Eldritch Horror Theatre

Unsurprisingly, another finger bone whistled out, trailing bloody light.

Multi-Brain Sister possessed a wide array of tricks, but her physical resistance was clearly lacking.

The bone bullet blasted her completely off her feet, sending a spray of dark red liquid into the air.

At the same time, Fu Qian gained another tentacle.

Though knocked to the ground with her cluster of heads mostly shattered, Multi-Brain Sister still struggled to get back up.

Fu Qian didn't use another Air Bullet. Instead, he simply stomped down again.

Amid a chorus of overlapping screams, Multi-Brain Sister finally died.

Of course, Fu Qian paid a price for this.

After repeatedly stomping on her, his right leg felt as if it had been plunged into magma. His skin had melted into a layer of searing liquid that clung tightly to his muscles.

'This place is ridiculous! If I stay much longer, I'll completely lose my human shape.'

Marveling at this, Fu Qian bent down to search Multi-Brain Sister's corpse.

He spotted a dull ruby ring on her withered, mutated left hand.

She was definitely human, though it was hard to imagine how she had ended up in a place like this.

Was she also looking for the thing they were trying to find?

Multi-Brain Sister carried no other useful clues. After finishing his search, Fu Qian stood up and surveyed his surroundings.

Judging by the two tunnels he had just walked through, this Underground area was massive.

Even if he managed not to get lost, exploring every path would take considerable time.

Still, Fu Qian was deeply curious about what these people had been digging for.

The tunnels branching out in all directions meant the original excavators hadn't been entirely sure of their target's location; otherwise, they wouldn't have dug such a chaotic maze.

That meant the object they sought might still be here.

Glancing around once more, Fu Qian mentally mapped out the route he had just taken and chose a distant tunnel.

[SAN Value -1]

After taking only a few steps, that terrifying prompt rang out again.

'Another monster spawn?'

That was Fu Qian's immediate assumption.

His current state as a blank-slate God of War seemed to make him particularly susceptible to influence.

But even after he braced himself for battle, no Serpent-Man illusion appeared, nor did any ethereal singing drift through the air.

'Alright then.'

Fu Qian actually felt a faint twinge of disappointment.

Lethal as she was, Multi-Brain Sister had actually been quite the singer.

But if it wasn't Multi-Brain Sister, what did this sudden drop in his SAN Value mean?

'Are there other monsters down here? The kind that can shatter my sanity without even needing to sing?'

'That would be way over the line!'

He didn't even know where the enemy was. He couldn't just stand here and bleed SAN Value for nothing. Should he head back up first?

It was a shame, though—he still didn't know what those people had been digging for.

Just as he was debating whether to retrace his steps, a thought flashed through Fu Qian's mind.

They had been digging for something... There were no monsters here, yet his SAN Value was still dropping.

What if the very thing causing his SAN Value to drop was exactly what they had been looking for?

Couldn't he just use himself as a human radar to track down its location?

Just like he had tracked Multi-Brain Sister earlier.

Always a man of action, Fu Qian quickly used his current position as a center point, plotted a new route, and set off.

After a considerable amount of time—and the cost of over a dozen SAN Value points—Fu Qian finally arrived at the end of one of the tunnels.

Staring at the solid rock face in front of him, Fu Qian felt an unprecedented wave of distortion wash over him.

He raised his right hand. The three tentacles he had sprouted from firing his Air Bullets slithered into the cracks in the stone, slowly probing inward.

[SAN Value -1]

A few seconds later, Fu Qian heard that life-draining prompt once again.

At the same time, the space before his eyes warped, and a strange, corrosive sensation flowed down the tentacles and into his body.

An uncontrollable, tyrannical rage swelled in his heart. Fu Qian could feel himself rapidly degenerating, both in body and mind.

'If this is what they were looking for,' he thought, 'these people sure had unique tastes.'

Fu Qian quickly yanked his hand back. A mass of liquid-like black mist was clinging to his tentacles.

In the next second, he drove a ruthless punch straight into the rock wall.

[SAN Value -1]

The prompts were getting faster.

Yet rather than backing away, Fu Qian began tearing the stones apart with his bare hands.

A blood-like substance began oozing from the cracks in the rock.

Simultaneously, the instability in his own body grew increasingly severe. He couldn't even maintain the face he had modeled earlier; his features slowly reverted to their original state.

Seemingly oblivious, Fu Qian kept tearing at the wall.

Finally, as he ripped away the last chunk of stone, an object came into view.

It was an ink-black stone, roughly the size of a fist.

The most eye-catching part was its center, where a cluster of swirling dark red mist made the entire stone appear crystal clear.

This sight suddenly reminded Fu Qian of his experience in Shangjing.

When he had smashed the head of the Pseudo-Demigod Chen Xing, the Blood of Thorns that dropped out had been a similar stone.

It had just been a bit smaller, and the aura it gave off had felt nowhere near as sinister as this one.

Was this the source of corruption for the entire area?

Had someone realized this and gone through all this trouble to dig it out?

It didn't seem like the kind of thing the Natives would do.

Fu Qian pondered for a moment. He raised the tentacle that used to be his index finger, coiled it around the stone, and finally gave the top a light tap.

To his surprise, the mist inside the stone seemed to boil over. It instantly passed right through the seemingly solid rock and crawled straight up his tentacle.

A wave of corruption and depravity hit him, a hundred times stronger than before.

In that split second, Fu Qian felt as if every one of his limbs, facial features, and internal organs had developed a mind of its own.

They were no longer a unified whole. Instead, they grew wildly out of control, thrashing about and devouring one another.

Meanwhile, a sadistic, cold-blooded madness surged from the deepest depths of his soul, rapidly altering him at a fundamental level.

After an unknown amount of time, Fu Qian finally opened his eyes, having regained control over his body.

"Pain."

He muttered the word instinctively, his voice taking on a bizarre, distorted tone.

Accompanied by agonizing pain, deep gashes spontaneously tore open across his skin.

'How interesting!'

Fu Qian highly suspected that he was now in a true Demigod Realm state.

At the same time, the urge for destruction surging deep inside his heart told him that this Demigod Realm class might lean a little toward the evil side.

And the mist inside that stone had been the specific trait he was searching for.

Now that he had absorbed the mist, he could feel the distorting influence in the Underground rapidly fading.

In all likelihood, this had been exactly what that group was digging for.

Too bad they didn't have a human radar like him. They had ultimately been just one step away from the prize.

...

By the time Fu Qian returned to the surface, the sky was already growing dark.

Under this fading light, the white trees on the island appeared even more dazzling.

The price he had paid this time couldn't be called small. He had burned through more than 30 points of his SAN Value, but it wasn't without its perks.

His current physical state was a little bizarre, but now that he had truly become a source of twisted corruption, he could wield his power without any restrictions.

It was time to get down to business!

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