Chapter 15: CH 15

Zong Yan apprehensively read the third volume of the original 《Necronomicon》 from cover to cover. 

Volume III didn’t have much content, which was reflected in its page count. Compared to books with thousands of pages in the Miskatonic library, it was a little more than thirty pages. He could feel the lightness in his hand.

It was only after Zong Yan finished reading that he realized the volume only discussed a single God. Yog-Sothoth, the great Lord of the Gate.

At just over thirty pages, the unabridged version was incredibly detailed. Not only did it record the method of summoning the Outer God, it talked up the Lord of the Gate from beginning to end. It was a shining example of academic bias.

Compared to the other Outer Gods, Yog-Sothoth was a lot more approachable. Maybe it was because this omniscient and omnipotent Lord never tried to descend on the world in his true form. He must be aware of the consequences of this, which would inadvertently crush his followers along with the planet itself into slag.

To be honest, the true body of any Outer God was an absolute disaster. They were located outside the universe and beyond the dimensions. If one really wasn’t paying attention and appeared in his real form, then sadly the entire galaxy would collapse into a giant black hole and everything would be destroyed from the immense mass. However, there were a lot of cultists who didn’t come from a scientific background and still hoped their Lord could come to the Earth and rule over humanity, which created an endless amount of work for investigators.

To invite the arrival of Yog-Sothoth, believers didn’t even need to prepare that many offerings. All they needed was to build a charming stone tower for their lord and recite a mantra on a clear and cloudless day. After the summoning, the believers would casually point at random, and the Lord of the Gate would happily go to nearby villages to find his own sacrifices, without any Outer God primadonna baggage whatsoever.

Zong Yan: ? ? ?

Such a casual and warm-hearted god was really hard to find, especially when such a large number of evil gods were extraordinarily picky about the materials used for summoning. It was like a breath of fresh air.

With an emotional sigh, he lowered the book with a history of more than one thousand years to the bed and turned his head, gazing at the bright moon hanging high in the sky.

Tonight’s moon was particularly round and full. The cold moonlight was suspended in the air like a curtain of gauze, as pale as the descending Milky Way.

Zong Yan remembered that according to the lunar calendar, today was probably the fifteenth of the month.

The moon should always be full on the fifteenth. He unlocked his phone screen and checked the lunar calendar.

… Oh, July 15.

That was the date of China’s famous Mid-Autumn Festival, commonly known as the Ghost Festival.

Zong Yan wasn’t afraid. He was in a foreign country now, and ghost festivals were divided into regions. Foreign ghosts only celebrated Halloween.

Maybe it was because he’d tried Irish coffee for dinner today. It was midnight and he didn’t feel sleepy at all.

It was the first time Zong Yan had insomnia since he came to MU.

The black-haired young man was lying on the white sheets in his pajamas, rubbing his hair in annoyance until it resembled a chicken’s nest.

Tomorrow was the start of his first weekend at MU. Zong Yan refused Wang KeMing’s offer to go to London to have fun, deciding to spend the weekend with his vast pile of physics homework.

Zong Yan really didn’t have many requirements for material things. He was satisfied if he could eat until he was full. If the food was delicious, so much the better. For him, entertainment and hobbies came down to reading books and amusing himself on his own, occasionally brushing up on his favorite math problems.

After so many years of poverty, even if his standard of living had suddenly improved, Zong Yan hadn’t come up with any extra hobbies. Even if he had some money now, he felt ashamed to use it. All he did was save it. Anyway, no matter what, Zong Yan was incapable of going shopping at Harrods with Wang KeMing, or running off to a fancy club in London to strut around.

“But tomorrow is a weekend… You can legally stay in bed.”

If he didn’t stay up late tonight, wasn’t it a waste of an opportunity to sleep in?

The more Zong Yan thought about it, the more he was convinced. He reached out his hand and drew a card from the void.

Countless brilliant lines appeared inside the gap in space, gradually transforming into the shape of a card.

Ghoul language ability card.

Zong Yan: …

Ever since he’d entered school, the cards he pulled were strange. Last time he got a nightgaunt language card, which really stunned him for a while.

Even if he learned to speak these creatures’ languages, he wondered what he was supposed to do when he met one face-to-face. Should his first reaction be to rush over and beat them up like usual? Or was he going to stop and ask a friendly question in their language first. “Hey, little brother, are you about to start a fight?”

Look at the famous heroes in martial arts dramas. Whenever people were at the same level, what mattered was who was faster with their sword.

