“You and I are one. You need not mind such trifles.”
After they regarded each other for a few moments, the large tentacle slowly returned Zong Yan to the surface of the water within the cave.
He wasn’t sure exactly why, because there was no obvious indication, but Zong Yan thought the evil god might be a little tired.
He remembered the tentacle that had secreted mucus into his esophagus just now. Although the liquid was fishy-smelling and unpleasant, it gave Zong Yan an incredible amount of power. The strength coursing through his body was proof of that.
“Is it because you spent too much power to wake me?”
After a pause, Zong Yan decided to say what he was thinking.
It wasn’t possible to fake this kind of closeness and concern, so he decided not to worry too much.
Silence fell in the darkness of the cave.
And then a dark green light suddenly bloomed, illuminating the massive head and tentacles.
All the indescribable things in the cave suddenly vanished. In their place, standing before Zong Yan, was a strange man with dark wheat-colored skin and a naked upper body.
His face didn’t resemble Zong Yan’s in the slightest. While Zong Yan’s hair trailed the ground, the man’s hair only reached his chest. But the dark green color was the same, as were the dark golden eyes that resembled those of a cold-blooded animal.
Even so, their temperament was very different.
One was a beautiful teenager who carried a sense of youthfulness and even a kind of vaguely blurred gender, while the other was a king, evil and cold, who commanded submission with a glance.
If he had to identify the greatest similarity between them, it was probably the strange, demonic green color at the corners of their eyes.
As these thoughts ran through Zong Yan’s mind, he finally accepted the feeling that the man before him wasn’t just an evil god, but also his elder brother.
“Do not worry. It matters not.”
Cthulhu hesitated for a moment, then with a somewhat unnatural gesture stretched out his hand and touched the top of Zong Yan’s head.
Zong Yan’s body was 1.8 meters tall, but the evil god was half a head taller. He was probably more than 1.9 meters and sturdily built.
Zong Yan stared at the striking contours of the other’s body and the muscles that contained so much terrifying power. He inwardly thought the evil god’s appearance was striking, a virile and masculine form of beauty.
And when the other reached out his hand, Zong Yan unthinkingly rubbed against his palm.
Zong Yan: …
What kind of situation is this? His body reacted before his brain?
Cthulhu frowned.
A moment later, Zong Yan felt those powerful arms pass over his shoulders, and then a light fabric draped his body.
He looked down and saw that he was clothed in a dark gray robe, embroidered with intricate and mysterious golden patterns, with jingling ornaments on the cuffs.
The evil god lowered his head and clumsily tied the belt, then looked at his work with satisfaction.
The youth with long, dark green hair tilted his head slightly to look up at him. His appearance was reflected in those dark golden eyes, like the stars in the night sky had been broken up and scattered, shining brightly.
For some reason, the Lord of R’lyeh felt a tightness in his throat.
Evil gods paid no attention to familial relationships. Kinship was nothing to them. A mortal enemy was a mortal enemy, and it was absolutely impossible to show mercy for such a reason. For example, Cthulhu and his brother Hastur were sworn enemies, the kind who would seek to fight each other to the death whenever they met.
Even Azathoth, the Lord of the Universe, and his ungrateful sons were no more to each other than a ruler and his subjects.
Indeed, it was far more reliable to treat an evil god as a subject than try to restrain them with a familial relationship. At least they were willing to submit to an entity stronger than themselves. Otherwise, Azathoth wouldn’t have become the leader of the Outer Gods.
But the youth before him was different.
This was his half-self, his second self, not a brother or a two-faced god. In other words, they should have been the same entity.
No matter how confused an evil god might get, they would never be insane enough to attack themselves. Just like Nyarlathotep, who had so many avatars. No matter how bored he was, he’d never fall to the point of letting one avatar kill another.
So… For him, this was a uniquely trustworthy, utterly one-of-a-kind existence.
For an evil god who’d never felt such emotions, it was a completely novel feeling.
