88: Chapter 88 Can someone who has never died be called a protagonist?

Xie Feng saw the Third Princess on the deck of the flying boat.

She still looked the same, in dark black martial attire with dark golden trims, her height reaching only to his chest, and the angle at which she looked up at him was identical to their first meeting.

She only brought two attendants with her, one being the Imperial Guards Centurion who had always followed her, and the other a young attendant holding a long wooden box.

The Third Princess looked up at Xie Feng, and then she laughed.

It was a laugh she simply could not hold back, stretching from the corners of her mouth all the way to her ears, completely unbefitting a princess.

She laughed for a good while before stopping, wiping the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand.

"At least that layer of black hair you had before could cover things up a bit, but now the black hair is gone, and you've turned completely green."

Xie Feng tapped his blind staff against the ground, thought about it, and finally couldn't help saying:

"Your Highness, it is not very appropriate for you to laugh at a meritorious official like this."

"A meritorious official? You brat caused such a huge loss that I can't even go back to report to His Majesty, and you almost made this princess perish inside as well. Do you still count yourself as a meritorious official?"

The Third Princess finally managed to suppress her smile, tilting her head to wave at the attendant behind her.

The young attendant holding the wooden box stepped forward and opened it, revealing a heavily folded, extremely oversized black cloak inside.

Its material was extremely light and thin, and the surface faintly shimmered with ultra-fine dark golden rune circuits.

"It's a style from the West. The sandstorms are heavy over there, so this kind of hooded cloak can cover a person from head to toe."

"It was originally among the tribute items, and this princess had the royal crest removed and replaced with embedded rune weaving."

The Third Princess picked the cloak up from the box, shook it out, and handed it out in front of Xie Feng.

"Put it on. If you go to the imperial capital looking like this, the citizens will think this princess is harboring some strange anomaly."

Xie Feng took the cloak and put it on.

The size of the cloak was very loose, hanging all the way from his shoulders to his ankles.

The hooded part was extremely deep, and after pulling it up, his entire face sank into the shadows.

The Night Monarch moved slightly in his left eye socket, then proactively oozed a layer of extremely faint and thin shadow from deep within the eye socket, spreading outward along the edge of the eye socket to fill all the gaps between the hood's shadow and Xie Feng's facial contour.

Viewed from the front, nothing could be seen deep inside the hood, only a patch of pure darkness, and three petal-shaped fragments of fire floating in the exact center of the darkness.

The Third Princess leaned forward half a step and looked closely from the front.

"Looking like this, people would believe you if you said you were some eerie High Priest."

Xie Feng touched his nose: "Your Highness flatters me."

The Third Princess was clearly not praising him, but she didn't take back her words either, merely waving her hand to let the attendant take away the empty wooden box.

The two chatted for a few more sentences on the deck, nothing more than how their respective injuries were recovering, when the flying boat would arrive at the imperial capital, and whether there were any other arrangements along the way.

The Third Princess said that this trip she would first return to the palace to report on her mission, and after Xie Feng settled down, she would arrange for him to enter the royal library to look through the journals.

Xie Feng said he needed to contact the Qingyun Sect's people in the imperial capital first to report that he was safe.

The Third Princess nodded and headed to the upper level of the flying boat with her attendants.

Xie Feng greeted the Centurion and turned back to his cabin.

The cabin was very small, with a couch, a low table, and a Spirit Stone lamp.

He leaned the cold crystal blind staff against the wall, sat down on the edge of the couch, and placed the blue cloth bundle that Zuo Ciyuan had handed him before leaving onto his knees.

The bundle was not large, tied tightly on the outside with extremely fine hemp rope, and sealed with a very faint spiritual power Seal on the hemp rope.

Xie Feng used his fingernails to snap the hemp rope and undo the Seal.

revelations of glaaki

Xie Feng's fingers lingered on the cover for quite a long time.

Back in the ruins of Ranhuo City, when the God of Depravity threw this book to him, he was in a semi-demented state, flipping the pages of the book with rustling sounds.

There were only some fragmented residual memories left in his brain, and he had no memory at all of where the book went afterward.

Zuo Ciyuan not only saved him in the ruins but also collected this book as well.

