Beyond the universe, at the center of time and space, there was silence. It was only after entering the palace that one would hear the monotonous, accursed whine of unseen flutes, the symbol of the Lord of the Universe who was immersed in his beguiling dream.
Normally, a horde of Outer Gods danced outside the palace, and musicians held flutes and continually piped the sickening music day after day. And servants of the Outer Gods accompanied the dance day and night, and any intelligent creatures who heard it lost their minds.
Today, all three of the original pillar gods had arrived, and the Outer Gods around the palace ceased their piping. Their indescribable bodies shrank, treading carefully on the ground in a form more convenient for walking.
‘Is His Majesty Azathoth about to awaken?’
The Outer Gods’ psychic tendrils covered the entire universe, and when Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath arrived, Outer Gods from all over the universe received the news and tore through space-time to come as well.
The palace was full of indescribable colors, and malicious tentacles waved in the air, hovering unsteadily, weaving hypnotic, nauseating patterns.
This was the center of time and space, the starting point of everything, and it could easily accommodate the true bodies of the Outer Gods. For example, the dancers circling the palace were the size of planets.
This was a major event. What was about to happen? Was it possible that His Majesty was finally going to wake up?
It was such big news that little by little the word got out, and many more evil gods arrived in person. Some of them came in their own bodies, which were incredibly vast, and the palace that could accommodate so many via spatial expansion eventually ran out of room.
Everyone who entered the palace hesitated a little.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to come. It was just that they were afraid of the sound of His Majesty’s flute, which had an unfortunate brainwashing effect on anyone who listened to it for a long time. Many of the evil gods that served in Azathoth’s palace so conscientiously ended up staying because they’d been brainwashed after hearing it too long.
But if His Majesty wanted to wake up, his subjects had to be there. Anything else was an open declaration of disrespect. When His Majesty awakened, none of them would be able to escape, so everyone held their noses and showed up.
" "They filed into the palace, and everyone said “Huh” for a while and milled around.
No one observed the three pillars of the original gods who also waited in front of the palace. Anyway, all they could do was wait.
While the evil gods were standing by, a bright glow suddenly erupted in the center of the palace.
Billions of brilliant spheres of light burst out in the middle, so glaring and bright that its radiance couldn’t be looked at directly.
Many evil gods recognized it as the true body of Yog-Sothoth, but that guy lived outside the universe. They didn’t see him too often.
“The stream of consciousness didn’t return.”
For just a moment, the mass of glowing spheres contracted and collapsed, until it finally folded itself into a gray-haired man in a trench coat with a book in his hand.
Yog’s face was reserved. The words he’d just spoken didn’t fluctuate much.
He’d actually spent a lot of time searching. How could a human mind evade an Outer God? Not to mention, when the mental capability of the omniscient and omnipotent Lord was fully exerted, nothing in the eleven dimensions of the universe could escape his scrutiny.
It was just that, in all timelines, Azathoth never woke up.
How was that possible?!
The Lord of Time and Space, who’d never before experienced a miscalculation, felt incredibly displeased.
“Didn’t return? How is that possible?” Nyarlathotep had been lounging to the side in a good mood, but now he straightened up and his eyes turned an eerie crimson.
If the stream of consciousness didn’t come back, it meant Azathoth wouldn’t awaken.
Before Zong Yan, Azathoth had never spawned a stream of consciousness. His mind was full of clutter and disordered thoughts, just like the evil gods he’d generated.
Now that a consciousness had finally been created, and voluntarily sacrificed itself, how could it not return to Azathoth?
“Oh, what a shame,” Shub said with a phony smile. He stood across from them, looking like he’d just arrived from a movie set. His red eyes hidden behind sunglasses gave Nyarla a provocative stare. “The Father God is happy with this universe. He doesn’t want to wake up just yet.”
“Since His Majesty will not awaken, there’s no point in staying here.” While Nyarla and Shub jabbed at each other, Yog spoke up.
The man held an obscure book in one hand and had the other in the pocket of his trench coat. He looked calm and unperturbed.
A moment later, space throughout the palace was turned upside down. Every irrelevant evil god was shoved out.
Time rewound. Although creatures that existed above the dimensions weren’t controlled by time, Yog-Sothoth reversed the time axis and forcibly sent them back to where they came from.
