Reincarnated In a Cthulhu World And Everyone Is Obsessed With Me - Chapter 22

Chapter 22: Rules – “God is dead.”

Xia Mingyu’s shift at Paradise with Chesapeak went smoothly, aside from the fact that he had to wear a poorly made “fake skin” patch Chesapeak had rushed to finish. When he finally returned home, it was 2:30 AM. Fortunately, his next class wasn’t until the afternoon, allowing him a few hours of real sleep.

The apartment was quiet; Tang Yaopeng was already asleep. Xia Mingyu turned on the dim nightlight in the living room and found a note on the table: “Senior, there’s food in the fridge!”

He untied the colorful hair ribbon and wrapped it around his wrist. He ate a few cold bites of the packaged meal—low-quality oil and tough meat, yet still the highest standard for base residents. It made the decadence of the ball feel even more like a fever dream.

Looking out the window at the metallic blue glow of the distant buildings, Xia Mingyu felt a pang of nostalgia. He was more skilled with a pen than a blade, but in this world, losing touch with your dreams was just another form of death.

He noted something curious: since Sheikh began clearing the monster tides, it hadn’t rained once. The night wasn’t “gentle,” but the lack of dampness was a byproduct of Sheikh’s protection. Xia Mingyu knew his own kill count from earlier—nearly four hours of slaughter—was a drop in the bucket compared to the tidal waves Sheikh handled.

I need to grow faster, he thought. Much faster.

…

The next afternoon, Xia Mingyu and Tang Yaopeng headed to the Sentry Tower for Teresa’s Introduction to Mental Power Control. The massive circular hall was packed; everyone was chasing the dream of joining the Shadow Guild.

“Senior, did you go to the ball yesterday?” Tang Yaopeng asked while sorting paperwork. He worked as a clerk at the Sentry Tower—essentially a “civil servant” of the apocalypse.

Xia Mingyu nodded slightly.

“If you find a partner, you can come to me for registration,” Tang Yaopeng joked, holding up a stack of ‘Partner Registration Forms.’ “I’m basically running the Marriage Registry. I need to hit my KPI this month or my salary gets docked!”

The surrounding students laughed. One teased, “How many times does your Senior have to get married to fix your performance review?”

Xia Mingyu offered a professional, polite smile, ignoring the flirtatious looks from some of the other Sentinels.

The chatter ceased as the clicking of high heels echoed. Ms. Teresa entered. She wore an elegant indigo high-collared gown and a wide-brimmed hat, looking like a medieval noblewoman—the polar opposite of the rugged soldier image most people had of high-level Sentinels.

“Goodness,” she smiled. “With this crowd, I thought I was at a stadium for a concert.”

Teresa began her lecture by asking if anyone had entered a “Domain.” A few hands went up. Students described crawling insect hives, geometric mazes where people starved, and frozen tundras that required volcanic eruptions to clear.

Xia Mingyu listened intently. His understanding of Domains was limited to what an “ordinary human” knew in his previous life. The information was usually monopolized by high-ranking officials to prevent “information-based mental pollution.”

Teresa walked to the center of the stage. Without any mechanical aid, her voice carried perfectly to the back.

“We are five years into the New Era. We now define Domains as spatial gaps leading to three-dimensional alien worlds,” she explained. “Some call it a high-dimensional invasion, though that’s not official yet. But we have powers now. Mental power is a tangible force.”

She held out her hand, and a sphere of crackling electricity manifested—a “Mental Atom.”

“It’s like a boring high school physics class, isn’t it?” she joked. “But these atoms are what keep us alive. If there is a God, He holds logic in His left hand and science in His right.”

Xia Mingyu smirked. Teresa was a staunch materialist. In an era where “God is dead” meant a crisis of existence, she found meaning in the rules of the world.

“The space these atoms occupy is limited only by your imagination—or rather, the rules of the world you can understand,” Teresa continued.

She demonstrated by forming a mental apple, then moved on to the “Insect Mother Domain.” As she described the monsters, her mental atoms coalesced into a terrifyingly realistic creature: giant compound eyes, skeletal wings that could slice a man in half, and dripping fangs. The hall fell into a fearful silence; some students even screamed.

“To harvest a Domain, you must understand its nature: its appearance, habits, and social hierarchy. In short, you must understand the Rules,” Teresa said firmly. “The core of a Domain—the ‘Nucleus’—is the Rule itself. In the Insect Mother’s world, the rule is reproduction. Kill the Mother, and you destroy the rule. Destroy the rule, and the Domain collapses.”

She flicked her hand, and the giant insect dissolved into a colorful rain of mental atoms that drifted over the students before returning to circle her like a planetary ring.

“In a maze, the ‘Puzzle’ is the rule. In a tundra, ‘Cold’ is the rule. Harvesting is simply understanding and then breaking those rules.” She tapped her temple. “Use your imagination. The boundary of technology is not the boundary of imagination. We spend our lives expanding that frontier.”