The night before Zong Yan’s summer vacation came to an end, right before he was scheduled to report to Tsinghua, he had a dream.
Ever since becoming the Lord of the Universe, Zong Yan seldom dreamed.
This was partly because the whole “Azathoth created the universe in his dream and became a human in his dream and then had a dream inside his dream” was really just too much recursion; and it was partly because while Zong Yan was dreaming he might accidentally switch to his evil god form, and if that happened, watch out.
The entire universe was created from Azathoth’s dream, and when Azathoth dreamed inside his dream world, everything in his dream became reality. This meant that when Zong Yan watched a horror movie before bed, the next day he saw a story in the newspaper about corpses going on a murderous rampage. And the only way to get the Lord of the Gate to agree to wind back the clock was to “…” at the same time.
That was why Zong Yan turned off his dreaming subsystem by default.
But this time he indulged himself and ended up in a dream.
The moment he entered the dream, Zong Yan realized the problem.
He wasn’t in reality.
So the black-haired young man looked around, surveying his environment.
There was nothing else around him, just endless darkness, with a few scattered stars visible in the distance.
Zong Yan thought it was strange, so he waved his hand and immediately snapped himself out of the dream.
But after he broke free, his surroundings didn’t change.
“Yog?”
He whispered his lover’s name, but there was no answer.
Weird, was something wrong?
Zong Yan was startled by the thought. In an instant his eyes glittered with chaotic light, and he connected to his true body at the center of time and space, projecting his awareness back to observe the universe.
The solar system was still in good shape, and the Earth remained safely in its orbit. World War III hadn’t broken out. The organizations of various countries were fighting a war of words instead of weapons. Everything was harmonious and peaceful. It didn’t look like an emergency situation.
Zong Yan scratched his head and abandoned his inspection. He stepped into the vacuum of outer space and emerged beyond the dimensions.
The Lord of the Universe wandered slowly through the starry void.
He was dressed in a loose bathrobe, which revealed his beautifully defined calves, and he strolled idly through the endless vacuum with bare feet.
After becoming the Lord of the Universe, Zong Yan hadn’t tried to do anything like this before.
On the one hand, he wanted to finish his life as a human, so he rarely used Azathoth’s power to do much. On the other hand, he was just too busy. Busy coming back to take the college entrance exam, busy shooting a movie, busy looking up his friends, busy falling in love. Where did he have time to experience the supreme power of being the Blind Idiot God?
So this time, Zong Yan slowed down and meandered peacefully through the sea of stars.
When he was a child, Zong Yan liked to read picture books. His family didn’t have much money, so Grandma frequently took him to the nearby second-hand bookstore to borrow books.
""Out of fear of damaging the books, Grandma would carefully wrap them in plastic cut from a bag, then instruct him to be careful while he read them.
Eventually Zong Yan got to know the old grandfather who ran the second-hand bookstore. The store often had new books on the shelves, and the old grandfather wasn’t worried about Zong Yan damaging them. Every time Zong Yan visited, the elderly man would happily show him the new arrivals.
When Zong Yan was in elementary school, he wasn’t overly busy with his studies, and he didn’t have to spend much time on schoolwork. He passed most of his childhood in the used bookstore with its rows and rows of shelves. Zong Yan loved reading books, and he loved learning new things from them.
Of course, one of the categories that interested him most was astronomy.
A decade or so ago, China hadn’t yet developed its own manned spacecraft, but in the former Soviet Union and the United States, astronauts had already gone to space and roamed around.
Which young boy didn’t have a few dreams? Most children dreamed about becoming scientists, painters, and so on.
Zong Yan’s dream was impressive. He wanted to become an astronaut and go into outer space.
But he never imagined his dream would come true in another way.
As the thought crossed his mind, the black-haired young man laughed in blank surprise.
He lifted his gaze and looked out at the deep, silent sea of stars.
