"The Ten Supreme Deities' council was about to convene. Honorable Calamity Supreme God, would you accept the invitation immediately?"
At this moment—or rather, for the past three days—Tang Chuan had been completely bewildered.
This inexplicable thought appeared in his mind about once every hour.
Three days ago, it had still been obscure and vague, difficult to grasp.
Tang Chuan had merely assumed that after exhausting himself, his body had been drained dry and his thoughts had developed a subtle deviation.
But today, this thought beyond his control had gradually become clear, deafeningly so.
It was just short of directly displaying a prompt window before him, asking whether he accepted the invitation—with only an "Accept" option and no "Decline" option.
His eyes were bloodshot beneath dark circles, threaded with red veins.
His mind was muddled, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and his entire body felt weak.
These were all symptoms of being relentlessly tormented by that inexplicable thought for three days. It simply would not let him sleep. The moment he fell asleep, it woke him up.
Tang Chuan was about to go insane.
Whatever devil's game this was, couldn't he just accept already?
He was not an idiot, nor did he think he had suddenly developed delusions that revolved around this one thought all day long.
The reason he had not responded over the past few days was that the thought had been too obscure for him to understand what it meant.
But now, he was afraid that something unpleasant might happen if he responded.
Yet every hour or so, it would boom through his mind like a giant bell.
Who the hell could endure that?
Damn it, whatever devil's game this was, if it would not let him sleep, then he would fight it to the end!
Without immediately choosing to accept, Tang Chuan stumbled out of his single-occupancy dorm room, his eyes bloodshot.
He hired a private car and went from the nearest Buddhist temple, to a Daoist temple in the mountains, and then to a church in the city center.
"Three Pure Ones, Dao Ancestors, Buddha Tathagata, Jesus Christ, God, bless your devout follower and help me beat the shit out of that bastard demon that won't let me sleep!"
Along the way, besides praying to the gods, Tang Chuan bought many supposedly consecrated items from those places of worship.
He did not ask them to exorcise him.
It was useless.
He had tried yesterday. No one could remove that inexplicable thought from his mind.
There were, however, two sage-like "masters" whose looks at him were extremely strange.
Their expressions seemed to say, A demon's latched onto you? Seriously? Just say you have delusions!
Of course, they did not turn away a customer delivered right to their door. Not only did they fail to exorcise anything, they swindled Tang Chuan out of quite a bit of money. One of the more conscientious ones even recommended a psychiatric sanatorium to him afterward.
During that trip, the deafening thought appeared twice more in Tang Chuan's mind. Each time, his vision went white and he nearly fainted.
It had become even more intense.
There was no stopping it.
The car took Tang Chuan all the way back to the entrance of his dorm building.
Tang Chuan paid the fare, picked up his bags, and was about to open the door and get out.
"The Ten Supreme Deities' council was about to convene. Honorable Calamity Supreme God, would you accept the invitation immediately?"
It was back.
Tang Chuan was struck as if by lightning. He convulsed in the back seat and took several seconds to recover.
The driver in the front coughed twice and said, "Buddy, even if you hired the car, don't mess around inside it. I wanted to say something the first two times..."
You had not paid then, and I was afraid you would get embarrassed and refuse to pay if I called you out.
Now that the money was in, I really wanted to tell you that I had put up with you for a long time!
You thought I could not see you just because you were in the back seat?
Did you think the rearview mirror was decoration?
Tang Chuan had only just recovered, and his brain was still lagging. He did not understand at first. "Sorry."
The driver said, "It's fine. How about giving me some money to wash the car?"
Tang Chuan froze.
Once he understood, his face darkened. "Get lost!"
With that, he got out and returned to his dorm room.
He put on a silver cross necklace, a Buddha and Guanyin pendant, a consecrated protective talisman from the Daoist temple, and another ring of garlic around his neck.
He held an oversized Peachwood Sword and carried an extravagantly designed silver Holy Cross Sword on his back.
Splash~
He poured the Holy Water he had obtained from the Holy See over his head.
Tang Chuan roared, "Accept! I accept the invitation!"
I want to see who's been keeping me awake. Even if it's a Demon God, I'll chop it down!
Of course, physically speaking, the Demon God could not be taller than 1.75 meters or weigh more than sixty-five kilograms.
Whoosh!
The moment Tang Chuan finished speaking, his body was enveloped by an eerie energy and began to float, twisting out of shape.
A force that reversed reality made his body twist, deform, and spin continuously like a vortex.
In the end, the vortex turned into a tiny black dot and disappeared.
The room was empty, as though nothing had happened.
His consciousness and body entered a strange passage. All around him were bizarre, abstract, distorted fragments of imagery that seemed to connect every heaven and world.
Time and space seemed tangible here, something one could grasp with an outstretched hand.
That was only if one could stretch out a hand.
Within this bizarre passage, both Tang Chuan's body and consciousness had transformed into indescribable shapes. Forget reaching out a hand—he did not even know where his hands were.
Even his thoughts seemed to stagnate, unable to keep pace with the speed at which he traveled through the passage.
I'm done for. I definitely can't beat this...
The thought flashed through Tang Chuan's mind.
Tang Chuan had always believed that perhaps strange things did exist in the world, however unlikely that might be.
But whether they truly existed or not, the real world had remained peaceful for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years. Human society was stable and harmonious. That alone showed that, at least within the framework of the real world, human power did not fear gods or ghosts!
