Eldritch Horror Theatre

No wonder the older generation always stressed leaving a good impression.

Fu Qian owed his current success entirely to the generous support of his audience.

Blood Clan. Demigod.

Since he had borrowed the esteemed Annalise's character design, Fu Qian had no intention of tarnishing the vampire image.

Fortunately, after everything over the past few days, he had built quite a connection with this ancient, otherworldly race.

Every movement he made carried more of their essence than a genuine member of the Blood Clan. Even the surface tension of his spilled blood practically oozed elegance.

He wasn't playing a member of the Blood Clan out of some twisted sense of humor.

Even with his theories about the "consensus," putting it to practical use was far from simple.

The human heart was always unpredictable. In their current predicament, the primal urge to survive had already stirred these various wills into a volatile undercurrent.

Even the slightest unnatural slip could send them veering off his designed path.

This wasn't a matter of fast or slow, but the fundamental difference between forward and reverse.

Take a very simple example: Excellency Ji Ning couldn't pull out the dagger, yet he had.

This stark contrast was an excellent point of leverage, one that could help him break free from the shackles of his original image—provided he could offer a suitable explanation.

Simply claiming the Demigod Rank wasn't enough to form a seamless transition.

After all, Ji Ning was a demigod herself, and she had failed to pull it out.

Under these circumstances, a unique physiology seemed like the perfect angle to play up.

And as an ancient race, the Blood Clan had always been the poster child for unique physical traits.

Their physical characteristics were so iconic that simply changing his eye color was enough to broadcast this new identity.

Using this as a springboard to establish some plausibility, a natural question would follow: was a Blood Clan physiology alone enough to explain such a massive disparity?

At that point, by combining it with his earlier overwhelming resistance to the erosion, he could slowly hint at his status as a demigod.

It would be a truly complementary process in every sense of the word.

Under intense self-suggestion, manifesting even a single trace of divinity would reinforce the audience's suspicions about him being a demigod. In turn, that growing consensus would further drive his divinity to manifest.

Even a split second of hesitation in the middle of it all could leave him falling short by a single basket of earth.

Fortunately, for a lunatic like him, baseless confidence was practically a prerequisite.

That was his complete plan, marrying theory with practice.

Of course, there was one more reason he had chosen the Blood Clan. While the dagger's intricate patterns weren't exactly black and red, they were undeniably elegant.

...

Elegance never went out of style, especially now that he had buffed it with scarlet special effects.

Fu Qian brought the blood-soaked dagger to his nose and took a light sniff, as if savoring its lingering essence.

He had been telling the truth earlier; he genuinely wasn't entirely certain why Excellency Ji Ning had failed to pull out the dagger.

Though one of the reasons was undeniably his own interference.

The moment Excellency Ji Ning displayed her newfound prize, Fu Qian realized a potential opportunity had arrived. He had forcefully convinced himself that their exploration wouldn't be quite so smooth, and that this new prize couldn't be unsheathed.

Even so, he had been far from certain about how much his belief could actually influence the situation.

To Fu Qian, it had merely been a matter of spotting Ji Ning's cognitive error regarding the card suit, realizing the chance to create a stark contrast, and taking a gamble.

The reason it had yielded such perfect results was likely the same reason the card suit hadn't matched up: Excellency Ji Ning's tracking plan simply hadn't inspired enough confidence in the others.

In the group's current consensus, they were still facing a form of authority akin to a Deity.

Against such an opponent, how reliable could an ordinary demigod's tracking methods truly be? Even Ji Ning herself likely harbored doubts.

Consequently, those underlying worries had truly manifested in the form of this fallacy.

Once he realized that, he had deliberately pointed out Ji Ning's blindness and the mismatched suit to fan the flames.

His original goal in fanning those flames had simply been to draw even more suspicion onto himself.

Even if he hadn't been able to pull out the dagger and had been forced to pass it to the others to try, he still could have steered the narrative toward his demigod status; it just would have been a bit harder.

However, the situation had played out far too perfectly. It had actually turned into a Sword in the Stone scenario.

With luck like that, the ensuing developments were incredibly smooth—including right now.

Under the team members' varied gazes, Fu Qian followed Excellency Ji Ning's instructions and suddenly experienced the "abstract vision" she had described.

...

[Color, shape, material... you can only perceive that specific information when you specifically need to see it.]

That was how Ji Ning had described it. But as Fu Qian experienced it himself, he felt an extra layer that was seemingly familiar—it felt just like the mission briefing at the start.

He had marveled at its bizarre style then, and now, he was getting the exact same sensation.

The moment the dagger tasted his blood, abstract revelations blossomed in his mind.

Translating those revelations felt exactly like reading one of those flowery college entrance exam essays.

Words possessed great power, but their scope wasn't absolute. Take this for example—

[Go straight, turn right, and pass by a magnificent golden statue.]

It certainly mentioned color, but the colors of everything besides the golden statue were omitted from the record, rendering them impossible to "see." This was the limitation Ji Ning had spoken of.

What he had managed to access now felt exactly like lines of descriptive prose.

Taking a bold leap of logic—if this was a deeper stream of information, one that touched the very essence of this world, then could this predicament they were trapped in, this place that was neither reality nor dream... could it be a notebook? One co-authored by everyone involved?

Was this the fundamental reason why mind over matter worked here?

"How is it? Did you see anything?"

Facts proved that curiosity was a lofty virtue indeed, especially when compounded by the desire to survive.

His earlier behavior had already been suspicious to the extreme, subtly toeing the line of making him public enemy number one.

Yet, following his actions just now, the very first voice to ring out still couldn't help but ask what he had found.

"I did."

Fu Qian simply nodded, refusing to play any of those seemingly shrewd but ultimately idiotic games of withholding information for leverage.

Given the current situation, even if he told them the absolute truth, the team's trust in him would still be practically non-existent.

If he started acting secretive on top of that, the expected benefit of keeping him alive would probably plummet into the negatives.

Old Man Li hadn't spoken much recently, but he was decisive and ruthless. If things really reached that point, the old man likely wouldn't mind planting a halberd squarely in Fu Qian's forehead.

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