Chapter 203 The Abyss

The world was funny sometimes. Sometimes you could stare at the mountain or a forest and be lost in its beauty, and then, that same forest could consume you whole and teach you a new terror. You could fall off that mountain and meet a tumbling end. 

I was now in the forest, cursing myself for thinking it looked great at this very moment. 

Eldritch entities were the worst thing to have ever been. 

Well, maybe not the worst, but close enough. 

I didn’t stare at them, but I could certainly feel the mix of destruction and chaos bubbling over the horizon. 

Wang Hou stood on the ship with a quiver on his lips. 

“Senior daoist, I had no idea the Entropic Path was this terrifying!”

“Have you ever journeyed through here?” I asked. 

“A few times, but never this far.”

I nodded. You couldn’t walk the Entropic Path, not as anything below a World-King.  

You needed to be able to deal with the literal breakdown of your nature to do so. It was like the void, but worse. 

There were God-Imperiums here, and we would supposedly be avoiding them, but we-- or rather I had already run into one. 

But they would mostly ignore us, mostly. The key thing about traveling through lands like this is that they weren’t monoliths. 

The Entropic Path, as chaotic as was, was not the Chaos Gates. It was a path to them, so the creatures and the God-Imperiums that occupied their celestial realms, weren’t out to destroy everything by any means necessary. 

Yog-Sothoth and his pals were beyond here. 

“Senior, do you not fear getting this close as a follower of the Tome?” Wang Hou asked me. 

“The Chaos God has no reason to squash me. And besides, the Tome is not in direct opposition to them. Their fight is less conceptual and more personal.”

“What about Azathoth? Or Nyarlathotep?”

“Don’t say their name,” I replied. “But yes, even they are beyond the Gate. They might wander about but they have no use with insects like us. And even if they were to leave their realms, the God-Imperiums of the paths would hold their own. As the people of the Golden Lands would rebel against the Heavens if they intruded.”

Wang Hou nodded. 

“I understand, I just-- I’ve never been down this path.”

“Neither have I.”

It was a different experience to travel down a path that World-Kings used. It was shocking.

The path could be thought of as sidewalks and both Wang Hou and I were ants on that sidewalk, currently, we felt like ants on somebody’s coat. We have traversed these lands before, but never so high and from a position of notable power. 

It was understandable that Wang Hou would feel terror. I felt afraid right now. 

I could feel eyes in the far distance. Creatures of chaos, of entropy, of destruction of the fifteenth rank noticing us as we passed by.

Still, we were nothing to God-Kings and God-Imperiums, but the terror was there. 

I looked around, noticing several people having similar feelings.

And more so, I could feel the other World-Kings on the boat. 

It was a contest of power. Sure, everything out there might be thinking about attacking us, but the World-Kings on this boat were doing just the same. 

There were ten World-Kings on the ship, including the ship itself and they pressed down on their aura and projected out into the void. 

We are here. If you wish to attack, you shall be attacking us all. Do so and pay the price. 

That was their message, and the world understood it loud and clear. 

The seas quieted down and suddenly, we were alone again. 

But that didn’t mean they were gone. They were still watching, we just couldn’t see their eyes. 

I calmed my nerves. 

I could still see things, celestial realms shined in the distance, but out here, they were nothing more than traps. Celestial realms native to this region were ones of disorder. They were less like stars and more like black holes ready to consume you whole. 

“Do not fear,” the Primordial Cult’s lady said to me. “We have crossed this boundary before and will do so again, deeper and stronger. It is merely a moment of weakness you see in their eyes.”

I nodded. 

“May I ask why? I thought your ship had already grabbed all the cargo it needed? Why turn around to only come this deep into the Entropic Bound.”

The rabbit lady smiled. Her arms rubbed her carapace and her thorax rose slightly. One of her rabbit ears perked. 

“It is a training expedition. The ten World-Kings of this ship have already hunted for their prizes, all they seek to do now is to enter the Entropic Path a bit and allow their disciples the chance of warring against the lesser chaos creatures. It is for us, the Ten Sects of the Dark Maiden, to train in the safer parts of the place.”

I frowned. 

“How will that be done?”

“The ship will stop soon and small threats will be allowed in certain areas. The guests will remain safe, though you can join in if you want to, though your safety is no longer guaranteed. Then each sect led by each World-King will descend down into the battle areas and train themselves against the beasts.” 

That made sense. 

This ship didn’t need guests. We were only here because the money we provided would go to the disciples. This training time did strike me as strange though. Would the fifteenth rank leaders of this ship really inconvenience themselves for their disciples? 

Would they interrupt their trade voyage for something so small?

“Do not misjudge our World-Kings. They are traders, barters, a crew older than your bloodline, but they still care for their sects.”

I nodded. 

“How noble,” I replied. 

The rabbit lady shrugged. Wang Hou watched the ship from far away. He was talking to other people now, laughing at a joke of some sort. 

“They are a crew. To see them as anything more or less than that would be a lie. They started eons ago at rank nine, sailing across existence as a gathered group and now they’ve all ascended this high. They have raised us with them, watching over us with their shadow, even in fights and battles.”

“Amazing,” I replied. 

It was a wild idea, gods growing and cultivating and the smaller people following in their footsteps from afar. 

There was a concept of a garden amongst stronger cultivators. I thought about Sir Dorsin’s robe. The wizard had a whole universe within his robe and wore it as clothing. 

That wasn’t uncommon. 

A garden was essentially a world, a real breathing world, that a cultivator watched over and ruled as god. It wasn’t for cultivation’s sake. It wasn’t as practice, but rather as a hobby. 

A rose garden had plants and insects in it. You watered it and hoped it would grow and blossom under your care, all as a hobby. 

The problem with hobbies is that they get neglected. People tear down their gardens. Winter comes and the leaves fall off. No matter how fun a garden was, nobody felt too bad about abandoning it. 

I thought this was a bit of a similar situation, but no. Apparently, the World-Kings of this ship cared about the small people that relied on them. 

That made me like them more.

Then the ship stopped moving.