Eldritch Horror Theatre

"Hmph. In all of Lincheng, nothing I, Fu Qian, set my sights on has ever escaped my grasp."

A string of cold sneers echoed through the dim room.

Leaning back on the living room sofa, Fu Qian exuded the aura of a ruler looking down upon the world. Resting in his hand was a bronze human-faced helmet.

Paired with his lines, the pose truly cranked his chuunibyou vibes to the maximum.

He hadn't intentionally left the lights off to set the mood; the living room curtains simply weren't very good at blocking light.

If the silhouette of him holding up a severed head was projected onto the window and accidentally spotted, it would probably scare the living daylights out of the neighborhood elderly who were still awake.

In short, after cementing his persona to his friends as a dedicated psychological counselor—and someone whose prolonged illness had practically made him a doctor—Fu Qian bid farewell to the deeply moved youths. He declined their offers to escort him and headed home alone.

His reason for refusing was very simple.

"My patient also came alone."

It was an irrefutable fact. Besides, even if their classmate Fu had a rather eccentric mind, Madam Sissi didn't seem entirely normal either.

Carrying the Box all the way home, Fu Qian confirmed once again that it posed no immediate danger before deciding to handle it right then and there.

No wonder so many people said art was abstract.

Taking on the role of a top-tier art appraiser, Fu Qian held the Bronze Madam with a serious posture. He looked past the surface, taking in the artwork's inner mastery from multiple angles in three dimensions.

He ultimately concluded that its anatomical structure indeed came from a human being, specifically a young woman.

Whether that was the origin of its name, however, was hard to say.

"Looks like I have to wear it for it to work."

Fu Qian muttered to himself after some observation.

It was just as he had suspected. Holding it let him know it was a transcendent item, but he couldn't hear those ravings from before.

He didn't hesitate. Adjusting its angle, he slowly slipped it over his head.

The smell wasn't as bad as he had imagined. The tissues seemed to have undergone a rather special treatment after being spliced together.

Right away, Fu Qian reached the exact same conclusion as Madam Sissi.

A second later, voices washed over him, but... they were different from what he had heard before.

The eerie ravings seemed to stretch out, rearranging and recombining as they echoed.

After a brief agitation, a peculiar sensation set in. The helmet began to squirm like a living creature, gradually encasing every inch of his head.

At the same time, the viscous flesh formed an incredible barrier, rendering everything in the outside world exceptionally blurry.

Being unable to breathe was one thing; if he hadn't advanced to the Demigod Realm, he likely would have lost all perception of the outside world by now.

Fu Qian silently assessed the situation. Instead of trying to take the helmet off, he sat up a little straighter to keep the expanding fleshy slime from staining his sofa.

The expansion finally stopped after about half a minute. Fu Qian felt as if he were balancing a fifty-jin raw beef meatball on his head.

By now, the ravings had transformed into a highly rhythmic sobbing.

It seemed he had overcomplicated things earlier.

He didn't need to do anything; simply wearing it triggered the change. The voice was likely just a defense mechanism.

The subsequent evolution, akin to resonance, would only occur when it detected a transcendent entity sticking its head inside.

While making this silent deduction, Fu Qian focused his mind on the crying.

"It fell off... grow another one..."

A moment later, a slightly distracted muttering rang out amid the sobs, clearly coming from the same person.

At the same time, a sliver of Bright Light appeared in the darkness.

...

What was this... a guillotine?

As the Bright Light fully enveloped his vision and his sight returned, Fu Qian found himself standing in a desolate courtyard.

Directly ahead, on a square platform, three kneeling bronze statues came into view.

Without exception, they all lacked heads, looking like death row inmates refusing to fall after decapitation.

But a closer look revealed the sheer weirdness of it all.

The badly rotted clothes draped over the statues seemed to have been put on later. He could faintly make out complex, layered designs and even the outlines of hoop skirts.

These didn't look like death row inmates waiting for the axe; they looked more like a group of court ladies.

Yet, the exposed arms were as withered as chicken claws, and they were even missing fingers—details that entirely contradicted the traditional image of noblewomen.

This didn't seem like a guillotine for losing heads, but a platform for growing them!

Fu Qian's gaze finally settled just below the collar of one of the statues. Noting a sunken chest that completely mismatched its dress, he silently formed a hypothesis.

These statues were likely the source of the helmet in his hands.

Indeed, although their color was highly similar, the material of these three statues—much like the Bronze Madam—was clearly bizarre.

If they had all been formed from living people, then their physical deformities made sense.

That phrase from earlier—"It fell off... grow another one"—was likely referring to their heads.

For reasons he couldn't yet determine, their heads had fallen off, and then tissue and blood from all over their bodies had surged upward, attempting to grow a new one?

Even if this wasn't reality, it was still a bit too abstract.

Yes, Fu Qian was absolutely certain he was under an effect similar to a Lucid Dream.

His real body was still sitting on the living room sofa; everything before his eyes was merely an illusion.

If he wanted to, he could take the helmet off at any time and interrupt the whole process.

Of course, there was no reason to do that.

Madam Sissi had traveled a great distance to deliver this to him, and he had successfully uncovered a place that only a transcendent—perhaps even one of considerable strength—could enter.

Under normal circumstances, shouldn't there be some transcendent legacy waiting for a Fated person?

Naturally, it could also be a set of deadly traps, waiting for a Fated person.

Harboring beautiful expectations for this trip alongside his ever-vigorous curiosity, Fu Qian walked up the stairs step by step until he finally stood upon the stone platform ahead.

Almost at the same time, a shocking scene on the other side of the stone platform came into view.

In a corridor brimming with palace grandeur, hundreds of densely packed statues knelt together, all facing the exact same direction.

Even though they no longer had faces.

At a glance, they were just like the three over here—possessing deformed limbs and clad in grand formal dresses.

What a seemingly familiar scene!

Fu Qian sighed.

When he met Su Gao and the others in the Old City, the hall full of mollusks had displayed an almost identical demeanor.

Could there also be some evil god or Offspring in the direction they were facing?

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