It wasn’t something an ordinary god was capable of doing. Among evil gods, there were very few who could control time. Only the Lord of Time and Space could do it easily, and this time the target consisted of dozens of powerful Outer Gods.
But it wasn’t that important in the end. It had been a long time since the Outer Gods had gotten together, but anyway it was just a mistake and His Majesty didn’t happen to wake up after all. Someone gave them a ride home, so they yawned and went back to their own things. Once again, the indescribable piping of flutes could be heard outside the palace, and only the remaining three primal gods remained inside.
The three of them existed at the same level, so they weren’t affected by Yog-Sothoth’s time reversal.
“My dear Yog, you don’t seem to be in a good mood?” Of the three original gods, the cheeriest one was Shub.
As he stared at the gloomy-looking Nyarla, Shub’s irritation reduced quite a bit.
Shub was the last person who wanted Azathoth to be resurrected. But that human had ignored his generous offer and used the card at the last moment, which really came as a surprise.
Shub had no idea what went wrong after that. The thing he wanted to avoid didn’t happen, and he was also able to taunt Nyarla about it, so his happiness couldn’t be put into words.
The Lord of Time and Space gave Shub a cold glance.
The next moment, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young was shrouded in a web of dark spatial cracks. The timeline began to shift backwards out of control.
If the blow had targeted any other type of creature, including a Great Old One, such an attack would have severed them from their body.
Unfortunately, the three original gods were on the same level. If they had to compete based on strength, there was no real way to determine a winner.
When the space around him began to shatter, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young revealed his own indescribable body. Thousands of tentacles waved in the air, and a sticky liquid dripped from countless mouths and fell into the void. The sudden change in mass deformed nearby space, so the attack didn’t land.
“Ahh, it looks like you’re in a really bad mood.” After the unnamable horror transformed once again into the Earth’s most well-known international superstar, Shub casually brushed back his long, disheveled hair.
“It’s strange that the stream of consciousness failed to return to His Majesty Azathoth. Didn’t it die?”
The palace was nearly empty. Nyarla and Yog had left long ago. Except for the ceaselessly irritating sound of a flute, there was no response to Shub’s question.
The Black Goat with a Thousand Young touched his chin, then ripped through space and departed. “Forget it, who cares. I’m just glad He didn’t wake up.”
Just how horrifying was the sound of His Majesty’s flute? Even for the three proto-gods, if they listened to it long enough, it inflicted a kind of spiritual pollution.
—
Zong Yan knew very clearly he was dead.
The moment he used the Azathoth card, he felt as if he’d been swept away by thousands of torrents, suddenly becoming the most insignificant grain of sand in the universe.
It was an amazing sensation—he felt very clearly that his soul had broken away from the weight of his body, freed itself from its shackles, and drifted slowly in the void.
He walked the star-strewn universe and saw stars wherever he looked. Although he was able to see, he couldn’t influence where his soul went. He’d lost control. He couldn’t move at all.
So—
Just like that, he was dead.
He was floating gently in the starry void, and gradually, somehow, began to feel some regret.
To die saving humanity was heroic and cool, of course, but he hadn’t taken the college entrance exam yet. He hadn’t been able to go to Tsinghua yet. There were goals in his life he hadn’t achieved. Thinking about all those things, it was really a shame.
Even worse, Zong Yan had finally managed to cram high school physics knowledge into his head thanks to the mental torture of Yog-Sothoth. That was more than a hundred hours of mental torture!! If he died like this and couldn’t even take the college entrance exam, wasn’t it a waste of suffering?!
The more Zong Yan thought about it, the angrier he felt. Without his noticing, his body grew more and more transparent.
The next moment, his vision went black. And he vanished.
A dark green rift full of the unknown swallowed him up.
The next time he awoke, Zong Yan felt like he was trapped in a narrow space. The air was full of the smell of seawater.
His body was so heavy he didn’t have any strength at all, and he was so drowsy it was difficult to open his eyes.
That was when a cold and sticky object caressed his cheek, then jabbed itself down Zong Yan’s throat without any explanation.
Zong Yan: …
Vomit—
Whatever it was tasted really bitter and astringent. Not only did it have a disgusting fishy smell, it was as cold as an arctic glacier. To summarize, it didn’t feel very good at all.
