Yog-Sothoth deliberately lowered his voice, and his ambiguous words seemed to contain a thousand suggestive meanings.
If an intelligent creature had the ability to withstand the mental pollution of direct contact with an evil god, they would discover that this, in fact, was what lay behind the Ultimate Gate.
It was said that anyone who managed to pass the Ultimate Gate would learn the sum of all knowledge, the secrets of everything in the universe. But in reality there was nothing beyond the gate but the true body of Yog-Sothoth.
Yog-Sothoth was knowledge itself, the All-in-One, the supreme unity of existence. To see him was to see everything.
Zong Yan told himself this wouldn’t be good. The corners of his eyes twitched and he said, somewhat helplessly, “Can you try not to fill your head with this kind of thing all day long?”
“What kind of thing?” the Lord of the Gate asked with perfect innocence.
Zong Yan couldn’t have said why, but even with all these bubbles stacked in front of him, he could still imagine the Lord of the Gate’s exact expression right now.
There would be a lazy smile on his face, an eyebrow slightly raised, and his head propped in his hand as he stared minutely at Zong Yan, just like so many times before.
“What exactly are you talking about?” the evil god asked again. His voice was tinged with low laughter.
Suddenly an ice-cold sphere burrowed under Zong Yan’s clothes. The black-haired young man watched in shock as the sphere dissolved into a slimy, liquid state, wordlessly wrapping him up inside it.
Obviously, Yog-Sothoth was well-acquainted with Zong Yan’s preferences. The cold sensation lasted only a short period before it warmed to something closer to human body temperature. There was a slight sensation of heat, neither too hot nor unbearably cold.
You’re the one who swore you’d never be interested in a low-level intelligent creature! Hah, straight from the mouth of an evil god, what a liar.
The evil god’s voice was low and gravelly: “I’m not thinking about anything. All I’m doing right now is following the ideas in your head.
“Besides… You enjoy it too. Don’t you?”
The words seemed to reverberate, but they also seemed completely silent.
The sound came from a distance, a far-off place filled with endless malice, and somewhere inside it was the demonic, bewitching whisper of an evil god. Any intelligent creature who heard, or saw, or came into contact with this kind of scene would go mad from the incomprehensible things they witnessed, forever wandering in confusion and disarray, their sanity lost and unrecoverable within a human lifetime.
An infinite multitude of spheres constantly fusing, constantly fissioning, trapped the black-haired young man in the center. The glowing spheres lay somewhere on the boundary between reality and illusion, existing in a mysterious state that couldn’t be expressed in human words, but they became physically real the instant they came into contact with Zong Yan’s body.
The black-haired young man lay on his back, floating, surrounded by bright but indistinct phantoms, like he was drifting in a cloud of light.
Zong Yan inwardly cursed eight generations of Yog-Sothoth’s ancestors, incidentally excluding his father.
He was currently in human form, a mimetic human, and although he desperately wanted to swipe the screen to something else, his body was already responding.
Only those who’d experienced it would know what it felt like to be favored by a god. Whether a god of light or a god of evil, the moment the eyes of that divine being focused on you couldn’t be described.
After a Supreme Being chose you, it wouldn’t allow you to escape, and whether selected by light or darkness, the feeling didn’t change. Even if darkness chose you, you’d throw yourself into its arms without any hesitation.
All the spheres melted into liquid and gently enveloped Zong Yan’s body.
There was no unnecessary movement. Zong Yan felt as if he’d fallen into a layer of warm and placid water. The fluid wrapped around his body like a soothing stream, softly washing over his limbs.
The flowing water was never truly tangible, not quite physically real, which made it even more alarming when it suddenly ran wild, moving violently.
The black-haired young man received these rampant fluctuations helplessly. His body moved in rhythm, rising and sinking in the waves.
His four limbs were pale and slender, with blue blood vessels faintly outlined on his skin. Under the radiance of the glowing light, there was a kind of sanctity that was simultaneously eerie and demonic.
The currents were sometimes urgent, sometimes gentle, but each of them was exactly right—sensation dancing on the tip of a knife.
The all-knowing, all-seeing Lord didn’t abandon any of his patience. He precisely controlled every nuance affecting the young man’s body. Every contraction, every slackening, even the wandering movement of his eyes were anticipated by the Lord of the Gate.
