16: 1st Umr

The mission rewards for Kumu Village were distributed on the third day after returning to the sect.

The contribution points were one hundred more than what Tu Ziguan had calculated.

When the deacon of the Affairs Hall took back the mission scroll, he deliberately glanced at Xie Feng a few more times.

The deacon shouted from behind, "Junior Brother Xie. Stay a while."

Xie Feng didn't even stop.

"Are you kidding me? When Shen Gongbao said 'Fellow Immortal, please stay,' do you know how many immortals ended up on that name list?"

"For next year's inner sect assessment, the outer sect has recommended your name."

Xie Feng turned around.

That being said.

The deacon lowered his head to organize the booklets on the table, speaking as if he were talking about a trivial matter.

"Who recommended it?"

"A joint recommendation by several Elders."

The deacon raised his head, his gaze carrying the expression of *I don't quite understand either, but the Elders have decided it this way*.

"Elder Pu, Elder Zhao, and Elder Liu, the three of them jointly recommended you."

"Can I not go?"

The deacon looked at Xie Feng as if he were looking at a lunatic.

"With a joint recommendation, not going is considered an abstention. If you abstain, you need to discuss it with the recommending Elders, and you will not be allowed to participate again for three years."

When Xie Feng walked out of the Affairs Hall, the sunlight was blazing.

The news spread much faster than he walked.

Along the way from the Affairs Hall to the inn, at least three groups of people lowered their voices as he passed by.

"That's Xie Feng."

"The one from the first lineage?"

"What first lineage? He single-handedly wiped out a lesser anomaly in Kumu Village."

"The version I heard was three."

"Regardless of how many, he was recommended for the inner sect assessment anyway."

"How many years has it been since a First Realm Disciple was jointly recommended for the inner sect assessment in the Qingyun Sect?"

Xie Feng quickened his pace. When he reached the entrance, Tu Ziguan was leaning against the door frame, chewing on a sesame flatbread.

Seeing Xie Feng's expression, he slowed down the speed of chewing his flatbread.

"Did you hear?"

"Can you eat less of that stuff? Carbs will make you fat."

Xie Feng went straight upstairs, with Tu Ziguan following behind, still pinching half a flatbread in his hand.

Returning to his room, Xie Feng sat down by the bed and lowered his head to look at his hands.

His cultivation at the seventh heavenly layer of the First Realm was not bad among Disciples of the same batch.

The inner sect assessment was not compared with Disciples of the same batch, but with all recommended Disciples in the entire outer sect, of whom at least half had cultivation above the Second Realm.

What was he going to use to pass?

"Brother Feng."

Tu Ziguan leaned against the door frame and took a bite of the flatbread.

"Are you wondering whether to abstain?"

"You cannot participate again within three years. Three years is enough for that squinting Wen Yushu to charge into the Fourth Realm."

"So what? What does that have to do with me?"

"Then what do you plan to do?"

Xie Feng was truly prepared to abstain, but he didn't dare to discuss it with Pu Huai.

What an international joke; just a glance would make him wet his pants.

"Brother Feng, I want to ask you something." Tu Ziguan's chewing motion stopped.

"Hm?"

"I've heard you mention it before. *The Call of Cthulhu*, TRPGs, SAN values. You've brought it up several times. What is a SAN value?"

"Sanity value," Xie Feng replied. "Seeing monsters loses SAN; seeing evil gods loses even more SAN. Once your SAN runs out, you go crazy."

Tu Ziguan nodded and said, "Then how much SAN have you lost?"

"Zero," Xie Feng said. "Not a single point lost."

Inside the room, the two men frowned and thought for a moment. Outside the window came the full-spirited shouts of Disciples sparring on the martial arts practice field.

"Are you sure that Yog-Sothoth is watching you?" Tu Ziguan spoke.

Xie Feng raised his head.

"When you locked eyes with that anomaly in Kumu Village, you said, 'If we locked eyes, no one would dare to lock eyes with That Being.'"

Tu Ziguan stuffed the last bite of the flatbread into his mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed.

"But I thought about it the whole way back. If it really is Yog-Sothoth—that super invincible celestial big shot you told me about—watching you, why haven't you had a single thing happen after looking at Him for half a year?"

He looked at Xie Feng.

"If it really is Him watching you, you are just a Cultivator at the seventh heavenly layer of the First Realm—are you a hydraulic jack? How can you withstand so much?"

Xie Feng's lips moved.

"Perhaps it's not Yog-Sothoth," Tu Ziguan said. "Perhaps you got it wrong from the very beginning."

Over the past half year, Xie Feng's sleep time had been extremely little, and he had been under high pressure the whole time. Aside from releasing some stress during missions, he had remained quite tense the rest of the time.

But who would have thought that Tu Ziguan's words would instead produce a hint of a different meaning in Xie Feng's heart.

That night, Xie Feng sat on the bed without cultivating.

Moonlight filtered through the window paper, casting a patch of pale light spots on the ground.

Staring at that patch of light spots, Tu Ziguan's words from daytime repeatedly spun in his mind.

If it really was Yog-Sothoth watching him, how on earth did he manage to endure it for half a year?

Whether following TRPGs—that is, the so-called tabletop game rules—or following the settings of the cthulhu mythos.

The sanity check for directly staring at an Outer God was 1d10/1d100.

Translated into human language, any normal person had a one-fourth probability of falling directly into permanent madness when facing an Outer God.