In the world of martial arts, speed makes you invincible. Zong Yan understood this very well.

Speaking of which, he suddenly remembered he hadn’t used the new A-rank daily disposable persona card he pulled last time.

The main reason was that he just had too many things going on lately. The new school had given Zong Yan a serious sense of insecurity, so he hadn’t dared to draw many cards during the first week. He kept his San value high just in case.

Now that he thought about it, if that persona card consumed half the San value at night, it would be a lot more effective than the Child of the Wind for him at this stage. He needed to hurry up and figure out more about the card to give himself a bit more security.

As he lay on the bed Zong Yan pulled out the persona card and crushed it in his hand.

""

The persona card wasn’t easy to break. When it finally snapped, it shattered neatly into countless little ice crystals. Zong Yan used to play with tactile fidget toys as a child. His OCD was in love.

【A-rank daily disposable persona card: first time activation. Please assign a name.】

Zong Yan thought about it. “Let’s call it the Night Watchman.”

【Daily disposable persona card “Night Watchman” requires SAN value = 35. Current SAN value = 40. Activation successful.】

【Attention. This persona can be maintained for approximately 8 hours at night】

【According to the rules, night is the time between sunset and sunrise. At sunrise, the SAN value consumed by the persona card will double.】

This wasn’t a voice that was talking to Zong Yan. After he used the persona card, these messages automatically appeared as a stream of thoughts in his mind.

The next second, the fragments of stardust scattered in the air and disappeared beneath his skin. The dazzling light vanished in a flash.

In addition to the time limit for using daily disposable persona cards, the physical transformation itself was a big dramatic thing. It was basically a magic girl transformation sequence in an anime, including the background music.

That was why Zong Yan generally wouldn’t activate a persona unless he was in a critical situation. Last time, when he mistakenly beat up a nightgaunt in midair, he fortunately had enough San value to deactivate the persona at a high altitude. Otherwise he would have had to explain to a crowd of senior investigators why he had the ability to transform himself.

In an instant Zong Yan, whose hair had been messy as a haystack a moment ago, became a Night Watchman in a black trenchcoat with his hair neatly tied back in a ribbon.

His temperament had also updated, changing from a sloppy male college student lying in bed with nothing to do, straight into a smartly-dressed metropolitan gentleman of the foggy streets, ready to attend a ball anytime, anywhere.

Thud—

Because he was reclining in bed, the top hat on his head smoothly rolled aside and tumbled to the floor.

But that was nothing. The most important thing was that Zong Yan felt a heavy weight on his left shoulder.

As he turned his head, it so happened that the beak-masked bird of death looked over too. Two pairs of scarlet eyes locked on each other. The latter party could see that the former’s eyes were dull. It didn’t seem too smart.

Zong Yan: …

This card actually included a portable pet, not bad.

“This bird really needs to lose some weight.”

The bird hadn’t looked that fat on the card.

Unexpectedly, the bird of death understood what he said. At first it gathered its wings together to settle on his shoulder, but now it gave a twitch. The creature turned its butt to his face and lifted its wings, knocked open the window and flew away.

Ohhh, quite a temper.

Zong Yan paused for a moment. Then he gracefully rose with an elegant posture. He slowly and carefully drew on a pair of black gloves, freed the gold chain dangling from his pocket, and smoothed out the folds of the long black coat and the dark gray dress shirt beneath.

When he’d finished all this and was standing on the carpet, only then did he reflect on what he’d just done.

According to Zong Yan’s usual personality, he never would have been so meticulous. It was probably a result of the personality attached to the Night Watchman card.

Zong Yan wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

Anyway, the next step was to test this card’s abilities.

The black umbrella in the Night Watchman’s hand gently tapped against the ground. His figure elegantly dissolved into the shadows.

The next second, the top hat-wearing Night Watchman reappeared outside the window.

Oh… This card was able to blend itself into the shadows, but there were a lot of restrictions on the range of movement. 

The feeling of passing through the shadows was wonderful, just like rising through a smooth, warm layer of water.

Zong Yan stared at the reflection of the eaves in the window glass and melted down into a shadow again. This time he appeared on the roof of a nearby villa.

Clothed in moonlight, he gazed down at the night from a high vantage.

Zong Yan’s heart seemed to be filled with an unparalleled sense of conceit, like the night was naturally his territory. At the moment of integrating into the shadows, he felt an overwhelming sense of composure and even… desire for domination.

For as long as the night endured, he was its master.