But right now Zong Yan couldn’t control his body.
He felt like his entire frame was an ice sculpture without a trace of heat. Forget about trying to resist—he could hardly even crook a finger.
The sticky thing pried open his mouth, passed deep into his throat through his esophagus without any obstruction, and began to secrete an indescribable fluid.
As the disgusting liquid flowed inside him, Zong Yan felt a sensation of warmth in the very center of his body. It gradually increased in temperature, like an ice sculpture that was slowly reviving into a person.
That strange and repulsive liquid was giving him vitality, sending him a constant flow of life energy.
He didn’t know how long it took, but after a while Zong Yan felt like he’d gradually gained some strength. He was able to twitch his fingertips and lift the tip of his tongue.
‘Don’t move. I won’t hurt you.’
A cold voice appeared in his mind, loud as a thunderclap.
Although the voice was low and gravelly, the concern it contained was absolutely genuine.
Even to the extent that… he didn’t know why, but the moment the voice appeared, Zong Yan actually felt a sense of long-lost affinity and closeness from deep inside.
So he forgot to struggle for a while, but slowly opened his eyes.
This was a dark cave with a high dome, filled with seawater, unfathomably deep.
Nameless tentacles coiled in the shadows, brutally occupying almost the entire cave.
Within those shadows, an unsightly, octopus-like head was quietly regarding him.
At the surface, on the border between the water and the air, Zong Yan was floating naked in the sea, covered only by ankle-length, dark green hair, staring into the four eyes opposite him.
—
The author has something to say:
In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
TL Notes:
Welcome to the new arc! It continues through Chapter 92 (ﾉ◔ ₒ ◔)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. – 在永恒的宅邸拉莱耶中，长眠的克苏鲁候汝入梦。 In Lovecraft’s stories, R’lyeh is referred to with the ritualistic phrase “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” with the provided translation: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”. The meaning of the author’s version is very slightly different, but it seems to be the most common Chinese translation of this set phrase. The changes probably make it sound more poetic in Chinese
Azathoth:
Image source: Call of Cthulhu, French version – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]
Beyond the universe, at the center of time and space, there was silence. It was only after entering the palace that one would hear the monotonous, accursed whine of unseen flutes, the symbol of the Lord of the Universe who was immersed in his beguiling dream.
Normally, a horde of Outer Gods danced outside the palace, and musicians held flutes and continually piped the sickening music day after day. And servants of the Outer Gods accompanied the dance day and night, and any intelligent creatures who heard it lost their minds.
Today, all three of the original pillar gods had arrived, and the Outer Gods around the palace ceased their piping. Their indescribable bodies shrank, treading carefully on the ground in a form more convenient for walking.
‘Is His Majesty Azathoth about to awaken?’
The Outer Gods’ psychic tendrils covered the entire universe, and when Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath arrived, Outer Gods from all over the universe received the news and tore through space-time to come as well.
The palace was full of indescribable colors, and malicious tentacles waved in the air, hovering unsteadily, weaving hypnotic, nauseating patterns.
This was the center of time and space, the starting point of everything, and it could easily accommodate the true bodies of the Outer Gods. For example, the dancers circling the palace were the size of planets.
This was a major event. What was about to happen? Was it possible that His Majesty was finally going to wake up?
It was such big news that little by little the word got out, and many more evil gods arrived in person. Some of them came in their own bodies, which were incredibly vast, and the palace that could accommodate so many via spatial expansion eventually ran out of room.
Everyone who entered the palace hesitated a little.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to come. It was just that they were afraid of the sound of His Majesty’s flute, which had an unfortunate brainwashing effect on anyone who listened to it for a long time. Many of the evil gods that served in Azathoth’s palace so conscientiously ended up staying because they’d been brainwashed after hearing it too long.
But if His Majesty wanted to wake up, his subjects had to be there. Anything else was an open declaration of disrespect. When His Majesty awakened, none of them would be able to escape, so everyone held their noses and showed up.
" "They filed into the palace, and everyone said “Huh” for a while and milled around.
No one observed the three pillars of the original gods who also waited in front of the palace. Anyway, all they could do was wait.
While the evil gods were standing by, a bright glow suddenly erupted in the center of the palace.