Cthulhu reached out automatically and touched a lock of the youth’s dark green hair, pinning it behind his ear.
The evil god’s fingers were rough and full of calluses. When they brushed Zong Yan’s face, there was a tingling sensation on his skin.
“Let’s go.” He suddenly grabbed the youth’s wrist and plunged into the water.
Zong Yan: “! ! !”
Before he could react, his head was already submerged.
Zong Yan was stunned. After a while, he realized he didn’t have to breathe. Moreover, the water surrounding him was gentle and tame. If he felt the urge, he could control it however he wanted.
No need to breathe… It was an incredible sensation, but as a human who’d lived and breathed for seventeen years, even if he no longer needed oxygen, he still instinctively twitched his nose.
Which led to another issue. Only the evil god’s shell was human. He didn’t actually have any lungs, so he was reacting to nothing.
Zong Yan was beginning to feel a bit pensive. He allowed his body to follow Cthulhu underwater while thoughts spun rapidly through his mind.
He’d obviously died, so what exactly was going on right now?
Zong Yan concentrated on this question. Then a certain image crossed his mind, and he felt shocked.
As he was facing Mordiggian in the void, Zong Yan suddenly realized Ghroth was about to come.
An Outer God was approaching the Milky Way, and Apollo, the Sun God of Earth, naturally experienced a premonition. In an instant he saw an apocalyptic scene. Mountains and rivers collapsed, the earth roared, volcanoes erupted.
An oppressive feeling crawled up his body like a carpet of insects with a shivery feeling of threat. It was certain—Ghroth was about to descend upon the galaxy. The situation was worse than anything Zong Yan had expected.
So he made an instant decision. He reached his hand into the glittering gap in space and grabbed Azathoth’s card.
The situation was urgent. Zong Yan took out the card and crushed it automatically. But as a result, a bunch of dark green crystalline fragments with a mysterious demonic glow scattered in front of him. He was stunned for a moment, but the situation was so dangerous he didn’t have any time to think.
He quickly drew the card again, and that was when he transformed into Azathoth.
But the question remained, what was that dark green card?
Zong Yan hid his hand behind his back, trying to sneak into the gap in space so take out the card again.
There was a certain guess in his mind. Maybe that dark green card was responsible for his current situation.
It must be a daily disposable persona card! If he was right, the card was probably related to Cthulhu. Maybe Cthulhu was a different type of evil god. Unlike the King of Clouds and the Sun God, he was an evil god who actually existed, and that was what created this half-self situation.
But even as he thought this, his fingers grasped nothing at all.
Zong Yan froze for a moment. He instinctively looked down.
“What is the matter?”
In this short space of time, they’d swum to the bottom of the shadowy cave.
On the seafloor was a huge altar made of an unknown type of mineral, painted with glowing, dark green runes. This was the source of the light that dyed the entire cave an eerie vegetable juice color.
When the evil god looked at him, Zong Yan reflexively shook his head. “Nothing.”
But his hands hanging at his sides began to tremble.
Drawing cards from the void was Zong Yan’s superpower, an ability he’d possessed since childhood, something he was born with. He’d always been able to use it, no matter where he was, at any time. Even when his San value was negative, he could easily open the multi-colored space that was uniquely his own.
But now…
He was in the dark.
He’d learned the language of the evil gods without any kind of aid, and the color of his hair and eyes had changed. Even his face didn’t look quite like his own. If he appeared in front of Wang KeMing or Edward in this form, they wouldn’t recognize him at first glance.
Admittedly, there was a great deal of power surging through his body, but the fact there was no blood beneath his skin told him he’d become an evil god, a Great Old One.
In this form he couldn’t take the college entrance exam, and he couldn’t go to MU. He wasn’t even human anymore.
And right now Zong Yan didn’t know whether the superpower he’d had since birth was gone for good.
He felt lost.
After all the excitement of saving the world, Zong Yan was a teenager who wasn’t yet eighteen.