Permanent!

Yet Xie Feng's sanity remained completely intact.

This did not look like the mental state a person gazed upon by an Outer God for half a year should have.

Unless the one gazing at him was not an Outer God, or rather, not the Outer God he thought it was.

Xie Feng groped out a booklet from under his pillow.

That was something he started writing since entering the Qingyun Sect. Fearing he would forget, he had written down that knowledge of the cthulhu mythos in the notebook.

Yog-Sothoth had Incarnations, just like Nyarlathotep had countless Incarnations.

Nyarlathotep could disguise itself as Pu Huai, could disguise itself as anyone, and could shatter the name "Nyarlathotep" into countless fragments scattered across different bodies.

Why couldn't Yog-Sothoth?

What if he had gotten it wrong from the very beginning?

What if the one gazing at him was not Yog-Sothoth, but a certain Incarnation of Yog-Sothoth—an Incarnation that was not so cold toward humanity, or even somewhat curious?

Xie Feng stood up and walked out of the room.

Tu Ziguan's room had its lights on. Xie Feng knocked three times. Tu Ziguan was wearing his sleeping undergarments, his hair disheveled, and he was still pinching a half-polished copper coin in his hand.

Seeing Xie Feng's expression, he put the copper coin back into his sleeve. "What is it?"

"Tu Wu," Xie Feng said. "Do me a favor."

"Speak."

"Early tomorrow morning, I'm going to the back mountain. If I don't come back—" Xie Feng gritted his teeth. "Just pretend I passed the inner sect assessment and was exceptionally accepted."

Tu Ziguan froze.

Xie Feng's expression was extremely resolute.

It was the resolution of someone who had been tormented by a question for too long and finally decided to go find the answer.

"Alright," Tu Ziguan said.

Xie Feng turned and left. Tu Ziguan stood at the doorway, watching Xie Feng's figure disappear into the darkness at the end of the corridor.

The moonlight shone on his fingers gripping the door frame, the knuckles turning pale from exertion.

The abandoned martial arts practice field at the back mountain.

Xie Feng lay in the middle of the overgrown weeds, looked at the dense starry sky, and closed his eyes.

He shut the entire world outside his eyelids.

Then he "looked up."

His consciousness looked upward in the darkness.

It was the same as the lights he had seen in his dream half a year ago, yet different.

The light in the dream was a rotating sphere, but the light he saw at this moment was soft and quiet, like a very thin layer of gauze, and there seemed to be a human figure behind it.

It was an outline, a silhouette, an existence residing outside of all time and space, draped in a shimmering veil.

It sat there—not "sitting" on a chair, but existing in a position beyond the comprehension of Xie Feng's consciousness, seemingly a throne, yet also like a threshold, or even the door itself.

It was looking at him.

From the front, behind a pair of eyes that Xie Feng could not see, it quietly and gently gazed at him.

It was like a gatekeeper watching a traveler who had walked up to the door but didn't dare to knock.

Xie Feng's lips moved.

He had read all the lore of Yog-Sothoth, including its Incarnations.

It had two primary Incarnations.

One was the wrathful Aforgomon, manifesting as a dazzling light that brought destruction.

The other was the Primordial Immortals, the gatekeeper of the silver-key gate.

The relatively benign one.

However, using human emotions to describe a god was inaccurate; one could only say that one of its Incarnations was relatively surging, while the other was relatively calm.

"Tawil at-Umr."

That shimmering veil trembled slightly, and the existence behind the veil nodded at him.

Standing on the wasteland beneath that moonlight with his eyes closed, Xie Feng saw the silhouette behind the veil deep within his consciousness also quietly "looking" at him.

"Why didn't you say so earlier? Why didn't you say so earlier?" Xie Feng cried out in a breakdown, finally letting go of a small portion of the pressure that burdened him.

The veil trembled slightly.

It did not answer, but Xie Feng felt a certain emotion. Without language or imagery, it was a pure "implication" transmitted over.

That implication was roughly saying:

"You didn't ask either."

"Am I Young Master Void?"

Xie Feng relaxed, a stale meme slipping right out of his mouth.

It was neither merciful nor compassionate, only gentle; it was even too lazy to do something like "actively explaining."

Xie Feng wanted to curse, but he didn't dare.

"After all this fuss, I scared myself."

He really felt much more relaxed now; Xie Feng dared to make stale jokes right in front of an Outer God.

Xie Feng lowered his head, speaking very softly toward his own shadow.

"...Thank you."

There was no response, but Xie Feng felt that the gaze was still as quiet and as gentle as it had been half a year ago.

He stood up and saw from his shadow that his face seemed to be hanging with an extremely faint layer of light, like a thin layer of gauze.

Then he saw Tu Ziguan sneaking around in the bushes.

Xie Feng didn't even ask, "Why are you here?"

On the way back, passing by that patch of bushes, he reached out and hauled Tu Ziguan up from the ground.

"Let's go."

Tu Ziguan patted the grass debris off his body and followed beside him.

Xie Feng still had many things to do.

As well as a question that suddenly occurred to him.

If the one gazing at him was Tawil at-Umr, then did Yog-Sothoth itself, within some dimension his consciousness could not reach, cast a glance at him through Tawil's eyes?

Also, a major heartache had been resolved, but there was still Nyarlathotep over there.

"The burden is heavy and the road is long."