Chapter 80: CH 80

What kind of a city was this?

Words alone could never describe its grandeur and magnificence.

The city was a deep, incomparable dark green in color, shaped like a disc, ruling over the South Pacific Ocean. In the center, a divine tower stretched up from the fish-scale patterned walkways, ominous and strange.

The place where they stood was the highest and most central point in all of R’lyeh, separated from the rest of the city by a wide but delicate bridge. Looking down, they could see into the endless depths of seawater that lapped against the palace walls. If someone were to fall from here, they would plummet the height of a mountain before they reached the water.

Looking further out, almost half of R’lyeh existed underwater. All that was visible above the sea were the spires of towers like a magnificent forest of stone, layers upon layers receding into the distance. The end of them couldn’t be seen at a glance. A multitude of creatures floated on the water in dense masses, bowing their heads to the central palace to express their absolute submission.

Any other intelligent creature that approached the city would immediately detect the heavy, unclean odor that pervaded the air. But Zong Yan only thought the city was beautiful. Although many of the patterns and styles were strange, they revealed an unparalleled skill of craftsmanship that left him amazed.

This wasn’t a city that humans could have built. Every structure revealed angles that were impossible in the three-dimensional world.

Its aesthetics was far from the mainstream conception of beauty as humans perceived it. The construction materials weren’t readily available on land. They’d been collected from different planes and galaxies by the clans that worshipped the evil god, offered as rare and valuable gifts to their master.

The Deep Ones were a lowly servitor race, regarded as terrifying and ugly by other species. They had fins on their backs; huge, protruding eyes; webbed membranes on their hands; and fish-shaped heads with humanoid bodies. They were one of the most common otherworldly species encountered by investigators on sea or underwater missions. Years ago, the small town of Innsmouth in the United States was home to a nest of these creatures until it was sealed off by MU investigators. Zong Yan was familiar with them.

The Star-spawn resembled octopuses in appearance and had densely-packed tentacles. These hideous, unsightly creatures favored the deepest underwater trenches. It was said the U.S. once sent a deep-sea submersible to the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Deep underwater, it was attacked by Star-spawn, and no one returned alive.

As for the shoggoths who’d been enslaved since ancient times by other species, Zong Yan knew them all too well. After all, he’d once torn apart a shoggoth in the haunted house of Qingyang High School.

None of the clans dared to make a sound. Their eyes were fixed on the high platform with obvious fanaticism.

No one risked challenging the authority of the Lord of R’lyeh, and no one spoke up to ask why a second man stood beside the king.

Because Cthulhu wasn’t just their king. He was their religion.

If a god wanted to do something, would he explain himself to others?

“Dagon,” the evil god said carelessly.

“Your Majesty, your subordinate is here.”

A column of water burst out from the abyss beneath the palace, steadily lifting up a creature.

Its body was huge, and its green skin was mottled as though it were riddled with noxious tumors, somewhat like the skin of a toad.

But Zong Yan felt slightly connected to it.

To put it another way, Zong Yan sensed he was the master of this creature called “Dagon”. If he wanted to, he could destroy Dagon’s body and soul with a thought.

“This is my subordinate god. I have given it supremacy and granted it permission to attend to internal matters in R’lyeh.”

Perhaps the evil god had noticed Zong Yan’s slightly puzzled eyes, so he paused and explained with a serious expression.

It was obvious that Zong Yan didn’t regard Dagon with much approval—but that was because he was looking at an extremely ugly monster, not for any other reason. Dagon’s appearance was just a bit too shocking for his eyes.

Cthulhu misunderstood the expression of his other self. He frowned and said, “If you don’t like it, there is no need for it to exist.”

In the language of the evil gods, “he”, “it”, “she” and “He” were all pronounced differently.

Obviously, “it” was the lowest, most contemptuous appellation.

Dagon might be a god, but in the eyes of the Lord of R’lyeh, it was still insignificant, a piece of worthless trash.

“No, no, I’m just a little curious.” Zong Yan blinked his eyes and hastily looked away from Dagon.

At this point, the evil god remembered that although his second self had been born alongside him, he had also been asleep for billions of years without interruption.

While Zong Yan was sleeping, Cthulhu had placed him within his own body to protect him.

Many times Cthulhu thought the other party would never wake up. After all, he’d waited many years, but his half-self never showed any signs of life.

Although evil gods were born with an inherent wisdom superior to all other intelligent creatures, there were still areas that needed to be supplemented.

His half-self probably felt that R’lyeh was unfamiliar and strange.

The Lord of R’lyeh thought he was being incredibly attentive. It was a complete reversal of his usual cold and merciless personal style.

“This is our R’lyeh. You are my other self and will share authority with me,” Cthulhu said. “All things are subservient to me, and all things are yours.

“He is me, as I am him.”

These words weren’t heard only by Zong Yan. They filtered into thousands of psychic links, spreading into the ears of all of Cthulhu’s subservient clans, declaring the supreme will of the god.

The king with his bare upper body took Zong Yan by the hand and slowly led him from the platform.

They strolled leisurely through the air without any assistance, supported by the ubiquitous water element in the air.

The kings inspected their territory and their slaves. The enslaved creatures bowed their heads in trepidation, trembling with fear of incurring the wrath of the gods.

“Where do you wish to go?”

The evil god patrolled the skies with his second self, taking him all over R’lyeh, patiently explaining everything he saw.

As Dagon followed, his eyes almost popped out of his head.

Dagon was a subordinate god of Cthulhu and the elder of the Deep Ones. As the number one servant who’d always followed the Lord of R’lyeh, Dagon understood exactly how cold-blooded and ruthless the evil god really was.

