Chapter 86: CH 86

Thanks very much to an anonymous reader for the ko-fi! ♥ ٩(◕‿◕)۶

Zong Yan: ? ? ?

What the hell? I know you guys are mortal enemies. I know one of you built Carcosa and the other built R’lyeh in response. I know you two don’t see eye-to-eye, but digging under the wall of someone else’s half-self is going a bit too far, right?

“Watch what you say. Such words are the greatest provocation to me,” Zong Yan said coldly. 

He raised his hand and another massive water curtain rose up from the ocean, rolling towards the sky with a deafening roar.

After a few such attacks, the sea level nearby had lowered. So much water was pumped out so fast that there wasn’t time for more water to rush back from a distance. The ocean’s surface was dotted with spinning eddies, generated by the collision of large and small currents.

Zong Yan’s mind, which was almost in a panic, finally calmed down.

At first he was flustered, worried he’d somehow revealed the secret of the persona cards. He almost scared himself to death, but it turned out to be a false alarm. He was relieved.

The King in Yellow didn’t respond. The shadows behind the evil god quietly hovered in the air. Without a trace of difficulty, Hastur pushed away all the high-pressure waterspouts.

He was a Great Old One of vast experience with unfathomable power. There was no way he could be compared to a counterfeit goods second self like Zong Yan.

But Hastur wasn’t angry at Zong Yan. On the contrary, he extended his hand in a pleasant gesture.

“It’s impossible for me to mistake my own scent. You carry my blessing.”

The blessing of the Lord of Interstellar Spaces didn’t leave a mark, but it was imbued with his aura. No one else but him could feel it.

There was another reason Hastur was so certain.

Essentially, he and Cthulhu had been born together. They might even be called fraternal twins, though evil gods didn’t recognize such a concept.

Before they were even born they’d begun snatching power from each other. After birth, this pattern continued. So if Cthulhu claimed to have a half-self or brother or something of that kind, Hastur certainly had a share.

As it so happened, the King in Yellow recalled that Cthulhu’s behavior had been sneaky and somewhat unnatural when he was born. Additional conspiracy theories brewed from there.

Did gods even have half-selves?

Of all the Great Old Ones, Elder Gods, and Outer Gods that Hastur knew, this was the first time he’d heard of such a thing. But the young evil god in front of him truly did possess Cthulhu’s power, and not only that, he possessed a scent unique to Hastur.

Therefore, according to logic, the most likely scenario was that this evil god was their common half-self at the time they were born, or a third evil god who’d lacked power and fell into a deep sleep. But he’d been hidden by that despicable villain Cthulhu all these years.

In any case, the above was speculation. The most important thing was that when Hastur gazed upon this young evil god, he didn’t feel the slightest bit of disgust. On the contrary, there was a faint but discernible feeling of closeness and affinity that arose within his soul. It was completely different from the deep, inherent revulsion he felt from Cthulhu.

“You must have just awakened.” The King in Yellow was in a good mood. “The power of an evil god is not used in such a way. It seems Cthulhu didn’t teach you this. He really is a poor guide.”

The Lord of Interstellar Spaces had already built a chain of logic in his mind.

Cthulhu, that despicable god, concealed their common half-self for so many years, and even poured his own power into him in an attempt to make him belong only to Cthulhu. Today Hastur caught him red-handed.

‘Not bad, his appearance and attire are very much to my liking. Far better than that barbarian Cthulhu.’

He unobtrusively surveyed the young evil god in front of him, and his admiration grew stronger and stronger.

‘It’s just that he received an infusion of Cthulhu’s power. That dark green color is hideous.’

‘But it doesn’t matter. After I bring him back to Carcosa, I’ll have time to remove that deep-rooted, ugly green color.’

Obviously the King in Yellow’s thoughts were unknown to Zong Yan. Right now the young evil god was burning with anger.

The power of an evil god isn’t used in such a way. That sentence made the cold-blooded part of Zong Yan’s mind, the part that belonged to an evil god, rise up in fury.

For an evil god, those words were an insult. It was similar to a human saying, “you’re incompetent”. They were statements that expressed disbelief in a person’s ability.

It was impossible for any arrogant evil god to enjoy that kind of evaluation, okay?

So Zong Yan’s temper got the better of him.

He gave a cold smile. “Then how about this?”

The next moment, dark clouds instantly covered the sky, and lightning flashed within the gloom. Bolts of electricity as wide as saucers flickered and disappeared, then crashed down into the sea, throwing a massive wall of waves into the air. On the seafloor, a volcano detonated under the powerful force. The sea parted at the evil god’s command, and hot magma shot into the air. The sky boiled, forming a barrier of white mist which converged into heavy rain.

The figure of Zong Yan vanished, replaced by a huge, bloated form surrounded by eerie, ice-cold tentacles.

Along with the tentacles, a bank of green fog appeared, speckled with wisps of mysterious colors. The fog drifted into the rain clouds and mist, tainting them the same unnatural hue. The instant a living creature encountered the fog, its body would corrode, leaving only a stinking green skeleton behind. It was as if a dusty, ancient tomb had been unearthed after thousands of years, spilling its miasma onto everything in sight. The abomination of the evil god’s true form loomed within the fog, veiled yet horrifying, like the specter of the god of death.

It wasn’t clear how many clansmen of the King in Yellow were obliterated in just a few seconds.

The Byakhee fell from the air with a scream. Ithaqua’s freezing storm barely managed to protect the city of Carcosa. The Lloigor, those invisible creatures from the stars, grew horrible fangs and quickly transformed into pure energy.

