Where to seek answers 4K (revised)

Lin Chuan held his breath and concentrated, carefully drawing on that unnamed Sefirah. It felt like carving a miniature sculpture. The hardest part was not having enough strength, but controlling that strength so that he used only the tiniest fraction of it.

He was still unfamiliar with the process and could only brush against the edges of its symbolism. He absolutely could not go deeper, lest he exert too much force and plunge straight in. If he accidentally overused it, he would not disappear and sleep until the Oldest One fully awakened, as he would if he ascended to a Great Old One with the Nothingness Pathway as his main pathway. Still, he might spend several hundred years as an invisible presence in the world.

No one would be able to see him, no matter could be touched by him, and no sound could convey his will.

In short, in that state, although Lin Chuan would still objectively exist in this universe in both a physical and mystical sense, the world would identify him as nonexistent and refuse to interact with him in any form.

Only after wrapping himself in a layer of protection formed by invoking his symbolism did he let out a long breath and reach out to push open the wooden bedroom door he had previously fashioned inside the Sefirah space.

The action reinforced the impression of leaving. With the illusory creak of the hinges, the boundless, deathly silent void around him rapidly receded like a deep sea at ebb tide, and the world began to redraw its familiar, mundane contours within his senses.

Lin Chuan opened his eyes. His vision focused again, and he saw his bedroom once more.

The curtains were drawn tight, and the door was firmly shut. The room's only light source was the eye-care desk lamp casting a warm yellow glow over his desk. That alone was not enough to tell whether it was day or night outside.

Rather than immediately pick up his phone to check the time, he waited quietly in the center of the room.

"Now that I've arrived, if my guess is right... one, two, three. There it is."

He could feel a Beyonder power enveloping the area, but its authority ignored Lin Chuan as though he did not exist.

"Hmm... just as I thought."

Lin Chuan could clearly sense that it was a constantly active authority whose range covered the entire Earth, and even the nearby Starry Sky. It included blind stupidity and seemed to contain an extremely well-concealed element of psychological suggestion, similar to the Spectator's ability to suppress memories and erect barriers to perception and understanding.

At present, Lin Chuan possessed no authority related to "analysis" or "knowledge." He could only use his intuition to perceive the most obvious, superficial mystical information, such as the power's effective range and direct effects.

So this must be the work of that Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings, right?

Who exactly is this aimed at? The Outer Deities beyond the Starry Sky?

No, that doesn't make sense. The Oldest One is still sleeping on Earth and is about to wake up, and there aren't any torn-off Sefirah here. Who would come here?

It might make sense for me to have run into it when my true body first came to Earth, but this time my Sefirah is already here. Surely I can't still count as an outsider.

Lin Chuan cast a brooding glance at the Qin-Han Secret Record of Esoteric Arts on his desk. He had guessed what was going on.

Since it had nothing to do with the outside world, the Celestial Worthy must have laid down a layer of blind stupidity while pulling people into Sefirah Castle. This would prevent too many sudden deaths like these from being discovered and causing panic and suspicion, which might alert God Almighty and prompt him to throw an elbow ahead of schedule.

Lin Chuan himself probably had not realized this before coming. After sneaking onto Earth, the moment he was deployed, he took a full hit from an intelligence-reducing aura and a perception barrier that suppressed his memories.

Recalling his recent actions, how he had foolishly believed himself to be an ordinary person who had just transmigrated and had even played at plagiarizing literature and investing on Earth, Lin Chuan painfully covered his forehead. Why did everything keep coming back to bite him? Now he really could sit at the same table as the Genie...

As for why the Celestial Worthy could simultaneously use his own authority of Fooling and psychological suggestion similar to the Spectator's, that was easy to understand.

At this point in time, the Celestial Worthy and God Almighty had not yet split up. What was yours was mine, and what was mine was still mine. What was wrong with borrowing it for a bit?

That also explained why Lin Chuan, despite his high status, had been caught completely off guard and fallen victim without even having time to react.