He could feel overwhelmed. He could feel sad and afraid.
But he would never feel regret.
Ahh, I just don’t know if I can find a solution before the college entrance exam! Otherwise won’t it be a waste of all that physics tutoring?
Zong Yan sighed to himself. At the same time, the luminous green runes on the floor began to glow more brightly, and a strange formation spread over the entire cave.
A spatial transfer array had been activated.
The scene in front of Zong Yan changed in a flash.
He reappeared in a magnificent palace.
The palace was dark green in color, just like its owner’s hair, and it glowed with an ominous light. The air inside was murky, but there were random shapes strewn on the ground like large chunks of jade.
The palace didn’t follow any recognizable architectural style. Even the carving and the delicate, magnificent reliefs had a sense of strangeness.
What Zong Yan didn’t realize was that if a human laid eyes on this scene, the only thing they would feel was disgust.
Because the entire palace, not just the angles of the structure itself, but its styling and decorations, deviated from the principles of Euclidean geometry.
It had been built by higher-dimensional beings.
Cthulhu naturally took his hand and led him outside the palace.
They walked barefoot on the cold stone floor. Of course, Zong Yan’s body no longer dreaded heat or cold.
Zong Yan walked past the ornate, gorgeous sculptures, the exquisite decorations, the pillars standing on either side, and finally passed through an archway to the outside.
The sky overhead was blue and clear, and the sunlight streamed onto his face.
Zong Yan’s eyes widened.
“O great father and savior, eternal master of R’lyeh, we hail you!”
They stood above the city, looking down at the endless urban landscape below.
The palace overlooked the center of the city, surrounded by the other buildings like stars surrounding the moon.
How big was it? Even the legendary Atlantis might pale before this city. Its size was shocking.
And in the streets, thousands upon thousands of otherworldly creatures knelt towards the palace with faces full of worship.
From their appearance, Zong Yan knew they were members of Cthulhu’s clan.
“They are Deep Ones and Star-spawn and shoggoths. Lesser beings.” The evil god swept a careless glance at them, and his dark golden eyes were full of indifference. When he lowered his head, his expression remained the same, but his tone softened. “This is R’lyeh.
“Our R’lyeh,” he added after a moment of thought.
At that point, Zong Yan realized the underlying inconsistency that kept bothering him.
According to the records of the occult world, R’lyeh sank beneath the sea hundreds of millions of years ago.
For millions of years, Cthulhu’s followers had tried to return the city to the surface.
And now—
It stood in the middle of the ocean in all its magnificent glory and splendor, without any trace of having sunk.
—
The author has something to say:
Zong Yan: Now I’m a person with a background!
Let’s talk a little about the family relationships of the evil gods. Lovecraft didn’t specify the parents of Cthulhu. Later people came up with two different versions.
How should I say this… I’m going to blur this setting a bit. The story won’t mention Cthulhu’s parent god, because for evil gods, kinship really doesn’t mean anything. It’s fine for people to play around in the comment section, just know that I won’t mention this aspect in the story.
Azathoth is the father god of the three original pillar gods, and I’ll mention the relationship between Cthulhu and Hastur, but aside from that, don’t pay attention to other kinship relationships. They won’t be covered in the story.
—
TL Notes:
I’m not sure if the author changed their mind later or is scamming us, but contrary to this author’s note, the parent god of Cthulhu is named in a later chapter. Maybe the author just means she isn’t going to follow the usual mythology or something, idk. I mention this because I felt so amazed and betrayed (… jk ofc). It’s not super important. I’m just mentioning it so you won’t look at me later like, “Confectioner, what is this?” I don’t know either. (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥
Cthulhu’s “clan” – 眷族 – juànzú – family members, family dependent clan/race/nationality
a person with a “background” – 后台 – backstage – background, backing, support – Basically, a person with a family or allies to back them up
R’lyeh:
Image source: Richard Benning – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
Image source: Walter Brocca – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]
“You and I are one. You need not mind such trifles.”