The Night Watchman paused on the roof of the building, suddenly opened his black umbrella and jumped down from a height of three stories.

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The moonlight flowed with pure, clear light. The shadow of the black umbrella and a human-shaped figure were faithfully projected on the ground. But at the moment he jumped, the human shadow quietly melded into the umbrella.

If someone happened to look over, they would only see a black umbrella, as though supported by an invisible person, falling straight down to the ground, a top-heavy object completely ignoring Newton’s laws.

The Child of the Wind’s trait was wind manipulation, and its special ability was flight. The Night Watchman’s currently known special ability was blending into shadows, but he didn’t know what its trait was.

Zong Yan thought this card might be able to manipulate darkness or shadows, but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t make his shadow disappear.

He tried to call his harbinger bird again, but there was no response. It was probably still angry.

Strange.

Generally speaking, traits should be easier to find than special abilities. When Zong Yan first used the Child of the Wind card, he discovered its special abilities after noticing the traits. But the Night Watchman seemed the other way around.

He thought about the keywords on the card over and over, and suddenly, in the next second, he heard a strange voice.

The voice was particularly strange, ethereal but very clear.

Zong Yan sensed he was the only one with the ability to hear it.

“Prince Edward’s at it again. It’s the middle of the night and he won’t let the ghosts sleep!”

Zong Yan: …?

Damn, ghosts?!

He reflexively wanted to gulp, but this card clearly insisted on carrying out British elegance to the end and didn’t allow him to do so. Zong Yan could only stare in the dark. His gloved fingers unthinkingly toyed with the gold pocket watch dangling from his pocket, as though its cold surface could cool his head.

Zong Yan had always been a materialist. He himself was a classic example of “you have to see it to believe it”.

He didn’t believe in ghosts or gods.

Unfortunately, this little assertion was smashed to bits after he came to Miskatonic University.

Darwin had ceased to be religious in his later years, but the great man had stood at the podium and said “gods really exist”, so Zong Yan had to change his disbelief in ghosts and gods to disbelief in ghosts.

But as it turned out, today, July 15, the day of the famous Ghost Festival, his only remaining creed was broken.

Zong Yan’s mind reviewed some ghost movies he’d seen when he was younger. He thought of all those disheveled older sisters and immediately wanted to turn around and leave.

He thought he understood the traits of this card now.

The Night Watchman. Its trait was… bridging life and death.

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The sound of a violin abruptly resonated through the night.

The violinist was obviously in a good mood. He could pull out a section of Rachmaninov’s Vocalise with the agitation of Paganini. With the moonlight it was really a bit romantic.

“Damn it! Disturbing ghosts in the middle of the night, there’s no end to it!!”

As Zong Yan stood in the corner he found the ethereal voice that called itself a “ghost” came from the villa next to him.

The villa actually had very good sound insulation. If he weren’t standing nearby, he really wouldn’t have heard it. There was no impact on neighbors like Zong Yan who lived in another building, but for ghosts it really was a little loud.

Moments later, Zong Yan heard countless different voices, one after another.

“The prince has only been enrolled in school for five days, and every night he has to make that racket until midnight.”

“Exactly! I didn’t think MU’s art department was so famous when I was alive. Why did this prince even report to MU? Hell, the Royal Conservatory of Music should have welcomed him!”

The wispy voice of one of the ghosts came much closer: “You ghosts who only come to visit don’t know. I’m the resident ghost of this villa. There’s a lot of gossip about the little prince.”

“What, there’s gossip? What gossip, tell me!”

All of a sudden the ghosts were boiling over with fascination, chattering noisily.

You couldn’t blame them for being interested when their own lives were so boring.

These ghosts were basically professors or students of Miskatonic University who’d lost their lives in attacks by various bizarre creatures. Many of them were from the time when MU was still in the town of Arkham.

After the school moved to the border of the Dreamlands, many of these remnants of consciousness had transmuted, producing an existence similar to a ghost.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t be seen by others, and they could only communicate ghost-to-ghost. As the days stretched on, they had nothing to do but chinwag and idle about.

Zong Yan listened to their conversation and overheard a few vaguely familiar names. For example, a certain ghost was the unlucky investigator whose heart was ripped out by an otherworldly horror in a laboratory, and another ghost was the leader of MU’s Antarctic research team one year. Later he died heroically fighting cultists. Because he was so worried about MU, he eventually drifted over from the Antarctic.

