Zong Yan had no idea the Lord of the Gate had secretly burned the love letter in his school bag.
He was taking a shower in the bathroom, lifting his head to let the hot water from the shower stream over his face.
Warm steaming mist wrapped around the teen’s trim, slender body, condensing into water droplets that slid down his pale skin.
He turned off the hot water, put the bath towel to the side, shrugged into his bathrobe, and walked out.
A moment later Zong Yan received a meaningful stare from the Lord of the Gate.
Zong Yan: “…?”
His hand, which was rubbing his head with a towel, stopped. With a puzzled face he turned on the hair dryer and aimed it at his hair.
Tomorrow was the start of a free weekend, which he hadn’t had in a long time. He was able to finish up his homework during evening self-study today, which meant he had two full days of rest.
For a senior three student, two days was a precious resource. All the students in Senior Class 3 who planned to take the college entrance exam paid for tutors on the weekends. There was no shortage of one-on-one teaching by famous tutors who charged four figures an hour.
Zong Yan was the only maverick who stood alone. That was because he was poor.
But he had money now. Zong Yan earned a decent sum by completing tasks during the previous incident when creatures were appearing in Jiangzhou. For his senior year, he was completely free from worries about making ends meet.
So—what was he going to do tomorrow?
AD
Zong Yan picked up his phone and looked at it. There was no news.
He’d recently asked Wang KeMing to keep an eye on MU’s internal affairs. If anything happened, he’d make sure to report it to Zong Yan.
After a few offhand question-and-answer sessions, Zong Yan learned from the Lord of Time and Space why Paracelsus had gone to Miskatonic University to become the vice chancellor.
During the previous century, MU organized a scientific research team to journey deep into the South Pacific. Their target was R’lyeh, the city which sank 300 million years ago.
The research team was said to be composed of the most famous senior investigators of the time, all of them able to shred otherworldly creatures with their bare hands.
They set sail on a ship and arrived at Pohnpei Island, a state of the Federated States of Micronesia.
It was believed that Pohnpei Island was the closest island to the sunken R’lyeh.
This was the conclusion investigators had reached after covertly installing tracking devices on Deep Ones.
The entire occult world took the scientific research expedition to the South Pacific seriously, because the possibility of uncovering the history of R’lyeh was a rare opportunity for humankind. Investigators went on to discover a period of history in which the Earth was ruled by a Great Old One, knowledge they obtained from the mysterious 《R’lyeh Text》.
Studying history was incredibly useful for the occult world.
The magic patterns passed down to modern times were actually extracted from ancient magical formations. These ancient characters were then aggregated and converted for use in combat. Every archaeological discovery meant a possible increase in investigators’ strength.
Unfortunately, only one of the senior investigators who joined the research mission came back alive.
""
The sole survivor fell into a fit of madness, mumbling, “The time of terror has come… He will surely return to the Earth”. No one could get another word from him.
But it wasn’t completely fruitless.
The insane investigator brought something back with him—a piece of broken dark green jade, densely covered with mysterious writing. When experts with high insight took a single look at it, they were overwhelmed with feelings of disgust and nausea that dominated their minds. For years, the jade piece was sealed in MU’s largest storeroom. A series of linguistically gifted investigators struggled to decipher it.
In the end they concluded the jade piece was most likely the key to unlocking R’lyeh.
Thanks to Yog-Sothoth’s relentless revelations, Zong Yan knew that Paracelsus was a fanatical believer in Cthulhu, probably a high-ranking member of his cult, most likely a priest. Given such a dignified position, there was no need for him to lower himself playing Mission Impossible spy games at MU. The most probable conclusion was that the university contained something coveted by Cthulhu’s believers.
Given this speculation, Zong Yan asked Wang KeMing to check on what was happening with the storage room every day after class.
MU was an enormous complex of buildings. They’d leased the entire border region of the Dreamlands, and the Spire Council had moved over its headquarters in recent years. The storeroom was heavily guarded with layer upon layer of alchemical magic formations. Paracelsus, as one of the leaders of MU, might end up trying to steal what he was supposed to safeguard.
At the moment, the sky was high but the emperor was far away. With the Gate of Truth currently in Boston, Zong Yan’s biggest problem was that he wasn’t close enough to rush to the scene if something happened.
