Chapter 36: CH 36

The Astrologer on the card looked unremarkable. In his hand was a mysteriously glowing magic ball inscribed with a six-pointed star. If not for that, Zong Yan might have thought it was a waste card. After all, it was an E-rank daily disposable persona card that didn’t come with a fancy transformation.

This card only needed 5 San points and lasted up to three hours. He’d have 65 points of San value left after using the card.

Zong Yan crushed the card. A second later, a crystal ball glittering with a six-pointed star appeared above his palm.

【I want to know… the location of the disaster】

Zong Yan waited for a moment, focused his attention, and placed his fingers on the globe.

His thoughts seemed to fissure into a thousand strands of silk. They uncoiled from his fingertips, rotating and twisting into a mysterious skein of spiritual power which was absorbed by the glass ball.

In an instant, an enormous star map unfurled in Zong Yan’s mind. He was suspended over a sea of stars, overlooking the vast territory beneath his feet.

After receiving their master’s command, the stars began to move. They floated in the void, twinkling, then one by one rearranged into the trajectory of the future. Finally they fed a vague image back to Zong Yan.

After all, this was just an E-rank daily disposable persona card. The decisive factor that made it E-rank was the fact the card had no combat power whatsoever. And it was useless unless it was linked to high insight ability. Without that, it wouldn’t reveal a thing.

Zong Yan was only able to catch a fleeting image.

But the image made his pupils dilate.

That place was—

Dujiakou, the most prosperous financial center in Jiangzhou. It was just above the Huangpu River, not far from the Dragon Group base.

Seventeen minutes left in the countdown. Zong Yan hurriedly grabbed the astrological ball, opened the bathroom door and got into the express elevator down the hall.

Come on, come on, come on!

He had to make it there in fifteen minutes. Otherwise…

In the image, a heavy blue-black cloud of some opaque, unidentifiable substance seeped from the vault of the sky and spread out to envelop the world. Within the black fog that blotted out the sun, a mass of indistinct but wolf-shaped, angular creatures glittered with an unsettling light.

These terrible beings didn’t have tangible bodies or any actual form that could be put into words, but the moment they were glimpsed by human beings, they struck the deepest terror into whoever saw them. Impenetrable fear surged up from the depths of the mind, a dread without source, but all too real.

Such sinister beings didn’t belong to this plane. Under the guidance of their leader they’d crossed dimensions, passing through the boundaries of time. In pursuit of a specific scent they’d reached the present world.

The moment Zong Yan saw the image, he realized the calamity was nothing like what Tawil said. It wasn’t a matter of a few tens of thousands of lives.

If he didn’t stop it… he was afraid every person in Jiangzhou would share a tomb!

—

Outside the door, the Dragon Group battle operations center had begun to evacuate its personnel. Under the flashing yellow lights, more and more people took off their white coats, assembled their alchemical weapons, and evacuated in an orderly manner towards the emergency corridor. Even in a crisis, their discipline as soldiers remained intact. The sound of their footsteps was steady and there was no hint of disorder.

Si Yan had already changed into his combat uniform. When the countdown timer reached ten minutes, he took the elevator to the top of the building without hesitation. He Yuan, the long-time adjutant of Team 7, had already gone to direct the operations of the team. Si Yan didn’t join them. As a precious Monarch, he headed to the roof to board a helicopter. The moment the countdown ended, wherever in Jiangzhou the calamity appeared, the aircraft Si Yan boarded would be the first to arrive.

Although Commander-in-Chief Si Xun was the second Monarch, he was no longer in his prime. His ability to command the overall situation was more useful than his awakening talent. In recent years, aside from occasional bouts of destruction between father and son in the Dragon Group base, the second Monarch was seldom seen going into combat. 

As for the seventh Monarch, his situation was a bit unclear. Obviously he should have been considered a major asset in the battle, and he’d even provided the warning, but for some reason no one in the command room remembered he existed. It was as if everyone had spontaneously forgotten about this helper.

The gray-haired, white-robed man stood up from the conference table. In his expression neither anger nor joy could be distinguished.

Given his nature, he could easily discern that the bathroom behind the operations room was empty.

Everything was proceeding along the path laid down by the grand master of time. All that remained was to see whether a certain chess piece would jump off the chessboard again.

If so—

The god’s glowing, golden eyes suddenly darkened, and a billion points of light seemed to ignite within the blackest depths of his pupils, outlining the contours of countless terrifying and indescribable filaments.

As soon as he turned around, he disappeared into thin air.

—

There were seven minutes left in the countdown.

In the last three hours, the entire occult world made every effort to mobilize its forces from all corners of the globe.

Although performed in haste, the preparations were clearly successful.

In the history of the world, never before had humanity fought against an otherworldly species on this scale.

It wasn’t long ago that extraterrestrial beings rarely roamed urban areas where humans lived. They preferred to attack less-populated suburbs or isolated towns.

That was why in the investigation archives of Miskatonic University almost all abnormal events occurred in small towns like Innsmouth, Arkham, and Dunwich in the United States, the Severn Valley in England, and so on, and generally didn’t involve big cities.

This also made the work of investigators more convenient. Of course, in the twenty-first century, technology was developing rapidly every day. The arrival of the information age made communication easier.

Although the occult world wasn’t a secret to high-ranking officials of various countries, it was still unknown to the general public. The secrecy wasn’t just for the protection of ordinary people, but for the Awakened themselves. Cultists didn’t share this understanding. In order to attract believers and develop their sects, they wanted to be as famous as possible.

There once was a sect that arrogantly decided to livestream the ritual to summon their Lord. As a result, before their Lord could arrive, they were pinpointed with the help of American GPS satellites and scooped up by investigators.

