This place was beyond the dimensions, beyond all time and space, beyond the end of the universe.
Here, a sea of stars glittered. Wisps of radiance trembled in the darkness like a candle flame in a lantern, swaying but never extinguished.
Few intelligent beings ever reached this place, including evil gods. And evil gods who weren't powerful enough had to abide by the same restrictions.
To be honest, it wasn't that difficult to get here. But you had to pass through the Gates of the Silver Key, then be recognized by the ancient and immortal keepers before you'd be permitted to enter the Ultimate Gate of the Universe.
Beyond the Ultimate Gate, the true body of the Lord of Time and Space stood firmly above the universe, looking down on everything that existed. Nothing could escape his sight.
As it should be.
But this axiom, which was stronger than the three laws of the universe, had just been refuted.
A figure clothed in glowing light slowly walked through the Gates of the Silver Key.
Beyond the gates was a huge stone pedestal, engraved with a dense series of enigmatic magic patterns.
In this place, under the blessing of the Lord of Time and Space, time itself was meaningless. To sit here for a moment was the same as sitting for a century. What significance did it have? Time was meaningless to an evil god. Things that actually were meaningful to them were so rare and few in number they weren't worth mentioning.
All the ancient keepers sitting below the throne stood to pay the greatest homage to the figure.
"Hail to the Lord on his return, under the Great Reign of Yog-Sothoth."
They watched over this place, guarding the gates of eternity and knowledge, but the ancient ones knew they were no more than slaves of the Lord of the Gate.
They dwelled under the reign of Yog-Sothoth, one of the three pillars of the original gods; the Supreme Master of Time and Space; the Lord of the Gate; the great deity of the Trinity of the Gate, the Key, and the Guardian of the Gate; the Opener of the Way.
The gray-haired, golden-eyed evil god didn't give them a single glance. He took one light step and the next moment he appeared before the Ultimate Gate.
Unlike the monolithic pedestal, the Ultimate Gate had no patterns inscribed on it. It was exceptionally simple, flat, and uncomplicated.
It towered over heaven and earth, an endless expanse of a structure stretching further than the eye could see. It was like a giant mantle that stood in front of the final abyss of the universe.
No one had visited this place in many years. Let alone humans, countless intelligent species found it difficult to reach.
The last occurrence could be traced back to the previous century as humans reckoned it. A tiny human, an investigator named Randolph Carter, had pleased the Lord of the Gate, so the Lord granted an exception and allowed the human to pass through the Ultimate Gate and peer into the true nature of the universe behind it.
Unfortunately, Randolph Carter had lost himself in an endless parallel dimension. Whether he lived or died was unknown. However, the Lord of the Gate didn't revoke his reward. Instead, he promised that if the man someday reached the Gates of the Silver Key again, the Lord would grant him the supreme honor of becoming a god of the ancient ones.
'You cannot reach the Gates without the Silver Key.'
The ancient ones were silent. They were well aware of the evil god's malevolent intentions.
Sure enough, in the years that followed, no one resembling Randolph Carter ever visited this place again.
Tawil's face had no expression. He simply looked at the gate that represented the ultimate wisdom of the universe, and the stone door silently opened under the eyes of the evil god.
The door obeyed its master.
Behind the stone gate was a space that had no name. A sea of stars drifted in the silence, and disorderly fragments of space and time bloomed and were rapidly extinguished. Each fragment represented the final disappearance of a civilization in the long river of time.
If another intelligent creature had been present, it wouldn't have been able to see any of this. Their minds would have been invaded by the chaotic fragments of space-time, and they'd eventually lose themselves in different mazes of thought, a state otherwise known as madness.
Only an evil god could gaze upon this sight. To be more specific, only the Lord of Time and Space could do so.
But that wasn't the most fascinating thing about this place.
The most fascinating thing was, of course, the billions of glowing spheres that surrounded those chaotic fragments, a billion glorious spheres of light that were constantly splitting and merging.
This was the true body of Yog-Sothoth. Although the mass and volume of an Outer God's body didn't have definite values, at a rough estimate, the volume of a single one of these spheres was equal to tens of billions of black holes, while the mass of a black hole was tens of billions of times that of the sun. But the laws of modern physics were useless when it came to black holes, so it wasn't possible to compare their mass or volume in straightforward terms.
And these spheres, which were constantly rupturing and converging, could also be numbered in the billions.
That was why the Lord of Time and Space had placed his body here.
If he went out into the universe, no celestial body could endure his mass. He would only leave behind collapsed dimensions and obliterated galaxies along the way.
Tawil strode forward with a cold face. He walked across this space as if it were flat and paused at a distance roughly equal to his true body.
A dimensional space was quietly sliced open, like lifting the lid of a box.
This box space was the treasure chest of the Lord of Time and Space. Inside it was the Lord of the Gate's collection.
Yog-Sothoth would occasionally store things in here that he found interesting. For example, a turquoise stone containing millions of souls after the destruction of an advanced civilization, or the stardust created from the explosion of a large celestial body, or a crystal generated in the center of a galaxy after millions and millions of years.... Naturally, things that could be admired by the Lord of the Gate were far from ordinary.
But in the midst of all these treasures lay the lonely body of a low-intelligence creature.
The evil god crooked his finger. A moment later, the body was removed from the space.
It wasn't entirely clear what was on the evil god's mind. He'd frozen time for this body and moved it back in the timeline.
