Oh, he fainted.
Yog-Sothoth, who was floating in the air above the youth, looked down at him, then calmly averted his eyes and returned to the book in his hand.
The Lord of Time and Space might be the master of knowledge, but that certainly didn't mean he knew how to tutor anyone.
Besides, even if an evil god knew how to give lessons, and offered to teach you, would you dare to accept?
Throughout the universe, Yog-Sothoth had hundreds of millions of devoted believers. These believers gave offerings of faith and made sacrifices to the mighty Lord of the Gate, then prayed to the evil god to give them knowledge.
Other races in addition to human beings could also withstand the baptism of the evil god's mind.
Yog-Sothoth's preferred teaching method was direct infusion of knowledge.
But there were other ways.
The textbooks of the Great Race of Yith were similar to the methods of the evil god.
As an alien race whose technology was more than a dozen epochs ahead of humans on Earth, the Great Race of Yith had long ago abandoned traditional methods of communication using words and language. Instead they used thoughts and hyperlinked brain waves.
The book Yog-Sothoth gave to Zong Yan was brutally direct. In fact, it was a textbook of enlightenment for the Great Race of Yith. Although it appeared to contain words, in fact, as long as the person who viewed it understood their language—meaning, their brainwave frequencies matched—the knowledge within the book would transform into a narrow beam of electromagnetic waves and automatically insert itself into Zong Yan's mind.
This was no different from Yog's favorite "filling a stuffed duck egg" method of bestowing knowledge, except that one was a bit more simple and crude, and the other was a little more gentle. Aside from that they were essentially the same.
The gray-haired evil god carelessly flipped another page of the book in his hand. After a while, he thought something might be wrong.
The black-haired teen was lying on his back on the soft carpet.
The floor of Zong Yan's room was covered with thick Persian rugs, hand-woven from expensive Egyptian wool. They were warm when you stepped on them barefoot, which was very much in line with Zong Yan's secret fluff-con inclination.
When he first fell over, his face revealed pain for a moment, but it didn't seem serious after that.
But now—
The black-haired teen was curled up on the carpet. His knees were drawn up against his chest and his arms were wrapped around his legs.
For a human, it was body language that revealed insecurity, because in infancy, all humans developed in this position in their mother's womb. If he instinctively used this posture, it meant the surrounding environment made him insecure.
The light in the room was dim. The teen's temples were covered with sweat. Strands of hair clung to his cheeks like curling black snakes.
His eyebrows were tightly knitted together, his face was contorted with pain, and his lips were bitten and smeared with blood, a dreadful sight.
The thin, casual clothes had bunched up because of his movements, revealing the pale skin of his back covered with cold sweat, and the crystal sheen of the sweat was dazzling under the cold white light of the desk lamp.
The Lord of the Gate thought he'd been extremely considerate. He'd very kindly taken into account the fact that Zong Yan was still in a human state. To evil gods, the human brain was closer to a goldfish brain. His intention was to let Zong Yan master advanced physics first, then slowly help him weed out the unnecessary parts.
Anyway, Yog-Sothoth really wasn't capable of taking a "Five Years of College Entrance Exams, Three Years of Simulations" approach to guiding Zong Yan through physics exercises. That was just too degrading to his identity as an evil god.
Strange—since this was the Father God's stream of consciousness, and he'd already interfaced twice with the Father God's mind, there shouldn't be such a serious rejection reaction, right?
The evil god's head lowered while his white robe remained motionless, in total violation of the laws of physics.
With just a thought, Zong Yan was lifted by an invisible force, suspended in mid-air.
Beads of sweat condensed on the teenager's face without ceasing, as if he were in a sauna instead of an air-conditioned room. His clothes were soaked with sweat. He looked like a drowned chicken.
Clearly he wasn't in good shape.
Yog frowned.
"What's wrong with the Father God?"
Just then, Nyarla's avatar, the Haunter of the Dark, emerged silently from the darkness. He incidentally touched the wall switch, turning off the lights.
The room was suddenly plunged into a darkness where nothing could be seen. Of course, that didn't hinder the vision of the evil gods.
"I don't know," the all-knowing, all-powerful Lord simply said.
It wasn't a lie.
When it came to this black-haired young man, Yog not only couldn't see his timeline, he couldn't see his past or future, and he couldn't see his present.
"Why don't you try it?"
The Haunter of the Dark folded up his shadow-woven wings, and his triple-lobed eye glittered fiery red.