After they regarded each other for a few moments, the large tentacle slowly returned Zong Yan to the surface of the water within the cave.
He wasn’t sure exactly why, because there was no obvious indication, but Zong Yan thought the evil god might be a little tired.
He remembered the tentacle that had secreted mucus into his esophagus just now. Although the liquid was fishy-smelling and unpleasant, it gave Zong Yan an incredible amount of power. The strength coursing through his body was proof of that.
“Is it because you spent too much power to wake me?”
After a pause, Zong Yan decided to say what he was thinking.
It wasn’t possible to fake this kind of closeness and concern, so he decided not to worry too much.
Silence fell in the darkness of the cave.
And then a dark green light suddenly bloomed, illuminating the massive head and tentacles.
All the indescribable things in the cave suddenly vanished. In their place, standing before Zong Yan, was a strange man with dark wheat-colored skin and a naked upper body.
His face didn’t resemble Zong Yan’s in the slightest. While Zong Yan’s hair trailed the ground, the man’s hair only reached his chest. But the dark green color was the same, as were the dark golden eyes that resembled those of a cold-blooded animal.
Even so, their temperament was very different.
One was a beautiful teenager who carried a sense of youthfulness and even a kind of vaguely blurred gender, while the other was a king, evil and cold, who commanded submission with a glance.
If he had to identify the greatest similarity between them, it was probably the strange, demonic green color at the corners of their eyes.
As these thoughts ran through Zong Yan’s mind, he finally accepted the feeling that the man before him wasn’t just an evil god, but also his elder brother.
“Do not worry. It matters not.”
Cthulhu hesitated for a moment, then with a somewhat unnatural gesture stretched out his hand and touched the top of Zong Yan’s head.
Zong Yan’s body was 1.8 meters tall, but the evil god was half a head taller. He was probably more than 1.9 meters and sturdily built.
Zong Yan stared at the striking contours of the other’s body and the muscles that contained so much terrifying power. He inwardly thought the evil god’s appearance was striking, a virile and masculine form of beauty.
And when the other reached out his hand, Zong Yan unthinkingly rubbed against his palm.
Zong Yan: …
What kind of situation is this? His body reacted before his brain?
Cthulhu frowned.
A moment later, Zong Yan felt those powerful arms pass over his shoulders, and then a light fabric draped his body.
He looked down and saw that he was clothed in a dark gray robe, embroidered with intricate and mysterious golden patterns, with jingling ornaments on the cuffs.
The evil god lowered his head and clumsily tied the belt, then looked at his work with satisfaction.
The youth with long, dark green hair tilted his head slightly to look up at him. His appearance was reflected in those dark golden eyes, like the stars in the night sky had been broken up and scattered, shining brightly.
For some reason, the Lord of R’lyeh felt a tightness in his throat.
Evil gods paid no attention to familial relationships. Kinship was nothing to them. A mortal enemy was a mortal enemy, and it was absolutely impossible to show mercy for such a reason. For example, Cthulhu and his brother Hastur were sworn enemies, the kind who would seek to fight each other to the death whenever they met.
Even Azathoth, the Lord of the Universe, and his ungrateful sons were no more to each other than a ruler and his subjects.
Indeed, it was far more reliable to treat an evil god as a subject than try to restrain them with a familial relationship. At least they were willing to submit to an entity stronger than themselves. Otherwise, Azathoth wouldn’t have become the leader of the Outer Gods.
But the youth before him was different.
This was his half-self, his second self, not a brother or a two-faced god. In other words, they should have been the same entity.
No matter how confused an evil god might get, they would never be insane enough to attack themselves. Just like Nyarlathotep, who had so many avatars. No matter how bored he was, he’d never fall to the point of letting one avatar kill another.
So… For him, this was a uniquely trustworthy, utterly one-of-a-kind existence.
For an evil god who’d never felt such emotions, it was a completely novel feeling.
