Celestial Worthy

The surroundings were bleak and gray, and the soil was reddish-brown, as though it had been soaked in blood.

There was no sky here in the conventional sense. Everything was unusually dim, as dark as a night lit only by starlight.

Yet when Nimrod raised his head, he could see dense, grayish-white fog shrouding the sky, like a thick layer of clouds.

This is Cordu Village outside the dream... That "countdown" sent me straight here?

Looking at the figure sprinting in the distance and the distinctive ruins around him, Nimrod recognized where he was. His temples began to throb.

Before transmigrating, Nimrod had been a reader who knew Lord of the Mysteries thoroughly and had only skimmed Circle of Inevitability. He knew exactly what this place was.

This was a special region formed through the combined influence of several powers after Klein, the Fool, sealed the Outer Deity's Angel inside Lumian Lee, the protagonist of Circle of Inevitability. These were ruins contaminated by an evil god.

At the beginning of Circle of Inevitability, Lumian had always believed these ruins were his dream, while the Cordu Village in his dreams, where his sister was still alive, was the "real world." The truth was precisely the opposite: this place, heavily contaminated by an evil god's power, was reality.

For an outsider like Nimrod, being sent here when the countdown ended was undoubtedly a terrible outcome. Merely thinking about how many high-level beings were watching this place made his scalp prickle.

Still, Nimrod soon steadied himself:

Since a certain priest hasn't appeared in front of me, what I need to do now is find out as quickly as possible whether the body I'm using is a "brand-new" one or that same Amon avatar from before...

As Nimrod considered this, he lowered his head to examine his current body.

The good news was that he was still using the same Amon avatar as before. He wore the black robe left behind by the body's previous occupant, with no monocle on his face.

However, faint gray mist now drifted through his body, even making it somewhat transparent. He looked like an illusory "spirit" shrouded in gray mist.

My physical state hasn't changed, and neither has the tear I deliberately made in my clothes... It's just that the power of the gray fog is leaking out of me...

That pretty much confirms that when the countdown reached zero, I was sent here along with my body from reality. I don't need to worry about anything happening to a body left over there.

For now, I haven't felt any contamination from an evil god. None at all.

...Right, all that knowledge in my head about Outer Deities and Above the Sequence hasn't killed me on the spot, either. Looks like being a transmigrator did come with a cheat after all...

The countdown on the back of my hand has reset? Does that mean I'll return to the world of Lord of the Mysteries when it reaches zero again?

On his first day after transmigrating into the world of Lord of the Mysteries, the countdown on the back of his hand had displayed "[168:00:00]" and had steadily ticked down.

As Nimrod analyzed the situation inwardly, he suddenly sensed something unusual, as though something were watching him.

He immediately grew alert, reined in his somewhat scattered thoughts, and held his breath, quietly listening to the sounds around him.

In this dangerous world, no matter how many special advantages he possessed, caution was still necessary.

After all, the exploits left behind by such famous figures as Master Luo and Luo the Great were enough to keep Nimrod cautious in this world.

...Strange. Why do all these reckless idiots have Luo in their names?

As Nimrod thought this, he kept watch for anything unusual around him. Suddenly, he sensed what seemed to be faint sounds vibrating in the parts of his body covered by the thin gray mist.

When the gray mist drifted across him again, he keenly noticed a jumble of sounds reaching his ears, much like those he had heard when he transmigrated.

Nimrod hesitated, then suppressed the surge of emotion inside him and spoke calmly:

"Who's there?"

The grayish-white fog in the ruins continued rolling as before. His surroundings were quiet, broken only by occasional footsteps that sounded like humanoid creatures prowling nearby.

Nimrod stood where he was, seemingly certain that someone was watching him.

After a while, a soft chuckle sounded in Nimrod's ears:

"You don't seem particularly stupid, but in the end, you're just like that fellow I sealed inside the lamp. You've lost everything, with nothing left but your own will."

"Hmm, you don't seem worried about your future?"

There really is someone! But that voice... Nimrod mulled it over for a moment. Somehow, the voice sounded incredibly punchable, and strangely familiar. A somewhat outlandish guess began to take shape.

He knew his transmigration was connected to the gray fog.

And the voice in his ears had mentioned a "lamp"...

Having settled on his guess, Nimrod steadied himself and spoke in as even a tone as he could manage:

"Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings?"

Before arriving here, he had experienced many dreams about the gray fog-in other words, Sefirah Castle. To him, this was the most likely answer.

Sure enough, after he spoke, the voice paused for two seconds before sounding in his ears again:

"You guessed it? Not bad."

The voice in his ears did not seem surprised, but a flicker of doubt arose in Nimrod's mind. If his transmigration really was connected to the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings, why hadn't the being he was conversing with read his thoughts?

He had only been gambling on someone watching him. For instance, he vaguely remembered that Amon's brother, Amon's father, and one half of the Ancient Sun God seemed to have been watching this place all along.

I had permission to enter Sefirah Castle before, and now the Celestial Worthy's will has awakened, yet he can't affect my condition...

Nimrod felt the spot marked with an "Ω" on the back of his hand grow faintly warm. A somewhat risky idea immediately arose in his mind.

He did not answer the Celestial Worthy. Instead, he quickly took four steps counterclockwise, murmuring a phrase with each step:

"Celestial Venerable of Heaven and Earth for Blessings;"

"Celestial Lord of Heaven and Earth for Blessings;"

"God Almighty of Heaven and Earth for Blessings;"

"...Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."

Once these four phrases left his lips, the gray mist around him abruptly swelled, swallowing his figure completely.

Upon hearing those four phrases, the voice that had been chuckling just moments earlier suddenly froze. For the first time, it revealed surprise, as though wondering why Nimrod knew those four honorific names.

Nimrod opened his eyes and saw one ruptured cocoon after another floating around him. Farther away, indistinct mist writhed ceaselessly.

Among these cocoons stood a figure.

The figure wore an ancient robe, black outside and yellow within. Strangely, beneath it was a Zhongshan suit with a distinctly Republican-era style, making him look as though different eras had been spliced together.

He had a slender build, and his face seemed covered in white light, obscuring his features. Only its gaunt outline was discernible.

Where his eyes should have been, the colors radiating from two points of starlight lingered in the shape of eyes. A pair of black, gold-rimmed pince-nez rested on a nose bridge formed from pure white light.

The figure looked at Nimrod, who had suddenly appeared before him. After a brief moment of astonishment, he regained his composure, raised his hands, and clapped lightly:

"Clever. I admit, you're much cleverer than the Genie."

"Even reduced to this state, you haven't shown the slightest emotional fluctuation. Are you so certain you can break through my seal on you?"

Here's a little taste of what a real transmigrator can do... Nimrod silently quipped. His pre-transmigration impression of the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings-in other words, the Lord of the Mysteries-then surfaced in his mind:

He was a textbook evil god: brutal and insane, sinister and cunning, yet still possessed of a god's arrogance. He enjoyed toying with other lives for his own amusement and was one of the personalities of this universe's Original Creator.

However, after Circle of Inevitability ended, Nimrod had acquired a brand-new label for the Celestial Worthy.

A Great Old One-level Sequence 8 of the Seer Pathway.

"You're right."

Nimrod spoke to the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings with perfect calm:

"Who would be afraid of a Great Old One-level Clown?"