You're not going anywhere!
Cain shouted sternly.
Immediately after, the eerie polyhedron known as Leviathan activated once more, hundreds of chains surged toward Wood—
You think you can wound Papa!
Jormungand suddenly expanded, enveloping Wood's body in layers, staring coldly at Leviathan and Cain, who was commanding Leviathan.
You, what on earth are you trying to do!
“I want to—”
Ignore him, let's go.
Wood ordered Jormungand and Anubis.
[Fine.]
I'll listen to Papa.
Jormungand writhed his massive body, causing the seemingly indestructible building to suddenly crack and groan, followed by—the ceiling collapsed, Leviathan, Cain, the countless half-dead people hanging in mid-air by Leviathan's chains were all exposed under the radiance of the Blood Moon Barrier.
The way you look right now—
Wood was about to express his thoughts when a voice suddenly reached his ears—
[Come! Come! Come!]
(What sound?)
Wood was stunned.
Cain had clearly heard that voice as well; a subtle flicker passed across his handsome face before a smile curled once more at the corners of his mouth. "Darling, where are you going?"
I am not your darling.
“But—“
Goodbye!
As the words fell, Wood wrapped his arms tightly around Jormungand's massive body and whispered, "Take me away from here."
[—No problem!]
Jormungand writhed his body, charging alongside Anubis with their powerful, massive bodies against the Blood Moon Barrier forged by Leviathan and Cain!
[In the face of absolute power, all methods are a joke!]
..
..
Papa!
After successfully bringing Wood to a safe area, Jormungand immediately shrank his body and coiled around Wood, acting coquettishly.
Was Little Jormungand's performance just now excellent?
“Extremely excellent.”
[He is countless times better than that idiot Anubis, isn't he?]
Anubis has an excellence that belongs only to him, you can't—
[In fact, Cain's words were not entirely a lie.]
Anubis's Voice hummed—fearing he would be hunted by Cain's Vampires and Ogres, he maintained his three-meter-tall wolf-headed humanoid form at this moment.
You mean—
[High civilizations have appeared on Earth more than once; when the previous era was destroyed, the Survivors abandoned their independent physical bodies and merged into one through mental connection to survive.]
“..”
Wood froze; this was something he simply could not imagine.
Why do this? Do they not feel pain?
In the face of Death, pain is trivial, especially since the technological tree of the human civilization of the previous era was already oriented toward the spiritual system. In fact, it was precisely because the human civilization of the previous era was a spiritual civilization that the human civilization of the current era was able to successfully construct an imaginary community known as gods.
“.. Wait! My brain can't quite keep up."
Wood said helplessly, "I can more or less understand what you mean, but.. it's like I understand, yet also completely don't understand.. I mean, if all the known religious gods on Earth all come from the human collective imagination, the ability to construct a collective imagination through spiritual power is actually a remnant of the technology tree of the previous era's human civilization.. then.. then you and Jormungand, Boss.. wouldn't you all.. all be.."
(Could it be that Cain gradually drifted toward Nothingness because he realized this?)
The more Wood thought about it, the more depressed he became. Suddenly, he heard a strange sound coming from ahead. Following the sound, he looked toward the exit of the Sewer and saw a man, as thin as a skeleton and dressed in rags, crawling out.
“You—"
I am Rex, the one you are looking for.
-----------------------
Author's Note: Thanks to readers “＿蓝芜＿”, “Kitten Fishing for Big Fish”, “Qing Yun”, “If You Don't Read Properly, You'll Work in a Factory”, “Lan Mei Xiao Yang”, “Ye Yuan”, “Shi Yi”, “Mu”, “moonlit”, “Click to See a Super Beauty”, “Meng Li Jian”, “Qian Duo”, “Riyue Taosan Huan”, “Courage is Lifelong Relianceing”, “”, “A Cat's Murmurs”, “Li Yu”, “Xing Ye”, “kiki”, “Min”, “Dong Xi”, “Yi Tuo Da Yan”, “Yuan Zhong Ren De Yi Yu Zhong Li” for the Irrigation Nutrient Solution.
Please provide the Chinese paragraph you would like me to translate.
Rex?
Wood rubbed his eyes vigorously. Due to prolonged hunger, malnutrition, a lack of sunlight, the man before him looked like a walking skeleton; his coarse skin hung loosely from his bones, his facial features were completely sunken, his nose and ears drooping like modeling clay, with only his eyes gleaming like those of a nocturnal animal.
Do you know what you're saying? No, how do you know we are in—
My Companions and I have lived in the New York Sewer for a long time, what you people on the surface call 'Mole-men.' To us, Death is a reality that could happen at any moment, hunger and drugs are even more.. but we are still alive, living as stubbornly as bacteria..
Rex murmured, his voice filled with confusion and sadness, as well as an extreme indignation toward his current situation.
At this moment—
Papa! Look behind him! Look at his shadow!
Upon hearing that, Wood looked behind Rex—under the shimmering light, a vast amount of translucent, dust-like substance, flickering with multicolored radiance, existed between Rex's body and his shadow.
(These are..)
It is us.
Rex spoke bluntly.