The ancient ones who were just beyond the Gate had no idea that not far away, their forever rational and logical Supreme Lord was skillfully pleasuring his beloved human being.
But it wasn’t over yet. The fluid seeped beneath the young man’s skin, visibly sinking inside him, and in a slow, relaxed manner it changed its material substance and merged with his surging blood.
In an instant, Zong Yan felt his soul plunge into a vast ocean.
Only after he was completely immersed did he realize he’d been here once before.
A long while ago, around the time the Lord of the Gate said he’d tutor Zong Yan in physics, they’d connected over a psychic bridge.
Back then, Zong Yan was really, truly an ordinary high school student. And the Lord of the Gate was a high and mighty evil god who merely spared him some attention.
Therefore, when the psychic bridge was established, the Lord of the Gate gave Zong Yan some slightly malicious advice. In addition to intimidating Zong Yan not to try to leave before the lesson ended, he also warned him not to try to cross the psychic bridge and contact the other side, or Zong Yan would encounter a horrifying scene that would crater his IQ on the spot.
Needless to say, Zong Yan had no interest in Yog-Sothoth’s sea of consciousness, and he had absolutely no wish to become a permanent vegetable. After all, he still had to take the college entrance exam. He wasn’t curious in the least.
So he never attempted to go over and take a look.
This time the Lord of the Gate personally invited him in.
“Aside from you, no one else has ever been here.”
The black-haired young man was drawn upwards against the current, across the psychic flood, to the inner reaches of the evil god’s mind.
This was the sea of consciousness of Yog-Sothoth.
But the word ‘sea’ was no longer accurate. This place was vast and infinite and it had nothing to do with common matter. It was more like a spiritual convergence, indeterminate and formless.
Of course, Zong Yan was completely without fear. He switched his spiritual body over to his Azathoth form and roamed around like he was taking a casual stroll.
But he soon lost the ability to form any thoughts at all.
Countless and vast, resplendent, abhorrent, ghastly, ponderous, incandescent, dark, ecstatic…
Everywhere, everything, the torrent of consciousness pierced through him over and over like a needle, softly slicing open all of Zong Yan’s hidden recesses. An even larger spiritual body cut through him, intersecting, merging.
It was an arcane and mysterious process. No evil god would ever voluntarily do such a thing to another evil god, because it was equivalent to the deepest level of contact and communication, and in such circumstances all distance between them was reduced to zero.
“Ah—”
Outside the sea of consciousness, the black-haired young man’s body suddenly spasmed.
Those liquid currents didn’t stop their movements but followed the raging flood of the sea of consciousness. Gradually the rhythms fell into sync.
Zong Yan even became a little confused. Where was he?
Was he an ordinary high school student, or was he Azathoth, the Lord of the Universe; was he experiencing the past, or was he creating the future?
Zong Yan opened his mouth to make a sound, but it was impossible to squeeze even half a word from his throat.
Everything came to a halt.
The young man who was lying amidst the glory of billions of brilliant spheres of light had disappeared, replaced by a massive kaleidoscopic fantasy, an abyss. He had all the qualities of an abyss.
He was like everything, and He was like a slowly rotating black hole with no visible end. Everything, even the light emanating from the spheres, was absorbed by Him. Nothing and no one could escape His control or His sanction.
The spheres, however, weren’t afraid at all. They even began to tremble slightly.
This wasn’t from beholding the true body of the Lord of the Universe, but rather—
One after another, the massive shadowy shapes tried to fold themselves up and rushed towards that abyss. Even the Lord of the Gate himself could hardly endure a few seconds under that terrible sight. But he was so overwhelmed, so aroused by the thought of what he was doing that he couldn’t stop himself from shaking.
The spheres were all swallowed up by the abyss. Just like at the time of the original creation, they reverted to the Nameless Mist, returning to the primeval core of the universe.
Countless timelines collapsed as a result, countless worlds perished, countless worlds survived.
They were entangled beyond the dimensions of existence. One true body and another were completely, utterly entangled. The slightest fluctuation might trigger the destruction of the universe, and time lost its meaning from that moment. Even the ancient ones were stunned and knelt before the Gate in silence.