Billions of brilliant spheres of light burst out in the middle, so glaring and bright that its radiance couldn’t be looked at directly.
Many evil gods recognized it as the true body of Yog-Sothoth, but that guy lived outside the universe. They didn’t see him too often.
“The stream of consciousness didn’t return.”
For just a moment, the mass of glowing spheres contracted and collapsed, until it finally folded itself into a gray-haired man in a trench coat with a book in his hand.
Yog’s face was reserved. The words he’d just spoken didn’t fluctuate much.
He’d actually spent a lot of time searching. How could a human mind evade an Outer God? Not to mention, when the mental capability of the omniscient and omnipotent Lord was fully exerted, nothing in the eleven dimensions of the universe could escape his scrutiny.
It was just that, in all timelines, Azathoth never woke up.
How was that possible?!
The Lord of Time and Space, who’d never before experienced a miscalculation, felt incredibly displeased.
“Didn’t return? How is that possible?” Nyarlathotep had been lounging to the side in a good mood, but now he straightened up and his eyes turned an eerie crimson.
If the stream of consciousness didn’t come back, it meant Azathoth wouldn’t awaken.
Before Zong Yan, Azathoth had never spawned a stream of consciousness. His mind was full of clutter and disordered thoughts, just like the evil gods he’d generated.
Now that a consciousness had finally been created, and voluntarily sacrificed itself, how could it not return to Azathoth?
“Oh, what a shame,” Shub said with a phony smile. He stood across from them, looking like he’d just arrived from a movie set. His red eyes hidden behind sunglasses gave Nyarla a provocative stare. “The Father God is happy with this universe. He doesn’t want to wake up just yet.”
“Since His Majesty will not awaken, there’s no point in staying here.” While Nyarla and Shub jabbed at each other, Yog spoke up.
The man held an obscure book in one hand and had the other in the pocket of his trench coat. He looked calm and unperturbed.
A moment later, space throughout the palace was turned upside down. Every irrelevant evil god was shoved out.
Time rewound. Although creatures that existed above the dimensions weren’t controlled by time, Yog-Sothoth reversed the time axis and forcibly sent them back to where they came from.
It wasn’t something an ordinary god was capable of doing. Among evil gods, there were very few who could control time. Only the Lord of Time and Space could do it easily, and this time the target consisted of dozens of powerful Outer Gods.
But it wasn’t that important in the end. It had been a long time since the Outer Gods had gotten together, but anyway it was just a mistake and His Majesty didn’t happen to wake up after all. Someone gave them a ride home, so they yawned and went back to their own things. Once again, the indescribable piping of flutes could be heard outside the palace, and only the remaining three primal gods remained inside.
The three of them existed at the same level, so they weren’t affected by Yog-Sothoth’s time reversal.
“My dear Yog, you don’t seem to be in a good mood?” Of the three original gods, the cheeriest one was Shub.
As he stared at the gloomy-looking Nyarla, Shub’s irritation reduced quite a bit.
Shub was the last person who wanted Azathoth to be resurrected. But that human had ignored his generous offer and used the card at the last moment, which really came as a surprise.
Shub had no idea what went wrong after that. The thing he wanted to avoid didn’t happen, and he was also able to taunt Nyarla about it, so his happiness couldn’t be put into words.
The Lord of Time and Space gave Shub a cold glance.
The next moment, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young was shrouded in a web of dark spatial cracks. The timeline began to shift backwards out of control.
If the blow had targeted any other type of creature, including a Great Old One, such an attack would have severed them from their body.
Unfortunately, the three original gods were on the same level. If they had to compete based on strength, there was no real way to determine a winner.
When the space around him began to shatter, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young revealed his own indescribable body. Thousands of tentacles waved in the air, and a sticky liquid dripped from countless mouths and fell into the void. The sudden change in mass deformed nearby space, so the attack didn’t land.
“Ahh, it looks like you’re in a really bad mood.” After the unnamable horror transformed once again into the Earth’s most well-known international superstar, Shub casually brushed back his long, disheveled hair.
“It’s strange that the stream of consciousness failed to return to His Majesty Azathoth. Didn’t it die?”
The palace was nearly empty. Nyarla and Yog had left long ago. Except for the ceaselessly irritating sound of a flute, there was no response to Shub’s question.