As the words fell, Rex's eyes began to flicker with a colorful, dark luster, his limp, drooping lips emitted a sharp, ear-piercing sound like metal clashing together: "We are Survivors from the previous era. To survive, we abandoned our original independent Physical Bodies and became the forms we are now.. We had always stayed deep within the Jungle Pyramid until.. now, we encountered them. Their bodies contain a pain that can resonate with us.."
And then?
We want to live on with them.
But—
Although we are Survivors from the previous era, we never intended to destroy the current world. We only want to survive—to survive in the underground of this world or in any other corner. As long as we can survive, we are willing to do anything!
Since your goal is to survive, why did you kill that vagrant?
Wood asked in confusion, "He was just a poor wretch being squeezed to the limit by the upper class of this city, just like Rex, who was possessed by you. Why kill him?"
We didn't kill him—
Huh?
We fused with him.
Rex, or rather, "We" said, "Three days ago, he approached us of his own accord and confessed that his body no longer had any possibility of survival, but his mind still possessed the instinct to live. He hoped we could help him escape his physical body and become a part of us.."
—I don't believe it!
Wood said firmly, "It's not that I don't believe a vagrant would voluntarily abandon his physical body; it's that I don't believe you have the ability to fulfill your promise—to achieve eternal immortality for the soul once the life has lost the protection of its physical body."
However, we have fulfilled our promises, using our own unique means.
"Rex," he said softly, a non-human light flashing in his eyes once again.
The civilization of the previous era was built upon the spirit rather than matter. Therefore, we universally possessed highly developed telepathic and psychokinetic abilities, possessing peaceful souls that were serene, exquisite, full of love for all the beauties of the world. Although we did not invent complex machinery, we could easily lift boulders weighing millions of kilograms through the connection of spiritual power and place them with precision, constructing prehistoric megalithic structures that would be considered a Miracle to you in this era.
Because our culture is rooted in the interconnections of the Spiritual Plane, individuals communicate with one another through telepathy, our world rarely experiences large-scale misunderstandings, nor did we need to develop large-scale weapons of mass destruction. For thousands of years, we maintained peace, stability, prosperity, tranquility, until the great catastrophe arrived—
“Faced with the sudden and large-scale climate anomalies on Earth, we tried many methods. We even considered an 'Ascension' plan to merge all of humanity into a single giant spiritual entity, using powerful spiritual energy to traverse interstellar space toward other habitable planets—unfortunately, although our spiritual energy civilization is highly developed, our level of civilization is not sufficient to complete such a grand vision. We could only merge spiritual entities on a small scale while simultaneously executing the 'Noah's Ark' plan.”
Noah's Ark? Isn't Noah's Ark a record from the Bible?
Wood could not help but interrupt Rex.
Noah's Ark is just a metaphor, a metaphor to help you understand our plan.
Oh, oh! Please continue—
Wood said with a hint of embarrassment.
Please provide the Chinese paragraph you would like me to translate.
The Cataclysm finally arrived—earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, fissures, boiling oceans.. Before the great power of nature, the thousands of city fortresses we had strained to construct continuously collapsed and were destroyed. Cities and the lives within them were swallowed by the catastrophe. In the end, only a few scattered cities miraculously survived the global Cataclysm, at the painful cost of being left riddled with holes, reduced to Ruins, with populations plummeting to less than one-thousandth of what they were before the Cataclysm. Of course, the Earth that experienced the Cataclysm was unrecognizable, the environment had become so harsh that it was nearly uninhabitable for humans.
Please provide the Chinese paragraph you would like me to translate.
"Rex!" he shouted excitedly.
Those things—
“We still do not know where That thing came from; perhaps from the depths of the universe, or perhaps from the Abyss that was already hidden within Earth—They suddenly appeared after the Cataclysm, occupying vast territories and the human tribes whose civilizations had regressed due to the Cataclysm, driving them to launch attacks against us—unlike us, who value peace, They are exceptionally cruel and bellicose, soon.. almost the entire army was wiped out, with only a very few surviving."
And then? What happened after that? Those things..
We do not know exactly when or how They arrived on Earth, but we know—by exploiting the weakness of civilization after the Cataclysm, They successfully occupied vast territories, controlled massive numbers of humans, wiped out the civilization of the previous era. Fortunately, Earth does not accept Them, does not allow Their true forms—that extremely viscous and terrifying gelatinous substance existing between the physical and the spiritual—to expand at will, crawling through cities and mountains until the entire planet is covered.
Ugh..
Wood shuddered.
Just the thought of all the cities, villages, forests, farmland, mountains, rivers on Earth being covered by that viscous, filthy thing, as thick as jelly or snot, that gelatinous monster constantly twisting and wriggling, made him feel so nauseated he wanted to vomit.
Thinking of this, Wood feigned a calm expression and said, ".. Sounds a lot like Cthulhu."
.. Cthulhu? Yes, They are the true origin of those distorted, hair-raising beings that you now call 'Cthulhu.' —Those things wanted to occupy Earth, but the will of Earth resolutely rejected Them, forcing Them, who possess a unique intelligence and civilization system, to use the humans of Earth, whom They enslaved, as food during Their stay on Earth, to create so-called kin by splitting and attaching themselves to humans.
"Rex" explained painfully, a profound despair welling in his eyes.