Chapter 27: The Pinnacle of a Fleeting Draconic Life, the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event!

Liuxing: ???

Liuxing was stunned by the sudden turn of events. Faced with the overwhelming, searing heat of the flames, he panicked and fled in a blind rush. As he ran, he suddenly collided with something and tumbled to the ground. When he scrambled back to his feet, he realized he had just run into his big brother!

Although his brother often bullied him, having him there made Liuxing feel significantly safer.

"Awoo!"

Liuxing hurriedly gestured wildly at Chu Xu, trying to describe the terrifying sight he had just witnessed. Chu Xu felt amused; he figured Liuxing would never guess that the ball of fire falling from the sky was actually his own handiwork.

When Chu Xu and Liuxing returned to the scene, the male hook-clawed dragon had been burned alive. Its charred, gruesome carcass lay on the ground, wisps of white smoke rising from it. Liuxing dared not approach the corpse, fearing the same fate, so he cautiously picked up the body of the female hook-clawed dragon instead. Standing before the prize, he gestured with his limbs to Chu Xu, signaling that this was his own solitary kill.

"Got it, got it. You’re impressive. Here’s a thumbs up."

Chu Xu raised a foreclaw and gave Liuxing a thumbs up. Though Liuxing did not understand the meaning of the gesture, he sensed his brother’s admiration and immediately puffed out his chest and raised his tail in triumph. Next, he would take his trophy home to show Dragon Mother and his second sister; they would surely be impressed by his prowess.

Chu Xu extinguished the remaining flames on the male hook-clawed dragon, picked up its carcass, and returned with Liuxing.

Meanwhile, Dragon Mother had realized Liuxing was missing and had stopped hunting to search for her troublesome youngest son with Longyue. Suddenly, she caught the scent of blood and hurried toward it. Before long, she saw her two sons approaching, each with a kill in his jaws. She was not surprised that her eldest son had caught prey, but she was truly astonished that her youngest, still barely fledged, had managed to hunt as well. She also noticed the wounds covering Liuxing’s body, the blood already dried, showing just how fierce a battle he must have fought.

"Awoo!"

Liuxing, however, cared little for his injuries. Upon seeing Dragon Mother, he dashed over and showed off the female hook-clawed dragon in his mouth to her and Longyue, hinting frantically: Look! This is the prey I caught!

Dragon Mother gently extended her tongue to lick Liuxing’s wounds. Longyue, who had yet to catch a kill of her own, circled the trophy excitedly, drooling with envy.

"Roar!"

Liuxing let out another dramatic, chuunibyou-esque roar that echoed across the forest. He felt that at this moment, he had reached the peak of his short dragon life, even casting his big brother into the shadows!

...

"BOOM—!!"

A sudden, earth-shattering roar and a blinding flash of white light engulfed the entire world! Chu Xu had no time to feel pain or even react before he was swallowed by the light, and the entire world he inhabited evaporated along with him!

"That dream again!"

Before dawn had broken, Chu Xu woke with a start, his chest heaving and his heart racing, still shaken by the experience. He did not know when it started, but he frequently dreamed of that Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Everything played out like a film; even though his consciousness remained clear, he could not wake himself up.

The first thing that caught Chu Xu’s sight was the endless expanse of space. This was the solar system, the orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Two asteroids had collided in a violent explosion. Afterward, both lay shattered into hundreds of massive fragments, continuing to drift through space. To the vast solar system, this collision was merely a trivial footnote in its long history. Yet, a hundred million years later, the butterfly effect of this event would strike small Earth, bringing about a world-altering mass extinction.

After the void of space, Chu Xu’s perspective shifted to the familiar Earth. A hundred million years had passed since the collision. It was the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous, and this was the Laramidia sub-continent of ancient North America.

Chu Xu could even see himself, along with Dragon Mother, Longyue, and Liuxing. By that time, he was living independently, while Longyue and Liuxing were still with Dragon Mother, all of them grown. Like any other day, all creatures lived as they always had: predators lurking in the shadows, herbivores foraging while watching for threats, pterosaurs and birds soaring in the sky, and mosasaurs and fish swimming in the depths.

"Boom, boom, boom—!!"

Everything came to a sudden, screeching halt. With a roar that shook the heavens, the sky turned blood-red. The mountains lost their color, and the sun and moon faded. An asteroid fragment about ten kilometers in diameter plunged from the sky, transforming into a meteorite that tore through the atmosphere at an astonishing speed. Almost every animal on Earth looked up in unison, watching the harbinger of destruction fall, eventually striking the southern coast of Laramidia.

"Rumble!!"

The impact of such a massive meteorite released 4.2 x 10^23 joules of energy—the equivalent of 100 trillion tons of TNT, or two million "Tsar Bomba" hydrogen bombs detonating at once. It left behind the famous 300-kilometer-wide, 40-kilometer-deep Chicxulub crater. Near the impact site, countless creatures were vaporized in an instant, and the shockwaves radiated across the entire North American continent. The resulting magnitude-12 earthquakes, super-tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and massive storms dragged even more life into hell.

What followed was a true "nuclear winter." Massive amounts of sulfur were injected into the atmosphere, blocking the sun, causing temperatures to plummet and triggering acid rain that lasted for decades. Surviving plants could no longer photosynthesize and withered away. Herbivores starved, and predators eventually followed. Not just dinosaurs, but pterosaurs, enantiornithes, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, ammonites, and 70 percent of all Late Cretaceous species were wiped out, vanishing into the river of history forever.