In Zong Yan’s eyes, the massive nebulae around him were like slowly rotating trinkets. With the slightest movement of his mind, he could make them silently disappear.
Of course, if he felt like it, he could create even more massive nebulae with a whim, and every flower, every plant, every tree on the planets within them would be created according to his liking.
""He could simulate God’s seven days of creation, or Pan Gu’s separation of the heavens from the earth. He could control a planet’s flow of time, moving the Earth from the current year 2019 to the year 5430, or even the interstellar age.
Of course, that was assuming humans were still around.
The universe was Zong Yan’s garden. It was his playground, and it was his property.
He could paint and draw on it as he pleased. Nothing could defy the will of the Lord of the Universe.
Sometimes Zong Yan wondered: how could Azathoth have so much power but still choose to let himself fade away?
Although Zong Yan had entered the empty shell of Azathoth, he wasn’t the Azathoth who had first created the universe.
Zong Yan was the Azathoth of the new timeline. The moment he became Azathoth, the residual will of the Lord of the Universe modified reality, and the previously existing timeline was changed. In the current version, the universe had been created by “Zong Yan”. The effects of this alteration rippled across all timelines and worlds, and even spread to Zong Yan’s past.
There were countless Zong Yans in countless parallel worlds. Not every Zong Yan would find the notebook, just like the Zong Yan in the Astrologer’s Earth. That world’s Zong Yan spent his life as the only person on the planet with superpowers.
However—as long as there existed a single one of those thousands of parallel worlds in which Zong Yan and Yog got together and Zong Yan became the Lord of the Universe—oh boy, the effects would ripple out to every single timeline.
Sometimes Zong Yan thought he’d stumbled across an incredibly lucky break.
Who would have thought the Lord of the Universe was just an empty shell?
Where had the previous Lord of the Universe gone?
Zong Yan thought of the vast and empty temple he saw when he woke up, and inwardly thought he understood.
Could an evil god feel lonely?
Maybe so.
Maybe Azathoth was lonely, and that was why he made such a beautiful, intricate dream. He created so many different kinds of evil gods and intelligent creatures to keep him company.
Without being aware of it, Zong Yan realized he’d been floating in the universe for a while, so he collected his thoughts and blinked his eyes.
In an instant, at the will of the Lord of the Universe, a tear-like opening appeared in front of the black-haired young man.
He stepped lightly through it and landed on top of a stone pedestal.
All the ancient ones sitting around the throne stood up in surprise.
There was one thought on their minds—
Who was this? How could anyone tear through space and arrive here on their own?!
This wasn’t just some random, nameless place. This was beyond the dimensions, the last outpost of reality in front of the Ultimate Gate of the universe.
Unless the Lord of the Gate, Tawil At-U’mr, personally opened the gate, it was impossible for anyone to arrive here.
""Was it possible… that the person who so easily ignored the laws of the Lord of the Gate was an even greater being than the Lord of the Gate himself?
The ancient ones were amazed. It was only when they saw Zong Yan’s face that they seemed to remember something in a daze.
Hadn’t the Lord of the Gate led a human personally through the Ultimate Gate, and didn’t that human look a lot like this?
While they were all wondering, the human Zong Yan walked up to the Ultimate Gate and casually pushed open the door without knocking.
“Yog?”
The black-haired young man peeked inside and looked around, then closed the door behind him with one hand.
The scene inside the Ultimate Gate hadn’t changed much since the last time Zong Yan saw it. It was basically the same.
Billions of brilliant, glowing spheres slowly rotated, merging and splitting, flickering and flaring in a constant, endless dance, like the sole surviving star fire from an ancient universe.
Of course, Zong Yan was no longer in danger of burning his eyes. He stared at it boldly.
Sometimes Zong Yan thought it was a little strange. Three original gods were born at the beginning of creation, and two of them were hideous tentacle monsters. This Yog guy was the best-looking of all of them, even a bit artistic.
Zong Yan had touched the newly born Yog. His body was soft and gelatinous and felt especially good in Zong Yan’s hand.