On the one hand, he had just arrived and lacked precautions. On the other, the Celestial Worthy at this point could still, to some extent, be considered one of the Oldest One's main personalities. When using his authority, he might have borrowed part of the Oldest One's status.

Before returning this time, Lin Chuan had learned his lesson and used his Sefirah to put a layer of protection around himself in advance. As a result, he had avoided the Celestial Worthy's disgusting intelligence-reducing aura and perception barrier.

But if I follow that logic further, just how high is my own status...?

"Forget it. That's a matter for later." Lin Chuan shook his head, forcibly cutting off the impractical curiosity in his mind.

Right now, the most important, most urgent, and only thing before him that required immediate action was this:

Run.

Who knew when the Oldest One would awaken, or how long that awakening would last? If, at some point, the left side of the Oldest One's brain that wanted to do something elbowed its way past the right side that wanted nothing to do with anything, Lin Chuan could happily welcome the ending where the Oldest One dragged him off to become ().

Besides, that was extremely likely. After all, Cuttlefish had explicitly stated that although the Oldest One was a collection of contradictions and the ultimate mental patient, that did not mean he would forever oppose and cancel himself out until he froze up. Occasionally, he would still act. Creating the world, for instance, or leaving the Mirror Primordial contingency in the City of Calamity.

Although the peculiar nature of Lin Chuan's own symbolism meant that, under normal circumstances, even other Great Old Ones would find it extremely difficult to discover him, and his being a Sefirah from beyond the Oldest One ensured he would not be sucked in by convergence...

Knowing full well that the Oldest One was about to awaken and still hanging around right under his nose-wasn't that asking to die?

So he had to run, right now! He could not stay on Earth for another moment. At this instant, Lin Chuan's feelings resonated perfectly with those Great Old Ones in the universe who kept far away from Earth.

As an ordinary person, he had not thought much of it, but in the eyes of an Outer Deity, Earth really was a godforsaken backwater full of dangerous troublemakers.

Having settled on his next course of action, Lin Chuan finally had the presence of mind to pick up the phone on his desk, turn on the screen, and check the time.

The time displayed on the phone ticked forward much as he had sensed it would. Time flowed at a one-to-one ratio, just as it did in Sefirah Castle, indicating that his Sefirah truly existed within this universe now and was connected to the normal world.

However, Lin Chuan had a vague intuition that he could forcibly adjust that flow of time. Whether slowing time inside the Sefirah to a crawl or speeding it up until ten thousand years passed in an instant, he could do it.

It was this

sort of instinct. He only knew that he could do it. But if someone insisted on asking him exactly what fine control he needed to make the adjustment, what effects it would produce, what authorities were involved, or what principles governed its operation...

Lin Chuan's only answer would be that he did not know.

It was like a warrior born with divine strength. He could easily lift a thousand-pound boulder, but he knew absolutely nothing about muscle fibers generating force or the principles of leverage.

Just as, even now, he did not know what precise mystical term he should use for his unnamed Sefirah.

Nor did he know exactly what abilities Sequence 9 through Sequence One of the Nothingness Pathway he represented possessed. He had only a vague, instinctive understanding of them.

For a transmigrator deeply shaped by an education in modern logic, this state of ignorance-knowing that something worked without knowing why-was clearly unsatisfactory.

In fact, from a purely survival-oriented perspective, it did not matter at all whether Lin Chuan understood any of this. As long as he was willing to completely let loose, his total ignorance of his abilities would not interfere in the slightest with the normal functioning of that symbolic power.

Ultimately, the Beyonder abilities from Sequence 9 to Sequence One, and even the Uniqueness, were all differentiated, downgraded manifestations of the symbolism within a Sefirah.

Other Great Old Ones were not required to possess an authority of knowledge and analyze themselves before they could use their symbolism, either.

So the question was, why did Lin Chuan not simply fully awaken his Sefirah and become a Great Old One? Wouldn't that spare him the trouble of worrying about his Sequence abilities?

Oh, please. Don't make your lord, the embodiment of nothingness, laugh.

Lin Chuan leaned back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and sighed deeply. Using some of his Sefirah's abilities purely by instinct was certainly an option. After all, symbolism such as nothingness, division, and termination generally could not exist, but once it did, it was truly powerful.

