Eldritch Horror Theatre

There was a freshly killed corpse in the Real World too, and it wasn't the missing fourteen-year-old boy?

The situation was growing more and more bizarre.

Compared to the frozen corpse they found earlier, the nature of this murder was far more vicious.

The only silver lining was that the victim appeared to be a certain deranged artist.

Fu Qian walked up and carefully examined the murder scene.

He drew this conclusion easily; although he had never met Evan in person, he had seen his portrait.

Given that the face remained intact, recognizing him was effortless.

Moreover, multiple spots on the corpse exhibited a wispy cyan substance similar to the stain on his own fingers.

Encountering the Art Prison's resident prodigy for the first time, Fu Qian thoroughly patted down the body as a modest sign of respect.

It featured a curved, razor-sharp, and slender blade shaped like a willow leaf—a thoroughly professional tool at first glance.

A scalpel?

Fu Qian picked up the bloodstained blade and turned it over in his hand, noting that it seemed to be another instrument meant for a hospital.

However, the actual cut didn't seem quite so professional.

Although delivered with a single forceful stroke, the edges of the wound were still rather jagged.

Judging from its placement, it was likely a successful sneak attack rather than a frontal execution.

No matter how he looked at it, such sloppy work didn't seem like the handiwork of his colleague.

So who could have done it? The two missing individuals?

Fu Qian naturally recalled the scene from when he first arrived at the Art Prison.

Based on his previous deductions, the crowd of tenants who had stared at him so intently were likely mostly dead in the Inner World.

First, they had fallen victim to Evan's Formless Tree project, and then they had suffered at the hands of his colleague.

In contrast, every single one of them was still alive and kicking in this world. That was enough to prove his theory: dying in the Inner World merely represented a lost Anchor Point, and wouldn't cause a corresponding death in the Surface World.

Therefore, someone in this world must have personally killed Evan.

If it wasn't his colleague, the most obvious suspect was the young man in the Inner World who had his skull cracked open.

Brother Peeker had mentioned that the young man and a girl with a rather fiery temper had entered this place together, never to be seen coming out again.

Perhaps they had already been in the Inner World during his conversation with Brother Peeker, but one couldn't forget that the tenant's cognitive state back then had actually been similar to Jean's at the breakfast shop.

That is to say, not knowing oneself is a guest while in a dream; he had still believed he was in the Surface World.

The only reason he managed to recall more details later—such as eating—was thanks to Fu Qian's step-by-step guidance.

Thus, there was good reason to believe that the two missing individuals walking into this place had genuinely occurred in the Surface World.

So he might as well press on and see if he could find another corpse.

Wiping the scalpel clean on Evan's clothes, Fu Qian stood up and continued forward.

...

It might be a murder weapon, but legal consequences were the least of his concerns right now. There was absolutely no need to worry about becoming a prime suspect.

His pace seemed leisurely but was actually quite swift. As Fu Qian navigated the Underground, he continued to map out his route, carefully twirling the scalpel between his fingers.

He hadn't taken this highly relevant item to use as physical evidence, of course.

With one confirmed kill already under its belt, it would serve as a decent weapon if used properly.

That was right. One of his true motives was that he genuinely needed to prepare a few more offensive options.

He had formed a hypothesis earlier: could the cyan stains on his fingers possibly involve a Transcendent Tier property?

Currently, there was still no clear answer to that question. However, Evan lying dead on the floor from massive blood loss proved one point to a certain extent—

Whether the cyan stains involved the Transcendent Tier or not, they certainly didn't grant the bearer any extraordinary vitality.

Nor had they manifested as any special offensive abilities, like sprouting tentacles or vines. In short, he couldn't count on them.

From this perspective, the Surface World was still the Surface World. It seemed to have the effect of suppressing the Transcendent Tier.

No matter where he had received his enlightenment from, everything Evan had done thus far hadn't exceeded the realm of deranged delusions.

The barrier between the surface and inner worlds had not been breached, and the Formless Tree only existed in his imagination.

Truthfully, this was indeed much more reasonable.

He remembered his initial assessment of his situation at the start of this assignment.

Forcing a mechanically remade higher entity of the old ones to walk around solely as an ordinary human was far from a simple matter.

Confining him to this town was already an astonishing feat. To plunge him into the Inner World in order to subject him to a Transcendent Tier dimensional strike and threaten his life was an exaggeration that was truly terrifying upon deeper reflection.

If they wanted to take it a step further and unleash a dimensional strike directly in this Surface World, it would simply be too much.

The mission could be considered a resulting compromise between whatever power lay behind the scenes and the Warehouse. No matter how foolish the latter might be, it was hard to imagine it signing such an absurdly unequal treaty.

As a result, he couldn't help but feel increasingly curious: if his competitor were to appear before him right now, what form would they take—

At a certain point, Fu Qian stopped in his tracks, gazing at another fork in the path not far ahead.

He had passed by many similar forks along the way. By Fu Qian's estimation, the boundaries of these winding subterranean passages had long since extended past the Art Prison's perimeter.

However, that wasn't why he had stopped. At the end of one of those diverging paths, light seemed to be filtering in.

...

So was this why Brother Peeker hadn't seen anyone leave?

Naturally, he couldn't just ignore such a discovery. Fu Qian quickly made his way to the end of the illuminated path.

Facts proved his eyes hadn't deceived him. The light was indeed leaking through the gaps of a loosely fitted trapdoor above.

Seeing as there were even dedicated steps leading up to it, Fu Qian easily pushed the trapdoor aside.

Poking his head out, he found himself looking into a dust-covered room that appeared to have been abandoned for a long time.

What caught his eye the most, however, were the numerous footprints stamped into the dust. Even though no one lived here, it seemed more than one person had passed through.

A secret underground passage leading to an exit hidden in an abandoned house? A rather classic setup.

Fu Qian didn't stand on ceremony and climbed right in.

After verifying that the place had indeed been abandoned for ages, Fu Qian followed one set of footprints to the window.

The brown cloth curtain had already been pulled halfway open. Stepping exactly where the previous footprints had stood, he gazed out into the distance.

Much like where Rachel and her husband lived, this was a standalone building.

The vantage point offered a good view, though he couldn't escape the sight of the ashen, decaying town, as well as—

As his gaze swept across the landscape, a rather conspicuous building easily caught Fu Qian's attention.

It wasn't far away. Was that... a hospital?

Staring at it in silence, he quickly drew his conclusion.

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