Eldritch Horror Theatre

'Isn't this mission... a bit too easy?'

The pleasant prompt confirmed the authenticity of the Holy Grail before him.

Hearing it, however, made Fu Qian frown slightly.

Making himself the sole Anchor Point for the Blind Eye Holy Grail was easy enough to understand after his earlier conversation with the Old Man Sage.

The very nature of the Blind Eye Holy Grail inherently rejected being perceived by anyone.

The Anchor Point here clearly referred to everyone aware of its existence. Normally, that meant the members of this expedition team, and now he needed to stop them from being so impolite.

The Holy Grail being perceived solely by him—that had to be the condition for the Warehouse to successfully execute Containment.

Looked at that way, it was perfectly logical.

Yet that brought back the very first question: why had his abilities and Items been confiscated?

The problem was that, given the current mission, this group of incomplete Saints was doomed to die anyway.

Why not just wipe them out first, then figure out how to find the Holy Grail?

Was it out of fear that the Holy Grail would copy his abilities and become too difficult to handle?

Though hard to imagine, even if it did copy something, where would it infuse that power?

Those living corpses acting as guards were obviously fragile. A single beam turned them to ash. How many tentacles could they possibly sprout?

The logic of this mission was genuinely strange.

Was it because of some underhanded trick that even the Sage couldn't perceive with Insight?

According to the Sage, the downfall of the Blind Eye Society came from qi deviation—they grew too radical and saw things they shouldn't have seen. It was perfectly normal for them to possess knowledge beyond standard comprehension.

In fact, the Sage's willingness to use him as a probe proved that, following Fu Qian's hints, the old man logically believed such a possibility existed.

But in all fairness, even if every eye outside sprouted beam-firing tentacles and blasted him at once, Fu Qian didn't think it would cause any fatal damage.

Was there something even more terrifying? Something that made the Warehouse instantly conclude brute force would fail and only outsmarting it would work?

Fu Qian recalled the beam that had finally sent him away last time.

It had torn right through his shields, completely unstoppable.

"Is there another problem?"

Beside him, the Sage's voice rang out once more.

"I see the clock, but where is the Tower?"

Fu Qian nodded, honestly raising his question.

Heh.

The Old Man Sage listened with a smile but didn't rush to answer. Instead, he clapped his hands twice.

Barely ten seconds later, light footsteps approached.

'Ladies first?'

Fu Qian didn't need to turn his head to know it was Ais, one of the three who had stayed behind.

Judging by the timing, the trio likely hadn't waited at the entrance to the Stone Statue Hall, but rather lingered on the stairs just beneath the statues.

They seemed incredibly eager. The excuse they gave themselves was probably to avoid missing the signal.

Yet even in this situation, the Holy Grail still hadn't activated. Was it because, here in the Clock Tower Hall, it lacked any countermeasures to deal with everyone at once?

No wonder the Sage was in such a hurry to bring people in. The threat from the Holy Grail had been neutralized, so naturally, the next priority was the threat posed by a suspicious individual.

"So beautiful..."

With Ais entering, the Sage—now seemingly holding an invincible position—looked completely relaxed. Ais, however, was even more so.

The moment she stepped through the door, her eyes glued themselves to the Holy Grail as she let out a heartfelt sigh of admiration.

"It's even more enchanting than I imagined. I can't believe it's been missing for centuries. Is it looking at me?"

"The act of 'looking' is hard to define here, but obviously, it knows that you know about it," the Sage explained with a smile, looking quite satisfied with her reaction.

"Also, Left Hand seems to want to know where the actual Tower of the Clocktower is."

Oh?

Ais's gaze flickered as she gave Fu Qian a meaningful look. The next moment, she flashed a charming smile and pointed upward.

"The Astral Clocktower—isn't it right up there?"

The Astral Clocktower. It was a good name, and quite fitting.

Fu Qian had already noticed that the overlapping golden dials above did indeed have numerous shapes carved into them, representing the Stars.

Furthermore, as the hands and dials turned, the positions of the Stars would weave and shift. It was a miraculous design—wait, he seemed to know where the "Tower" was.

'Fixed mindsets are a bad thing after all, huh?'

One subconsciously assumed that an ancient ruin involving the transcendent would be hidden away in some remote wilderness, rather than deep in the Underground of a major metropolis.

Fu Qian tilted his head up to look again.

The Astral Clocktower. No wonder it sounded familiar.

The name had appeared in a leisure book he had casually skimmed through.

It was one of the many wonders of this world, existing for nearly a millennium. To this day, it remained the landmark structure of a certain ancient city.

Supposedly, its original purpose was to express reverence for the starry sky.

And on its dials—said to condense the wisdom of countless artisans—symbols of various celestial bodies were carved, exactly like the ones currently above his head.

Every night, starlight would shine down through the dials, casting magnificent, dreamlike patterns onto the floor of the Clocktower.

Of course, that wasn't why the Clocktower had been featured in that book.

As a world-renowned wonder, the Clocktower was most famous for being fraught with misfortune.

Not only was it frequently struck by natural disasters, but the various man-made catastrophes it suffered were also absurdly frequent. It was a classic example of a fate fraught with misfortune—so much so that its golden clock had long ceased to tick.

...

'Anyway, back to the earlier question. Where is the Tower?'

'The thing above my head obviously isn't the clock on the Clocktower. But when Ais pointed up just now, could she have been referring to somewhere even higher?'

'For example, what if this is the Underground of the Astral Clocktower?'

'Interesting. In that case, the existence of this mysterious wonder is undoubtedly tied to the Blind Eye Society.'

'Pulling off an operation like this in a densely populated area carries immense risk. There would have to be an absolute necessity for it—like building it specifically to store the Holy Grail?'

'Then what's the significance of the dial overhead?'

A flurry of thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant. The next moment, Fu Qian's gaze fell upon the largest Star on the dial.

Through the hollowed-out opening, he could see pitch-black darkness, a completely different texture from the rest of the underground structure. Could it be...

"I really envy those transcendents. Looking up in reverse like this, I honestly can't see a thing!"

The next moment, Fu Qian voiced a heartfelt sigh.

"...What do you want to see?"

The Sage's smile faded as he narrowed his eyes at Fu Qian.

"The Tower, of course."

Fu Qian answered matter-of-factly, not at all worried about guessing wrong.

He never believed for a second that, given his earlier suspicious performance, the Old Man Sage would still leave him alive.

"Or rather, the light shining down through the Clocktower."

Seeming to stare at an infinitely high point beyond the dial, Fu Qian continued.

"I wonder if moving this thing would have any effect?"

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