Fire descended.
It was no ordinary fire.
There was no scorching heat, no choking smoke.
Only a pure, liquid golden radiance ignited silently from Lin Qingyue's feet.
The radiance climbed up her shins, waist, and neck, spreading upward until it completely encased her in a vertical, golden cocoon of light.
Her plain Priest Robes disintegrated inch by inch in the blaze, turning into a sky full of stardust.
New clothes coalesced from the depths of the light.
Deep green tights hugged her straight legs.
A sharply tailored Academy-style dress covered her body, its collar buttoned meticulously.
White, black, and deep green formed a steady base, accented with splashes of light green, refreshing and layered.
In an instant, her style had mutated from "Violent Priest" to "Harmless School Beauty."
At the same time, in the sky above her head, a giant virtual screen, tens of meters square, unfurled out of thin air!
The fluorescent blue image tore through the dusky yellow sky, and an exquisitely produced animated sequence began to play.
A war-torn ruined city, with mountains of steel wreckage piled high.
The silhouette of a young woman stood against the light atop a collapsed steel ruin, her long grey hair dancing in the wind, with the burning skyline behind her.
In the upper right corner of the screen, characters emerged: [Embers in a Shell].
Before the stirring BGM could even begin, what first poured out of the screen was a chaotic flood of distorted electronic communication signals.
"Sector 7 Defensive Line has fallen! Requesting backup!!"
"Refuge Area No. 3 is under attack! Civilian casualties are heavy!"
"The Core Sector Energy Shield is about to collapse! Can anyone hear me? Is anyone—"
A series of desperate pleas for help, torn apart by static, surged from the screen and intermingled with the roar of artillery, filling the real flesh-and-blood battlefield like a physical wave of sound.
The audio of these transmissions was too realistic.
In the Coalition Assault Team at the very front line, a Simian Race communications soldier instinctively slapped the Magic Communicator at his waist.
He looked down. The communicator wasn't lit at all.
The voice was coming from the sky.
"Wha... what the hell is this?"
He looked up in horror at the giant screen that blotted out the sky and the burning ruins on its surface, his entire body freezing.
On the platform, the golden radiance dissipated.
The reassuring Pink-Haired Priest had vanished.
In her place stood a young woman wearing an academy uniform.
Her skirt swayed gently in the foul wind of the canyon.
Fragile.
Slight.
In a school, she was the type who would be bullied by upperclassmen and cry for a long time after being punched once.
She was utterly out of place on this Purgatory Battlefield, a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood beneath her feet.
"..."
The entire front line fell into an eerie, dead silence.
Hao Chi's goggles snapped down onto the bridge of his nose with a clack.
He opened his mouth, only to find his vocal cords had ceased to function.
Beside him, the Pandaren Guard's heavy shield crashed to the ground with a thud, kicking up a ring of dust, yet he remained completely oblivious.
Lin Xiyue's expression was a masterpiece of mixed emotions: shame, helplessness, and a death glare that promised to drag her sister back and beat her to a pulp.
"Sis."
She forced the word out through gritted teeth, "You call this... a combat form?"
Su Wan's reaction was filled with a Mage's rationality, her mind immediately initiating an academic analysis.
"It should be a preliminary ritual for some kind of transformation-type ability," she judged, her wording precise. "Mechanically, it's a first-stage form change... but the output capability of this form—"
"Is zero."
Xia Lian's follow-up was precise and lethal: "It possesses no offensive capabilities whatsoever."
She was dutifully holding the communication crystal as Lin Qingyue had requested, recording this absurd scene in its entirety.
In the rear, the waves of doubt from the Allied Forces' elites, who had already pushed their nerves to the limit and were prepared to charge with their lives, could finally no longer be suppressed.
The captains of the three assault battalions exchanged glances across the distance, their silent communication so intense it practically threw sparks:
"What about the secret weapon we were promised?"
"The lives of the entire army are staked on a young girl like this?"
"...Are we being played?"
