26: Chapter 26. I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to talk to you about our Heavenly Father and Savior.

Xie Feng had been running to the pool recently.

When he sank to the bottom of the water, his two hollow eye sockets filled with coolness, and the messy things in his cranial cavity would be washed away.

Xie Feng called this "water in the brain".

Today, sitting on the rock by the pool, he suddenly heard fish swimming in the pool, and turned his head to ask Tie Rong.

"Tie Rong, is there an ocean nearby?"

Tie Rong seemed to think about it.

"I don't know. I grew up in Cangyun City since I was a child and have never been out. Why are you asking this?"

"I want to eat seafood."

"What is seafood?"

Xie Feng suddenly realized that people in this world might not know what "seafood" was at all.

So he changed the way he asked.

"Is there that kind of water, much, much bigger than a pool, salty, with fish, shrimp, and crabs inside?"

"Are you talking about that big lake to the east of Cangyun City?"

"It's not a lake, it's an ocean, the kind with no edges."

"Water with no edges, what kind of thing is that?"

"I have nothing to say to bumpkins like you."

Xie Feng and Wen Yushu made an appointment to play chess.

The stone table and stools in the pine forest were chosen by Wen Yushu, who said it was cool. Actually, Xie Feng knew that this guy just liked to make a move when the wind blew through the pine needles.

The sound of the wind was loud, the sound of placing a piece was small, and the opponent was easily distracted.

Xie Feng's evaluation of this was: dressed up like a human but acting like a dog, full of calculations.

When they reached the thirty-seventh move, Xie Feng suddenly spoke.

"Wen Yushu, have you ever seen the ocean."

Wen Yushu's sound of placing a piece paused for a split second. "The ocean?"

"Water much, much bigger than a pool, salty, with no edges."

"Never seen it, heard of it. There should be records in the Library Pavilion. Why are you asking this?"

"Want to eat seafood."

Xie Feng could feel those peach blossom eyes of his narrowing slightly, his face probably carrying a smile that made people want to hit him.

"Brother Xie, are you going to flip through the Library Pavilion just to eat something?"

"Can't I?"

"You can." Wen Yushu placed his piece, "Check."

Xie Feng pushed the chessboard away. "I'm not playing anymore."

Behind him came Wen Yushu's extremely faint laughter, blown away by the pine wind.

"I'm going out for a bit."

Xie Feng went to the Library Pavilion.

He went to both the inner and outer gates; anyway, the Sect had no restrictions, and Disciples who weren't Inner Sect Disciples just couldn't Cultivate in the inner Sect.

The inner Sect's Library Pavilion was several times larger than the outer Sect's. Xie Feng's Spiritual Qi brushed past rows of bookshelves, finally stopping at the "Geographical Records" section.

His fingers touched the spines of the books one by one: 《Chronicles of Cangyun City 《Mountain Records of the Qingyun Sect 《Examinations of the Northern Cities... None.

There was no "World Map", no "Chronicles of the Continent", and not even a single book recording the geography outside of Cangyun City.

People in this world really never cared what the land beneath their feet looked like.

"Give me a map, give me a map, won't you?"

Suddenly Xie Feng touched a scroll.

Xie Feng pulled the scroll out and unrolled it.

Xie Feng's Spiritual Qi swept across it, the trend of the mountains, the winding of the rivers, the twists and turns of the coastline.

His fingertips slid across a coastline, from north to south, from south to north.

That arc was too familiar to him.

"Bohai Bay?!"

The Bohai Bay of mantis shrimp, barracuda, and tongue sole.

His fingertips traced upward along the Bohai Bay, the Liaodong Peninsula, the Shandong Peninsula, the gap between the two peninsulas.

In his past life, he lived in Tianjin for a lifetime, and although he didn't live long, every coastline on this map was thoroughly memorized in his heart.

Then his fingertips stopped at the edge of a blank area.

South Pacific.

"... Fuck"

He rolled up the scroll, tucked it under his arm, and walked out of the Library Pavilion.

When he reached the door, the administrative Disciple shouted.

"Senior Brother Xie, that scroll cannot be borrowed."

"I didn't borrow it!" Xie Feng didn't stop his steps, "Wen Yushu borrowed it, just pretend you didn't see it!"

If a person has no shame, they are invincible under heaven.

Are you kidding, Wen Yushu passed the assessment and is now in the inner Sect. He saved Wen Yushu's life anyway, so tossing this matter to him will do.

When Xie Feng dragged Tu Ziguan out of the Cultivation room, Tu Ziguan was circulating his copper coins.

"What are you doing, blind man."

"Come with me."

Xie Feng dragged Tu Ziguan into his room, closed the door, and spread the scroll on the table. He grabbed Tu Ziguan's hand and pressed it against the edge of the scroll.

