Curse Realm gradually disappear within the spatial turbulence until the entire world became void.

Holding Shion’s hand, Bingtang silently stared at the utterly vanished old world.

Only now did the Sect Master truly feel the reality of destroying a world.

It felt not unlike blowing up an anthill...

“Did any other people from other old worlds come earlier?”

Bingtang nodded, then melted the frost and the spatial breach vanished completely.

After that, no one would ever find the Curse Realm again. Soon no one would even know that a former old world called the Curse Realm had once existed.

“Did the Sect Master sense everything in the Curse Realm?”

“It was obvious.” Shion sneered. “Did you think I treat Azure Cloud Sect as the Disaster Control Bureau?”

Bingtang smiled slightly. “We’ll find them one by one after I investigate more intel. Let the true-transmission handle it. They should have some trials.”

“All right.”

Shion pulled her hand back from Bingtang. “How are the remaining true-transmission’s realms?”

“Except for Bai Mei, they’ve all risen to Blooming, and some have even reached the Lush Leaves realm.”

“Oh?” Shion’s face brightened;

interest finally stirred. “Which disciple did so well?”

“Thousand-Pinweed.”

At the mention of that name, Shion fell into an odd silence.

Bingtang looked at her smilingly. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you supposed to be pleased?”

“Ting.” Shion’s tone turned cold. “Nothing—only Lush Leaves, after all. Among the true-transmission, only Senior Sister Tian currently has hope of stepping into Nascent Soul;

she still needs to work hard.”

“That’s true, but you still don’t seem to like her.”

“It’s not about liking or not...” Shion shook her head. “Forget it, don’t talk about her. This Curse Realm yielded a lot;

I need to retreat to cultivate. I have new ideas about the Grain Abstention Pill;

perhaps this time I can make a Foundation Building Pill.”

“Good.”

Saying that, Shion produced a small vial filled with red-gold liquid. “Ask around whether this is valuable.”

These were naturally the Golden Calamity Dragon King’s blood. Golden blood did indeed look valuable...

Bingtang turned the vial in her palm, then nodded. “All right, I’ll ask around, but don’t expect too much.”

“Mm.”

Seeing Shion hesitate, Bingtang grew curious. “Anything else?”

After thinking for a long moment, Shion took out ten completely shattered Black Gold Cards from her person.

Bingtang’s pupils tightened.

Even in her own home, such cards were not casually seen.

Each card was worth at least several thousand units.

The Sect Master carefully held the broken Black Gold Cards and looked at her with pleading eyes:

“Can these be restored?”