And until something happened, Zong Yan couldn’t just run over and accuse Paracelsus of being a cultist. Probably no one would believe him.
It was a dangerous situation, and unless Cthulhu’s followers took the initiative, Zong Yan was restricted to playing defense. All he could do was wait.
Forget it… Tomorrow I’ll check the MU app to see if there are any otherworldly creatures in Jiangzhou. Earn some money to buy round-trip plane tickets to the United States. The rest is up to fate.
The black-haired teen sighed, turned over in his bed, locked the screen, and sank into a dark, sweet reverie.
AD
It was a dreamless night.
—
Zong Yan rolled over. He suddenly felt like he’d collided with a lump of something cold.
By reflex he opened his eyes. Although he was startled, his face was still sleepy and dazed.
A second later, Zong Yan saw a magnified face up close and personal.
To describe it more accurately, the face was covered with golden eyes, but there were no other human organs visible. It was like the legendary hundred-eyed ghost from urban legends, a blood-curdling sight.
Zong Yan: “…” Instantly awake.
Zong Yan: “Ahhhhhhhh, a ghost!”
He reflexively ducked out of the quilt and retreated away, his face filled with blind panic.
The problem was that the bed wasn’t very big. Zong Yan scooted back so fast he almost landed on the floor.
The evil god frowned. Just as Zong Yan was teetering with empty space behind him, about to fall out of bed, he was pulled forward by a strong force. Like a ball bouncing off an invisible wall, he rolled back into the cold embrace of Yog-Sothoth.
In an instant, the face of the Lord of Time and Space, which had been densely covered with eyes, returned to normal, becoming his usual handsome, ascetic self.
AD
“What are you doing!!!” Zong Yan almost stopped breathing. His voice choked in his throat, his chest heaved up and down, and his eyes were wide as saucers.
“…”
The gray-haired evil god lowered his head and lightly glanced at him.
Because of the sudden struggle just now, the loose t-shirt Zong Yan wore was hanging loosely on his body.
Yog hardly needed to look down to see an unrestricted view of the young man’s bare chest through his open clothes, the slender, graceful limbs, and the two sweet red spots that dotted his pale skin.
The Lord of the Gate frowned.
He hooked his finger, and a set of clothes Zong Yan had stored in the closet floated out, from tops to pants to underwear, with nothing missing.
Then Zong Yan watched in horror as the T-shirt he was wearing suddenly disappeared.
“W-W-W-W-What are you doing!!!”
For Zong Yan, the scene instantly triggered certain images from the fragmentary future he’d seen before. He screamed, instinctively backed up and covered his chest with both arms. He stared at the gray-haired evil god with the expression of someone who was looking at a beast.
“Get dressed.” The evil god gave him an unfathomable look. His words were concise.
Zong Yan’s heart was pounding. “Then turn around!”
AD
Yog-Sothoth gazed at him steadily, and those golden eyes were filled with deep, obscure, chaotic emotions. Just when Zong Yan thought he might have offended the other party, the god stood up from the bed and neatly turned his back.
…Just like that?
Zong Yan warily lowered his hands, then picked up the clothes from the bed and quickly put them on.
He was so nervous when changing his underwear that he shrank into the blankets.
He didn’t know why but he felt a constant chill on his skin.
Meanwhile, the Lord of Time and Space, who’d turned his back, withdrew his gaze without a flicker of expression.
There was nothing an evil god couldn’t see if he wanted to.
Yog connected to his true body, opened the eyes that were distributed throughout the third dimension, and spent a lot of effort to locate this position in time and space. Then he observed the entire process of Zong Yan changing his clothes from every conceivable angle.
The Lord of the Gate was now a bit confused.
He didn’t know why the black-haired teen had reacted so strongly a moment ago.
He pondered it for a moment, and after not locating an answer in his evil god data bank, loaded another set of human behavioral models.
After forming a vague hunch, the great Yog-Sothoth made a special trip to the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. He spent a few seconds scanning every traditional paper book inside it with the vast psychic capabilities of an evil god.
AD
Among all the countless species throughout the universe, whether it was a race on the occult track or a race on the technological track, whenever a civilization made a bit of progress, the first thing they abandoned were paper books. This form of recording information was universally recognized as the most backward form of information storage.
Under normal circumstances, the Lord of the Gate would never lower himself to such an extent.
