32: Chapter 32 You're so clever, here's a little red flower for you!

After Sect Master Shen Du's footsteps completely disappeared at the end of the mountain path, Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan chatted at the doorway for a long time.

Xie Feng told Tu Ziguan everything, and the two men's lives were tightly bound together.

Tu Ziguan spoke first.

"Brother Feng." "Hmm?"

"Did I drool just now?" "All over the ground."

"You drooled too." "Indeed."

The two of them fell silent for a moment longer, then simultaneously squatted down with their backs against the door frame.

"Brother Feng, what Realm do you think the Sect Master is actually in?"

"The Eighth Realm."

"What kind of concept is the Eighth Realm?"

Xie Feng thought about it. "Wen Yushu's grandfather, Elder Wen, is in the Sixth Realm, or maybe the Seventh Realm. Elder Liu is in the Sixth Realm, and the Sect Master is two major Realms higher than them."

"What kind of concept are two major Realms?"

"According to what's written in cultivation novels, he could fight ten of the likes of Elder Wen, maybe even more."

Far away in the Inner Sect, Wen Yushu sneezed.

Tu Ziguan pulled the necklace out from his collar and looked at the bead by the moonlight. The light blue fragments inside the bead emitted an extremely faint shimmer in the moonlight.

Tu Ziguan stuffed the bead back into his collar. "Brother Feng, were we too cowardly before?"

"It's not that we were too cowardly; we were too weak." Xie Feng's blind cane tapped on the ground. "I've been scared for over a year, and I never thought about a question: Are the people of this world afraid?"

Tu Ziguan suddenly stood up, walked into the room, and fetched that booklet from Xie Feng's couch.

He opened the first page, looked at it by the moonlight, and then closed it.

"It's blank. I can't see a single word."

Things having reached this point, Tu Ziguan was no longer cowardly. Leaning on the great tree of the Sect Master meant enjoying the shade.

The two of them suddenly realized that if the cthulhu mythos was analogized into a cultivation novel...

Then...

"Brother Feng, what are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about what you're thinking about."

"Did you figure it out?" Tu Ziguan put the booklet back on the couch, walked back, and squatted down.

Xie Feng's mind suddenly cleared up.

Nyarlathotep wouldn't kill him; Nyarlathotep would find it very interesting. But as long as they continued to Cultivate and grow stronger, one day they would flip from inside the box to outside the box.

By that day, they wouldn't have to be chess pieces anymore.

Tu Ziguan changed his posture, shifting from squatting to sitting cross-legged.

"Brother Feng, you said during our chat just now that you were harmed by habitual thinking before. What do you mean?"

"In that game from my past life, investigators were all ordinary people with mortal bodies. Seeing mythological creatures required passing a sanity check, and failing it drove them directly mad. I spent a lifetime in that world, and the cthulhu mythos in my mind was 'invincible'."

Xie Feng's blind cane tapped gently on the ground.

"I never thought that the people of this world might not be afraid of these things."

"That's right! They aren't afraid." Tu Ziguan looked at the moon.

"I still don't know what concept the Sect Master's Eighth Realm is, but the mythological creatures of this world might not be as strong as I imagined. Or rather, the Cultivators of this world are much stronger than I imagined."

Xie Feng tapped his blind cane, his voice gradually quickening.

"The investigators from my past life at most held a gun, and at best knew some minor Spells, but the Cultivators of this world are different!"

At this moment, Xie Feng suddenly froze, finally realizing how important Wen Yushu's words were!

"Remember, cultivation base is everything in this world!"

Xie Feng stood up, his blind cane tapping the ground. "Tu Wu, let's rank the combat power."

Tu Ziguan also stood up. "How should we rank it?"

"Start ranking from the ones I've seen."

Xie Feng's eyeless eye sockets gleamed.

The Black Pine Forest anomaly is roughly between the Third Realm and Fourth Realm, which is medium-low in the anomaly system. He dared to counterattack the Dark Young, so the Dark Young are probably between the Fourth and Fifth Realms. That mirror anomaly in the Mirror Tomb cannot be defeated by anyone below the Fourth Realm, so it's around the Fifth Realm.