“I finally, completely, have you.”
—
Zong Yan was fuming.
After he got up from bed, he immediately used his authority to block the Lord of the Gate’s permissions and hurled the evil god who’d been lying beside him back where he belonged.
The incidents of last night, which began somewhat inexplicably, ended in tragedy.
Zong Yan’s avatar actually collapsed.
Making Zong Yan lose consciousness was one thing, but mauling his avatar to the point that it collapsed was just outrageous.
So outrageous that a vague sensation actually reached Zong Yan’s current body, making him walk a little unsteadily.
That hateful, wretched, feral Yog-Sothoth! He clearly knew today was the day Zong Yan had to report to Tsinghua!!
""Zong Yan viciously waved his hand and dispelled the pain in his body as he stomped out of the house.
After he was admitted to Tsinghua University, the door of the villa was no longer connected to the private garden in Jiangzhou. It had been moved to the capital, just a ten minute walk from Tsinghua.
In other words, even if Zong Yan was going off to college, he didn’t have to live in the dorms. Every day he could go straight home after class.
There weren’t many otherworldly creatures here in the capital. One reason was the dragon vein mountains nearby. In ancient times, a great master had buried an enormous old seal under the mountain range. Not only did this prevent extraterrestrials from visiting, evil gods avoided the area too. After all, as far as evil gods were concerned, old seals were as appealing as poop.
Today was the first day for students to report to school. After dealing with the scoundrel Lord of the Gate, Zong Yan picked up his school bag and followed a shady path, slowly walking to the place designated for freshmen to sign in.
Unfortunately, he relaxed too soon.
When Zong Yan filled out the form and handed it in, he happened to glance up.
In front of him, a gray-haired evil god gazed over with a smile, propping his head on his hand. The ID badge of a professor was on his chest, and in his eyes was a knowing, incomparable expression.
Zong Yan: “…”
TL Notes:
what a liar – 骗人的鬼 – deceitful ghost, dirty trick, etc.
dragon vein – 龙脉 – Undulating mountains, an important concept in feng shui (Wikipedia)
[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]
Yog-Sothoth deliberately lowered his voice, and his ambiguous words seemed to contain a thousand suggestive meanings.
If an intelligent creature had the ability to withstand the mental pollution of direct contact with an evil god, they would discover that this, in fact, was what lay behind the Ultimate Gate.
It was said that anyone who managed to pass the Ultimate Gate would learn the sum of all knowledge, the secrets of everything in the universe. But in reality there was nothing beyond the gate but the true body of Yog-Sothoth.
Yog-Sothoth was knowledge itself, the All-in-One, the supreme unity of existence. To see him was to see everything.
Zong Yan told himself this wouldn’t be good. The corners of his eyes twitched and he said, somewhat helplessly, “Can you try not to fill your head with this kind of thing all day long?”
“What kind of thing?” the Lord of the Gate asked with perfect innocence.
Zong Yan couldn’t have said why, but even with all these bubbles stacked in front of him, he could still imagine the Lord of the Gate’s exact expression right now.
There would be a lazy smile on his face, an eyebrow slightly raised, and his head propped in his hand as he stared minutely at Zong Yan, just like so many times before.
“What exactly are you talking about?” the evil god asked again. His voice was tinged with low laughter.
Suddenly an ice-cold sphere burrowed under Zong Yan’s clothes. The black-haired young man watched in shock as the sphere dissolved into a slimy, liquid state, wordlessly wrapping him up inside it.
Obviously, Yog-Sothoth was well-acquainted with Zong Yan’s preferences. The cold sensation lasted only a short period before it warmed to something closer to human body temperature. There was a slight sensation of heat, neither too hot nor unbearably cold.
You’re the one who swore you’d never be interested in a low-level intelligent creature! Hah, straight from the mouth of an evil god, what a liar.
The evil god’s voice was low and gravelly: “I’m not thinking about anything. All I’m doing right now is following the ideas in your head.
“Besides… You enjoy it too. Don’t you?”
The words seemed to reverberate, but they also seemed completely silent.