But now—
The face of the gray-haired evil god might be expressionless, but In fact his brain’s CPU was scouring in search of the answer he desired, all while he was slightly distracted watching Zong Yan change his clothes.
“I’m dressed.”
The instant Zong Yan finished putting on his socks, Yog turned around without a word.
Zong Yan: Intuitively I sense something’s wrong, but I’m not quite sure what it is. Contemplating.
“You came to see me early in the morning. What’s the matter?”
He couldn’t think of the answer, so even if Zong Yan really didn’t want to, he got straight to the point.
“Something happened at MU,” Yog said slowly. “The little fat man you ordered to keep an eye on things isn’t very reliable.”
Zong Yan leaped up from the bed. “What?!”
The thing he was worried about last night—how come the instant he woke up, it suddenly came true?! He didn’t even have a chance to book a ticket yet!
AD
Just as Zong Yan’s thoughts were dancing like ants on a hot pan, a rail-thin hand appeared before his eyes.
He was suddenly reminded of the moment in prehistoric times when he’d stepped through space. Just like now, the gray-haired evil god had stood before the void, offering him his hand.
“Let’s go,” the Lord of the Gate said indifferently. “By the way…”
“What?”
Caught off guard, Zong Yan blinked his eyes, and his gaze suddenly crashed into the radiant golden irises of Yog-Sothoth.
He wasn’t sure how it happened, but they were now standing closer together, so close that Zong Yan could see the Lord of the Gate’s incredible god-made skin, without the slightest hint of pores, as perfect as a mannequin, and a hundred million points of light lurking in those golden eyes, quietly peering into the greatest mysteries concealed within the depths of the universe.
‘Don’t look directly into the eyes of an evil god. The eyes of an evil god represent his truest self, and if he wishes, at any moment you might lose yourself in the light emanating from his true form, and fall into perpetual madness and confusion.’
In a trance, the black-haired teen’s thoughts drifted back to the words Yog once said to him.
Then he heard the evil god before him say, “There’s no need to hide yourself from a god. As higher-dimensional beings, we don’t have uncontrollable sexual impulses like inferior creatures such as humans.”
His tone was flat, like he was talking about the weather.
Zong Yan: “…?”
—
Zong Yan had no idea the Lord of the Gate had secretly burned the love letter in his school bag.
He was taking a shower in the bathroom, lifting his head to let the hot water from the shower stream over his face.
Warm steaming mist wrapped around the teen’s trim, slender body, condensing into water droplets that slid down his pale skin.
He turned off the hot water, put the bath towel to the side, shrugged into his bathrobe, and walked out.
A moment later Zong Yan received a meaningful stare from the Lord of the Gate.
Zong Yan: “…?”
His hand, which was rubbing his head with a towel, stopped. With a puzzled face he turned on the hair dryer and aimed it at his hair.
Tomorrow was the start of a free weekend, which he hadn’t had in a long time. He was able to finish up his homework during evening self-study today, which meant he had two full days of rest.
For a senior three student, two days was a precious resource. All the students in Senior Class 3 who planned to take the college entrance exam paid for tutors on the weekends. There was no shortage of one-on-one teaching by famous tutors who charged four figures an hour.
Zong Yan was the only maverick who stood alone. That was because he was poor.
But he had money now. Zong Yan earned a decent sum by completing tasks during the previous incident when creatures were appearing in Jiangzhou. For his senior year, he was completely free from worries about making ends meet.
So—what was he going to do tomorrow?
AD
Zong Yan picked up his phone and looked at it. There was no news.
He’d recently asked Wang KeMing to keep an eye on MU’s internal affairs. If anything happened, he’d make sure to report it to Zong Yan.
After a few offhand question-and-answer sessions, Zong Yan learned from the Lord of Time and Space why Paracelsus had gone to Miskatonic University to become the vice chancellor.
During the previous century, MU organized a scientific research team to journey deep into the South Pacific. Their target was R’lyeh, the city which sank 300 million years ago.
The research team was said to be composed of the most famous senior investigators of the time, all of them able to shred otherworldly creatures with their bare hands.
They set sail on a ship and arrived at Pohnpei Island, a state of the Federated States of Micronesia.
It was believed that Pohnpei Island was the closest island to the sunken R’lyeh.
This was the conclusion investigators had reached after covertly installing tracking devices on Deep Ones.
