2018.6.1
Happy Children's Day to myself, I suppose.
After all, judging by the lifespan of an Outer Deity, I am still in my swaddling clothes. Where in this world is a Great Old One in his early twenties? I am entirely a child among children, the kind who could run straight to the Mother Goddess and cry for my mom.
Zhou Mingrui doesn't count; he can only be considered half a Great Old One, which is strike one. Furthermore, he is nothing more than a veteran granddad pretending to be young-a survivor of the Great Old One kind-which is strike two. Finally, and most crucially, he is relatively shameless. To sum it all up, Lin Chuan is completely and utterly still a child, so why shouldn't he celebrate Children's Day?
"Sigh."
Lin Chuan let out a faint, lingering sigh. Ever since he decisively grabbed his bucket and ran away from Earth on the fifth of last month, he had been drifting tediously through this dead cosmos for more than twenty days.
At first, that sense of novelty truly diluted the sorrow of leaving his homeland. In the vast deep space far from Earth, without needing to worry that too much commotion would draw the gaze of the Celestial Worthy or God Almighty, he was finally able to familiarize himself with his authorities and symbols to his heart's content.
At the same time, the sea of stars was boundless, and the leaping experience that shattered the shackles of space was sufficiently shocking. During this period of letting himself go, he even achieved "standing shoulder to shoulder with the sun" in the literal sense; while maintaining the state of Nothingness, he could gaze closely at the violent and magnificent fusion storm inside the star.
You must know that this was a limited-time, non-returnable, out-of-print scenery. If he didn't look at it now, he wouldn't get to see it in the future.
After the Oldest One's Barrier rose, the moon was occupied by the Mother Goddess of Depravity; the sun was first the Primordial God Almighty, then the Supernova Dominator, and later, after the Ancient Sun God was born, He held the concurrent post for a while until He fell and it was Aucuses's turn...
The ancients once sighed, "Dew from tonight is white, the moon is brighter in my hometown," and there was also poetry saying, "The moon of today once shone on the ancients." Yet when he returned to his old haunts in the future, what he saw would indeed no longer be the sun and moon of the past.
However, there was no one around. The aforementioned activities were novel enough, but when all was said and done, they were just ways to find something to do in his boredom. Without any people, without any objects to communicate with, and without a trace of living breath, this feeling of loneliness was truly difficult to bear.
Even though he could directly sink his consciousness into the Sefirah and quietly await the passage of time, to say nothing of how wasteful that would be, he also couldn't gauge how many years were left until the Fifth Epoch in the current historical node.
What if he bound himself like a silkworm in its cocoon and made a mistake when adjusting the time flow rate, only to wake up and find that, not to mention the Fifth Epoch, even the apocalyptic war had already been fought, and the Celestial Worthy had even borrowed a shell to go public and log back in...
Lin Chuan instantly felt a chill run through him. He shook his head hard, trying to shake the image of being possessed by the Guise out of his mind, but not only did it not work, a famous line even popped up:
You may not have Zhou Mingrui anymore, but you still have me, the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings. I can completely be your friend, the guide of your divine life...
F*ck (a kind of plant).
As expected, long-term lack of socialization led to a drastic plummet in mental sanity and wild imagination. Lin Chuan even began to seriously consider it, weighing whether he should turn back right now, snatch some lucky soul from Earth, and stuff them into the Sefirah to amuse himself.
He only appeared to be leaping forward step by step at the edge of the universe because he lacked a beacon and simultaneously wanted to find other Great Old Ones or civilizations in the universe. As long as he wanted to, relying on the anchored coordinates of Earth, he could project his position back at any time.
"...Forget it, I suppose." He tugged at the corner of his mouth with self-deprecating amusement.
He couldn't really treat people as toys for his own amusement. If he did that, how would he be any different from the Celestial Worthy and God Almighty?
Besides, snatching people up didn't seem to serve any purpose anyway. If he grabbed too many people, it would be easy for him to get discovered. What if the Celestial Worthy and God Almighty suddenly decided that to repel outside invaders, they must first pacify the interior? By then, instead of fighting each other after splitting up, they would join forces to arrest Lin Chuan, the illegal immigrant Outer Deity. That would be a complete loss of face.
"Making excuses again."
A bit pretentious, a bit awkward.
Yet Lin Chuan couldn't get past that hurdle in his heart. He didn't want to drag innocent people into this boundless void just for his own momentary boredom. Even though he knew full well that if those people stayed on Earth, their future outcome would most likely be buried alongside the apocalypse, and taking them away with him would actually be truly saving lives.
Perhaps it was a psychological mysophobia. Though they faced the apocalypse, it had nothing to do with him after all, and he wasn't the one who caused the apocalypse... Moreover, turning a blind eye was one thing, but performing certain actions purely for amusement was an entirely different matter.
Lin Chuan didn't want to become too unfamiliar to himself. He didn't dare to give in a single step and wasn't willing to change at all. This was even harder than resisting divinity, because everything stemmed from his original heart. Still, when he saw that guy again, the other party couldn't possibly fail to recognize him, right?
What other reason could there possibly be for me not to go back? It couldn't possibly be that the Oldest One would awaken the moment I returned, right? Haha, there's no such coincidence, and the honorific name of the Beacon of Destiny isn't on me...
Thinking up to this point, Lin Chuan stopped his flag-planting behavior. He stayed in this star system and quietly waited. One day passed, two days passed, and nothing happened; the universe remained silent.
"Very good."
He let out a breath, fished out that diary, and began to record:
"It seems there is no such thing as a higher-level narrator arranging my life, nor am I the protagonist of some novel. Otherwise, following common tropes just now, the Oldest One should have 'conveniently' been next in line to awaken right after the thought of planting that flag landed in my mind."
Closing the diary, Lin Chuan tossed it back above the boundless void, into the urban bedroom he had previously materialized. He had reproduced his hometown before transmigration to scale almost entirely from memory. Everything was just as it was in his memories, with the sole flaw being that there was no one there, so he didn't stay inside it very often. He merely went to sleep in his own bedroom to maintain a normal routine-perhaps not entirely normal.
Lin Chuan withdrew his thoughts, gazed into the vast sea of stars, and thought to himself:
"During these days, I've casually materialized all sorts of entertainment facilities within the Sefirah. Even though there is no one to accompany me, I already learned how to enjoy solitude back before my transmigration."
"Playing through those games one by one, watching all the novels, anime, and movies-how could it take any less than ten thousand years to enjoy? How could I possibly feel bored? People who say they're bored probably haven't eaten fine food; isn't finding some good games a blast?"
"I might even encounter other civilizations in the starry sky... Considering the existence of Great Old Ones like the Supernova Dominator, I should say I'm bound to encounter them, and I can go make contact with them when the time comes. That should be quite interesting."
Lin Chuan was silent for a moment. Afterward, his figure receded like the tide, pressing forward in the direction dictated by his intuition.
It was time for him to continue on his way. There were still many things that always
needed someone to do them.
Before you continue