Power.
There was an endless flow of power coursing through his body.
Zong Yan had never felt so much strength before. Even when using the Sun God and Yun Zhong Jun persona cards, he hadn't felt such an abundance of power. He felt a rich profusion of elemental water in the air. Even the water that covered his body conveyed a sense of submission. He could set off a tsunami with a single thought.
He was still completely naked, held at the surface of the water by thousands of tentacles, looking up at an unidentifiable head near the ceiling of the shadowy cave.
This new body had long, supple, and slender limbs; an inverted triangle figure with a golden ratio; thin, elegant fingers; and a pair of long, perfectly-proportioned legs. On visual estimation, the height was 1.8 meters. It was a standard, perfect male model body.
Due to the usual lack of light, the skin was extraordinarily pale, like a vampire in European legends with a morbid pallor.
And the face had an extremely sharp profile, a high nose bridge, and deep set eyes. The irises were an unsettling dark gold color, like a cold-blooded animal, and at the corners of the eyes was a touch of demonic dark green.
Then there was the long, curly dark green hair, spreading out like seaweed behind him, floating on the surface of the water. It had a bewitching charm, reminiscent of a siren from ancient Greek mythology.
Although the temperament and body were far from Zong Yan's own, the face was really about the same as his original face. But the change in temperament had made an earth-shaking difference. His appearance still possessed an indefinable youthfulness, but it was like a bottle of "mature" dye had broken, spilled, and been mixed into his body.
At this point Zong Yan was able to see what had been inserted into his mouth.
It was a black tentacle, covered in mucus, with a slippery texture.
Zong Yan: ...
Not only that, his entire body was floating with writhing tentacles all around him, and an even bigger group of them circulated around the cave, emitting an evil, unsettling light. Each one had to be as thick as five or six fully-grown people. In comparison, the pseudopod in his mouth was slender and rather gentle.
If such an indescribable thing had stuck itself into Zong Yan's throat at any other time, he would have struggled for his life. Not to mention the presence of an unknown creature, currently suspected of being an evil god.
But right now all he felt was a sense of reassurance.
Especially after hearing that cold voice.
'I will not harm you.'
It was so ridiculous.
Zong Yan was in a daze, but he still tried to sit up, involuntarily lifting his shoulders, bending his knees, and trying to get up from the water.
He wasn't wearing any clothes right now. He was completely covered by his long, dense hair. But his body had regained some strength and he wanted to figure out what was going on.
Right before he'd woken up here, he was a disembodied soul drifting through the universe. It wasn't clear why he came back from the dead moments later.
Was there some kind of evil god who specialized in intercepting souls?
The next second, a tentacle forty to fifty centimeters wide reached up from the bottom of the water, softly but forcefully entwined itself around his waist, and pressed him back down.
Zong Yan felt the dense tentacle suction cups adhering to his skin. It was cold, like being covered in ice, but it wasn't painful.
The tentacle in his mouth was still secreting mucus, which flowed down Zong Yan's throat into his empty stomach, delivering a constant stream of life energy and heat.
He knew it was telling him not to move.
So Zong Yan relaxed his body.
To be honest, it was an incredibly bizarre scene.
If a third intelligent creature had been here, they would have screamed.
The young man with long, dark green hair lay on his back in the water. His face was demonic yet divine, his pale limbs were outstretched, and ugly tentacles entangled his entire body. It formed an intense visual impact, like a treasure imprisoned in the depths by an evil god.
There was a sound of dripping in the dark cave. In the bottomless depths of the water, dark green symbols emitted an eerie glow, and the refraction of light made the water look like sticky, poisonous slime.
It wasn't until Zong Yan's body completely regained its strength and he was fully able to control his movements that the ice-cold tentacle slowly withdrew from his mouth. The crystalline liquid that covered it dripped onto his face, and a residual warmth spread through Zong Yan's body.
The tentacles that were hooked around his waist slowly let go. Only then did Zong Yan begin to move his new body as he floated in the water.
In fact, if he wanted to, he could stand up and walk on its surface. His body was filled with so much strength and inexhaustible energy that he didn't even need to hook his finger to make the water submit to him.
... But he wasn't wearing any clothes. To avoid embarrassment, Zong Yan thought it was better not to stand up.
As the young man floated in the water, his long, wet hair was pasted to his cheeks, and the trace of deep green at the corners of his eyes became even more enchanting.
He lifted his head to look at the face of the evil god above him.
The body of the evil god was enormous. It was just that the cave was so vast you couldn't see an end to it.
Zong Yan estimated that a small mountain could fit inside the upper half of the cave, and an inland sea might fit below. There were inexplicable tentacles tangled everywhere, including deep underwater, densely packed around the body of the evil god.
And there was no doubt this was an evil god.
Don't ask Zong Yan how he knew. He'd been in contact with too many evil gods. From the famous three original proto-gods to all kinds of Great Old Ones, he'd probably seen more evil gods than any other human in the history of Earth, and probably more than all intelligent creatures in the universe.
Only an evil god had so much power, and Zong Yan dared to guess that this power greatly exceeded that of his current Elder God persona cards. But compared to the Azathoth Outer God card, it was a lot lower, so the entity in front of him was most likely a Great Old One.
It was then, while Zong Yan was pondering, that the evil god spoke to him.
This time he didn't use the psychic link but spoke directly.
"O my second self... Thou hast finally awakened from thy dreaming slumber."
