Eldritch Horror Theatre

One way to bridge a gap in power was to push upward until standing on equal footing with an opponent. The other was to drag that opponent down to the same level and beat them with sheer experience.

Fu Qian had formed exactly this strategy the moment he realized his upward path was practically nonexistent.

That was why he had been waiting for that "unnatural intuition" to surface—it was, to some extent, the intruder willingly lowering itself.

Mental degradation was still degradation.

Given the immense gap in their levels, Fu Qian didn't delude himself into thinking the Ancient One had to completely drop to his tier just to invade his mind.

But no matter what, that foreign thought in his head had to belong to it, right?

This was especially true given his rebellious behavior—climbing the stairway so relentlessly that his intuition had spiked out of control.

In that moment, Fu Qian could clearly sense that the thought definitely belonged to the intruder.

But this was only the first step.

The entity obviously wasn't going to sit down and chat with him, so Fu Qian had chosen another method.

As he had noted earlier, the few shared rules they both had to obey were his only leverage in this wildly unequal game.

Like the Bliss Potion, for instance, which could force a person back into slumber.

If he drenched himself in it directly, was it possible that the imposing will in his mind would also catch a splash to the face and suffer a momentary intoxication?

Would it then reveal something it never meant to show?

At least in this current moment of endless pleasure, Fu Qian really did see some very interesting things.

...

He was ascending.

That was his immediate sensation. Paired with the impact of pleasure crashing into his consciousness, it created a boiling surge of total bodily synchronization.

And this ascent was no metaphor; his perspective was literally being elevated to infinity.

The moment the fang slipped from his hand and hit the ground, Fu Qian felt his consciousness rocket upward until it shattered the very concept of height.

So... this... Joy Factory... really is shaped like a brain...

Just as his fiercely battered consciousness managed to form that single thought from the sights of his ascent, the scenery shifted again.

A spiderweb? An Eight Trigrams Formation?

Given the intense impact on his mind, Fu Qian could only form a few vague impressions.

In short, it was a unique structure formed by countless symmetrical webs stacked layer upon layer.

He couldn't see any people or creatures. He could barely perceive the concept of space, and he couldn't even tell if the webs themselves were organic.

But Fu Qian knew he was a part of it. This "it" could even be narrowed down to one specific web within the structure.

It was the true entirety of a certain concept. He was merely one of its multiple personalities, combining with other wills to form the whole.

All of his previous experiences were simply the mental activities of this personality—but that was strictly limited to the world where he had encountered the Tombkeepers. The other world, for instance, where he had fallen to the ground and been helped up, did not belong to this specific web.

Fu Qian could sense that the version of himself experiencing that other world was currently situated on a different web entirely. Its connection to his current "self" was separated by a conceptual distinction.

It was a bizarre yet wondrous sensation. To put it simply, he could just extend the earlier analogy of a split personality.

Eighteen types of Bliss Potions had sliced his consciousness into eighteen distinct fragments, each acting as a tool to digest and absorb a different model of the potion.

Within the True Bliss Realm of the Second Heaven, all active consciousnesses possessed this exact nature.

Upon breaking through to the Joy Factory of the Third Heaven and waking up within it, these scattered slices would then reconverge to form the concept of self.

However, from this suspected higher-dimensional perspective, the dynamic was completely flipped. The different models of pleasure themselves directly became the central subjects.

Instead of "Fu Qian's Number Eighteen pleasure," it became "Number Eighteen pleasure's Fu Qian." Now, all the consciousness slices within Number Eighteen formed a single whole, converging into the concept of "pleasure," and so on.

Though it was hardly the time for it, the realization easily reminded him of the saying about the Seed of Ecstasy: that "desire came to life."

It was indeed abstract, but witnessing this higher-level unity allowed Fu Qian to finally understand how the mastermind behind the scenes could influence his will.

This was exactly the more abstract condition he had guessed at earlier, aside from the time requirement.

As long as he was near this spiderweb plane, his will was no longer fully independent. It provided an opening to be exploited—a consciousness interface.

So he hadn't been overly pessimistic after all. The path of ascension truly was blocked by an impossible chasm.

Fu Qian's complete enlightenment only lasted for a split second. An instant later, his ascent hit its peak, and he was thrown into a rapid plummet.

The sheer scale of the plummet was staggering.

Amidst a chaotic, incomprehensible blur of images, Fu Qian barely realized he had plunged straight through the Joy Factory. He plummeted back down into the True Bliss Realm of the Second Heaven, even smashing right through the lid of a coffin.

When his vision finally stabilized, it locked onto a brilliantly multicolored body sprouting petals, thorny branches, and even insectoid segments—no, there were two bodies.

It was a wildly disorienting sensation. For a moment, his perspective actually split in two, allowing him to clearly see the human body lying inside the other coffin.

Aside from its own spectacular mutations, the body possessed a somewhat familiar face. It was none other than Brother Repentance, the Brotherhood traitor whose body he had occupied earlier.

What a coincidence.

Even as he marveled at the odds, Fu Qian's consciousness plunged deep into the mutated flesh.

...

He still hadn't returned to his comfort zone.

His five senses returned just a fraction of a second later than his consciousness. The moment he realized he could move, Fu Qian's first instinct was to verify his current identity.

As it turned out, he hadn't returned to Brother Repentance's body. Looking at himself, he had clearly swapped to an entirely new form.

He was young—younger than any of his previous identities, looking no older than twenty.

The body's physical condition was also ideal, with decent strength and speed.

He even had a weapon.

Fu Qian looked down at the object in his hand, turning it over playfully.

Round and heavy, it was shockingly a Small Golden Melon Hammer. It was completely pocket-sized, but its weight was anything but.

It was made of solid gold, too.

Was this truly the City of Sin? To be greeted by such a discordant scene right out of the gate...

Yes, although he couldn't be completely certain, Fu Qian judged that the staggering scale of his fall meant he had likely plummeted three entire tiers.

From momentarily brushing against the Fourth Heaven, he had dropped straight back down into the false City of Bliss—the exact place this mission had begun.

Plunging headfirst into this new body was the unmistakable marker of falling asleep in the Second Heaven and entering the First Heaven under a brand-new identity.

At the same time, there was also one profoundly interesting question: since he had arrived here, who on earth had taken over Brother Repentance's body?

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