Zong Yan: Antarctica and the US are so far apart—this ghost really worked hard.

“You don’t know about that, do you?” The ghost who’d first said the word “gossip” was smug. “I died later than all of you. I know a lot more about the private affairs of the British royal family than you.”

One of the ghosts was impatient. “Stop talking nonsense. Out with it.”

“Don’t be in such a hurry. Did you ever hear those rumors about the previous queen of the British royal family, the one who died so strangely?”

Perhaps the British constitutional monarchy and parliamentary system weren’t fully developed back then. From the signing of the Autumn Act by the legendary King Lanchester I until the present day, the British royal family continued to wield some power, and could even influence the decisions of the cabinet and prime minister.

Unfortunately, as time passed, and because of the mess left by the late kings George VI and Edward VIII, the common people came to resent the royal family. In modern times, an endless stream of voices in the Commonwealth spoke against the royal family. The royal family was walking on thin ice.

The current ruler of England was King Lanchester II. He’d turned sixty a few years ago and had three children: two sons and a daughter.

“Prince Edward is the youngest son of Lanchester II. Because he’s the child of the king’s old age, he’s always been highly favored. Unfortunately, when Prince Edward was seven, his mother Queen Isabella died under mysterious circumstances.”

This event caused a sensation in the last century.

Isabella, the queen of Lanchester II, was a gentle and beautiful person. She became his consort when Lanchester II was still a prince. Unexpectedly, a year after the king succeeded to the throne, the queen died in a freak incident in Buckingham Palace.

What was even more shocking was that Lanchester II remarried before Queen Isabella’s bones were cold, just half a year after the funeral.

The ghost tsked and lamented, “At first MU sent investigators to Buckingham Palace to investigate Queen Isabella’s death. Unfortunately, the British royal family obstructed everything to save face. In the end nothing was confirmed.

“The only certainty is that Queen Isabella’s death was linked to a cult that’s entrenched in London. They’re most likely followers of some Great Old One.

“The night before last, I’m afraid the little prince had a nightmare and called out his mother’s name in the middle of the night. He’s a prince but he didn’t even bring a bodyguard or servant. It took quite some courage to choose to enroll at MU.”

The ghosts fell silent.

At this point Zong Yan was embarrassed to continue eavesdropping.

For a while he stood in the shadows, listening to the dulcet sound of the violin.

Although it was a sentimental piece of music, Zong Yan felt a sense of liberation in it, like the notes had broken free from bondage and were jumping happily on the strings.

Since their first meeting, Prince Edward lived up to his words. He was very self-effacing and treated Zong Yan like a friend.

The Irish coffee Zong Yan drank that night was recommended by the young prince.

As his thoughts drifted, the Night Watchman saw a nebulous cluster of shadows floating in the air.

He shivered automatically, turned around and walked away.

Compared to the gods that Professor Darwin talked about in class, Zong Yan thought the existence of ghosts made an even more terrible impact on his mind.

The Night Watchman put away his black umbrella and slowly merged into the shadows beneath his feet.

In the distance, the harbinger bird swept past the dead branches of the trees. Perfect silence reigned over the night. The shadows bent their heads in silence and bowed to their new master.

What Zong Yan didn’t know was that behind the curtains of another house, a gray-haired man closed the book in his hand and quietly tore a hole in space.

—

His first beautiful weekend at Miskatonic University passed uneventfully in countless physics assignments.

On Sunday night Zong Yan had nothing to do, so he took a shower and lay in bed playing Rubik’s cube.

The phone beside him suddenly vibrated. Zong Yan picked it up and looked at it. The latest text message said the engineering professor had temporarily received an emergency assignment, and all magic pattern classes for the next two weeks were canceled.

Magic patterns had always been MU’s ace in the hole. It was one of the mandatory courses. The discipline required a diverse array of knowledge, covering both arts and sciences, memorization, calculation, and even drawing. All in all, if investigators wanted to learn to recite incantations and protect themselves in battles with extraterrestrial creatures, magic patterns were a no-brainer.

Some elective courses in MU were intriguing. For example, there was a class that studied friendly exotic species. In their first lesson, the students were sent to the hidden gate of MU to find a nightgaunt and have a friendly conversation.

The moment the head nightgaunt saw Zong Yan, he was terrified, let out a sharp howl, and led the other nightgaunts away in a crowd.

The teacher leading the class: ? ? ?

The teacher was silent for a while. “I’ve worked at MU for more than ten years. And this is the first time I’ve seen a nightgaunt so afraid of a student.”