The sound came from a distance, a far-off place filled with endless malice, and somewhere inside it was the demonic, bewitching whisper of an evil god. Any intelligent creature who heard, or saw, or came into contact with this kind of scene would go mad from the incomprehensible things they witnessed, forever wandering in confusion and disarray, their sanity lost and unrecoverable within a human lifetime.
An infinite multitude of spheres constantly fusing, constantly fissioning, trapped the black-haired young man in the center. The glowing spheres lay somewhere on the boundary between reality and illusion, existing in a mysterious state that couldn’t be expressed in human words, but they became physically real the instant they came into contact with Zong Yan’s body.
The black-haired young man lay on his back, floating, surrounded by bright but indistinct phantoms, like he was drifting in a cloud of light.
Zong Yan inwardly cursed eight generations of Yog-Sothoth’s ancestors, incidentally excluding his father.
He was currently in human form, a mimetic human, and although he desperately wanted to swipe the screen to something else, his body was already responding.
Only those who’d experienced it would know what it felt like to be favored by a god. Whether a god of light or a god of evil, the moment the eyes of that divine being focused on you couldn’t be described.
After a Supreme Being chose you, it wouldn’t allow you to escape, and whether selected by light or darkness, the feeling didn’t change. Even if darkness chose you, you’d throw yourself into its arms without any hesitation.
All the spheres melted into liquid and gently enveloped Zong Yan’s body.
There was no unnecessary movement. Zong Yan felt as if he’d fallen into a layer of warm and placid water. The fluid wrapped around his body like a soothing stream, softly washing over his limbs.
The flowing water was never truly tangible, not quite physically real, which made it even more alarming when it suddenly ran wild, moving violently.
The black-haired young man received these rampant fluctuations helplessly. His body moved in rhythm, rising and sinking in the waves.
His four limbs were pale and slender, with blue blood vessels faintly outlined on his skin. Under the radiance of the glowing light, there was a kind of sanctity that was simultaneously eerie and demonic.
The currents were sometimes urgent, sometimes gentle, but each of them was exactly right—sensation dancing on the tip of a knife.
The all-knowing, all-seeing Lord didn’t abandon any of his patience. He precisely controlled every nuance affecting the young man’s body. Every contraction, every slackening, even the wandering movement of his eyes were anticipated by the Lord of the Gate.
The ancient ones who were just beyond the Gate had no idea that not far away, their forever rational and logical Supreme Lord was skillfully pleasuring his beloved human being.
But it wasn’t over yet. The fluid seeped beneath the young man’s skin, visibly sinking inside him, and in a slow, relaxed manner it changed its material substance and merged with his surging blood.
In an instant, Zong Yan felt his soul plunge into a vast ocean.
Only after he was completely immersed did he realize he’d been here once before.
A long while ago, around the time the Lord of the Gate said he’d tutor Zong Yan in physics, they’d connected over a psychic bridge.
Back then, Zong Yan was really, truly an ordinary high school student. And the Lord of the Gate was a high and mighty evil god who merely spared him some attention.
Therefore, when the psychic bridge was established, the Lord of the Gate gave Zong Yan some slightly malicious advice. In addition to intimidating Zong Yan not to try to leave before the lesson ended, he also warned him not to try to cross the psychic bridge and contact the other side, or Zong Yan would encounter a horrifying scene that would crater his IQ on the spot.
Needless to say, Zong Yan had no interest in Yog-Sothoth’s sea of consciousness, and he had absolutely no wish to become a permanent vegetable. After all, he still had to take the college entrance exam. He wasn’t curious in the least.
So he never attempted to go over and take a look.
This time the Lord of the Gate personally invited him in.
“Aside from you, no one else has ever been here.”
The black-haired young man was drawn upwards against the current, across the psychic flood, to the inner reaches of the evil god’s mind.
This was the sea of consciousness of Yog-Sothoth.
But the word ‘sea’ was no longer accurate. This place was vast and infinite and it had nothing to do with common matter. It was more like a spiritual convergence, indeterminate and formless.
Of course, Zong Yan was completely without fear. He switched his spiritual body over to his Azathoth form and roamed around like he was taking a casual stroll.
But he soon lost the ability to form any thoughts at all.
