CH 42

【"No no —— let me go ah ah!!!" Screams rose one after another.

Catherine was so frightened that she’d gone numb,watching as the person beside her was bitten in half by the monster from the sea.

The humans who survived the ordeal ran off the beach and into the woods at the edge of it. Catherine, who had returned to her senses, followed in a panic. 

It’s all that monster’s fault!

Catherine remembered the beast who’d escaped the circus and followed after her with resentment.

Her feet had blisters, she’d been scratched by branches, her clothes torn ragged, she looked extremely miserable.

Suddenly, a dense wave of black-shelled insects crawled out onto the ground. They ate everything and instantly turned the people running in front of her into a pile of bones. Catherine screamed and swerved to the side.

On the peak of the mountain, the torches on the altar were lit in turn. Aman in black robes cut open the monster's wrist and watched the blood flow along the grooves in the altar, the emotion in his eyes frantic and chilling.

"We offer sacrifices to the god! We pray for your awakening!"

The sea became stormier and a terrible existence deep in the sea opened its eyes.

That was, the inexplicably great existence —— Cthulhu. 】

——From 《Cthulhu’s Wrath》

"Let me go." Zhou Yu frowned and lifted the old man's hand off his shoulder.

"I'm here to get the documents. I'm afraid I can't comply with your wishes." Zhou Yu smiled, but his eyes were cold.

The old man froze and naturally realized that the young man was unwilling to be his apprentice.

"Boy, why are you being picky? I'm the best alchemist in this city, you definitely won't lose out!" The old man's face wrinkled, and he had a childlike stubbornness in his eyes as he kept promoting himself with a thick face. (S: “thick face” wasn’t in the raws, but he’s being shameless, and this is a Chinese novel, so I thought it sounded more authentic)

"... No thanks."

Zhou Yu was speechless.

He walked into the credential room and saw the walls covered with various models. The only table was covered in papers full of messy notes.

"Excuse me, where is my certificate? I still have something to do." Zhou Yu looked at the pestering old man, his tone chilly.

"No no no, you must have rejected me without knowing who I am! I used to be the chief alchemist of Toria, but I was forced to leave the imperial capital because I was framed by my peers and returned here to do this job! Don't underestimate me! As long as you become my apprentice, I promise that you’ll become the greatest alchemist of all time!" The old man didn’t answer Zhou Yu's inquiry and continued to try persuading Zhou Yu, his face still stubborn to the point he looked a little insane.

He must take this young man as an apprentice! His life was running out. He didn’t have time and energy to return to the capital to get revenge on that scum. Only by receiving a genius as an apprentice could he prove to the world that he was right! Everything he did was for the development of alchemy as a whole! He wasn’t in the wrong!

Zhou Yu looked at this old man spouting nonsense, and wrinkled his brows in impatience.

He had to go back and cook for Franken. He didn't have the time to listen to the old man spouting inane rubbish.

"My family was once the country’s most prosperous family. Even the king had to bow his head to the people in our family, because they were all sorcerers and alchemists. There used to be a high-level alchemist and mid-level sorcerer! To this day, there are countless priceless alchemy books and grimoires in my family!"

"I don't need to know these things, please tell me where my documents—" Zhou Yu wanted to interrupt the old man, but paused when he heard what the old man said.

There was a flash of surprise in his eyes, and he asked, "Did you say your family still has grimoires? How many?"

He really didn't believe that there would still be a lot of magical books in such a remote town.

You know, a sorcerer was an existence that ordinary people couldn't see in their lifetime, not to mention precious books about magic.

In this era where knowledge was circulated, the price of books was unexpectedly expensive. The original owner only bought one ancient magic book and it exhausted all his savings. Did this old man really have magic books that were a lot more precious than those?

The old man saw that the young man he valued became interested in his family and immediately began to show off.

He boasted, saying that his family's collection of books was comparable to that of the Torian Imperial Library, because it was arduously collected through generations of their family.

