Eldritch Horror Theatre

"What's so interesting?"

Even Madam Sissi, despite her thoroughly playful attitude, seemed to have a hard time understanding Fu Qian's words.

In that brief time, the two of them had reached the end of the kneeling statues.

Before them lay a slightly cluttered hall. Aside from the debris scattered across the floor, there was nothing unusual at first glance.

Unfortunately, after offering his hint, Fu Qian had no intention of explaining further. He simply stood there in silence.

Thud!

Just as Madam Sissi frowned and stepped forward to take a closer look, a dark shadow plummeted from above with a heavy thud.

"What is that?"

Even though she was standing some distance away, Madam Sissi instinctively recoiled a step as she studied the object on the ground.

Having been nearly flattened by its fall, it was now slowly contracting back into a ball.

This thing was undoubtedly beyond ordinary human understanding. Fortunately, the kneeling statues had already prepared her, and Madam Sissi gritted her teeth to bite back a scream.

"Ah—"

But a scream rang out anyway.

A mere breath later, an ear-piercing shriek actually erupted from the lump of meat on the floor.

Furthermore, it sounded exactly like a human scream, filled with an indescribable sense of loss and frantic mania.

Along with the scream, the lump of meat began to flee for its life, squirming away from the two of them.

While it couldn't move very fast by squirming, the combination of its shrieks and desperate movements conveyed genuine terror.

"Looks like the head we're searching for."

Fu Qian only looked away after the lump of meat disappeared around a corner, offering a brief comment.

"That was absolutely disgusting."

By now, Madam Sissi seemed to have reeled her emotions back under control.

"Then what is that?"

She looked up, wanting to see where the "head" had fallen from, only to freeze in place once more.

She hadn't noticed it before. Behind an ornate chandelier, directly above where the lump of meat had landed, the vaulted ceiling appeared to have been crushed by something tremendously heavy, and a bronze-colored mass was protruding from the damage.

"Hard to say... strictly speaking, it looks like an ear."

Fu Qian answered quickly this time, rubbing his chin with a perfectly serious expression.

He wasn't spouting nonsense. From this angle, the thing crushing through the ceiling was indeed a massive, slightly grotesque human ear.

"Nonsense, how could a person have such a huge ear?"

Madam Sissi retorted instinctively.

"By your logic, wouldn't that thing from earlier have squeezed out of its ear canal?"

"It is ridiculously large."

Fu Qian didn't rush to argue with her. Instead, he shook his head.

"I know you dislike being controlled, but if you really want to achieve that, you first need to learn how not to be misled."

"Just because I mentioned earlier that the statues were made of flesh and blood—a piece of information you can't even verify—you instinctively ruled out the possibility that the thing up there is a statue when you saw it?"

Seeing Madam Sissi temporarily at a loss for words, Fu Qian smiled with pure malice.

"Why not just go up and take a look?"

...

Fear and anger often shift into one another. Madam Sissi was clearly in a foul mood now, so she didn't even wait for Fu Qian to lead the way. She marched straight up along the path the lump of meat had taken to escape.

Looking quite appreciative, Fu Qian followed right behind her.

It was a little different from what they had imagined. Above the hall's vaulted ceiling was actually a rather expansive platform.

Between the resplendent golden pillars, a colossal mass gleamed under the sunlight.

Madam Sissi, who had come up first, stood frozen less than ten meters away from it.

"What... is this thing?"

She asked the question for the third time on this trip, her voice sounding like a sleepwalker's murmur.

"Given the ear we just saw below, this should be a brain."

Fu Qian continued to answer fluidly.

This time, Madam Sissi didn't argue.

That was because the shape of the thing before them was even more undeniable than the ear.

Although it was covered in a pale pink hue, its overall shape and the many sulci and gyri along its surface were perfectly clear. It looked exactly like a resting brain—except it was thousands of times larger.

Most importantly, it was absolutely a creation of flesh and blood. There wasn't a single trace of bronze to be seen.

"Didn't you say... it was fake?"

Madam Sissi's voice was impossibly dry.

"Are you sure?"

Fu Qian corrected her misconception.

"What I said earlier was not to be easily misled, and that the nature of that thing couldn't be determined. It seems you haven't grasped the core idea."

"...So what do you think this thing actually is?"

"Didn't I just say it? A brain."

"I mean, how did it form? This is way beyond the size of a normal brain, right?"

"Finally, a meaningful question."

Fu Qian's tone carried a hint of satisfaction.

"Is it possible that it just kept growing from the foundation of a normal brain?"

Fu Qian took two steps to the side, gesturing for Madam Sissi to follow.

"When you encounter something you can't understand, one of the simplest methods is to look at it from a different angle—in every sense of the word. So, do you see that?"

As he spoke, he pointed to a certain spot beneath the brain.

There lay a set of remains that fell within the size range of a normal human. It gleamed with the same bronze color as the statues and looked as if it had been crushed to death.

"Are you trying to say... the brain belongs to this corpse?"

Madam Sissi's comprehension skills were undeniably quite good.

"Proportionally speaking, isn't that ear pretty close in size to this brain? Could it be that the head kept swelling and swelling until the person was crushed to the ground... and then, pop!"

Fu Qian gestured at his own head.

"The skull blew off, and this thing was completely unleashed."

"As much as I hate picturing that, I have to admit... it makes a certain amount of logical sense."

Having gritted her teeth through the entire explanation, Madam Sissi slowly nodded.

"But why would it swell?"

"That's a bit more complicated. We still have too little evidence to make a judgment."

Fu Qian shook his head frankly.

"Before we ask that, we might as well ask a simpler question... Where did that 'head' that dropped earlier run off to?"

That was true...

Madam Sissi blanked for a second upon hearing that.

The scene before them was so shocking that it had actually made her forget this most direct question.

But in the brief time since they had come up, the lump of meat had vanished.

The platform up here was completely flat. Aside from hiding behind the stone pillars, there was truly nowhere to take cover.

"I have a guess regarding that."

Fu Qian didn't make things difficult for her this time. He reached out and snapped his fingers.

Beneath the thick cortex of the brain, dense, rippling movements suddenly appeared, looking exactly like a school of startled fish.

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