The voice was low and gravelly, and the words didn't belong to any language known to humankind, nor could human vocal cords produce such sounds. But Zong Yan understood it effortlessly.
An incredible, almost unbelievable idea began to form in his mind.
As if to reinforce the evil god's words, thousands of tentacles suddenly swam up from the depths of the water. The thickest one was bigger than a hundred Zong Yans. These huge tentacles didn't approach him, but split into much more slender tendrils, hesitated a bit, then slowly twisted themselves around the young man's fair ankles and wrists. A single tentacle about the same thickness as Zong Yan remained suspended in the air.
【This is a way of expressing intimacy】
Before Zong Yan quite understood what he was doing, he grabbed hold of the tentacle that was suspended in the air, hugging it tight. The moment the soles of his feet left the water, he sat down, and his body rubbed itself against the tentacle.
It was only after doing all this that he realized what he'd done.
When the youth approached him so closely, the evil god was obviously a bit surprised, but he also felt a certain degree of anticipation.
All evil gods were higher-dimensional beings. It was impossible for them to innately understand human emotions.
This included the evil god himself. He was great, he was evil, he controlled life, he ruled the oceans, but he'd never once felt any soft emotions.
He lifted up the tentacle which held the little man with a great deal of caution.
But even if he was cautious, the evil god had a body like a mountain, and the young man with the long, dark green hair was as small as a grain of sand, so tiny that the slightest touch might cause him to shatter.
For the first time, the evil god felt an emotion similar to that of being overwhelmed.
Any one of these tentacles could effortlessly set off a tsunami, or strangle the most powerful races and species in the universe in an instant. It could secrete enough poison to paralyze a person's mind.
But right now, it was carefully holding a treasure and slowly lifting it up.
He wasn't taking any liberties. They were each other's half-selves. It was fitting for them to be close to each other.
"I am Cthulhu, the Lord of R'lyeh," the evil god said after a while. "You are the other self that was born with me. Because your body lacked strength, you have been dormant for billions of years. It is only today that you have finally been able to awaken."
That sense of familiarity that transcended his soul, an emotion that derived from deep within his blood—Zong Yan finally understood what it was.
He tried to speak. "... Are you my elder brother?"
As soon as he opened his mouth, he was startled.
Because the language he spoke wasn't a human language. It might be more appropriate to call it the common language of evil gods.
And Zong Yan had called him big brother.
He'd called an evil god "big brother"?!!
"What manner of name is that? I seem to have heard it in the realm of human dreams. Is it a human social relationship term?"
The Lord of R'lyeh didn't care about this very much. He meditated for a moment. "Thou art mine other self and shalt be like me, sharing my authority and power. As for my title... Thou art an existence co-equal to myself. Do as thou wilt."
As he said this Zong Yan realized why he thought the name sounded familiar.
Cthulhu, Cthulhu, Cthulhu.
In biology class, this was one of the first Great Old Ones introduced by Mr. Darwin.
It was also one of the most widely known Great Old Ones.
According to legend, he was once the king of R'lyeh, a city of the sea. 350 million years ago on Earth, he'd built a glorious civilization. Every sea creature bowed down to him.
But for an unknown reason, the civilization was destroyed in a war, and R'lyeh sank to the bottom of the ocean. The great Cthulhu was sealed inside R'lyeh and fell into eternal slumber.
It was said that when the stars returned to their places, he would be able to awaken from his long sleep, then drag the world into his dream and rebuild R'lyeh.
Zong Yan choked on his own thoughts for a moment. Then he slowly reached out and put his palm on the huge, ugly head in front of him.
If something like this had happened before, he would have run away long ago, but now... the feeling of affinity and closeness was too real.
He had truly become a Great Old One, the younger brother of an evil god.
It was absurd. Was there some kind of reincarnation function after death?
What was even more absurd was that Zong Yan didn't feel any sort of inner rejection, just a faint but dawning happiness.
It was like... they had finally reunited after a long separation, and he was filled with heartfelt joy.
---
The author has something to say:
Mr. C: Happy to have you, Didi!
Bubbles: (I feel bitter but I'm not going to say it)
---
TL Notes:
thou - 汝 - rǔ - literary/archaic "you". Mr. C frequently uses literary/archaic terms including archaic first-person "I" - 吾 - "wú" for himself. However, he sometimes uses informal "you" - 你 - "nǐ" for various people, so don't be surprised if "thou" disappears at times, it's in the raw. Also, I'm not aiming for 100% correct archaic English. I want to get the flavor across, not confuse people
Happy to have you - 喜提 - (neologism c. 2018) to be thrilled to receive / to excitedly take delivery of
Glossary of world terms—new in this chapter:
other self, second self, half-self - 半/身 - bànshēn - half/body - This is a new term. Avatars/incarnations use 分/身 - fēnshēn - clone/body, refer to the note in Ch. 16
You can find the master list of transliterated names and titles in Chapter 0 - TL Notes. In this chapter:
elder brother - 兄长 - xiōngzhǎng - elder brother / term of respect for a man of about the same age - Zong Yan calls Mr. C "xiongzhang" verbally, then switches to "gege" in his thoughts. Refer to Ch. 23 for "gege"
Mr. C - 克总 - Kè zǒng - 克 is from 克苏鲁, "Cthulhu". 总 is frequently translated "President" or "Mr.", but also means chief, general, director, etc.
Didi - 弟弟 - dìdì - younger brother - Refer to the note in Ch. 32