Zhou Yu knew that it must’ve been an exaggeration and naturally he didn't fully believe it. He heard the old man boasting non-stop about it and began to look closely around the room. He accidentally saw an abandoned manuscript.

On this manuscript paper was the drawing of a human body. Those meticulous lines outlined an exquisite map of the human anatomy.

In a time when experimenting on humans with alchemy was forbidden, Zhou Yu had an inkling as to why the old man was driven out of the capital.

"If possible, I would like to look at those books before making any judgements. Mister, you should know that I’m short of money and usually can't buy many of them. If you really have a lot of books, I might just agree to your demand.” Zhou Yu took some gold coins out his pocket and smiled, interrupting the old man's lengthy speech.

The old man's eyes flashed with surprise and he once again happily started to ramble: "Good, good, come, follow me! I'll take you to our family's library!"

The old man pulled Zhou Yu, about to leave the certificate room, but Zhou Yu reminded him that his certificate had not yet been issued. Only then did the excited old man recover a bit of his reason, taking Zhou Yu's official alchemist's certificate from who knows where and giving it to Zhou Yu.

Because this city's Alchemist Society was only responsible for the assessment of low-level alchemists, Zhou Yu now has the credentials of the lowest class of alchemists.

But that was enough.

He didn't want to go too far in that direction, because in his opinion, except for some individuals who were truly skilled, many of them passed themselves off as formal alchemists by mechanical memorization, it was almost on the same level as ancient China.

After receiving the certificate, Zhou Yu followed the old man out of the Alchemist Society. As for Franken's breakfast, Zhou Yu decided to buy more things at noon to compensate him.

Under the guidance of the old man, Zhou Yu quickly came to a quaint old house.

Red bricks and tiles, a three-storeyed spire, an overgrown courtyard and the tattered iron fence gave off the atmosphere of a medieval haunted house.

Zhou Yu glanced at the old man with some doubts in his heart. Anyone who saw such a run down house would not have thought that it would have any precious books in it.

"Come, young man, follow me!" The old man was anxious when he saw Zhou Yu hesitating at the door, "Don't look at how worn out the exterior looks, in fact, the inside is still very neat!"

Obviously, he also knew that his ancestral house was very shabby. He was usually just too lazy to take care of it and was also disinclined to hire servants to clean up the place because of his alchemy experiments. This caused the original luxurious and beautiful house to turn to shambles.

Zhou Yu stepped in with hesitation, but palmed his dagger. He was going in prepared, just in case this old man turned out to be a lunatic.

Following this somewhat crazy old man, Zhou Yu walked into the library located deep inside the house.

Huge bookshelves were scattered throughout the originally empty room and the shelves were filled with dusty books.

In the quiet library, the sun shone through the small window on the walls and fell on books that hadn’t been viewed for a long time. Dust fluttered under the light and time seemed to stop.

With so much reading material, it could be seen that this family had really been glorious, with their own era of prosperity.

Zhou Yu's emerald eyes widened as he looked at one of the bookshelves neatly arranged with grimoires and smiled.

Great, there were so many books! He didn’t even have to rush the trip to Kailans, the magic capital of Toria, anymore.

Zhou Yu turned to look at the proud and expectant old man and smiled, "I wonder if your distinguished self would like to make a deal with me?"

The old man shook his head and firmly said: "No transaction needed. As long as you’re willing, you can take these books away! You just have to agree to be my apprentice!"

Zhou Yu smiled and looked down, "Then, that’s really unfortunate. My humble self actually doesn’t have much interest in alchemy, and I think the only reason why your distinguished self wants to accept me as an apprentice, en, is to return to the Capital and become the chief alchemist? "

The old man's eyes darkened and he was silent for a while and finally spoke in a righteous manner, "It's not because of that ... I'm old and not so eager for power and influence anymore. I just want to prove that my alchemy is correct! Let those people who look down on me and slander me regret it! Let the world know that my method is right!"

"Is your method human experimentation?" Zhou Yu indifferently mentioned the theme of the alchemy practice that the old man had been hiding.

"!!!!!!"