“Why did you come here?”
The One-in-All was a little puzzled. He was constantly watching all things, in all worlds, at all times. At the moment, Earth’s Zong Yan was still lying peacefully in the arms of the Lord of the Gate, so this Zong Yan could only be a split incarnation.
It wasn’t unusual for an evil god to open a side account and make an avatar. Nyarlathotep was the best at it, but Yog had done it also.
In fact, Zong Yan had an avatar too. The name of his incarnation was Xada-Hgla, an avatar of the former Azathoth. There was even a lower independent race called the insects of Shaggai who worshipped Xada-Hgla and built a huge, magnificent temple for him on the planet Shaggai. Unfortunately, the temple failed to prevent the planet’s demise. The Shaggai insects moved away, and it was said that they built the last temple to the Lord of the Universe in England’s Severn Valley.
Zong Yan scratched his head. “I don’t know. When I fell asleep, I noticed I was dreaming, and then I came here. I might have accidentally split a wisp of divine essence and created a new avatar.
“But…” The black-haired young man looked a little worried. “It’s the first time I’ve done something like this. There won’t be any problems, right?”
As he spoke, the spheres with glowing surfaces began to descend from high above, gently gathering around Zong Yan.
They were like darting, spherical phantoms, or will-o’-the-wisps floating in the darkness, stacking on top of each other one by one, clustering near him like stars around the moon.
The black-haired young man was surrounded, like a jewel held in the evil god’s palm. If someone looked over from outside, all they’d see was a strange, massive miracle. The most evil being in the universe bowed his head for the young man, and with a low chuckle, he spoke.
“Well, let me take a look.”
—
The author has something to say:
Bubbles: Inspecting ♂
TL Notes:
Pan Gu – 盘古 – Creator of the universe in Chinese mythology
Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:
Pan Gu – 盘古
Xada-Hgla – 撒达·赫格拉
Shaggai – 夏盖
[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]
The night before Zong Yan’s summer vacation came to an end, right before he was scheduled to report to Tsinghua, he had a dream.
Ever since becoming the Lord of the Universe, Zong Yan seldom dreamed.
This was partly because the whole “Azathoth created the universe in his dream and became a human in his dream and then had a dream inside his dream” was really just too much recursion; and it was partly because while Zong Yan was dreaming he might accidentally switch to his evil god form, and if that happened, watch out.
The entire universe was created from Azathoth’s dream, and when Azathoth dreamed inside his dream world, everything in his dream became reality. This meant that when Zong Yan watched a horror movie before bed, the next day he saw a story in the newspaper about corpses going on a murderous rampage. And the only way to get the Lord of the Gate to agree to wind back the clock was to “…” at the same time.
That was why Zong Yan turned off his dreaming subsystem by default.
But this time he indulged himself and ended up in a dream.
The moment he entered the dream, Zong Yan realized the problem.
He wasn’t in reality.
So the black-haired young man looked around, surveying his environment.
There was nothing else around him, just endless darkness, with a few scattered stars visible in the distance.
Zong Yan thought it was strange, so he waved his hand and immediately snapped himself out of the dream.
But after he broke free, his surroundings didn’t change.
“Yog?”
He whispered his lover’s name, but there was no answer.
Weird, was something wrong?
Zong Yan was startled by the thought. In an instant his eyes glittered with chaotic light, and he connected to his true body at the center of time and space, projecting his awareness back to observe the universe.
The solar system was still in good shape, and the Earth remained safely in its orbit. World War III hadn’t broken out. The organizations of various countries were fighting a war of words instead of weapons. Everything was harmonious and peaceful. It didn’t look like an emergency situation.
Zong Yan scratched his head and abandoned his inspection. He stepped into the vacuum of outer space and emerged beyond the dimensions.
The Lord of the Universe wandered slowly through the starry void.
