Cthulhu Gonfalon

“After all, there are still kind people in the world!” Sui Xiong cheered delightfully, while smiling and waving to the sky, then he focused on the baldacchino.

He could actually feel that the baldacchino contained a powerful magic energy, or in other words, something connected with the magic energy. Or, to put it more precisely, there was the same willpower but much weaker, something like the cruel and cold willpower occupying on the baldacchino. It was now imprisoned in the cold energy, and draining away due to losing the supply from the outside.

Sui Xiong absolutely would not allow his spoils of war to drain away like this, and he hesitated for a while, but then his soul reached out its hands, ready to seize the baldacchino.

Suddenly, a purple-black light flashed, and his hand was stopped by that willpower.

“Oh? Seems there is a knack to it.” Instead of being angry about this, Sui Xiong was amazed. “Let me see how far you can go then!”

His soul clenched its fist, and smashed the baldacchino. Once, twice, thrice… The defensive power of that willpower was getting weaker and weaker. The willpower was finally defeated by his punch, and could never fight back.

“Now I think it is time to finish this, right…?” Sui Xiong was laughing hard. He caught that willpower and swallowed it, which had fallen into chaos after being defeated.

After all these years of travelling, he had already found that apart from “eating”, there was more than one way to devour a soul. In fact, as long as his soul touched the others’, he could directly devour it simply by touching it.

Compared to devouring a soul by eating, it was less efficient to do so by touching, but it could help him to get purer energy by filtering out the impurities of the others’ soul.

More than half of these impurities were memories and experience, which were not totally useless, but still, most of them lacked value. To avoid being greatly influenced every time he devoured a soul, he would use his soul’s energy to get rid of some useless impurities, which was quite troublesome.

If it were not for his mastering the technique of absorbing the magic power and being able to use this power to supply his soul with energy, much more time would be wasted, simply on the process of eating and filtering the impurities. So in the recent years, he had no longer used the technique of devouring to absorb a soul’s energy, but by touching.

However, today’s spoil of the war was rather different, which was worth swallowing and digesting slowly! Also, the magic energy on the baldacchino should be dealt with properly and not be wasted, although it was totally different from Sui Xiong’s cold energy. If he could figure it out and master it, he would be able to get one more powerful magic tactic, which would be immensely helpful, either for self-protection or attacking enemies in the future.

Not to mention, he had bred enmity with the owner of that cruel and cold willpower, and there was bound to be conflict between the two of them. If he could know more about his enemy, the chances of winning would be greater.

Therefore, Sui Xiong took the baldacchino with him and left. To make sure he would be safe, he left the Black Forest and went into the endless sea.

Since he had been relying on the huge jellyfish body, for him, the sea was the main battlefield where he could best demonstrate his power.

When the huge jellyfish swam into the deep sea, in the remote void of space, a dark, cold and quiet world, a magnificent figure watching the human world shook his head.

“He is rather cautious.” He announced, “The sea is not our territory, since he has hid into the deep sea, there is nothing we can do about it.”

“It will come out eventually,” an amazingly tall and heavy armor-wearing figure replied.

“Yes, but when that time comes, we would never be able to find him without the guiding of the willpower on your baldacchino, unless his path crosses with yours again.”

“We will meet again.” A short and old figure said, “Since it has already started, there will be further development and a final result. Also, that jellyfish does not seem like a short-lived creature, so it will show itself sooner or later.”

“When that time comes, we must make him give in, and we can make good use of his powerful energy.” The magnificent figure said, “Maybe it is worth us sacrificing the seat of a god.”

“It is not only us watching it, haven’t you found it strange that something else is seeking it?” The old figure warned them.

The magnificent figure was silent for a while, and then said, “Go and check on that.”

“Yes,” came a sound in the darkness.

“Let’s call it a day then. Our main job is fighting for the priesthood of Dark Night and Death. Since this has a lot to do with the vicissitude of us Night Gods, please take this seriously.”

The gods replied one by one, then they left and went to do what each of them thought was right.

Time passed slowly. For those figures who were called “Great”, “Immortal” by the mortal, time elapsing was not a big deal. In their view, time was often calculated on the length of one or two generations, or one or two centuries. While for the human, it was rather different.

“Ah… My enhancing ability in seclusion is finally over!” Sui Xiong breathed a sigh of relief and could not help but laugh when he saw the blue sky and white clouds again, which he had not seen for a very long time.

Staying in the deep sea alone, digesting the spoils of war and enhancing his ability all by himself were not easy things to do. They were all very different from his enhancing his ability in seclusion last time in the ice trench. At that time, he would often go back to the sea surface to relax. But this time, to avoid being seen by enemies, he just hid in the sea all the time, not even daring to go to the shallows.