As he made this "kind" suggestion his eye gleamed.
The last time Nyarlathotep had tried to penetrate Zong Yan's consciousness, he was unexpectedly slapped away and smashed into a wall. It was a little embarrassing.
He hadn't made this suggestion in good faith. He just wanted to see Yog jump.
Was there any chance Yog didn't know what he was thinking?
The gray-haired evil god stared coldly at the Haunter of the Dark. The next second, thousands of shadows erupted behind him, and light blazed out in the narrow room.
"! ! !"
The Haunter of the Dark avatar especially hated light. The moment these lights burst out, Nyarla shrank into the shadows and was forced to retreat from the room.
But on one point, Nyarla was correct.
Let's give it a try.
Yog commanded his shadows to slowly wrap up the black-haired teen and lift him in the air.
The shadows gently ruffled the sweat-soaked hair on the teen's forehead, then parted the lips that were bitten bloody and pressed against them, forcing the young man to open his mouth, preventing him from inadvertently biting into his own flesh.
If Yog had the inclination, his phantoms could destroy any galaxy he chose, anytime, anywhere. With a single movement of his mind the entire solar system would be razed to smithereens.
But right now, these shadows, symbols of destruction and devastation, carefully loosened the black-haired teen's collar, straightened his clothes, then covered and wrapped his body, drawing away all the exuded sweat, but occasionally left a red mark due to inexperience.
Fragile, too fragile.
Although this was the Father God's stream of consciousness, if his head and body were separated, or his scalp were incised along his hairline, this small stream of consciousness might not mature in time to return to the vast mind of the Lord of the Universe.
This human was so fragile that the evil god was forced to grow more and more cautious. Finally he even activated human emotions so that he could adjust his force to a level a human being could endure.
The Lord of the Gate thought he'd never been so considerate to anyone.
He felt like the most gracious evil god there was. Compared to those Outer Gods who did nothing all day but perform music in the palace for His Majesty Azathoth, playing the flute badly enough to destroy entire galaxies, Yog-Sothoth really was approachable, a very model figure of an evil god.
One of the shadows approached the forehead of the black-haired teen and attempted to enter.
No matter how fragile he was, this was Azathoth's stream of consciousness. Yog was ready to be ejected.
But, surprisingly, he didn't feel any sense of rejection.
The youth's spirit was like a bubbling warm spring, quietly accepting the cold spirit of the invading evil god, sinking with him into the boiling hot sea of his conscious mind.
Everything around him was like a newly-formed ink wash painting, like someone held a brush and left slashes of color everywhere, spilling out on everything together, a dizzying succession of brushstrokes.
The temperature was unbearably hot, as hot as a volcanic crater filled with scalding red lava, so hot that his sea of consciousness was boiling over.
Yog-Sothoth finally realized.
This wasn't some kind of mishap in the middle of the process. It was probably what the humans called "Second Awakening".
It was well-known that the Awakened went through two stages.
First awakening meant a person gained abilities where there was nothing. From then on, they could use magic patterns and alchemy and possessed inherent powers.
The Second Awakening was a burst of one's awakening threshold. It raised an Awakened person's power by another level, and usually occurred within two years after their first awakening.
Strictly speaking, Zong Yan wasn't actually Awakened.
But perhaps because of the fusion of dimensions, it was necessary to abide by the newly-integrated order, so similar symptoms appeared.
The problem wasn't the textbook. The book was at most a trigger.
The evil god suddenly became interested. He gazed at the sea of consciousness that was completely open to him, and the shadows of his spirit suddenly surged up, then plunged towards the sea below.
Unless two beings were on the most intimate terms, it was impossible for evil gods to be so open to each other, without any reservation, without even the slightest repulsion.
Yog-Sothoth wasn't a good god.
Since he dared to welcome an evil god into his mind, he would have to accept the consequences that came with the arrival of a supreme spirit.
—Even if the other party was a tiny human, an insignificant stream of consciousness.
---
TL Notes:
stuffed duck eggs - 填鸭蛋 - A dish where the egg shells are kept mostly intact with an opening on one end, then filled with glutinous rice, meat, and vegetables. The closest Western dish I can think of is stuffed bell peppers
fluff-con - 绒毛控 - "con" is from Japanese "コン", from the English word "complex", meaning a person who likes something to an extreme degree, e.g. "face complex", "lolicon"