He was dressed in a loose bathrobe, which revealed his beautifully defined calves, and he strolled idly through the endless vacuum with bare feet.
After becoming the Lord of the Universe, Zong Yan hadn’t tried to do anything like this before.
On the one hand, he wanted to finish his life as a human, so he rarely used Azathoth’s power to do much. On the other hand, he was just too busy. Busy coming back to take the college entrance exam, busy shooting a movie, busy looking up his friends, busy falling in love. Where did he have time to experience the supreme power of being the Blind Idiot God?
So this time, Zong Yan slowed down and meandered peacefully through the sea of stars.
When he was a child, Zong Yan liked to read picture books. His family didn’t have much money, so Grandma frequently took him to the nearby second-hand bookstore to borrow books.
""Out of fear of damaging the books, Grandma would carefully wrap them in plastic cut from a bag, then instruct him to be careful while he read them.
Eventually Zong Yan got to know the old grandfather who ran the second-hand bookstore. The store often had new books on the shelves, and the old grandfather wasn’t worried about Zong Yan damaging them. Every time Zong Yan visited, the elderly man would happily show him the new arrivals.
When Zong Yan was in elementary school, he wasn’t overly busy with his studies, and he didn’t have to spend much time on schoolwork. He passed most of his childhood in the used bookstore with its rows and rows of shelves. Zong Yan loved reading books, and he loved learning new things from them.
Of course, one of the categories that interested him most was astronomy.
A decade or so ago, China hadn’t yet developed its own manned spacecraft, but in the former Soviet Union and the United States, astronauts had already gone to space and roamed around.
Which young boy didn’t have a few dreams? Most children dreamed about becoming scientists, painters, and so on.
Zong Yan’s dream was impressive. He wanted to become an astronaut and go into outer space.
But he never imagined his dream would come true in another way.
As the thought crossed his mind, the black-haired young man laughed in blank surprise.
He lifted his gaze and looked out at the deep, silent sea of stars.
In Zong Yan’s eyes, the massive nebulae around him were like slowly rotating trinkets. With the slightest movement of his mind, he could make them silently disappear.
Of course, if he felt like it, he could create even more massive nebulae with a whim, and every flower, every plant, every tree on the planets within them would be created according to his liking.
""He could simulate God’s seven days of creation, or Pan Gu’s separation of the heavens from the earth. He could control a planet’s flow of time, moving the Earth from the current year 2019 to the year 5430, or even the interstellar age.
Of course, that was assuming humans were still around.
The universe was Zong Yan’s garden. It was his playground, and it was his property.
He could paint and draw on it as he pleased. Nothing could defy the will of the Lord of the Universe.
Sometimes Zong Yan wondered: how could Azathoth have so much power but still choose to let himself fade away?
Although Zong Yan had entered the empty shell of Azathoth, he wasn’t the Azathoth who had first created the universe.
Zong Yan was the Azathoth of the new timeline. The moment he became Azathoth, the residual will of the Lord of the Universe modified reality, and the previously existing timeline was changed. In the current version, the universe had been created by “Zong Yan”. The effects of this alteration rippled across all timelines and worlds, and even spread to Zong Yan’s past.
There were countless Zong Yans in countless parallel worlds. Not every Zong Yan would find the notebook, just like the Zong Yan in the Astrologer’s Earth. That world’s Zong Yan spent his life as the only person on the planet with superpowers.
However—as long as there existed a single one of those thousands of parallel worlds in which Zong Yan and Yog got together and Zong Yan became the Lord of the Universe—oh boy, the effects would ripple out to every single timeline.
Sometimes Zong Yan thought he’d stumbled across an incredibly lucky break.
Who would have thought the Lord of the Universe was just an empty shell?
Where had the previous Lord of the Universe gone?
Zong Yan thought of the vast and empty temple he saw when he woke up, and inwardly thought he understood.
Could an evil god feel lonely?
Maybe so.