The nightgaunt clan loved to play pranks. They liked to carry people high in the air and tease them, appreciating the human emotions of anxiety and fear.

In previous years, the students in the first class were the worst off because they’d suffer the harassment and torment of the nightgaunts’ unusual sense of fun.

At these times the professors usually sat on the sidelines watching the show.

The nightgaunts were very familiar with the Dreamlands. If these students could develop a good relationship with the nightgaunts, they’d be able to explore the Dreamlands in the future. Every year, Miskatonic University professors led students who’d received high marks in certain advanced courses to carry out various scouting and research activities.

The xenobiology teacher patted Zong Yan on the shoulder. “In the future, I advise you not to go into the Dreamlands. I’m willing to bet the nightgaunts have passed on stories about you to many other races.”

Thinking of this, Zong Yan scratched his head and remembered the nightgaunt language he’d learned a few days ago.

Guess it’s useless.

He offhandedly turned the cube and spun it around, reached into the void again, and was about to draw a card.

But as soon as Zong Yan poked his fingers into the void, a chilly card slid down his fingertips into the palm of his hand.

The black-haired teenager froze.

He was in a very casual position right now. His fingertips were reaching up, stretching into the void. According to the law of gravity, it was correct for the card to slide from a high place to a low place. It was correct but… Zong Yan had been drawing cards for years and observed a long time ago that cards didn’t obey the laws of physics. Even if Zong Yan were to let go right now, the card wouldn’t fall to the ground but remain floating in the air, just like in Cardcaptor Sakura.

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“Not only is the Joker card a fraud, now the persona cards are faking too?!”

Zong Yan was gloomy.

He helplessly flipped the card in his hand and wrinkled his brow in suspicion.

The card had no rank. Even the surface was blank.

A blank card meant a waste card. Zong Yan had drawn a lot of waste cards before, but they automatically dissolved after a second. They didn’t hang around like this card that was delivered to him, dead set on staying in his hand.

“Hmm… It seems to have writing.”

Puzzled, Zong Yan leaned over.

On the glowing front of the card were twisted, distorted letters that belonged to no existing human language.

They were more obscure than cuneiform, more imaginative than Phoenician script, more evil and unknowable than any character or ideogram.

As he looked at it, Zong Yan seemed to feel millions of needles stimulating his nerves, producing an inexplicable roiling heat around his temples. His head spun near to vertigo.

He’d never read this kind of writing before, nor seen any similar style of script.

The black-haired boy couldn’t help but open his mouth involuntarily, but no matter how he tried, he was unable to speak the forbidden, supreme, and overwhelmingly terrifying name.

His hand shook. Suddenly everything was clear.

Why did this daily disposable persona card have no rank? Because the being that possessed this name couldn’t be defined in such simplistic terms.

Even if it was just a persona card with a mere one-billionth the power of its primary body.

—

The author has something to say:

Arkham is the name of a town in the original Cthulhu mythology. It seems that DC also used this name to pay tribute to H. P. Lovecraft.

Also, the secrets of the British royal family in this chapter are basically made up. Don’t confuse them with reality ha

Guess which persona card it is

TL Notes:

This is the longest chapter in the novel! (ﾉ◕ ₒ ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ ♥  Tomorrow’s chapter is a bit shorter, fortunately for me.

Lord of the Gate – 门之主 – Alternatively: Master of the Door, Gate Master

more than one thousand years – 两千七百多年 – more than 2700 years – The author doubles down and insists the Necronomicon was written in 700 BC. So I guess this is a canon where that happened and ancient Arabic was a language that existed back then? Whatever, I’m just going to keep it consistent with Chapter 14 and the rest of the Lovecraftian mythos. If it matters I’ll go back and change it later.

Outer God primadonna baggage – 外神包袱 – Outer God burden – from “idol burden”, the amount of work idols have to do to maintain their image and appearance

amusing himself on his own – 自娱自乐 – self-entertainment, amusing oneself, play on one’s own

little brother – 小老弟 – xiǎo lǎodì – little/young fellow, a junior of equal standing

In the world of martial arts, speed makes you invincible – 天下武功唯快不破 

bird of death, harbinger bird – 告死鸟 – messenger bird of death

older sisters – 姐姐们 – jiějiěmen

prince – 王储 – crown prince – It was stated earlier that Edward is third in line to the throne

unusual sense of fun – originally said 精神污染 – ideological pollution, mental pollution, cultural contaminatio

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