Cthulhu reached out automatically and touched a lock of the youth’s dark green hair, pinning it behind his ear.
The evil god’s fingers were rough and full of calluses. When they brushed Zong Yan’s face, there was a tingling sensation on his skin.
“Let’s go.” He suddenly grabbed the youth’s wrist and plunged into the water.
Zong Yan: “! ! !”
Before he could react, his head was already submerged.
Zong Yan was stunned. After a while, he realized he didn’t have to breathe. Moreover, the water surrounding him was gentle and tame. If he felt the urge, he could control it however he wanted.
No need to breathe… It was an incredible sensation, but as a human who’d lived and breathed for seventeen years, even if he no longer needed oxygen, he still instinctively twitched his nose.
Which led to another issue. Only the evil god’s shell was human. He didn’t actually have any lungs, so he was reacting to nothing.
Zong Yan was beginning to feel a bit pensive. He allowed his body to follow Cthulhu underwater while thoughts spun rapidly through his mind.
He’d obviously died, so what exactly was going on right now?
Zong Yan concentrated on this question. Then a certain image crossed his mind, and he felt shocked.
As he was facing Mordiggian in the void, Zong Yan suddenly realized Ghroth was about to come.
An Outer God was approaching the Milky Way, and Apollo, the Sun God of Earth, naturally experienced a premonition. In an instant he saw an apocalyptic scene. Mountains and rivers collapsed, the earth roared, volcanoes erupted.
An oppressive feeling crawled up his body like a carpet of insects with a shivery feeling of threat. It was certain—Ghroth was about to descend upon the galaxy. The situation was worse than anything Zong Yan had expected.
So he made an instant decision. He reached his hand into the glittering gap in space and grabbed Azathoth’s card.
The situation was urgent. Zong Yan took out the card and crushed it automatically. But as a result, a bunch of dark green crystalline fragments with a mysterious demonic glow scattered in front of him. He was stunned for a moment, but the situation was so dangerous he didn’t have any time to think.
He quickly drew the card again, and that was when he transformed into Azathoth.
But the question remained, what was that dark green card?
Zong Yan hid his hand behind his back, trying to sneak into the gap in space so take out the card again.
There was a certain guess in his mind. Maybe that dark green card was responsible for his current situation.
It must be a daily disposable persona card! If he was right, the card was probably related to Cthulhu. Maybe Cthulhu was a different type of evil god. Unlike the King of Clouds and the Sun God, he was an evil god who actually existed, and that was what created this half-self situation.
But even as he thought this, his fingers grasped nothing at all.
Zong Yan froze for a moment. He instinctively looked down.
“What is the matter?”
In this short space of time, they’d swum to the bottom of the shadowy cave.
On the seafloor was a huge altar made of an unknown type of mineral, painted with glowing, dark green runes. This was the source of the light that dyed the entire cave an eerie vegetable juice color.
When the evil god looked at him, Zong Yan reflexively shook his head. “Nothing.”
But his hands hanging at his sides began to tremble.
Drawing cards from the void was Zong Yan’s superpower, an ability he’d possessed since childhood, something he was born with. He’d always been able to use it, no matter where he was, at any time. Even when his San value was negative, he could easily open the multi-colored space that was uniquely his own.
But now…
He was in the dark.
He’d learned the language of the evil gods without any kind of aid, and the color of his hair and eyes had changed. Even his face didn’t look quite like his own. If he appeared in front of Wang KeMing or Edward in this form, they wouldn’t recognize him at first glance.
Admittedly, there was a great deal of power surging through his body, but the fact there was no blood beneath his skin told him he’d become an evil god, a Great Old One.
In this form he couldn’t take the college entrance exam, and he couldn’t go to MU. He wasn’t even human anymore.
And right now Zong Yan didn’t know whether the superpower he’d had since birth was gone for good.
He felt lost.
After all the excitement of saving the world, Zong Yan was a teenager who wasn’t yet eighteen.