Maybe Azathoth was lonely, and that was why he made such a beautiful, intricate dream. He created so many different kinds of evil gods and intelligent creatures to keep him company.
Without being aware of it, Zong Yan realized he’d been floating in the universe for a while, so he collected his thoughts and blinked his eyes.
In an instant, at the will of the Lord of the Universe, a tear-like opening appeared in front of the black-haired young man.
He stepped lightly through it and landed on top of a stone pedestal.
All the ancient ones sitting around the throne stood up in surprise.
There was one thought on their minds—
Who was this? How could anyone tear through space and arrive here on their own?!
This wasn’t just some random, nameless place. This was beyond the dimensions, the last outpost of reality in front of the Ultimate Gate of the universe.
Unless the Lord of the Gate, Tawil At-U’mr, personally opened the gate, it was impossible for anyone to arrive here.
""Was it possible… that the person who so easily ignored the laws of the Lord of the Gate was an even greater being than the Lord of the Gate himself?
The ancient ones were amazed. It was only when they saw Zong Yan’s face that they seemed to remember something in a daze.
Hadn’t the Lord of the Gate led a human personally through the Ultimate Gate, and didn’t that human look a lot like this?
While they were all wondering, the human Zong Yan walked up to the Ultimate Gate and casually pushed open the door without knocking.
“Yog?”
The black-haired young man peeked inside and looked around, then closed the door behind him with one hand.
The scene inside the Ultimate Gate hadn’t changed much since the last time Zong Yan saw it. It was basically the same.
Billions of brilliant, glowing spheres slowly rotated, merging and splitting, flickering and flaring in a constant, endless dance, like the sole surviving star fire from an ancient universe.
Of course, Zong Yan was no longer in danger of burning his eyes. He stared at it boldly.
Sometimes Zong Yan thought it was a little strange. Three original gods were born at the beginning of creation, and two of them were hideous tentacle monsters. This Yog guy was the best-looking of all of them, even a bit artistic.
Zong Yan had touched the newly born Yog. His body was soft and gelatinous and felt especially good in Zong Yan’s hand.
“Why did you come here?”
The One-in-All was a little puzzled. He was constantly watching all things, in all worlds, at all times. At the moment, Earth’s Zong Yan was still lying peacefully in the arms of the Lord of the Gate, so this Zong Yan could only be a split incarnation.
It wasn’t unusual for an evil god to open a side account and make an avatar. Nyarlathotep was the best at it, but Yog had done it also.
In fact, Zong Yan had an avatar too. The name of his incarnation was Xada-Hgla, an avatar of the former Azathoth. There was even a lower independent race called the insects of Shaggai who worshipped Xada-Hgla and built a huge, magnificent temple for him on the planet Shaggai. Unfortunately, the temple failed to prevent the planet’s demise. The Shaggai insects moved away, and it was said that they built the last temple to the Lord of the Universe in England’s Severn Valley.
Zong Yan scratched his head. “I don’t know. When I fell asleep, I noticed I was dreaming, and then I came here. I might have accidentally split a wisp of divine essence and created a new avatar.
“But…” The black-haired young man looked a little worried. “It’s the first time I’ve done something like this. There won’t be any problems, right?”
As he spoke, the spheres with glowing surfaces began to descend from high above, gently gathering around Zong Yan.
They were like darting, spherical phantoms, or will-o’-the-wisps floating in the darkness, stacking on top of each other one by one, clustering near him like stars around the moon.
The black-haired young man was surrounded, like a jewel held in the evil god’s palm. If someone looked over from outside, all they’d see was a strange, massive miracle. The most evil being in the universe bowed his head for the young man, and with a low chuckle, he spoke.
“Well, let me take a look.”
—
The author has something to say:
Bubbles: Inspecting ♂
TL Notes:
Pan Gu – 盘古 – Creator of the universe in Chinese mythology
Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:
Pan Gu – 盘古
Xada-Hgla – 撒达·赫格拉
Shaggai – 夏盖
[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]
