Joy

Old Ge's student had saved photos of Old Ge's notebook on his phone. Since Old Ge had passed away, his research effects were inherited and managed by the state.

After obtaining the student's consent, a technician retrieved his phone from a storage locker outside and copied its contents.

Before long, someone brought a storage device into the conference room and connected it to the monitor.

Old Ge's research was immensely important. It was precisely because of this that he might have noticed something and suffered such a brutal reprisal, and the notebook concerned what Old Ge had been able to leave behind.

After all, the hidden enemy was impossible to guard against. This Special Corrosion was almost inconceivable: over countless years, not a single person had noticed it, leaving cultural relics and the culture they carried to gradually wither, and the study of history trapped in a long winter.

If they could learn its methods, they could follow the trail. No matter how powerful the organization was, it would struggle to withstand the might of the state. At the very least, they could stop the situation from worsening and buy enough time.

Everything was recorded in Old Ge's research notes.

The monitor responded quickly, displaying Old Ge's notes at once.

Xu Chen frowned as soon as he saw them. Everyone in the conference room who could see the monitor wore the same expression.

The marks on it were less like writing than drawings, and Xu Chen remembered making something similar himself.

Back in middle school, he had been bored in class and had just bought a new pen and notebook. He had drawn circle after circle along the notebook's horizontal lines, overlapping them and packing them tightly together in different sizes.

He didn't know why, but drawing those tedious circles had been a great way to unwind. He had filled two pages before he'd had his fill.

Could Old Ge have been that childish too?

The person who had brought the storage device looked at the screen and pressed the button again.

The monitor still showed circles covering an entire page. It seemed Old Ge's student had been mindful of his teacher's dignity and hadn't dared say they were scribbles, only that they were a little unclear...

"Are these Old Ge's notes?"

"Yes, these are my teacher's notes."

As though refusing to believe it, the person operating the monitor kept turning the pages. They were all filled with densely packed circles, enough to make anyone with trypophobia cry out that they couldn't stand it.

"Why does the writing look like this? Or is it a script your teacher invented himself, like a doctor's handwriting?"

"No, Teacher Ge's calligraphy was beautiful. As for why the notes look like this... I don't know either."

"I remember you're with the criminal investigation squad. You should know something about cryptography and handwriting analysis, right? Can you make sense of it?"

"I'm the best handwriting analyst in the criminal investigation squad. Besides knowing a thing or two about comparing handwriting, I've studied the field extensively. But to be honest... I'm afraid what Old Ge wrote has nothing to do with my field."

"What do you mean?"

The detective gave a wry smile and spread his hands helplessly. "There's no pattern to what Old Ge wrote, no variation in pressure, and the strokes vary constantly. Even if you gave a baby a pen and let them scribble, the marks wouldn't look like this. It doesn't look like a way of recording anything."

"Could something be hidden in it?"

"Then I'd suggest using other methods. Old Ge might have used invisible ink or an acidic or alkaline solution, but he couldn't have recorded anything in these messy marks on the surface."

"Why not?"

"This was Old Ge's notebook, for his own use, and his research involved a lot of information. Assuming these circles were a cipher, just telling them apart would be difficult. If he also had to keep checking a key to decode them, most of his time would have been spent on that."

"Then what do you think Old Ge drew these circles for?"

"I don't know."

"Send them to the technical team for analysis. Report back as soon as there's news."

"Yes!"

After getting nowhere with Old Ge's notes, everyone in the conference room turned back to Xu Chen.

"We'll keep pursuing this lead, but let's get back to the main subject and talk about you."

Xu Chen nodded.

"I've given you all the information I should, so I trust you're not completely in the dark anymore. You only need to tell us what message Old Ge was trying to convey to you."

Xu Chen recalled Old Ge's words and felt somewhat troubled. He had indeed discerned a direction from Old Ge's last words, because they were:

Terms from the Cthulhu Mythos.

Indescribable, ineffable, beyond sight and hearing—they referred to the ancient gods and alien beings of the Cthulhu Mythos, whose appearances, characteristics, and natures were far beyond human imagination and comprehension.

But Xu Chen couldn't say for sure. Why had Old Ge said those things? Had he been referring to something indirectly? Describing something? Had he really meant the thing Xu Chen imagined? That creation? That mystery? Or had it merely been the fantasy and madness of a life nearing its end?

At the very end, had he immersed himself in a terrifying fantasy of his own making, allowing him to glimpse something enormous, mutated, twisted, polyhedral, or irregularly shaped?

Xu Chen steadied himself and spoke the name he had perceived. "Cthulhu..."

An unspeakable terror descended in an instant. His entire body stiffened, his muscles tensing. All he sensed was the fleeting gaze of some natural predator, seemingly accompanied by murmuring, right above his head! In the starry sky overhead!

Fight or flight was not the full range of the human body's responses to danger. The complete response was fight, flight, or freeze. When certain animals encountered a powerful, invincible creature, they would freeze like statues, first to play dead and escape their natural predator, and second to avoid moving at all, lest they attract its attention.

Humans were now at the top of the food chain, however, so this response was rarely triggered.

That enormous consciousness swept past. Its thoughts were vast and far-reaching, and even though Xu Chen wanted nothing to do with any of it, some of them still burrowed into his mind.

Delicious... raising... restraint... harvest... reward...

Then, for no apparent reason, Xu Chen felt a blissful joy, as though something tremendously wonderful had happened to him: receiving his first paycheck... buying his first house... achieving success and fame for the first time... all of it coming together.

Afterward, he noticed that although he was mentally joyful and relaxed, his body remained rigid as though facing a formidable enemy. The extreme disconnect made Xu Chen deeply miserable.

It was as if his brain had been split in two.

Spread... spread... spread...

That thought persisted, and every time it appeared, it brought a feeling of extreme joy. It was revealing something, or perhaps guiding something.

After resisting for a moment, Xu Chen suddenly understood what Old Ge had encountered. The extreme joy he had spoken of was...

Xu Chen wanted to look up. Although there was a ceiling above the conference room, he had a feeling—he didn't know why—that if he looked up at the sky, he would surely see something...

As his gaze rose, the stars seemed to enter his sight. He knew perfectly well it was daytime and that no stars could be visible to the naked eye, yet he thought the brilliant starry sky was so beautiful that he simply had to look...

At last, the moment he saw what was above him, Xu Chen's tensed muscles suddenly spasmed with pain. He shouted a curse and sprang to his feet as if by reflex, managing to close his eyes as he looked directly at that consciousness.

The joy came to an abrupt halt, and all was silent.