Eldritch Horror Theatre

long and distant is the road ahead, I shall search high and low.

Fu Qian hadn't used the Pseudo-God Incarnation in days. It was a piece of equipment that cost twenty lives just to activate.

Yet right here and now, he activated it without hesitation.

His journey through the Ash Sea thus far had been fraught with bizarre perils at every turn, with hardly any opportunities to be found.

Yet with a ruthlessness bordering on paranoia, Fu Qian's violent advance had not faltered for a second. Ultimately, it allowed him to come face-to-face with the hidden little mermaid princess, Niniane.

And from this arguably most unique character, he had received an equally disappointing answer—even after pushing his oppressive presence to the absolute limit.

But was that really the case?

Closing his eyes, Fu Qian relied on his violently elevated station to finally grasp that faint thread of intention.

Faced with this trance-like sensation that felt practically encrypted, he drew upon every experience he had gained since entering the Ash Sea and violently washed over it.

Yet within this silence, that intention finally surfaced into consciousness—

Pushed to her absolute limit, Niniane had tried with all her might to "observe" and guess his intentions. However, her final assessment of him was "an intangible enigma." This description was obviously abstract...

At the same time, she explained that the "island" was essentially a mutation of her own body rather than a collection of different individuals, pointing out how difficult achieving the latter would be in the Ash Sea...

And this clearly contradicted what he had done with his own hands: grafting Li Min and Rachel together...

Under these circumstances, an inexplicable doubt emerged—Niniane might simply be ignorant, but when he helped Rachel fulfill her wish, how had he so naturally assumed that method would work?

He had never done that sort of thing before.

A piece seemed to be missing from his chain of logic, and he had not realized it at all.

Even his awareness of this "missing piece" was rapidly slipping away from his mind.

Fortunately, after violently elevating his station, he finally managed to catch hold of it.

Although too much time had passed to retrieve that missing piece of the logical chain, reverse-engineering the answer was not difficult.

Because of Niniane's connection to this place, her understanding could be considered common knowledge. Therefore, while creatures in the Ash Sea would indeed undergo maddening mutations, direct fusion between different individuals was impossible.

And the reason he had done so at the time was simply because he felt it was possible.

Why would he have this feeling that contradicted the facts? Because it did not contradict the facts—in his immediate vicinity, they absolutely could be grafted and fused together.

This was what he had been looking for from the very beginning—the anomaly generated in the Ash Sea due to his arrival!

It had actually appeared a long time ago, only for all cognition related to it to be completely erased.

This was not limited to him; the same applied to others.

This was why Niniane's assessment of him was that he was hard to observe.

As a native creature of the Ash Sea with a special connection to the Shattered Crown, she had gained expertise through prolonged suffering. It was hard to imagine anyone sharper than this critic he had finally sought out.

She had not disappointed his expectations. She really had discovered the changes he brought to the Ash Sea, but those discoveries had completely slipped from her mind as well.

The end result was that he had become an "enigma" in her eyes, impossible to observe.

...

This was practically Authority Grade targeting.

Did villains with too many fortuitous encounters eventually suffer a backlash after all?

Fu Qian had never been one for moral introspection. He instantly tossed aside the boring thought, arriving instead at a logical yet terrifying conclusion—a Divine Entity was watching him.

They had even done it so stealthily that not even the Red Moon had noticed.

Thinking back, almost the exact moment he grafted Li Min onto Rachel, the Shattered Crown underwent an anomaly and absorbed his group into it.

And according to Li Min, the interior of the Shattered Crown would cause "normal mutations" to accelerate.

That piece of knowledge served as an effective excuse for the changes happening around him, preventing him from realizing the truth and making the blank spot in his chain of logic increasingly glaring.

Even the frog that delivered itself to his door at the very end directly proposed the conditions for an advancement method, thoroughly muddying the waters.

Traps at every step. It was manipulated so exquisitely and covertly!

Fu Qian marveled in admiration.

The Shattered Crown's anomaly was clearly a rapid response triggered by his grafting operation.

If not for his excellent habit of never second-guessing himself, the best outcome right now would probably be returning empty-handed.

"Alright, time is up."

The next moment, Fu Qian snapped his fingers, signaling it was time to collect the test papers.

"Don't..."

Niniane's reaction was nothing short of mournful and despairing. Unfortunately, it could not sway Fu Qian in the slightest.

"One must always face life bravely. Let's continue with the last question from earlier."

Just asking a question?

However, his next words took Niniane somewhat by surprise.

"Listen carefully. I'll only ask this once."

Fu Qian did not give her any time to gather her thoughts.

"If the Vivian you've been waiting for all this time is already dead, do you want to be freed from the curse, or continue bearing this pain?"

...

"I admit, the prospect of freedom is truly tempting."

Fu Qian waited for a long time. It was not until the radiance on his body was about to extinguish that Niniane's voice finally rang out again.

"I can also guess that my sister must have run into a lot of trouble, but you said 'if'... I think that as long as I keep waiting here, there's still a sliver of hope...

"If possible, I choose to let the curse continue."

"Very nice."

Fu Qian was actually quite appreciative of this choice. The next moment, he reached out, grabbed Niniane's head, and activated the Decree of Return.

"Of course, I reserve the right to interpret that choice."

In just a few seconds, the nausea that had been bothering Fu Qian from the start erupted with unprecedented intensity.

It was accompanied by the massive island thrashing spasmodically, sending slime, pus, and blood flying in all directions.

However, none of this could pose the slightest interference to Fu Qian while he was in the Pseudo-God Incarnation state.

By the time the fleeting Deity station dissipated, the thick, paste-like bloody gore at their feet in this hidden space had risen past their knees.

In contrast, the mountain of flesh behind Niniane had vanished.

...

When Fu Qian let go, Niniane's eyelids twitched, struggling to open just a sliver.

Unfortunately, inside was still nothing but a pitch-black void.

Was the "wax" that had previously sealed her eyes actually melted eyeballs flowing out?

Fu Qian did not say anything. Niniane did not seem to mind it at all; she stroked her body joyfully, acting as if she had been granted a new lease on life.

"Nice legs."

Looking down at them, Fu Qian offered a deadpan critique.

The scales below the waist of this little mermaid princess looked much more delicate now. Further down, however, there was not a tail like the small mermaids in the corners had, but rather a dense mass of sharp legs.

Pale and sharp, each one unfurled to several meters long, arranged elegantly on both sides of her body.

That's right, they were Brother Sarlon's tongues.

The mutation on her lower half was too severe. Even the Decree of Return wasn't omnipotent.

And as an expert who had survived inside the Shattered Crown until now, Sarlon's most essential parts—his tongues—were undoubtedly among the hardest things to purify. It wasn't surprising they evolved this way.

In Fu Qian's eyes, this was actually far more imposing than having a pair of bare feet.

A tongue-legged beauty in the truest sense.

Of course, what gave Fu Qian the most comfort was that even though the Pseudo-God Incarnation had ended, the realization he had just grasped hadn't slipped away again.

The one who had been watching him seemed to have conceded defeat.

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