Nyarlathotep's Incarnation... let's not count its combat power for now; it didn't come to fight.

The Sect Master is in the Eighth Realm. Shub-Niggurath is one of the Three Pillar Gods, but I estimate it probably isn't her main body. As the Mother of All Things, she almost symbolizes the rules of the Universe, so what the Sect Master saw is most likely a projection of her Incarnation.

"Then what about the Ninth Realm? What if there's still something above the Ninth Realm?" Tu Ziguan stood in the moonlight, his mouth open and his eyes wide round. Then he suddenly let out a laugh. "Brother Feng."

"Hmm."

"You're right. We are fucking Cultivators. Why should we be afraid of a bunch of things that don't even have health bars?"

"Hounds have health bars."

"Then we're even less afraid."

The two people stood at the doorway, moonlight leaking down from the eaves and falling upon the youths' dreams.

"Brother Feng, what should we do next?"

"You Cultivate! The Sect Master went to find the Grand Elder and doesn't know when he will be back. Before he returns, you need to raise your cultivation base."

Tu Ziguan fished the necklace out from his collar and clenched it in his hand. "Regarding the hounds, ten years. The Sect Master said he will return within ten years."

"Ten years is enough for you to Cultivate from the Second Realm Nine Heavens to at least the Fifth Realm. A Fifth Realm Tu Ziguan could probably nail right through a hound's skull with a bullet."

Tu Ziguan smiled. "Your skill at drawing pie in the sky has improved again."

"Basic skill of doing human work."

"What about you?"

"I'm going to find the reason."

"What reason?"

"Why it's me."

"Understood. Let's work hard together."

"No toxic chicken soup for me, thanks for the invitation."

The two stood in front of their respective doors and exchanged glances.

They smiled at each other.

"Xie Feng." "What is it?"

"The Sect Master is awesome." Tu Ziguan stroked the necklace.

"The Sect Master is awesome." Xie Feng stood at the doorway, his hanging gauze swaying slightly in the night breeze.

The night was thick, and the consciousness in his mind gradually sank into wonderful fantasies about the future.

Then Xie Feng stood in Rlyeh.

"Cthulhu, you %#% %#%"

The deep sea.

Then he felt it.

In the center of the city, within the deepest palace, Cthulhu was looking at him.

"Holy shit, Lord Cthulhu has woken up?!"

It wasn't that breathing from a deep slumber last time; it was awake.

On its octopus-like head, countless tentacles hung down from its face, drifting slowly in the undercurrents of the seabed. The huge, bat-like wings behind it spread slightly, resembling two dark clouds blotting out the sky.

Its eyes were like two rotting stars.

"No, this is in a dream, this isn't Cthulhu, this is Klaxin!"

Just as this thought passed through Xie Feng's mind.

Looking into Lord Cthulhu's eyes, Xie Feng somehow felt he could make something out.

That seemed to be a kind of... similar to... human curiosity?

But Xie Feng didn't dare to be sure, because the feeling was so vague, chaotic, and miscellaneous.

It spoke. Its voice could not be understood, but the information was transmitted directly into his mind.

The information was so pure, so unadorned.

The way it entered the mind was almost as if someone was stuffing a molten iron skewer directly into your cranial cavity from your left ear.

Two words.

A place name.

It closed its eyes and withdrew its gaze.

The tentacles on its head hung down once more, the bat-like wings folded back up, and those rotting stars were covered.

It sank back into the depths of the throne, its breath becoming slow and long once again.

Rlyeh trembled slightly along with it.

"I chatted with Lord Cthulhu and didn't even go crazy?!"

At that moment, Xie Feng suddenly felt a slight warmth in his right eye socket.

Reaching out to touch it, a symbol appeared inside the eye socket.

That symbol emitted a dull metallic luster, along with a deep-space shimmer and nebular light grey or light purple tones.

The shape upon it was indescribable.

The ring was a portal, bounding incomprehensible non-Euclidean geometry. Sharp lines within tore out from the Void Realm, intersecting into bizarre alien wing-shapes. (Note: There is an image at the end.)

"Why does it feel like I've seen this somewhere before? It doesn't feel like an elder sign, does it?"