Countless and vast, resplendent, abhorrent, ghastly, ponderous, incandescent, dark, ecstatic…
Everywhere, everything, the torrent of consciousness pierced through him over and over like a needle, softly slicing open all of Zong Yan’s hidden recesses. An even larger spiritual body cut through him, intersecting, merging.
It was an arcane and mysterious process. No evil god would ever voluntarily do such a thing to another evil god, because it was equivalent to the deepest level of contact and communication, and in such circumstances all distance between them was reduced to zero.
“Ah—”
Outside the sea of consciousness, the black-haired young man’s body suddenly spasmed.
Those liquid currents didn’t stop their movements but followed the raging flood of the sea of consciousness. Gradually the rhythms fell into sync.
Zong Yan even became a little confused. Where was he?
Was he an ordinary high school student, or was he Azathoth, the Lord of the Universe; was he experiencing the past, or was he creating the future?
Zong Yan opened his mouth to make a sound, but it was impossible to squeeze even half a word from his throat.
Everything came to a halt.
The young man who was lying amidst the glory of billions of brilliant spheres of light had disappeared, replaced by a massive kaleidoscopic fantasy, an abyss. He had all the qualities of an abyss.
He was like everything, and He was like a slowly rotating black hole with no visible end. Everything, even the light emanating from the spheres, was absorbed by Him. Nothing and no one could escape His control or His sanction.
The spheres, however, weren’t afraid at all. They even began to tremble slightly.
This wasn’t from beholding the true body of the Lord of the Universe, but rather—
One after another, the massive shadowy shapes tried to fold themselves up and rushed towards that abyss. Even the Lord of the Gate himself could hardly endure a few seconds under that terrible sight. But he was so overwhelmed, so aroused by the thought of what he was doing that he couldn’t stop himself from shaking.
The spheres were all swallowed up by the abyss. Just like at the time of the original creation, they reverted to the Nameless Mist, returning to the primeval core of the universe.
Countless timelines collapsed as a result, countless worlds perished, countless worlds survived.
They were entangled beyond the dimensions of existence. One true body and another were completely, utterly entangled. The slightest fluctuation might trigger the destruction of the universe, and time lost its meaning from that moment. Even the ancient ones were stunned and knelt before the Gate in silence.
“I finally, completely, have you.”
—
Zong Yan was fuming.
After he got up from bed, he immediately used his authority to block the Lord of the Gate’s permissions and hurled the evil god who’d been lying beside him back where he belonged.
The incidents of last night, which began somewhat inexplicably, ended in tragedy.
Zong Yan’s avatar actually collapsed.
Making Zong Yan lose consciousness was one thing, but mauling his avatar to the point that it collapsed was just outrageous.
So outrageous that a vague sensation actually reached Zong Yan’s current body, making him walk a little unsteadily.
That hateful, wretched, feral Yog-Sothoth! He clearly knew today was the day Zong Yan had to report to Tsinghua!!
""Zong Yan viciously waved his hand and dispelled the pain in his body as he stomped out of the house.
After he was admitted to Tsinghua University, the door of the villa was no longer connected to the private garden in Jiangzhou. It had been moved to the capital, just a ten minute walk from Tsinghua.
In other words, even if Zong Yan was going off to college, he didn’t have to live in the dorms. Every day he could go straight home after class.
There weren’t many otherworldly creatures here in the capital. One reason was the dragon vein mountains nearby. In ancient times, a great master had buried an enormous old seal under the mountain range. Not only did this prevent extraterrestrials from visiting, evil gods avoided the area too. After all, as far as evil gods were concerned, old seals were as appealing as poop.
Today was the first day for students to report to school. After dealing with the scoundrel Lord of the Gate, Zong Yan picked up his school bag and followed a shady path, slowly walking to the place designated for freshmen to sign in.
Unfortunately, he relaxed too soon.
When Zong Yan filled out the form and handed it in, he happened to glance up.
In front of him, a gray-haired evil god gazed over with a smile, propping his head on his hand. The ID badge of a professor was on his chest, and in his eyes was a knowing, incomparable expression.
Zong Yan: “…”
TL Notes:
what a liar – 骗人的鬼 – deceitful ghost, dirty trick, etc.
dragon vein – 龙脉 – Undulating mountains, an important concept in feng shui (Wikipedia)
[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]
