Eldritch Horror Theatre

As they sped away, silence settled over the ship and the water below.

Though he lacked Lane's mastery over the currents, Delanlai was clearly familiar with the vessel. After needing Rachel's help for only a moment at the start, he took full control and focused entirely on steering.

Fu Qian wasn't surprised by his earnestness.

After all, catching up to check on the little mermaid's situation was an urge he simply couldn't resist.

Though Rachel could hear the faint singing, she was clearly struggling to process such a bizarre turn of events. For the moment, she remained completely silent.

As for the fishmen in the sea, they finally seemed to have learned how to yield to passing traffic.

It felt as though peace and tranquility had returned to the world.

As the architect of this peaceful scene, Fu Qian stood entirely on the sidelines, deeply gratified.

"Is that the one we caught earlier?"

Since she had left the deck immediately, she hadn't seen the mermaid climb the tree and wasn't sure if it had actually entered the Ash Sea.

"Yes."

Delanlai scoffed as he steered the ship, his tone laced with indignation and grief.

He clearly wasn't optimistic about the little mermaid's fate.

Whatever was happening, his former colleagues were undoubtedly to blame.

"And you wanted to kill everyone just because of that?"

Rachel wasn't the type to feel guilty over such things, and she shot right back.

"Besides, when Lane had you butcher the prey earlier, I don't recall you holding back either."

"How else was I supposed to earn their trust..."

The words clearly struck a nerve. Delanlai fell silent for a moment before muttering his reply, sounding as if he were trying to convince himself.

"And the things I dealt with were vicious predators. Mermaids are intelligent humanoids, and they're naturally friendly. It's completely different."

"Humanoids... Yet you were perfectly willing to slaughter a whole group of actual humans at once?"

Rachel sneered.

"What if someone did all that to save people? No matter how you look at it, gathering evidence and reporting them to the Night Watchers would have made far more sense."

"...As the fishman attacks grew more frequent, the Night Watchers' stance on mermaids became much less firm."

Delanlai hesitated briefly before explaining his concerns.

"So you resent them for not being extreme enough? Or do you just think mermaids shouldn't be implicated? Honestly, even someone like me who knows nothing about the ocean finds it hard to believe those two are completely unrelated!"

In difficult situations, people either clammed up entirely or talked far too much.

Rachel clearly wanted to vent her frustrations, her tone growing increasingly aggressive.

"I won't deny that, but the fishmen's aggression has been deliberately exaggerated. From what I know, they are nowhere near as ferocious as the ones we just encountered!"

As a staunch member of the Friends of Nature, Delanlai wasn't going to be argued down so easily.

"Are they really that different?"

However, right in the middle of their fierce verbal sparring, Fu Qian—who had been quietly listening to the music—suddenly chimed in.

"At least they aren't any more aggressive than those guys are right now."

Interrupted so abruptly, Delanlai lost his momentum.

He had no idea what this terrifying man was planning, but the mournful singing echoing in his ears pushed him to try and awaken whatever shred of humanity Fu Qian might have left.

"The way organizations like Siren describe certain incidents is absolutely exaggerated, I'm sure of it..."

'Are the fishmen leaving this place in a pacified state?'

'The odds of a special entity being out there just went up!'

Ignoring Delanlai's accusations against unscrupulous corporations, Fu Qian extracted the information he cared about, feeling quite satisfied.

'Who says debates are pointless? I just learned something useful.'

But the best part was that it wasn't his only discovery.

At that exact moment, the little mermaid's singing stopped.

Fu Qian nonchalantly got to his feet; Delanlai's breath instantly hitched.

Delanlai had noticed the silence as well, and he remembered the terrifying man's earlier words with perfect clarity.

"She has to rest eventually if she's been singing nonstop. Plus, she's swimming so fast that the distance between us is steadily widening."

Despite his earlier heroics, Delanlai certainly hadn't reached the point of welcoming death. Driven by anxiety, he quickly offered up those two explanations.

The man's thought process simply defied common sense, and Delanlai had no doubt that Fu Qian would happily crush his skull while carrying on a casual conversation.

"That makes sense. Even concerts have an intermission!"

To his surprise, however, Fu Qian naturally agreed with him.

...

The payoff had come even faster than expected.

Staring in the direction where the mermaid's song had faded, Fu Qian couldn't have cared less about Delanlai's anxiety.

He had deliberately allowed the distance between them to widen; otherwise, he would have violently forced them to speed up long ago.

Since he was using her as bait, all he needed was to track her in real time. Hovering too close would only spook the fish.

As for the intermission excuse, it wasn't complete nonsense. In fact, the little mermaid had already taken one break earlier.

But that had only lasted a dozen seconds before she hurriedly started singing again, terrified her captor would kill the hostages.

The reason Fu Qian stood up right then was that, in that very instant, his Thread of Attachment had made an impossible leap, suddenly pointing at a vastly different angle.

'Very low-profile. No wonder Vivian hasn't managed to catch it after all these years.'

After waiting in silence for half a minute and confirming that the Thread of Attachment was nearly stationary, Fu Qian let out a satisfied sigh.

A second later, under Delanlai's breathless gaze, that figure resembling the God of Death vanished into thin air.

'He just left?'

A moment later, after checking repeatedly and finding absolutely no trace of the mysterious man, Delanlai felt an uncontrollable wave of relief wash over him.

"...What exactly was that mermaid doing?"

Equally dumbfounded, Rachel subconsciously asked the question as their journey suddenly lost its purpose.

Unfortunately, still reeling from surviving after a catastrophe, Delanlai clearly couldn't answer her.

"I'm going to step outside for a moment."

Fortunately, Rachel gave a strange shudder the next moment. Instead of pressing him for an answer, she turned and walked straight out of the cabin.

...

'So, this is the place? It certainly doesn't look like the secluded hideaway of a transcendent master.'

Not long after, Fu Qian silently evaluated the stretch of ocean beyond the boundary.

This was the exact endpoint of the Thread of Attachment.

Within this relatively small spatial fragment, the light was dim. The currents were visibly murky, permeated by a heavy, lifeless atmosphere.

"Is the master of the house in?"

With a sigh, Fu Qian deactivated his Blood Crusade and stepped into the strange domain.

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