The entire occult world took the scientific research expedition to the South Pacific seriously, because the possibility of uncovering the history of R’lyeh was a rare opportunity for humankind. Investigators went on to discover a period of history in which the Earth was ruled by a Great Old One, knowledge they obtained from the mysterious 《R’lyeh Text》.
Studying history was incredibly useful for the occult world.
The magic patterns passed down to modern times were actually extracted from ancient magical formations. These ancient characters were then aggregated and converted for use in combat. Every archaeological discovery meant a possible increase in investigators’ strength.
Unfortunately, only one of the senior investigators who joined the research mission came back alive.
""
The sole survivor fell into a fit of madness, mumbling, “The time of terror has come… He will surely return to the Earth”. No one could get another word from him.
But it wasn’t completely fruitless.
The insane investigator brought something back with him—a piece of broken dark green jade, densely covered with mysterious writing. When experts with high insight took a single look at it, they were overwhelmed with feelings of disgust and nausea that dominated their minds. For years, the jade piece was sealed in MU’s largest storeroom. A series of linguistically gifted investigators struggled to decipher it.
In the end they concluded the jade piece was most likely the key to unlocking R’lyeh.
Thanks to Yog-Sothoth’s relentless revelations, Zong Yan knew that Paracelsus was a fanatical believer in Cthulhu, probably a high-ranking member of his cult, most likely a priest. Given such a dignified position, there was no need for him to lower himself playing Mission Impossible spy games at MU. The most probable conclusion was that the university contained something coveted by Cthulhu’s believers.
Given this speculation, Zong Yan asked Wang KeMing to check on what was happening with the storage room every day after class.
MU was an enormous complex of buildings. They’d leased the entire border region of the Dreamlands, and the Spire Council had moved over its headquarters in recent years. The storeroom was heavily guarded with layer upon layer of alchemical magic formations. Paracelsus, as one of the leaders of MU, might end up trying to steal what he was supposed to safeguard.
At the moment, the sky was high but the emperor was far away. With the Gate of Truth currently in Boston, Zong Yan’s biggest problem was that he wasn’t close enough to rush to the scene if something happened.
And until something happened, Zong Yan couldn’t just run over and accuse Paracelsus of being a cultist. Probably no one would believe him.
It was a dangerous situation, and unless Cthulhu’s followers took the initiative, Zong Yan was restricted to playing defense. All he could do was wait.
Forget it… Tomorrow I’ll check the MU app to see if there are any otherworldly creatures in Jiangzhou. Earn some money to buy round-trip plane tickets to the United States. The rest is up to fate.
The black-haired teen sighed, turned over in his bed, locked the screen, and sank into a dark, sweet reverie.
AD
It was a dreamless night.
—
Zong Yan rolled over. He suddenly felt like he’d collided with a lump of something cold.
By reflex he opened his eyes. Although he was startled, his face was still sleepy and dazed.
A second later, Zong Yan saw a magnified face up close and personal.
To describe it more accurately, the face was covered with golden eyes, but there were no other human organs visible. It was like the legendary hundred-eyed ghost from urban legends, a blood-curdling sight.
Zong Yan: “…” Instantly awake.
Zong Yan: “Ahhhhhhhh, a ghost!”
He reflexively ducked out of the quilt and retreated away, his face filled with blind panic.
The problem was that the bed wasn’t very big. Zong Yan scooted back so fast he almost landed on the floor.
The evil god frowned. Just as Zong Yan was teetering with empty space behind him, about to fall out of bed, he was pulled forward by a strong force. Like a ball bouncing off an invisible wall, he rolled back into the cold embrace of Yog-Sothoth.
In an instant, the face of the Lord of Time and Space, which had been densely covered with eyes, returned to normal, becoming his usual handsome, ascetic self.
AD
“What are you doing!!!” Zong Yan almost stopped breathing. His voice choked in his throat, his chest heaved up and down, and his eyes were wide as saucers.
“…”
The gray-haired evil god lowered his head and lightly glanced at him.
Because of the sudden struggle just now, the loose t-shirt Zong Yan wore was hanging loosely on his body.
Yog hardly needed to look down to see an unrestricted view of the young man’s bare chest through his open clothes, the slender, graceful limbs, and the two sweet red spots that dotted his pale skin.
The Lord of the Gate frowned.