But right now, the brutal and merciless king actually had a kind and benevolent expression on his face, calmly describing everything to the person next to him. It was so striking that the elder Deep One was almost blinded by the sight.

Cthulhu wasn’t born on Earth. He came to Earth from the binary star of Xoth. 

At the time, the Earth had just experienced a terrible earthquake. The Earth was essentially a water planet in earlier years, but after the earthquake, several continents were exposed by the sea. Therefore, Cthulhu chose one of the continents and built his city on it, R’lyeh. From then on, sea creatures ruled the Earth.

Under the power of the evil god, all aquatic organisms on the planet were subjugated. Apart from sea creatures, there was also a city called “Atlantis” located in the Atlantic Ocean that submitted to the rule of the Great Cthulhu.

Zong Yan inwardly drew a sharp breath.

Atlantis still existed….

A vague but terrifying suspicion began to arise in his heart.

“Where else would you like to go?” 

The Lord of R’lyeh turned his head, and a strand of his hair brushed Zong Yan’s face.

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“Let’s just walk around.”

Zong Yan felt incredibly confused, but he knew he couldn’t show it. Beneath his robe he pinched his palms, forcing himself to calm down.

So they traveled all over the Earth, from the floating glaciers of the Arctic Ocean to the dense rainforests of the equator, from the beautiful blue Mediterranean to the endless expanse of ice and snow in the Antarctic.

Zong Yan gazed at the planet beneath his feet. There was no sign of human existence. Even the shapes of the continents were completely different from what he’d learned in high school geography.

No, it couldn’t be said that humans didn’t exist.

On the edge of the Atlantic Ocean near the Mediterranean, there were several large and small city-states.

Zong Yan gazed at them for a long time from afar. The inhabitants were making incredibly advanced plasma beam weapons. Their faces were completely different from the humans Zong Yan knew. They were taller, stronger, full of power. Their culture and technology were far more advanced.

They weren’t like the humans that Zong Yan knew.

He suddenly recalled the Mayan civilization told of several solar ages. The occult world had uncovered a great deal of evidence that Earth had given rise to several brilliant civilizations before the rise of humans. Unfortunately, all of these civilizations were eventually destroyed.

Zong Yan was finally able to conclude that this Earth wasn’t the Earth of the modern, 21st-century civilization he remembered.

He’d arrived 350 million years earlier, to a prehistoric time when the Earth was still ruled by the Lord of R’lyeh.

Zong Yan felt a bit bewildered as well as sad.

He eventually began to calm down and decided to treat this accident as a rebirth situation.

To be honest, being reborn was a genuinely good thing for Zong Yan. Even if he couldn’t use his superpowers, even if he was no longer human and had become an evil god, even if he’d appeared in prehistoric times for unknown reasons, it could be regarded as a kind of payback for what he’d done.

After all, he’d saved the lives of seven billion people, and he was paying such a small price for it. In that sense, he was extremely lucky.

But if he wasn’t a human being anymore, didn’t that mean a lot of things had suddenly become meaningless?

Or… maybe he should learn to adapt and accept his new identity.

“Then, what’s my name? Do I have to share my name with my elder brother?”

When the youth with dark green long hair walked around, the ornaments on his robe jingled and swayed like bells.

“No lowly being may call a god by name indiscriminately, or it will suffer my wrath,” the evil god said as a matter of course.

That was fine, but Zong Yan didn’t want to be called “Cthulhu”.

Then Cthulhu’s low voice added, “But if you wish, you can choose a name  for yourself.”

Choose his own name?

Zong Yan inexplicably felt a little sad.

“Then call me Zong Yan,” he said softly.

‘After all, my name is all I have left.’

“Zong Yan?”

The name sounded strange in the language of the evil gods. It was more like the language of lower-dimensional creatures.

But Cthulhu didn’t delve into it. He touched the dark green hair of his other self, and said, “It’s a good name.”

—

The author has something to say:

Miserable, Bubbles is miserable.

—

TL Notes:

unparalleled skill – 镂月裁云 – engrave the moon and cut out clouds — a skilled work of art or literature

the Antarctic – The author actually said “北极” (North Pole / Arctic Pole) here, but I think they meant Antarctic because the Arctic was already mentioned once. As a side note, 350 million years ago the Mediterranean didn’t really exist, refer to Wikipedia articles on Gondwana and Pangaea

Glossary of world terms—new in this chapter:

Deep Ones – 深潜者 – An ocean-dwelling race described as having grayish green, slippery skin, and white stomachs. They have scaled, ridged backs; webbed and clawed hands; and gilled necks. Their heads are similar to that of a fish, with mouths filled with sharp teeth and eyes incapable of blinking. One of the main characters in Hellboy, Abe Sapien, is described as being one of them (H.P. Lovecraft Wiki)

Star-spawn – 星之眷族 – Also known as the Cthulhi or the Xothians, a species that physically resembles the Great Old One Cthulhu, although of much smaller size. Initially described as “a land race of beings shaped like octopi and probably corresponding to the fabulous pre-human spawn of Cthulhu,”(HPL: “At the Mountains of Madness”) the Star-Spawn are also described as being “composed of matter widely different” than what is native to our universe. Their bodies are so malleable they might almost be called shapeshifters. (H.P. Lovecraft Wiki)

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

Dagon – 达贡 – Dágòng

Xoth – 克索斯 – Kèsuǒsī

Deep Ones:

Image source: Call of Cthulhu, French version – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki

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Star-spawn / Xothian / Cthulhi:

Image source: Call of Cthulhu, French version – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki

–

Dagon:

Image source: Doom2018 – H.P. Lovecraft Wiki

[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]

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