81: Chapter 81 Zuo Ciyuan

Xie Feng barely paused after getting the book.

Dark green blood was still oozing from the wound split open from his left wrist to his elbow, while his right hand was already flipping open the book.

The human skin cover felt slightly warm beneath his fingertips, and the broken, rearranged illusionary runes on the cover lit up layer by layer the instant they came into contact with his magic value.

The three-lobed eyeball of his left eye allowed him to comprehend and read at a speed beyond human limits, while his right eye read using The Guide's perception. With every page flipped, those illusionary runes automatically rearranged into meanings he could understand deep within his consciousness.

Flipping through at an extraordinarily fast pace, Xie Feng had a clear goal—heading straight for the summoning incantations, or more accurately, straight for the summoning incantation for Azathoth.

The Blind Idiot God, the Nuclear Chaos, the One seated upon the obsidian throne at the center of the Universe.

Once Xie Feng flipped to it, he immediately began chanting the obscure, distorted incantation, preparing to drag the Lord of the Universe here to say hello to everyone.

His mind was crystal clear; his other hand had already folded a marker in the revelations. As soon as he finished chanting this section, he would turn the page and immediately begin reciting the summoning incantation for Ghroth.

The Purifier would come to awaken its monarch, and when that big alarm clock woke Azathoth up, everything could go to hell!

"Anomalies! Humans! Nyarlathotep! Go to hell, all of you! You terrifying bastards!"

Though he shouted this aloud, as Xie Feng chanted the incantation, the anomalies and humans on the field hugged each other tightly, trembling in terror. They felt the Lord of the Universe behind that incantation, and the sound of mad flutes seemed to seep out from Xie Feng's chanting.

When he read to the first section of Volume V, the phantom of the three-legged creature in his mind suddenly froze.

The ten-sided die suspended in midair stopped spinning, and then a smear of gray spread out from the pages of the revelations of glaaki in his hands, slowly creeping along the most core volumes of the Revelations.

The recovery of magic value within his body also halted; the God of Toads stopped supplying magic.

Tsathoggua certainly wouldn't meddle with Nyarlathotep's belongings lightly, but Azathoth was the Nuclear Chaos. As lazy as the God of Toads was, He knew what was at stake. Enduring His disgust, He drew out a strand of the deepest and coldest black liquid drop from His depths, enveloping the pages Xie Feng was searching through. The illusionary runes on the pages began to disintegrate layer by layer, and the ink on the paper silently evaporated into extremely fine gray particles; entire volumes of forbidden knowledge were thus dissolved into nothingness.

Then, the gray wrapped around the volumes enveloped by the black liquid drops and yanked fiercely. Accompanied by a sound resembling a scab being torn from the skin, a portion of the pages vanished.

Xie Feng felt the pages grow lighter in his hands; Volumes V and VII of the revelations of glaaki had been torn out.

The three-lobed flames of his left eye suddenly contracted, and the incantation coming from his mouth stuttered at the final turn. Lacking the original text of these two volumes, there was no way to proceed with the most crucial part of summoning Azathoth.

Yet Xie Feng was still struggling, stumbling as he squeezed out the remaining fragmented syllables from his mouth, attempting to invoke Azathoth through an incomplete incantation.

That's right—Xie Feng had painstakingly memorized the grammar of the spells in his past life, and now he was desperately trying to reconstruct the Shaggai Insects' summoning spell for Azathoth through educated guesses.

A hand reached out from behind, gently covering his mouth.

Extremely steady with distinct knuckles, its palm bore a very thin cocoon of spiritual power. The deep, dense spiritual power unique to a Cultivator seeped out from the palm, gently yet irresistibly pressing the rampaging magic value inside Xie Feng's body back into the depths of his Dantian. Cthugha's mark flashed furiously once, but the hand merely remained covered there securely, without even a tremor.

Ghatanothoa's mark throbbed dully before going quiet. The Nightgaunt in his left eye socket shivered into an extremely tiny ball, while the silver-white Void Realm in his right eye socket slowly retreated deep into the socket.

With his other hand, he tapped lightly toward the center of the battlefield.

All ten Dark Young froze simultaneously, as threads of dark green mucus snapped in midair. Their trunk-like hooves rested upon the vitrified masonry, but their originally unshakable stomping rhythm was lifted an inch upward from the soles of their feet by a remarkably soft yet heavy force of spiritual power.

Just one inch, and all the force of their trampling was completely dissipated deep into the earth.

The mouthparts of the ten young closed at once. They slowly stepped back, retreating into the shadows, which dissipated silently before the dawn arrived.

Nearby, the stone pillars filled with magic were crushed to dust. Deprived of the towering summoning pillars, those dreamlike bubbles in the sky flickered out one after another. Each bubble vanished silently, flashing a faint silver light right before extinguishing.

The summoning rituals for Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath were severed.

Ygolonac murmured softly in his palm. The God of Depravity lost interest; with the most amusing part interrupted, He no longer wished to linger here.

The long tongue in his palm retracted, causing the attacks from Grand Cultivator Helan Yan and Elder Zhou to miss, and His figure slowly drifted away.

As the anomalies were thoroughly crushed by the heavy spiritual power and the mythical creatures and Great Old Ones departed, the entire battlefield of Ranhuo City fell dead silent.

Unbeknownst to anyone, a person had appeared behind Xie Feng—a very tall, exceptionally lean middle-aged man with a gaunt face and cheekbones sharp as razor blades.

He wore an extremely simple black robe bearing no crests, runes, or any decorations that might indicate his identity, yet the spiritual power itself needed no adornment to display its presence.

A Ninth-Realm Great Cultivator.

The highest royal official in Qingzhou, the third-generation Governor of Qingzhou—Zuo Ciyuan.

He had sat in the position of a Great Cultivator for far too many years—so long that the younger generation of Cultivators in Qingzhou had hardly ever seen his face outside of ancient texts, so long that even high-ranking Sect members like Elder Han believed he had long since passed away.

Everyone on the deck fell silent at once. Grand Cultivator Helan Yan and Elder Zhou looked up simultaneously, their movements holding the immortal sword and ancient jade in midair freezing for a brief second before they bowed slightly in greeting.

Zuo Ciyuan didn't look at them; he merely kept covering Xie Feng's mouth, gently pulling Xie Feng half a step into his arms.

The back of Xie Feng's head rested against his chest. The fabric of the black robe was extremely rough, rubbing against the charred scar on the back of Xie Feng's neck burned by Cthugha's plasma fire pillar. Zuo Ciyuan looked down at Xie Feng.

Nightgaunt in his left eye, Silver Key in his right eye, two Great Old One marks on his chest, left arm still dripping blood, one-armed and one-eyed, riddled with chronic ailments, his body long since riddled with holes filled by the imprints of the gods.

"Enough."

It wasn't directed at Xie Feng, but at that body of the God of Depravity, at the dark cloud of the Black Goat slowly solidifying in midair, at Cthugha flashing on Xie Feng's chest, the Nightgaunt in his left eye socket, the silver-white Void Realm in his right eye socket, and at all the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods still fighting for this human vessel.

"This junior, I am protecting him."