The Black Goat with a Thousand Young touched his chin, then ripped through space and departed. “Forget it, who cares. I’m just glad He didn’t wake up.”
Just how horrifying was the sound of His Majesty’s flute? Even for the three proto-gods, if they listened to it long enough, it inflicted a kind of spiritual pollution.
—
Zong Yan knew very clearly he was dead.
The moment he used the Azathoth card, he felt as if he’d been swept away by thousands of torrents, suddenly becoming the most insignificant grain of sand in the universe.
It was an amazing sensation—he felt very clearly that his soul had broken away from the weight of his body, freed itself from its shackles, and drifted slowly in the void.
He walked the star-strewn universe and saw stars wherever he looked. Although he was able to see, he couldn’t influence where his soul went. He’d lost control. He couldn’t move at all.
So—
Just like that, he was dead.
He was floating gently in the starry void, and gradually, somehow, began to feel some regret.
To die saving humanity was heroic and cool, of course, but he hadn’t taken the college entrance exam yet. He hadn’t been able to go to Tsinghua yet. There were goals in his life he hadn’t achieved. Thinking about all those things, it was really a shame.
Even worse, Zong Yan had finally managed to cram high school physics knowledge into his head thanks to the mental torture of Yog-Sothoth. That was more than a hundred hours of mental torture!! If he died like this and couldn’t even take the college entrance exam, wasn’t it a waste of suffering?!
The more Zong Yan thought about it, the angrier he felt. Without his noticing, his body grew more and more transparent.
The next moment, his vision went black. And he vanished.
A dark green rift full of the unknown swallowed him up.
The next time he awoke, Zong Yan felt like he was trapped in a narrow space. The air was full of the smell of seawater.
His body was so heavy he didn’t have any strength at all, and he was so drowsy it was difficult to open his eyes.
That was when a cold and sticky object caressed his cheek, then jabbed itself down Zong Yan’s throat without any explanation.
Zong Yan: …
Vomit—
Whatever it was tasted really bitter and astringent. Not only did it have a disgusting fishy smell, it was as cold as an arctic glacier. To summarize, it didn’t feel very good at all.
But right now Zong Yan couldn’t control his body.
He felt like his entire frame was an ice sculpture without a trace of heat. Forget about trying to resist—he could hardly even crook a finger.
The sticky thing pried open his mouth, passed deep into his throat through his esophagus without any obstruction, and began to secrete an indescribable fluid.
As the disgusting liquid flowed inside him, Zong Yan felt a sensation of warmth in the very center of his body. It gradually increased in temperature, like an ice sculpture that was slowly reviving into a person.
That strange and repulsive liquid was giving him vitality, sending him a constant flow of life energy.
He didn’t know how long it took, but after a while Zong Yan felt like he’d gradually gained some strength. He was able to twitch his fingertips and lift the tip of his tongue.
‘Don’t move. I won’t hurt you.’
A cold voice appeared in his mind, loud as a thunderclap.
Although the voice was low and gravelly, the concern it contained was absolutely genuine.
Even to the extent that… he didn’t know why, but the moment the voice appeared, Zong Yan actually felt a sense of long-lost affinity and closeness from deep inside.
So he forgot to struggle for a while, but slowly opened his eyes.
This was a dark cave with a high dome, filled with seawater, unfathomably deep.
Nameless tentacles coiled in the shadows, brutally occupying almost the entire cave.
Within those shadows, an unsightly, octopus-like head was quietly regarding him.
At the surface, on the border between the water and the air, Zong Yan was floating naked in the sea, covered only by ankle-length, dark green hair, staring into the four eyes opposite him.
—
The author has something to say:
In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
TL Notes:
Welcome to the new arc! It continues through Chapter 92 (ﾉ◔ ₒ ◔)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. – 在永恒的宅邸拉莱耶中，长眠的克苏鲁候汝入梦。 In Lovecraft’s stories, R’lyeh is referred to with the ritualistic phrase “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” with the provided translation: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”. The meaning of the author’s version is very slightly different, but it seems to be the most common Chinese translation of this set phrase. The changes probably make it sound more poetic in Chinese
Azathoth:
Image source: Call of Cthulhu, French version – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]