He hooked his finger, and a set of clothes Zong Yan had stored in the closet floated out, from tops to pants to underwear, with nothing missing.
Then Zong Yan watched in horror as the T-shirt he was wearing suddenly disappeared.
“W-W-W-W-What are you doing!!!”
For Zong Yan, the scene instantly triggered certain images from the fragmentary future he’d seen before. He screamed, instinctively backed up and covered his chest with both arms. He stared at the gray-haired evil god with the expression of someone who was looking at a beast.
“Get dressed.” The evil god gave him an unfathomable look. His words were concise.
Zong Yan’s heart was pounding. “Then turn around!”
AD
Yog-Sothoth gazed at him steadily, and those golden eyes were filled with deep, obscure, chaotic emotions. Just when Zong Yan thought he might have offended the other party, the god stood up from the bed and neatly turned his back.
…Just like that?
Zong Yan warily lowered his hands, then picked up the clothes from the bed and quickly put them on.
He was so nervous when changing his underwear that he shrank into the blankets.
He didn’t know why but he felt a constant chill on his skin.
Meanwhile, the Lord of Time and Space, who’d turned his back, withdrew his gaze without a flicker of expression.
There was nothing an evil god couldn’t see if he wanted to.
Yog connected to his true body, opened the eyes that were distributed throughout the third dimension, and spent a lot of effort to locate this position in time and space. Then he observed the entire process of Zong Yan changing his clothes from every conceivable angle.
The Lord of the Gate was now a bit confused.
He didn’t know why the black-haired teen had reacted so strongly a moment ago.
He pondered it for a moment, and after not locating an answer in his evil god data bank, loaded another set of human behavioral models.
After forming a vague hunch, the great Yog-Sothoth made a special trip to the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. He spent a few seconds scanning every traditional paper book inside it with the vast psychic capabilities of an evil god.
AD
Among all the countless species throughout the universe, whether it was a race on the occult track or a race on the technological track, whenever a civilization made a bit of progress, the first thing they abandoned were paper books. This form of recording information was universally recognized as the most backward form of information storage.
Under normal circumstances, the Lord of the Gate would never lower himself to such an extent.
But now—
The face of the gray-haired evil god might be expressionless, but In fact his brain’s CPU was scouring in search of the answer he desired, all while he was slightly distracted watching Zong Yan change his clothes.
“I’m dressed.”
The instant Zong Yan finished putting on his socks, Yog turned around without a word.
Zong Yan: Intuitively I sense something’s wrong, but I’m not quite sure what it is. Contemplating.
“You came to see me early in the morning. What’s the matter?”
He couldn’t think of the answer, so even if Zong Yan really didn’t want to, he got straight to the point.
“Something happened at MU,” Yog said slowly. “The little fat man you ordered to keep an eye on things isn’t very reliable.”
Zong Yan leaped up from the bed. “What?!”
The thing he was worried about last night—how come the instant he woke up, it suddenly came true?! He didn’t even have a chance to book a ticket yet!
AD
Just as Zong Yan’s thoughts were dancing like ants on a hot pan, a rail-thin hand appeared before his eyes.
He was suddenly reminded of the moment in prehistoric times when he’d stepped through space. Just like now, the gray-haired evil god had stood before the void, offering him his hand.
“Let’s go,” the Lord of the Gate said indifferently. “By the way…”
“What?”
Caught off guard, Zong Yan blinked his eyes, and his gaze suddenly crashed into the radiant golden irises of Yog-Sothoth.
He wasn’t sure how it happened, but they were now standing closer together, so close that Zong Yan could see the Lord of the Gate’s incredible god-made skin, without the slightest hint of pores, as perfect as a mannequin, and a hundred million points of light lurking in those golden eyes, quietly peering into the greatest mysteries concealed within the depths of the universe.
‘Don’t look directly into the eyes of an evil god. The eyes of an evil god represent his truest self, and if he wishes, at any moment you might lose yourself in the light emanating from his true form, and fall into perpetual madness and confusion.’
In a trance, the black-haired teen’s thoughts drifted back to the words Yog once said to him.
Then he heard the evil god before him say, “There’s no need to hide yourself from a god. As higher-dimensional beings, we don’t have uncontrollable sexual impulses like inferior creatures such as humans.”
His tone was flat, like he was talking about the weather.
Zong Yan: “…?”
—
