Eldritch Horror Theatre

It was quite a challenge to the imagination!

Faced with the bizarre sight before him, Fu Qian did not hold back his marveling.

Clearly, before coming here, he hadn't expected the area around his fated prize to be this lively.

At this moment, Fu Qian could clearly sense that the object sharing an invisible connection with him lay right in the middle of this cluster of shadows.

It hadn't fled, nor had it been concealed.

Compared to the Crystal Sun in the Ash Sea, this was going incredibly smoothly.

Even with his Pseudo-God Incarnation active all this time, he hadn't detected any unusual gazes watching him.

This held true even though he had deliberately sought out someone with a special connection to the Blazing Rainbow, entering this place only after making contact.

Or perhaps the Blazing Rainbow was perfectly happy to watch him act, and this was all a trap of its own design?

Unfortunately, as he'd noted before, such deductions were completely meaningless.

For an entity clearly above Tier 1, any hint could easily be a double bluff. It was simply impossible to draw a conclusion from such straightforward reasoning.

Furthermore, due to the nature of "Eternity," it was entirely impossible to use common sense to judge just how much time had passed to create the sight before him.

It was a despairing thought.

...

Yet despite the situation, Fu Qian quickly set off again. He wove nimbly through the gaps between the rotting carcasses, his mood entirely unaffected.

Because he hadn't planned on deducing anything in the first place.

Whatever the truth might be, the lack of obstruction was the best possible outcome for him.

The next moment, slipping past a hideous bird skull that seemed to stare right at him, Fu Qian caught sight of his objective.

What was this...

This time, Fu Qian didn't even rush to mend his thinning eyelids, opting instead to maximize his powers of observation.

The main reason was that the sight before him was simply too bizarre!

It was a body only half the size of the skeletons outside. Its structure was somewhat similar, but its form was entirely different.

It was curled up in a fetal position, like an infant still gestating in the womb.

Judging by everything around it—was this a Phoenix undergoing rebirth?

But the problem was that, while it was indeed curled up in the shape of an egg, it wasn't actually inside a shell.

On the contrary, it was clutching a grayish-white Giant Egg in its embrace.

This bizarre sense of Dislocation felt incredibly, deeply unsettling.

Most importantly, the infant and the egg were physically connected.

From this angle, he could see that the egg wasn't whole.

Through a shattered hole in its shell, tendrils of a metallic substance—flowing like liquid blood—extended straight into the infant clutching it, nourishing the fetus.

He noted that it was being "nourished" rather than "drained" because, unlike the other rotting carcasses, this fetus remained completely uncorrupted despite soaking in The Lake.

It was clearly alive. Its body was semi-transparent, and that liquid—which seemingly required no veins to contain it—flowed freely within.

This flow didn't evoke a sense of motion, but rather an ultimate tranquility. Paired with the intensifying sensation of all things frozen in a single instant, it perfectly captured the concept of Eternity.

Aside from their inverted positions, the infant genuinely seemed to be incubating within the egg.

Fu Qian took a step forward, carefully studying the peculiar blood. He even caught his own reflection on its surface.

The substance's surface was like a mirror, seemingly capable of reflecting all light.

And at the same time, Fu Qian became absolutely certain of one thing—this was exactly what he was looking for.

...

To think it existed in this form.

So, having just harvested the power source of the Solar-Powered Whale, was he now here to plunder the Phoenix's liquid metal blood?

If this was truly the legendary creature capable of endless rebirth, it certainly served as an alternative interpretation of "Eternity."

Of course, the scene before him looked more like a gruesome exhibition of endlessly failed rebirths.

Along the way here, he had spotted deformities on almost every carcass.

Coupled with how densely packed they became the closer he got, there was good reason to suspect they all shared the exact same origin.

The failures were discarded to rot, allowing the next one to begin its gestation.

How fascinating. So what exactly was their relationship with the Blood Lake?

Shaking his head, Fu Qian reached his hand toward the fractured egg before his eyelids could corrode away completely.

It seemed there was finally a reaction.

The next second, before he even touched the shell, the flow of the metallic blood abruptly accelerated, looking as though it might spray out at any moment.

This sudden change caused the connected infant to tremble violently, its very form beginning to warp.

On its indistinct, blurry head, a single eye suddenly snapped open, unleashing a bizarre shriek.

'I knew it!'

Unsurprised by this development, Fu Qian completely ignored the infant bird and instead glanced at his surroundings.

The countless carcasses that had been suspended in various postures throughout The Lake suddenly began to shudder. Following the shriek, they all turned their hollow eye sockets in his direction.

...

This was quite the formidable audience!

It hadn't been obvious when they were curled up in balls, but watching nearly a hundred skeletal figures spread their wings and lock into aggressive stances was a rather spectacular sight.

And right in the center of it all, Fu Qian was thoroughly surrounded.

Just as he was wondering what kind of attacks such heavily rotted entities could muster, the one closest to him unhinged its jaw at an impossible angle.

Confronted with this seemingly familiar sight, Fu Qian frowned. Rather than pushing his luck head-on, he quietly shifted a short distance to the side.

Boom!

A turbid, perfectly straight beam radiating an aura of decay immediately blasted through the spot where he had just been standing. Upon missing its mark, the beam swept sideways to chase after him.

Submerged in The Lake's water, all of this naturally happened in complete silence. However, the sheer ferocity of the attack caused Fu Qian to automatically supply his own sound effect for it.

As he moved to evade, he carefully studied the sweeping torrent.

Even without making direct contact, he could sense a corrosive power within the beam that vastly eclipsed the Blood Lake itself.

To unleash an attack of this caliber despite their rotting state... these things were leaps and bounds stronger than the Ancient Giant Dragon projection he had encountered earlier!

However, it was exactly because he had recognized the familiar windup of the attack that Fu Qian had opted for this method of evasion.

If that thing hit him head-on, the resulting corruption of his flesh would be so severe that, unless he activated the Decree of Return, he likely wouldn't survive until the duration of Pseudo-God Incarnation ran out.

And these were merely defective rejects. If this was what a failure could do, he couldn't even imagine the terrifying might of a perfected specimen.

Amidst his marveling, Fu Qian quickly noticed exactly how the creature was powering its attacks.

As it unleashed the torrential beam of corrosion, the residual rotting flesh clinging to its skeleton was rapidly disintegrating.

Now that was an attack powered by burning one's very existence!

While he was still reeling from the sight, the creature's body was reduced to bare, stark-white bones, and the deadly beam came to an abrupt halt.

However, the white bones didn't stop moving. A second later, the skeleton surprisingly pulled itself into a tight ball, mimicking the fetal posture of the infant.

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