The old man was shocked and his forehead dripped with cold sweat. How did this young man know!

He’d intended to lie and get the youth’s trust first, then telling him the truth after pulling him into the water and making him learn his alchemy. (Blu: To pull someone into the water is to drag them into your scheme)

But now, everything was over.

No one would want to be an apprentice to an infamous practitioner of human experimentation.

He was doomed.

"Actually, I don't think human experiments are completely wrong, as long as they are not ** experiments." (S: asterisks were in the raws)

In the current era, alchemists also served as doctors, blindly superstitious and alchemists who knew nothing about the structure of the human body had accidentally killed many patients who’d only had minor illnesses.

The advanced Western medicine from the modern world didn’t exist at all here. Some medical procedures only involved infusions of gold or bloodletting treatments. The treatment methods were extremely primitive and unsanitary.

Zhou Yu watched the old man's face change slightly and he sighed in his heart.

This old man must have done ** experiments. Hah, sure enough, in this world where the concept of morals was weak, it was impossible for pure scholars to make a living. Even this old man who seemed to be moving towards science was stained with the blood of his fellow humans.

"You can prove to the world that you are right! As long as you expound upon some facts that already exist."

"But I’m old. I can’t dissect the human body, calculate the size of each bone and the distribution of each internal organ as quickly as when I was young." The old man dejectedly sat on the carpet in the library.

He has given up on his plans to accept Zhou Yu as an apprentice.

He knew that this young man was very clever, he wouldn’t follow him on this blood-stained path where he would be condemned by the public.

"What if I said that I could rejuvenate you?" Zhou Yu came to the bookshelf full of magic books and ran his fingers across those thick covers.

The sorcery he learned from Feng Xing was perfect for the current situation.

The old man with his head down suddenly raised his head, hesitating.

"I have an alchemy potion. In exchange for your soul, you can regain your youth, but you can't do any more ** experiments later, otherwise it will accelerate the aging process. How about it? These books in exchange for that potion. Are you willing?" Zhou Yu looked at the old man's cloudy eyes, his gaze containing a touch of indifference.

These restrictions were - of course - true, but the thing mentioned wasn’t potion, but a gu, that could burn the ‘essence’ within the human body, which was what the people in this world believed to be the ‘soul’. (Blu: gu - a legendary venomous insect. From legends, you make a gu by stuffing all sorts of insects into a container and seal it. The insects will fight and devour each other. The last one left is called ‘gu’ and is supposed to be the most poisonous. In some novels I’ve read, there is also a ‘mother’ gu and child ‘gu’. They are akin to a queen ant and worker ants, meaning, there can be a lot of child gu but only one mother gu, who controls all the child gu.)

***

In a small two-story building in the slums, Franken walked out of the guest room and quietly nestled in the living room, waiting for his Creator's return.

He knew that his Creator had a lot of work to do, so he wouldn't complain, but was just that he occasionally felt a bit lonely.

Looking dully at the fluff on the carpet, Franken remembered that vague memory from a few days earlier.

He recalled standing in the living room like he was now. After he was distracted for a moment, he walked into the basement involuntarily and kissed the Creator. The Creator hated him because of that and only finally changed his attitude yesterday.

In fact, he could feel that existence that came to him and even vaguely realized the relationship between them —— that unknown existence was the main body and he was a trivial fragment.

Who is he? Was he just a clone of that soul?

Franken's original clear eyes slowly filled with deep blue. However, he was unwilling. He was the life created by the Creator. He didn't want to return to the main body and didn't want to lose his consciousness and his beloved Creator.

He wanted to be the main body, not a fragment that could disappear at any time!

Outside the house, a group of people in black robes came knocking on the door.

The cultist who led the group looked at the faintly glowing statue in his hand and nodded at the person beside him.

"For the glory of our Lord!"

Bang ——

A loud noise sounded and the door was smashed to pieces.

Franken woke up from his contemplation and looked up, his eyes full of murderous intent.

Who is it? Daring to break into the Creator's house!