Even with debuffs such as returning to nothingness if he went all out and being unfamiliar with his own authorities and abilities, he could still rank among the most powerful Great Old Ones in the universe, comparable to the Mother Goddess of Depravity after part of her Sefirah, the Brood Hive, was torn away when the Oldest One awakened.

But that still left him ignorant. Besides, human wisdom lay in understanding: only by first grasping something's underlying principles could one learn how to overcome and control it.

This was about surviving, continuing to exist, and protecting his core interest-his "self"-within the vast universe.

At the same time, a more practical difficulty lay before him. If Lin Chuan relied solely on his symbolism for passive self-preservation, there would be no problem at all. But if he wanted to act proactively, it would not work. A Great Old One who could not wield his full strength and could only protect himself would not accomplish much.

Lin Chuan sat in his chair with his eyes closed, continually pondering and questioning himself:

If all I want is to survive, then my current situation is already perfect. As a will equivalent to a naturally born Great Old One, I can return from my Sefirah even if I'm erased.

And my Sefirah itself is my embodiment. Unlike other Sefirah, it cannot be accommodated by someone else or produce a new will.

Because no existence related to the Oldest One can accommodate or use this Sefirah. In a sense, my true body from before my transmigration and my mind jointly sustain symbolism beyond the Oldest One, while that symbolism beyond the Oldest One allows a Sefirah that originally could not exist to manifest stably.

But if all I want is self-preservation, then even as an ordinary person I could enter Sefirah Castle, shamelessly cling to the future Fool, and spend my whole life in peace. In that case, what difference would there be between coming to this world and never coming at all?

So I'll save my friends. I'll find every possible way to return home. I'll do everything I want to do and change everything I want to change, simply because I want to.

Besides, who would like this world full of despair, this symbolism of everything taking a turn for the worse, and an ending where the Great Old Ones inevitably revive and divinity completely replaces humanity?

If possible, I also want to change those future tragedies-the tragedies of others, the tragedies of an era. I want everything to have a chance at survival, and for a better possibility to always exist in this world.

"But what should be defined as an improvement? Different beings have different perspectives. Some people's happiness will always be the source of others' suffering."

"And how can you define depravity? Indulging one's own nature is neither right nor wrong. How dare you claim that those depraved people are not simply following their true hearts?"

"And what, exactly, does the variable you seek mean for this universe?"

"Even the Oldest One himself cannot know what an existence beyond the Oldest One truly is. Chaotic variables cannot be predicted. If the outcome produced by that variable is worse than the original, will you regret your own existence?"

"None of that matters," Lin Chuan answered without hesitation.

He did not know whether something had gone wrong with his mind, causing him to hear himself refuting himself. Even so, he would answer seriously, because he had a premonition that this would determine how he approached this familiar yet unfamiliar world in the future.

Perhaps it might also determine something else?

"Because I don't care."

"Because I don't care. I'll judge what happiness a normal person should have according to my own simple moral standards."

"Because I don't care. Those who truly regard destruction and depravity as their nature-I'll simply make them torment one another, or destroy them outright."

"Because I don't care. Of course I can't be absolutely right. Nothing in this world can serve as an immutable truth for everything. But I'll define what constitutes a variable and what constitutes a chance at life. Why would I need anyone else telling me what to do?"

"So what if my existence might lead to a worse ending? Should we accept an unchanging outcome just to avoid the risks a variable might bring?"

"I'll still do it. I firmly believe I can give everyone a happy ending, because that's just how presumptuous I am."

"Heh."

A soft chuckle suddenly echoed clearly through the empty room, its source unknown:

"Perhaps, if that is truly what you believe..."

The laughter was ancient and profound, yet carried a hint of spine-chilling amusement. Then the voice slowly faded beside his ear.

"Then do it. Do what you wish to do. Farewell, Lin Chuan. May we never meet again. But be careful. Pray to everything that you never encounter my other thousand faces. For I am Nyarlathotep. I am the Crawling Chaos."