Five minutes.

The electricity in Jiangzhou was temporarily switched off. The lights went out one by one.

The entire city of neon and noise came to a halt in an instant, becoming empty, silent, and filled with oppressive fear.

A team of investigators with badges on their chests and weapons in their hands picked an elevated spot in Dujiakou and settled in.

Ordinary citizens had already been evacuated from high places, but these investigators had mastered floating magic patterns. When they fell through the air, they only needed to activate a floating pattern near the ground to immediately enjoy an exciting bungee sequence.

The leader of the temporary investigation team had an assembled sniper rifle in one hand and a lit cigar in the other.

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The weapons used by investigators weren’t ordinary. They were products of alchemical formations, including the magic pattern painted on the bullets. They weren’t especially dangerous to ordinary people, but they were lethal to alien species.

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“Four minutes left.”

Rong Ge took out his pocket watch, narrowed his eyes, and put it back.

The current operation could be called the biggest event to ever happen in the occult world. The higher-ups had gone so far as to issue an extraordinary order—the first group of aliens must not be allowed to set foot on Earth, even if this meant exposing the existence of the occult world.

Compared to senior investigators and Monarchs, ordinary investigators were the mainstream of Awakened people. In normal times they enjoyed the high standard of living accorded to investigators. Occasionally, they formed investigation teams in twos and threes to solve all kinds of trivial extraterrestrial incidents.

The pay was quite good. Unless there was a mine to inherit back home, most Awakened were inclined to make a living as an investigator after graduation.

“Three minutes.”

A team member looked at his wristwatch and silently counted down.

“What are you nervous about? Jiangzhou’s a big place. We’d have to win the lottery for the calamity to land on our heads.”

The second in command patted the team member on the shoulder. With his other hand he was swiping through the MU app on his phone.

Because of the sudden emergency, the world’s media was focused on Jiangzhou. As the only social networking app of the occult world, the MU forum was updating at the rate of several posts per second.

The Awakened accounted for a tiny percentage of humanity. It was the first time the forum had been so lively.

“Sir, there are two minutes left.”

At the moment, the Dragon Group’s air combat troops were deployed in the sky of Jiangzhou in full force. They’d even sent fighter jets swarming over the empty city like bats.

“En.“

Wearing a special combat suit, Si Yan opened the cabin door of the helicopter.

The rippling wind buffeted his face. Every stroke was like the scrape of a knife.

He stood in the cabin with heavy windproof goggles on his face, squinting down at the city from above, looking at every corner, trying not to miss a single thing.

The instant something happened, he’d jump down without hesitation from high altitude.

For a true Monarch who controlled multiple elements, it wasn’t difficult to manipulate the wind enough to fly. The training of special operations forces included high altitude parachute jumping and all kinds of extreme conditions.

Last minute.

The investigators dropped what they were doing, looked into the sky, raised their weapons and stood ready.

Those sixty seconds were as long as a century.

Finally, as the last second slowly passed, silence reigned over the world.

“Report… No abnormalities.”

“Report, ground monitoring hasn’t detected any abnormal phenomena.”

“Report, the energy sensors aren’t picking up any residual signatures.”

…

A series of reports swarmed into the underground command center of the Dragon Group. Investigators on standby on the surface began to whisper.

“What’s going on? It’s not an oops, is it?”

The seventh Monarch had the power of prophecy as well as inexplicably high prestige, so much so that when he said there was a problem, the entire mystical world swung into action.

But when people thought about it carefully, it seemed that after all these years, the seventh Monarch had never actually predicted any major events. This gave rise to a wide range of opinions.

“Continue standing by. Don’t let down your guard.” The command room wasn’t taking anything lightly.

Just then, an analyst standing in front of a computer trembled and said, “Report, commander!! Meteorology has a situation!”

“Hurry up! Sync it to the shared screen!” Si Xun waved his cane then knocked it hard against the floor.

The next moment, an enlarged version of the weather monitoring map appeared on the big screen of the command room.

In the center of the real-time atmospheric map, a shocking thing appeared—a deep black spot in the sky above Jiangzhou. It expanded at an incredible speed, and as it grew its color got darker and darker, like a devil’s eye opening within the clouds.

The location wasn’t far away. It was exactly in the middle of Dujiakou.

“All investigators, proceed to Dujiakou immediately!”

Over the wartime wireless command channel only a single person could be heard, the old and determined voice of the commander. The investigators waiting on standby in the city put away their guns in unison, activated their acceleration magic patterns, and rushed to the position on the map.

There weren’t many people left in the command room. Everyone was busy transmitting satellite imagery, analyzing and assessing the situation on the scene.

In Miskatonic University, Darwin, Newton, Paracelsus, and even Nicholas Flamel, who almost never made an appearance, had gathered in the professors’ meeting room. In front of these elder scientists were the first images sent back from the front. They began to judge what kind of species had arrived and what measures should be taken.

Incidentally, Xu Fu had already gone to the front line.

While the battle plan was being carried out, the analyst who’d found the black spot at the beginning was still staring at the screen. He said with some confusion:

“Wait, no… There seems to be… something else.”

Next to the black spot, a nimbus of blue and gold had suddenly appeared, and with the same irresistible momentum firmly blocked its path.

What the hell was that?!

TL Notes:

Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:

Rong Ge – 荣格 – Alternatively: Jung. This is the Chinese name for Carl Gustav Jung, the famous psychiatrist. This name never appears again in the raw and it doesn’t seem to actually be him (despite the presence of characters like Newton). Maybe the author is a fan or namechecked Jung because he studied the psychological significance of alchemy (ref Wikipedia)

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