A scarred Oxfolk veteran gestured with his chin toward the screen overhead, which was still broadcasting the desperate communication, his voice a low rumble: "What the hell is that giant screen anyway?"
"Who knows? Maybe it's the casting wind-up for some kind of mass-destruction spell..."
"I'd say it's the precursor to a cultivation deviation!"
Hao Chi finally found his voice, his tone tinged with a sob.
"No... Your Tianshu University's ultimate weapon is just turning your Captain into... into..."
He pointed at the girl on the platform, his finger tracing futile circles in the air as he struggled to find any word that conveyed lethality.
"...a school beauty?"
In the back row, a Simian Race communications soldier peeked out, muttering softly: "You know, she is actually pretty..."
The scarred Oxfolk veteran beside him clamped a hand like a steel vice onto the soldier's head, shoving him back down.
"Shut up."
All the commotion and noise had no effect on the broadcast on the giant screen overhead.
The PV's footage advanced to a new segment.
In the animation, the grey-haired girl, dressed exactly like Lin Qingyue, stood alone amidst the ruins, holding a magnificently designed double-edged longsword.
The next frame.
The blade suddenly split, folded, and twisted as countless precision metal components re-engaged.
That longsword had actually transformed into a palm-sized metal creation resembling a scarab beetle.
Its dark green shell glowed faintly from a diamond-shaped core at its center, the whole object radiating a cold, mechanical beauty.
In reality:
The girl on the platform slowly raised her right hand.
Light converged in the void, and a metal device identical to the one in the PV footage quietly landed in her palm.
[Firefly Type-IV Transformation Device].
A soft emerald light spilled from the device, illuminating half of her face.
"What is that?" Su Wan narrowed her eyes.
As an Elemental Mage, her perception of energy far surpassed that of ordinary people.
And at this moment, the energy fluctuations emanating from that tiny device instantly sent a wave of goosebumps crawling up her back.
The instant the Transformation Device touched her hand.
Something was violently ignited within the girl's pink pupils.
That was no longer Lin Qingyue's gaze.
It was the absolute calm and resolve of a soul that had burned, been destroyed, and reborn countless times in endless war, now staring down this sea of insects.
She raised the Transformation Device to her chest.
On the virtual giant screen, the girl atop the ruins stood with a sky-blotting army of steel behind her and a bottomless abyss at her feet, with no way to retreat.
She made the exact same gesture as Lin Qingyue.
The BGM stopped abruptly.
Virtual and reality, two completely different worlds, achieved a perfect overlap in the image at this moment.
Silence lasted for less than a second.
Then,
two voices sounded simultaneously.
One came from the screen.
The other came from the girl's own lips.
Perfectly synchronized, word for word:
"Like Fireflies to a flame,"
Each word struck the air in the canyon with clarity.
It was not a shout, nor a roar, but a declaration so calm it was almost gentle.
"Life Begets Death."
The instant the final word "death" fell.
The diamond-shaped gem at the Transformation Device's core exploded.
Not shattered, but blooming.
Endless emerald light transformed into a trillion fragments of brilliance, defying gravity as they soared into the sky, like a magnificent meteor shower playing in reverse, erupting violently from the girl's body.
Then,
the world burned.
Crimson flames erupted from the center of her body!
A pillar of fire piercing heaven and earth tore a massive hole in the twilight sky.
A destructive heatwave, centered on her, swept frantically in all directions!
The metal wreckage on the platform was instantly blown away, and Hao Chi and his guards were knocked to the ground by the blast wave, shields and all.
Lin Xiyue roared, her great shield held firmly in front of her to protect Su Wan and Xia Lian.
Yet the three of them were still pushed back several meters by the violent hot wind, plowing three deep furrows into the hard rock ground!
"What on earth is this—"
Lin Xiyue's voice was completely crushed by the roar that tore through the sky.
"Your eyes! Don't look!!"
Hao Chi's scream was filled with the terror of being dominated by extreme light and heat.