The Lord Demon King is Unfathomable!

The Ryan Kingdom today is already in its third dynasty, and all that is known of Isaac IV's past is already a thousand-year-old history...

Honestly, Luo Yan was full of doubts about this history.

According to Principal Avin, Isaac IV, at the peak of his strength, was suspected of possessing powers rivalling those of deities.

Given the formidable personal strength and the overall might of the kingdom, how did the Isaac Dynasty come to be overthrown by a divine oracle?

And what exactly did this fellow do to blaspheme? Or, to be specific, what did he do to incur the jealousy of the gods?

Regrettably, the diary didn't mention any of the content Luo Yan was truly curious about; it merely stopped after mentioning that someone had come up with the steam engine.

Even until the end of the diary, Isaac IV merely mentioned in passing that he really wasn't suited for practicing magic, the elements that roamed between heaven and earth shunned him as if he had offended their mother, and he was destined to be no more than a bronze in this lifetime.

Obviously.

Up until the diary was completed, Isaac IV only had bronze-level strength and had won the admiration of mortals solely through the power of mortals.

As for obtaining powers that rivalled those of the gods, that happened many years after he had completed a series of reforms in the Ryan Kingdom.

To be honest, Luo Yan didn't care about any steam engine at all; such a thing was not particularly rare to someone who had received nine years of compulsory education.

In comparison, he was obviously more interested in how Isaac IV later broke through the bronze-level bottleneck and finally stood on the shoulders of gods...

But unfortunately, and most annoyingly, this part he was most curious about wasn't written!

It was unknown whether Isaac IV himself had written it in some other diary, or if this memory had been completely erased in the long river of history.

"It seems that for some reason, Isaac IV ultimately didn't publish his own diary... Was it because he didn't want to, or because he couldn't? Or... was there another purpose?"

Luo Yan glanced at the translation written by Professor Avin next to him.

To say it was like comparing apples and oranges would be too unkind, but at least the punctuation was guessed correctly. It was also quite useful strictly as a memoir of a Demigod-level Witch Demon's cultivation experience.

It's worth keeping, just in case.

If he was fortunate enough to cultivate to Demigod or Grandmaster level.

Just as Luo Yan, with a sense of disappointment, was about to close the diary and go to sleep, he saw a few lines of small text on the very last page—

"I believe my transmigration was not by chance, there will definitely be others who will come here through the same passage I once crossed. As for the reason... I'm not sure whether I should tell you here, even less sure if I would be allowed to see this diary again if I choose to tell you now."

"Anyway, if you are my kin, you will surely guess my identity and understand the message I've left... and face the same problem I did one day in the future."

"And if that day really comes, I believe even without my redundant reminders, you will realize your mission."

"Furthermore, as a welcome to you, I have prepared a special gift, which is also the last work I have left in this world—"

"I believe you will like it!"

The ink and handwriting of these few lines were drastically different from the previous pages.

Both the quality of the ink and the variation in the handwriting suggested that these words were likely written by Isaac IV impulsively in some year after the diary was finished.

Beneath the text on the last page was recorded the method to receive this "special gift."

It was a bronze-level magical ritual, with modest requirements for spiritual power and Magic Power, something he could barely afford.

The only requirement for the ritual was to prepare an artifact that still carried the personal aura of Isaac IV himself.

Principal Avin's necklace just happened to meet this requirement!

The urge to sleep vanished in an instant!

Holding back his excitement, Luo Yan took an hour to meticulously draw the magic circle with a Demon Crystal chalk, placing the necklace in the center of the circle, then recited the Spell that was inexplicably written in pinyin alone—

"Loyalty—"

"Strike the Great Bell!"

"Devotion—"

"Heat the bronze furnace, activate the valve!"

"Boiling—"

"Water of Sincere, dance of the pistons!"

"Praise—"

"Great Mechanical God!"

Huh?

Mechanical God?

The moment he uttered the last note, Luo Yan only felt a flash of white light, and then he lost consciousness.

When he opened his eyes again, it was already the next morning.

Standing up from the floor, Luo Yan only felt a severe pain in the back of his head, as if he had a hangover.

Since this was his first time encountering this situation, he couldn't tell whether the throbbing pain was because he had lain on the floor all night, or simply because his Magic Power was too low, drained by the magic circle before him.

"Magic Power... doesn't seem to have decreased, so the magic circle isn't driven by Magic Power, but some other energy?"

As for the so-called gift mentioned in the diary, Luo Yan didn't have too much of a direct sensation, so much so that he even felt like he had been played.

What exactly was going on?

And just as he hurriedly cleaned up the magic circle and tidied up the room, he suddenly realized a serious problem.

"...The necklace?"

Luo Yan hastily bent over and searched all over the floor, even turning the unrelated desk drawers inside out, but he couldn't find a single trace of the necklace.

Gone?

Luo Yan's face gradually changed.

If Principal Ai Wen found out that he had lost the antique he had given him that very day, he wondered if he could survive the wrath of that old Witch Demon.

Tell him the whole story exactly as it happened?

Like, that the "cipher" in the diary was actually the language of the Otherworld, that both Emperor Isaac IV and he were transmigrators...

"No... that won't do."

Luo Yan's forehead was already beaded with sweat; it seemed easier to fool the old monster by saying the necklace was lost than to tell the truth.

"Anyway, stay calm."

Luo Yan took a deep breath, sank his consciousness into the Sea of Consciousness, and calmed his mind through meditation.

It was then, as his heart settled, that he suddenly sensed something unusual—a subtle abnormality within his own Sea of Consciousness.

In the mist as thin as a gossamer, there seemed to be something hidden that he had never seen before.

According to the textbooks, that mass of mist was his spiritual entity, or in other words, his soul.

He had never heard of any Ritual Magic that could change the shape of the soul's essence!

"...What's going on?"

With a touch of trepidation and curiosity, Luo Yan controlled his consciousness, drifting cautiously towards the indescribable mist.

And as he delved deeper into the spiritual world, he became more certain that there was something hidden in the mist.

There was something there...

Could it be the necklace?!

No—

It didn't seem to be that simple!

As his consciousness fully entered the center of the spiritual world, he was shocked to discover a stone tablet standing erect in that realm of nothingness.

When he saw the words inscribed on the stone tablet, Luo Yan was stunned on the spot.

["Cataclysm" system loading complete!]

[Let this foolish world feel the pain!]

[—by, the Supreme Mechanical God, Linte Isaac]