Even so, they couldn’t escape the corrosion of the poisonous green fog. The evil god’s noxious, terrifying murk wasn’t just a gaseous cloud, it was like a form of cold and sinister plasma energy, or a gelatinous substance.  The slightest contact would contaminate and corrupt.

As Zong Yan gazed at this shocking, terrible scene, his face hidden in the fog didn’t waver at all. He looked cold and grim. With a single glance, the poisonous fog began to disintegrate the encircling forces of Carcosa.

This attack had been inspired by the sinking of Atlantis, and now he put what he’d learned to use.

Meanwhile, the King in Yellow continued to hover in the air. His robes hung down below him, and his manner was indifferent.

His pale, bony hands were crossed in front of his chest, and he didn’t say a word. He might have been a patient adult watching a child at play.

Those dark yellow robes were clearly enveloped in the poisonous fog, but they remained unaffected, as if he somehow belonged to a separate division of space.

This type of fog really couldn’t touch him at all.

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He even showed an expression of appreciation, which angered Zong Yan so much that he manipulated his true body to collapse space itself. Thousands of tentacles writhed, the sky collapsed and the earth fell, like the end of the world was imminent.

He was really furious, otherwise he wouldn’t have been willing to reveal his ugly body while fighting.

“Your strength is a little lacking, but still you have a lot of talent after just waking up. Truly worthy of being my half-self.”

In the confined space surrounded by tentacles, the King in Yellow suddenly removed his hood.

It was well-known that the human form of the Lord of Interstellar Spaces didn’t have a face. That part of his body was blank, like white paper.

But that was because the King in Yellow, whose sense of aesthetics was far superior to lower creatures, thought the face was the ugliest part of the human body. If someone tried to peek under his hood, they would have been dragged into the abyss by an indescribable scene.

But the truth was Hastur really did have a human form.

His curling, snow-white hair fell over his shoulders, the same length and texture as Cthulhu’s, and his face went beyond the limits of human imagination. His features possessed a beauty that was male as well as female, permeated with compassion and divinity. The corners of his eyes were marked with a demonic red line, and his dark golden irises were filled with an eerie, morbid darkness.

From the standpoint of genetics, Zong Yan actually noticed strange similarities between that face and his own as an evil god. Both approached a perfection of beauty that blurred the lines of gender, while in comparison, Cthulhu’s appearance was strictly masculine and rugged.

But his amazement only lasted for a moment.

The thin lips of the Lord of Interstellar Spaces curved slightly, and countless abominable and terrifying shadows emerged from beneath his ragged yellow robe.

Overwhelming power.

Zong Yan’s pupils suddenly constricted.

It took less than a second for those shadows to destroy the cage of fog that Zong Yan had so carefully built.

What was even more frightening was that Hastur skillfully avoided harming the young evil god, but directly broke through Zong Yan’s shadows and imprisoned him in his own cage.

Zong Yan only knew that he had crashed into a magnificent sea of stars. Immersed in absolute power, he couldn’t even catch his breath. He was dragged from his own conscious mind and shoved into the domain of the Lord of Interstellar Spaces.

The stars followed their own trajectories with an inexplicable metallic splendor, an icy glow that rotated with mysterious colors and brilliance.

Under this suppression Zong Yan resumed his human form. Those evil and horrible tentacles were retracted again as he floated in a sea of stars.

Are those lights?

No, they’re not.

A moment later, the stars merged into a stream of consciousness that hurtled with lightning speed towards the center of Zong Yan’s forehead.

The young man with long, dark green hair fell onto his back, and his dark golden irises were instantly muted by the colors of the stars. He floated in the air like a lifeless puppet, drowning in a sea of consciousness.

Some of the roots of his hair began to turn as white as snow.

The white-haired, yellow-robed king smiled and stepped forward to take his half-self in his arms. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and gentle. “Welcome back, my second self.”

At that moment, something new erupted.

Space was suddenly pierced by a tougher, colder energy. The stars shattered into glittering dust, annihilating the universe of consciousness.

The Lord of R’lyeh arrived, stepping on shadows and white bones, with a cruel and tyrannical expression on his face. When he saw Hastur, his dark golden eyes were cold as ice.

“Return him to me.”

Cthulhu’s anger reached a new height, and the shadows brewing behind him condensed into material form. Each one carried heaven-destroying force.

“Oh? When you hid him in the first place, you should have expected this day would come.” Hastur sneered, and with one hand he casually summoned a star to send Zong Yan, who was lying in his arms, into a separate dimension.

“Stop! That’s my half-self!”

That was when the Lord of R’lyeh noticed the change to Zong Yan’s hair. Without any more hesitation he attacked.

His enemy dared to pour his power into Cthulhu’s own half-self—it was unforgivable.

“He belongs to me.”

The King in Yellow laughed coldly and met him without fear.

—

The author has something to say:

Zong Yan: I became an evil god and still got beat up. It’s so hard for me ah

The persona cards are the root of the problem. A half-self means a lot to an evil god.

Anyway… The next update will reveal secrets about the persona cards!

TL Notes:

The author’s note is kind of vague. To clarify, the next few chapters have more discussion about persona cards and how they work. Of course, a lot of mystery remains

digging under the wall – 挖墙脚 – undermine the foundation; cut the ground from under sb.’s feet; sabotage. To undermine / to let someone down / to seduce someone away from something

sea of consciousness – 意识海 – The author has used this phrase a few times, like when Bubbles was teaching physics. It doesn’t seem to be a commonly used term. A little later in this chapter, Cthulhu butts in and it’s stated that he obliterated the “universe of consciousness / conscious universe” (意识宇宙). I’m not quite sure what that means, but it sounds violent (◕▿◕✿) Evil god smash! 

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

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