"Touch it."

"I'm not blind, I can see."

Tu Ziguan had a puzzled look on his face.

"Oh oh, projecting my own state onto others, then take a look."

"Brother Feng, this map..." Tu Ziguan's voice changed, "This is Blue Star."

"Look at the scale again," Xie Feng said.

"... It's bigger, at least several times bigger than Blue Star. The general shape of the coastline hasn't changed, but the area of every piece of land has been magnified, the ocean is also bigger, there's an extra continent above Europe near the North Pole, the rest of the shapes are correct, it's just bigger."

"Damn it, didn't touch it, what about the Hyperborean Continent?"

Xie Feng pointed his finger at that blank area of the South Pacific.

"Tu Wu, that Blue Star of yours, doesn't have Cthulhu."

Tu Ziguan fell silent.

"My Blue Star doesn't have it."

Xie Feng's finger drew a circle in the blank space of the South Pacific,

"But on that Blue Star of mine, there is a story. In the story, there is something called Cthulhu sleeping at the bottom of the South Pacific. A city called Rlyeh."

Xie Feng's finger moved away from the South Pacific and landed on the location of Europe.

His finger moved toward the depths of the Asian continent.

His finger moved toward the direction of the Pleiades.

His finger moved toward the Middle East.

Tu Ziguan watched Xie Feng's finger point across the map one by one, swallowing a mouthful of saliva. "Brother Feng, you mean... these places are all Cthulhu?"

"That's not it, but they're all great ones."

Xie Feng retracted his finger and pressed it against the veil hanging over his face.

"However, if this map and the map of my world have the same coastline shapes. If the coastlines are the same, the continental shelves are the same, and the submarine structures are the same. Then beneath the South Pacific, 126 degrees 43 minutes west longitude, 47 degrees 9 minutes south latitude..."

He didn't finish.

Tu Ziguan finished it for him.

"There really is a city called Rlyeh."

Xie Feng rolled the scroll back up, moving very slowly.

Suddenly he didn't want to eat seafood so much anymore; jianbing guozi would also be not bad.

The night was deep.

When Xie Feng's consciousness sank into the darkness, it was the same as every night.

His hollow eye sockets faced the dark ceiling, and the veil covered his face.

"No matter what time it is, it always feels a bit inauspicious."

In order not to let the veil fall off, Xie Feng still had to tie it to his head.

Slowly falling asleep.

What his consciousness sank into was not the darkness of sleep, but the darkness of water.

Cold, salty, squeezing in from all directions, darkness.

The deep sea.

The seawater was so deep that light couldn't penetrate it, and the water pressure crushed across his torso and limbs from every direction.

He couldn't feel his own body, but he knew he was sinking.

Slowly, unstoppably sinking.

"I knew it! Serves you right for being a glutton!"

Xie Feng endured the water pressure and fiercely slapped his own mouth.

His feet touched regular giant stones, the surface covered in deposits from who knows how many epochs.

Spiritual Qi oozed from the soles of his feet, sweeping across the surface of the giant stones, sweeping across those edges and corners corroded by seawater for hundreds of millions of years, those geometric angles that could not possibly come from any natural creation.

This was Rlyeh.

He stood at the apex of Rlyeh.

Xie Feng's consciousness wanted to scream, but the water pressure choked his throat.

His Spiritual Qi uncontrollably spread in all directions, sweeping across the giant stone architecture beneath him, sweeping across those huge porches and steps impossible to be used by human limbs, sweeping across those patterns carved on the stone walls that would make one's eyeballs sting at a single glance.

His Spiritual Qi swept over something, at the center of the city, in the deepest palace.

Something breathed.

The entire Rlyeh trembled slightly with that breath, and the silt that had accumulated on the giant stone structures for hundreds of millions of years was shaken off, drifting silently toward the seabed.

Xie Feng's Spiritual Qi uncontrollably surged toward that palace, toward the source of that breath.

Xie Feng couldn't see the full picture; the limit of Spiritual Qi only swept across an incomparably massive tentacle, a tentacle so massive that it occupied the entire field of vision.

"I'll bring a boat next time I sleep."

Xie Feng thought.

The moment Spiritual Qi touched His dream, one of His tentacles moved.

Extremely lightly, like a person in their sleep unconsciously curling their fingers.

His tentacle shifted slightly toward Xie Feng's direction.

Xie Feng's consciousness was crushed to pieces by this instantaneous pause.

His consciousness shattered into countless pieces in that void, every piece screaming, every piece unable to make a sound.

Xie Feng abruptly sat up from the stone couch.

His two hollow eye sockets faced the dark ceiling.

"I saw Lord Cthulhu."