Missing those two volumes, the summoning incantation of Azathoth could no longer be pieced together completely, but the remaining content was still the revelations of glaaki, still one of the highest-ranking taboo classics in the cthulhu mythos.

Then Xie Feng suddenly found something strange.

Logically speaking, even without stopping Xie Feng, Xie Feng could not summon Azathoth.

The Insects from Shaggai so fanatically worshipped an Incarnation of Azathoth, pouring infinite time and life into their mother planet, and only managed to painstakingly attempt summoning a Clone of Azathoth.

Yet with Xie Feng's dilapidated altar and mana value at that time, it was simply a pipe dream.

But why were the gods so vigilant about him trying to summon General A back then?

Xie Feng turned the book back and forth in his palm for several rounds, and then began to ponder the thoughts of the Governor of Qingzhou.

Zuo Ciyuan knew that he recognized this book, yet still gave it to him without leaving any additional conditions, not even saying a word of "use with caution".

Perhaps it was because a ninth-realm Cultivator didn't need to say such things, or perhaps Zuo Ciyuan felt that Xie Feng had reached the stage where he should judge this for himself.

However, not studying a classic obtained for free would be a waste.

Xie Feng now had the Night Monarch's three petal-shaped fire lights in his left eye, allowing him to read and understand at a speed surpassing humans, and The Guide's silvery-white Void Realm in his right eye, allowing him to directly reassemble phantom texts into understandable semantics deep within his consciousness.

He had already experienced this when flipping through it in the ruins of Ranhuo City.

As soon as those torn apart and reassembled phantom texts entered his eyes on the human-skin pages, the corresponding meanings would automatically emerge in his mind.

Moreover, the Night Monarch in his left eye socket would instinctively release an extremely thin layer of shadow to cover the pages, weakening the taboo contamination wriggling between the lines to a bearable degree.

Reading this kind of mythical classic, Xie Feng was now like a fish in water.

The text slowly unfolded deep within his consciousness.

As Xie Feng was reading "The mark is neither a blessing nor a curse, but a resonance projection of existence itself across multiple dimensions", the palm of his left hand suddenly began to itch.

It was an itch surging outward from deep within the dermis, accompanied by the wriggling sensation of extremely minute foreign objects.

"Why do I feel like my inspiration has increased?"

Xie Feng lifted his left hand from the pages and turned his palm over.

To his shock, a mouth had appeared right in the middle of his palm.

The lips were extremely thick and wide, with the edges rolling outward, revealing the dark red mucous membrane on the inside and two rows of jagged, sharp teeth.

A tongue protruded from the gap between the lips, plump and long, its surface covered with extremely dense barbs.

It was licking the lines on his palm, licking from the lifeline to the wisdom line.

Every lick left a trail of extremely fine and sticky saliva, bringing a bout of itching as if fleas and lice were reveling beneath his skin.

"Fatty! You chose me as the High Priest?!"

Before Xie Feng could deal with the mouth on his left hand, the Revelations held in his right hand suddenly shook violently.

An extremely thin and long object deep within the spine was activated.

The spine split open a gap, and a spike glowing with a dark green metallic luster all over shot out abruptly from the gap.

Its tip was extremely fine, so fine that it was almost indistinguishable to the naked eye.

The surface of the spike was covered with extremely dense spiral patterns.

A certain living tissue possessing both metallic texture and biological characteristics opened its eyes.

The moment it saw Xie Feng, Xie Feng even saw ecstatic joy in its eyes.

That dark green metal spike ejected from the spine, leaving Xie Feng with no time to react at all.

The spike had pierced into his chest, penetrated the dark green skin beneath his clothing, and protruded half an inch from his back.

Xie Feng's heart was pierced precisely, passing right through the center of the left atrium and nailing the entire heart into his chest cavity.

"Glaaki, I f—"

The sound was cut off after squeezing out a single, extremely short and hurried syllable from his throat.

His body began to exhibit typical acute blood loss reactions: vision plummeted drastically, his ears buzzed, and the tactile sensations in the distal ends of his limbs stripped upward from his fingertips at an extremely fast speed.

Xie Feng died in the cabin...