The black-haired teen was suspended in the void. His eyes were tightly closed, his eyebrows were knitted together, his thin lips were gently pursed.
His appearance was outstanding for a human. Whenever he was on the street he attracted countless stealthy glances from others of his kind. Unfortunately, Zong Yan had the mind of a totally oblivious straight man. He didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to other people's stares, nor did he care if he ended up lodged in someone else's daydreams.
The body was suspended at the moment Zong Yan had crushed the Azathoth card, determined to give up his life. That explained why the black-haired teen's expression was so stern, like he was ready to die.
Yog-Sothoth knew without looking that the body in front of him had lost its soul forever.
The young man's skin was pale and cyanotic. The blood in his veins and arteries no longer flowed, but was miraculously frozen in his body.
This lifeless appearance was unbearably ugly.
The soul was originally a stream of consciousness belonging to the Lord of the Universe. After it was freed from this body through a voluntary sacrifice, it should have returned to the torrential mind of the Lord of All.
But no.
He'd escaped the control of the omniscient and omnipotent god.
The gray-haired, golden-eyed evil god lowered his head, and his long, pale fingertips gently traced the face of the black-haired teen.
'Ugly.'
He smoothed the young man's brow and straightened the tense corners of his mouth. No one could have imagined the Lord of Time and Space would have such patience.
Right now Yog-Sothoth's mood was very complex: half-filled with anger that his prey had escaped his grasp, half-filled with the sudden rise of strong, intense interest.
And there was something even more subtle, an emotion which joined the anger he felt at the sight of this dead and lifeless body.
"How could you escape my grasp..."
With a terse sigh, he fiddled with the young man's silken black hair.
The all-seeing, all-knowing Lord had never experienced a situation he couldn't observe.
If Yog chose, he could even observe the actions of the other three original proto-gods, who were at the same level as himself. It only took a thought.
He knew all things. There was nothing he couldn't master, and nothing he couldn't grasp.
It was difficult to put his emotions into words.
In the end, this tiny ant was different.
The vast body was quietly fissioning and fusing in the void, and part of his vision was focused on the floating body of the young man.
From the very beginning, Yog-Sothoth hadn't been able to see into the present or future of this human. He'd followed the short seventeen years of the black-haired teen's life like a spectator and found nothing worthy of being the choice of the Lord of the Universe. It was all too ordinary.
What was the difference?
The evil god pondered for a while but couldn't explain it to himself.
Yog would generously reward any being who could please him with knowledge or gifts, but evil gods didn't provide after-sales service, and he actually enjoyed seeing intelligent creatures go completely insane when they aspired to huge amounts of knowledge they couldn't handle.
That had always been the case before, but Yog had actually taught Zong Yan seriously. The young man was the first intelligent creature in many years to not have his head explode.
The evil god had even wanted to accept Zong Yan as a follower.
As was well-known, the mighty Lord of Time and Space had many believers, but he had very few subordinate gods, let alone priests.
If a follower continued to please his Lord, it wasn't impossible to be elevated to the rank of deity. Yog-Sothoth had always been a generous god.
Yog thought these things a bit dispassionately, and his fingers accidentally left a scratch on the black-haired teen's eyelid.
He immediately frowned and rewound time. Then he pushed the black-haired teen into the middle of the billions of glowing, brilliant spheres that were constantly melding and fracturing.
A thin line slowly appeared on the surface of a sphere. Finally, the largest and brightest orb swallowed the teen.
Yog decided to carefully examine the future timeline again.
The only being who stood eternally outside the dimensions of the universe was Azathoth. Since the stream of consciousness wasn't with His Majesty, it meant Zong Yan had to exist somewhere inside the universe.
Tawil stepped forward. The next moment, his body suddenly disappeared and he merged into the largest sphere.
'It doesn't matter. No matter where you escaped to, you can't escape these all-knowing, all-seeing eyes.'
In the void, Yog-Sothoth lifted the corners of his mouth.
---
"R'lyeh has gone to war with the Byakhee of Carcosa before. It isn't clear how the enemy learned His Majesty was sleeping. But now that the two sires have awakened, the time is right for R'lyeh to counterattack...."
Zong Yan was reclining on the throne, listening. He suddenly looked up as if he felt something.
The young evil god was lazily supporting his head, and his long, dark green hair fell past his shoulders to the ground, like tendrils of the finest seaweed.
"Your Majesty, what is your command?"
Dagon, who was in charge of the briefing, was startled. He hurriedly knelt down for fear of angering the evil god.
"It's nothing."
Zong Yan waved his hand, but the next moment he stroked his eyelid with a faint feeling of surprise.
Strange... He thought he'd felt a vague tingling there just now.
---
The author has something to say:
Zong Yan: Oh, you ignored my love at the beginning, but now you come crawling back!
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TL Notes:
ancient keepers - The raw just calls them "ancient immortal ones" or "ancient people". It was pretty vague and I felt the need to call them something.
come crawling back - 我让你高攀不起 - I can't afford you / I'll make you climb high - meaning "You spurned me before, but now that you want me, I won't easily accept you"
Glossary of world terms—new in this chapter:
Byakhee - 拜亚基 - Bàiyàjī - Interstellar predators with webbed feet and membranous wings that travel the vacuum of space at a speed faster than light.
You can find the master list of transliterated names and titles in Chapter 0 - TL Notes. New in this chapter:
Your Majesty - 尊敬的陛下 - Zūnjìng de bìxià