By digesting the willpower that had been defeated by him, he received much information that he had been longing for, which included several kinds of commonly-used languages and characters, some basic facts of this world’s biology, geography, politics, the way to use energy, and so on. Most importantly, he had found out whom he had made an enemy of this time. As it turned out, it was the God of the Night Gods, or the Night Watcher, Wu Mian, who was a real god.

The world he was in was a world where all those unscientific creatures, like gods and monsters, existed. A world where there were as many powerful creatures as trees in a forest. Among them, there were some powerful creatures which were worthy of the title of the “Real God”. Not only were they extremely powerful, but they were also incredibly omnipotent. For example, they could absorb energy from their followers’ beliefs, and achieve the integration of the source energy. No matter what, judging from all the information Sui Xiong had gotten, they were indeed incredibly powerful!

The willpower Sui Xiong got came from the belief those villagers of the White Leaves Village had during the sacrifice activities all these years, and it was also mixed with the influence God Wu Mian had brought when he showed himself a few times. So it was a bit disordered. More than ninety percent of it was the paeans to the God Wu Mian. If these paeans were all real, it only proved that the God Wu Mian was so incredibly powerful that the God who ever said “Let there be light”, the Buddha who ever said “Escape from the human world of woes and find salvation”, and the Daoist who ever said “The destiny of things that were born before the heaven and the earth had already been decided”, were all shadowed by him. Sui Xiong was so lucky that he could even escape and survive after provoking the God Wu Mian. He must have knocked and broken many wooden-fishes, or saved enough ghost money to fill a few warehouses, otherwise, he could not be so lucky.

Of course, these were just things he was boasting about. Since Sui Xiong was not dumb, he knew that the God Wu Mian was indeed powerful, but was still frightened by that golden light and had ran away! Not to mention, Sui Xiong’s own cold energy could just stand his willpower. So it was definitely all bragging that the God Wu Mian was that magnificent!

However, the God Wu Mian was not someone who was easy to get along with either. He was a member of the “Night Gods”, an evil God who loved the taste of blood and horror. The chief God of the “Night Gods” was the “King of Night”, a vampire in the Archeozoic Era. The gods he led were all nothing but dark war-crafts, and the “Night Watcher”, who was insidious but calm and loyal, was his castle’s gatekeeper before he was apotheosized.

In the past six hundred years, starting from the time when the gatekeeper was under the King of Night’s command, until the time when he became an immortal, he had always been dutiful, and never slacked at his work. He never rested when he was injured, he never slept when he was tired, even until he died.

This incredible loyalty was praised by his Lord, and when his Lord, the King of Night, was apotheosized, he was also elevated to the rank of a God from an old subordinate who was too fragile to even hold a knife. His title was called “Wu Mian” (sleepless), or the “Night Watcher·God Wu Mian”, which was what he often was called.

Simply put, the God Wu Mian was just a gatekeeper of the King of Night. But one should never underestimate him, even many powerful heroes in the famous Chinese Wuxia novel “The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils” were easily defeated by a old man whose duties were just guarding the entrance and sweeping the floor in the Shaolin Temple Scripture Library. The God Wu Mian was not just an ordinary gatekeeper. In his few hundreds of years working career, he had already hacked five to six “legendary strong men”. Also, after he was apotheosized, he had successfully hacked some enemies in the wars with other gods. Thus, he was indeed worth the title of the best soldier of the Night Gods.

Though God Wu Mian had been enough to make Sui Xiong feel that he was under pressure, Sui Xiong felt he was not just under “great” pressure, rather he was under “tremendous” pressure, when he thought that there was the whole Night Gods behind the God Wu Mian.

Therefore, he worked harder to improve his ability. On one hand, by studying the magic energy on the baldacchino, he could have a deeper understanding of how the various energies in this world functioned and how to practice them. In this way, he would be able to acquire more tactics. On the other hand, he had extracted all the valuable information from that willpower and strove to memorize it.

After this, not only did he have a better control over the cold energy, but he had also mastered the energy of shadow, death and guarding. In this world, it meant that he had already mastered the energies of four fields. To be precise, he had reached the acme of practicing the cold energy tactic, and once the right time came, he could further enhance it, and become an immortal God.

As for how to realize this…he guessed that he would probably need another few hundred years or so… However Sui Xiong could not be patient enough to spend a few hundred more years improving his ability. Actually, enhancing his ability in seclusion and in total darkness had almost driven him crazy. So as soon as he felt he had reached his limit and he could no longer calm down, he left the deep sea and headed for the land. Before that, he managed to find a volcano in the sea, and threw that useless baldacchino into it.

If the information about the God Wu Mian that was contained in the baldacchino was true, then the God Wu Mian could only locate him through the baldacchino.

Now… The God Wu Mian could locate him in the magma!

Using his big tentacles, Sui Xiong erected the biggest middle finger the world had ever saw, and stuck it at the baldacchino that was slowly sinking into the magma. Then he walked away without turning back. He had decided that he would never come back to this volcanic vent in his lifetime!

“Human world, I am coming!”