Otherwise, demons and monsters would have overrun society long ago!
Thus, Tang Chuan's motto in life was simple: god or ghost, if you did not submit, then fight!
If he could not win...
Then they could sit down and talk things over calmly!
Communication was the true meaning of intelligent life's existence. It was not easy for different species from different spaces to make contact. Getting physical would only hurt everyone's feelings.
At first, he had indeed thought that if this thing could mess with him, then as a citizen of Xia, protected by humanity's fortune, he could mess with it too.
Having gone too long without sleep, Tang Chuan's thoughts were somewhat disordered. He decided to gear up properly and beat the hell out of it!
But after witnessing everything around him that surpassed the limits of human imagination...
Tang Chuan sincerely felt that sitting down for a talk would be more reliable.
Who knew how long had passed.
Tang Chuan felt as though, in an instant, he had experienced the passage of hundreds of millions of years. It was strange and absurd, beyond the power of words to describe.
When he came back to himself, he had arrived in a dark-toned place, like an endless expanse paved with obsidian...
A continent?
Before Tang Chuan could think further, his vision went white again. His brain shut down, and he collapsed headfirst onto the ground, his body convulsing without end.
An incomprehensibly vast torrent of information began flooding madly into Tang Chuan's mind.
Compared to this boundless amount of information, Tang Chuan's twenty-three years of life experience did not even amount to a drop in the ocean.
The storage capacity of his mind was like a single grain of dust on Earth, while this immense information was the entire cosmic starry sky!
Tang Chuan's consciousness was instantly stretched apart, drowned, and destroyed.
When he vaguely regained consciousness again, Tang Chuan felt like a fetus floating in amniotic fluid. The exhaustion from going so long without sleep had vanished completely, and he felt so comfortable that he did not want to open his eyes.
In his daze, he seemed to dream of a black diamond-shaped crystal that flickered with dim light.
The black crystal gathered, compressed, stored, and sealed that vast information.
It also stitched together and repaired Tang Chuan's individual consciousness, which had been torn apart by the overload.
He abruptly opened his eyes.
Tang Chuan sprang to his feet, his gaze blank.
Somehow, he seemed to vaguely understand something, yet he could not clearly part the veil of mist and see its essence.
It was like waking up after a vivid dream. In the instant he awoke, he roughly knew what he had dreamed about, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember it clearly.
It was profound and unfathomable.
"Why did you send such a weak avatar to attend the council?"
A voice like a great bell came from beyond the universe, deafening him.
Tang Chuan hurriedly covered his ears. His soul felt as though it were about to be torn apart by those words.
This was absolutely a language beyond human imagination, impossible to describe—like the true speech of High-Dimensional Life, whose every syllable lower-dimensional life could never decipher.
And yet...
Tang Chuan understood it?
Covering his ears, he raised his head blankly.
He saw the once blurry sky continuously shrinking, shrinking, shrinking until it was as vast as the cosmic starry sky...
Then it shrank further, infinitely further.
Suppressing his shock, Tang Chuan stared blankly as the boundless continent transformed into an enormous and bizarre black throne.
That boundless black continent, as vast as a sea of stars, had merely been the surface of a seat?!
But that was not what shocked Tang Chuan the most.
He saw a palace that seemed to contain the mysteries of the universe and the ultimate principles of all worlds and all things, stretching across the cosmic starry sky!
Inside the palace stood ten thrones of different shapes and colors—or perhaps they should be called divine seats?
And Tang Chuan himself was standing on one of these divine seats, a place that should have been accessible only to supreme deities?
Besides him, there were nine other "things" occupying their own divine seats.
Ten divine seats, ten "things," arranged in a circle, formed the interior of the Supreme Council's hall!
He called them "things" rather than "creatures."
Because those nine existences utterly surpassed Tang Chuan's previous understanding!
One of them barely resembled a humanoid, but it had three faces and eight arms, its entire body composed of fragments of cosmic starry sky!
Tang Chuan had watched them shrink, shrink, and shrink again just moments ago!
He had no doubt that plucking out any one of that being's "cells" would reveal a real galaxy!
Another was covered in Fleshy Tumors and all manner of eyeballs, with tentacles of different sizes protruding from certain parts. It was extremely asymmetrical and wholly violated human aesthetics!
Or perhaps it was simply a planet, quietly floating upon its divine seat.
Or perhaps it was a mass of ever-changing gas, within which dozens of gem-like objects resembling atoms darted about rapidly and chaotically...
They came in every possible shape!
They were completely indescribable!
Compared to them, Tang Chuan's appearance—with crosses, protective talismans, garlic, a Peachwood Sword in hand, a silver Holy Cross Sword on his back, chicken blood smeared across his face, and his hair wet with Holy Water—
At least from a human perspective, was rather... normal?
But these gods all seemed to be looking at him...
Tang Chuan did not know whether "looking" was the right word, but he could clearly sense that all nine supreme beings were examining him.
Thinking of how they had just infinitely shrunk this palace—or rather, this council hall—which had been even larger than the cosmic starry sky, in order to communicate with him as equals, as well as that deafening question—
"Why did you send such a weak avatar to attend the council?"
Tang Chuan began to panic!
Could these things, more godlike than even the gods of human knowledge and imagination—
Have mistaken him for the so-called Calamity Supreme God?
This was the thing that had troubled him for three whole days...
The invitation to the Ten Supreme Deities' council?!