Eldritch Horror Theatre

It possessed only a mouth sewn with thick thread, yet the cloth doll was unquestionably "looking" this way.

Or more precisely, an observation was being conducted through it.

This bloodstained handicraft had a highly recognizable design.

Though it was hard to imagine exactly how it had escaped that locked cabinet and burrowed into Miranda's body.

Indeed, the doll was identical to the "monitoring" device Tan Mingxue had once placed on the table.

Now that it was detached from its human host, the surface blood rapidly seeped into the doll itself. For a moment, the stark red-and-white contrast of its exquisite clothes looked even more striking.

Subverting the heavenly order truly carried immense risks. The visiting group had come up empty-handed, and by the time Miranda was forced to seek out the Night Watchers for a lead, she had already been unknowingly infected.

The change was so subtle that neither he nor Sha Ming had noticed a thing, even at close range.

That was no false modesty. When Miranda brushed past him just a moment ago, he hadn't sensed the slightest anomaly in her flesh and blood.

...

Anyone could see that Miranda's condition was abnormal.

Take, for example, the elderly Huang Leji lying on the ground, who ultimately hadn't survived the ordeal.

It went without saying for Sha Ming, considering she was a talent he had personally selected.

In fact, within this unique domain, Sha Ming's perception was likely even amplified.

Yet it was precisely that boost which bred overconfidence. Assuming he had the situation perfectly under control, he allowed himself to be pinned down by the sudden ambush.

Had he not stepped in out of a sense of duty, the man's precious item would likely have been snatched away by now.

His own observations hadn't yielded any more clues than Sha Ming's. He had maintained a higher state of vigilance primarily because of his awareness of the bigger picture—the Night Watchers had been acting a little too out of character.

He had harbored that vague suspicion ever since they were outside visiting old acquaintances.

Fu Qian always had the good habit of observing things with specific questions in mind, and this time was no exception.

Earlier, Miranda's behavior had shown absolutely no anomalies.

Even after catching up with the main group alone, she had actually listened to his deliberate warning and stopped in her tracks.

But that was the extent of it. Soon after, her behavior rapidly deteriorated to the level of the local Night Watchers—a shift that logically made sense.

Enraged by deception, and subjected to rapid flip-flopping between the brink of death and the hope of survival, she suffered a final emotional collapse and decided to drag everyone down to hell with her.

It wasn't an impossible reaction, but Fu Qian preferred to give people more credit for their mental fortitude.

That applied to Sha Ming as well. Fu Qian doubted the man truly bought into Miranda's sudden change.

It was simply that Sha Ming was too confident in his control over the situation. Driven by his own posturing and an urgent desire to exploit every available stimulus, he hadn't bothered to stop Miranda.

As for Fu Qian himself, the moment the anomaly surfaced, his immediate thought was that all his slacking off hadn't been in vain.

Another hidden faction had just made its move. Their target was highly likely the Record of True Transcription, though their exact methods remained to be seen.

So theoretically, he wasn't just stealing the fruits of someone else's labor—this was the reward of his own cooperative maneuvering.

And that wasn't even his only prize—

It seemed there were some bad apples hidden among the Night Watchers.

...

Every anomaly truly had a cause.

It wasn't mere carelessness that had allowed them to be fooled. The Night Watchers' seemingly crude arrangements were actually the result of someone maintaining precise control over everything, deliberately allowing the incident to unfold.

The entirety of West Plain City had been intentionally tossed before the tree and the book.

Of course, Fu Qian didn't think Tan Mingxue had orchestrated the whole thing. Her capabilities fell drastically short of such a scheme. Her earlier smugness had likely been genuine; at best, she was nothing more than a pawn.

But if memory served, back when he had first encountered Eldest Miss Wen, one of the local Night Watchers—Tan Mingxue's colleague, Qi Xue—had given him a warning. Qi Xue had claimed their boss was on an entirely different level, advising him not to harbor any impulsive thoughts.

Transferring away their elite personnel would absolutely require that boss's explicit approval, wouldn't it?

The situation was growing livelier by the second. That tree was drawing an extraordinary amount of attention.

As for why he still had the nerve to push things to such an extreme limit even after figuring all this out?

That primarily stemmed from Excellency Patches's final piece of advice—the Record of True Transcription possessed living properties.

The Thread of Attachment still had its limitations. It wasn't so miraculous that it could casually yank equipment right off a person's body.

Otherwise, he would have long since become the number one master thief in the transcendent realm.

If he could just spot transcendent items, yank them over, rip off his mask, and return to base, the Warehouse would have run out of storage space in no time.

However, since the target was "alive," he figured it was worth a shot. After all, the boundary between it and a living organism was blurred.

Brother Patches had literally told him to free his mind.

And if he unfortunately botched the attempt?

The worst-case scenario was simply that Sha Ming would take the item back, and he would have to figure out a way to break out of prison once again.

The facts proved his gamble to be spot on. The moment the Record of True Transcription landed in his hands, a bizarre connection instantly forged itself in his mind.

Though stone walls blocked his physical sight, they did nothing to stop an incomparably magnificent scene from bursting into his perception: gargantuan branches piercing the sky, writhing tentacles spreading with wild abandon, and mouthparts blooming everywhere like flowers...

He could confidently confirm that this was the very same tree that had previously been so desperate to manifest, yet was now hiding away with equal desperation.

The only issue was that the entity, which had previously been in a constant state of tearing and rotting, was now trapped in absolute stillness.

Whether it was the tentacles, the mouthparts, or even the writhing main body, it was as if someone had slammed a pause button. It was entirely frozen, completely devoid of any change.

At the same time, its formerly flesh-like substance had entirely transformed into an incomparably brilliant gold.

Just like the Record of True Transcription in his hands...

Or the remains left behind by Blood Lion...

Or even the patterns representing the Golden Law that had once appeared on Ill Omen's body...

Sublime, divine, and inviolable.

Had all laws returned, culminating in the Golden Body?

No wonder it had chosen to vanish and stop manifesting its divinity before the masses.

And no wonder all three of his own halos could no longer be used.

They were just knock-offs pieced together from Residue anyway. It was only natural for them to fail in the presence of the genuine article.

Tracing the connection between the Record of True Transcription and the tree, Fu Qian didn't waste a single millisecond, pouring all his focus into sensing the complexity, the Eternity—and even the familiarity—within that glorious scene.

Yes, the distinct familiarity of a second encounter.

But the last time hadn't been here in West Plain. Back then, the tree had been nothing more than a lump of murky, rotting flesh.

That was a place called Laerdin, at the Far End of the Stars.

Could it be that the Return of the Old Days... applied to more than just the King of the Abandoned Prison?

The Dark Moon Pope, Nelgria, had once said that even she didn't know what had triggered the reappearance of the Law's starry sky, or what had caused the historically annihilated Laerdin to return.

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