He could feel overwhelmed. He could feel sad and afraid.
But he would never feel regret.
Ahh, I just don’t know if I can find a solution before the college entrance exam! Otherwise won’t it be a waste of all that physics tutoring?
Zong Yan sighed to himself. At the same time, the luminous green runes on the floor began to glow more brightly, and a strange formation spread over the entire cave.
A spatial transfer array had been activated.
The scene in front of Zong Yan changed in a flash.
He reappeared in a magnificent palace.
The palace was dark green in color, just like its owner’s hair, and it glowed with an ominous light. The air inside was murky, but there were random shapes strewn on the ground like large chunks of jade.
The palace didn’t follow any recognizable architectural style. Even the carving and the delicate, magnificent reliefs had a sense of strangeness.
What Zong Yan didn’t realize was that if a human laid eyes on this scene, the only thing they would feel was disgust.
Because the entire palace, not just the angles of the structure itself, but its styling and decorations, deviated from the principles of Euclidean geometry.
It had been built by higher-dimensional beings.
Cthulhu naturally took his hand and led him outside the palace.
They walked barefoot on the cold stone floor. Of course, Zong Yan’s body no longer dreaded heat or cold.
Zong Yan walked past the ornate, gorgeous sculptures, the exquisite decorations, the pillars standing on either side, and finally passed through an archway to the outside.
The sky overhead was blue and clear, and the sunlight streamed onto his face.
Zong Yan’s eyes widened.
“O great father and savior, eternal master of R’lyeh, we hail you!”
They stood above the city, looking down at the endless urban landscape below.
The palace overlooked the center of the city, surrounded by the other buildings like stars surrounding the moon.
How big was it? Even the legendary Atlantis might pale before this city. Its size was shocking.
And in the streets, thousands upon thousands of otherworldly creatures knelt towards the palace with faces full of worship.
From their appearance, Zong Yan knew they were members of Cthulhu’s clan.
“They are Deep Ones and Star-spawn and shoggoths. Lesser beings.” The evil god swept a careless glance at them, and his dark golden eyes were full of indifference. When he lowered his head, his expression remained the same, but his tone softened. “This is R’lyeh.
“Our R’lyeh,” he added after a moment of thought.
At that point, Zong Yan realized the underlying inconsistency that kept bothering him.
According to the records of the occult world, R’lyeh sank beneath the sea hundreds of millions of years ago.
For millions of years, Cthulhu’s followers had tried to return the city to the surface.
And now—
It stood in the middle of the ocean in all its magnificent glory and splendor, without any trace of having sunk.
—
The author has something to say:
Zong Yan: Now I’m a person with a background!
Let’s talk a little about the family relationships of the evil gods. Lovecraft didn’t specify the parents of Cthulhu. Later people came up with two different versions.
How should I say this… I’m going to blur this setting a bit. The story won’t mention Cthulhu’s parent god, because for evil gods, kinship really doesn’t mean anything. It’s fine for people to play around in the comment section, just know that I won’t mention this aspect in the story.
Azathoth is the father god of the three original pillar gods, and I’ll mention the relationship between Cthulhu and Hastur, but aside from that, don’t pay attention to other kinship relationships. They won’t be covered in the story.
—
TL Notes:
I’m not sure if the author changed their mind later or is scamming us, but contrary to this author’s note, the parent god of Cthulhu is named in a later chapter. Maybe the author just means she isn’t going to follow the usual mythology or something, idk. I mention this because I felt so amazed and betrayed (… jk ofc). It’s not super important. I’m just mentioning it so you won’t look at me later like, “Confectioner, what is this?” I don’t know either. (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥
Cthulhu’s “clan” – 眷族 – juànzú – family members, family dependent clan/race/nationality
a person with a “background” – 后台 – backstage – background, backing, support – Basically, a person with a family or allies to back them up
R’lyeh:
Image source: Richard Benning – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
Image source: Walter Brocca – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]
