Eldritch Horror Theatre

So snakes had nine lives too?

The prompt that chimed wasn't entirely what Fu Qian had expected.

He had originally estimated he could survive executing the target a few more times, and he had mentally prepared himself for exactly that.

Reality proved that his predecessors probably hadn't had much SAN Value to spare.

Exactly. Those last few words hadn't just been to set the mood.

Fu Qian had always seriously considered the philosophies of life that Excellency Destiny Serpent brought up, even long before He pointed them out.

Things like why he was here, what his actions meant, and his final honest admission that he wasn't entirely sure how many lives the other party actually had.

"Confront and execute the Serpent of Destiny." The mission objective was actually quite clear and brutal.

And as analyzed before, as the price for setting a trap for him, the Serpent of Destiny had to guarantee that coming here would definitely result in "confronting" Him.

Yet the entity's posture was like someone sitting squarely at the execution ground; aside from splashing Fu Qian with blood, He showed absolutely no intention of fighting back.

It made it seem as though the only thing he needed to calculate was whether he could withstand the splashing blood.

The conclusion: it was very hard to withstand.

Even the Body of the Tyrant, which Excellency Destiny Serpent had marveled at, was rapidly breaking down from the slaughter it was inflicting.

At the same time, as a symbol of destiny, the entity seemed to eternally return from death, making the task appear completely impossible to finish—but was that really the case?

...

Of course not. If He was truly immortal, why would this task even exist?

Therefore, the execution could definitely be completed. Fu Qian still had confidence in that.

The troublesome part of this problem actually lay in that latter suggestion—should he try a different method?

Facing a target dummy with an invisible Health Bar whose reflected damage was visibly about to kill him... even if he believed the execution was possible, trying something more technical was clearly a reasonable line of thought.

However, this would mean that in his already limited time, he would have to find another path, searching for an alternative way to eliminate a higher entity.

It was an absurd idea, but given that the current approach seemed to have a zero percent chance of success, it was a highly tempting option for a normal person—but only for a normal person.

Who said there was no Health Bar?

Perhaps he had lacked an understanding of destiny previously, and due to various restrictions, the Warehouse couldn't provide any further hints.

But Fu Qian believed that if one liked to ponder seemingly meaningless questions, they might just help yield meaningful answers at critical moments.

Like why exactly he had come here.

...

He had already concluded earlier that the Old Hunter was a predecessor who had failed.

So to Excellency Destiny Serpent, he was just a new Scavenger.

And to the Warehouse, this was yet another Containment attempt.

These were easily obtainable answers, but they contained a core question: before he arrived as the new Scavenger, what state had the Serpent of Destiny been in?

In fact, this was something Fu Qian had been thinking about for a long time.

It had been practically confirmed early on that some predecessors had seen their SAN Values hit zero due to Containment Failure. So what happened to the missions they were supposed to complete?

Were they marked as a failure, meaning the target had successfully resisted the Warehouse, just waiting for the next Scavenger to try again?

And were all those attempted processes, except for the final one, defined as false history?

It sounded somewhat reasonable.

But from Excellency Destiny Serpent's perspective, having survived the ordeal, did He really have to worry about someone suddenly traveling through time to kill Him years later while He was just eating hotpot and singing songs?

Then the worldline would shift, and the next second He would be in a box?

And as an outsider with a special constitution, did he possess a relatively transcendent status over time and space, allowing him to be unaffected by certain paradoxes and thus experience contradictory scenarios?

This was indeed a common interpretation when time and space were involved.

But Fu Qian had no intention of blindly accepting conventional wisdom, and had always maintained his reservations about it.

And Excellency Destiny Serpent's actions this time were, to a certain extent, pleasantly surprising.

As a player in the domain of destiny, it was no surprise that His grasp over the past possessed a sharpness far beyond the ordinary.

For example, in this specific Containment, He could use the predecessor's failure as a tool, employing the methods of the Inner World to twist it together with the Warehouse's new attempt, weaving a dangerous cage for Himself.

This was understandable to Fu Qian, but apart from that, two specific points caught his attention.

First, He didn't run.

Since Excellency Destiny Serpent could see the deformity of Fu Qian's state of existence, He should be much better equipped than anyone else to discern his current perceptive weaknesses.

Yet, even after the door was opened and they faced each other directly, the entity still showed no intention of fleeing, choosing to stubbornly take the beating right there.

Fu Qian had been somewhat curious about this from the very beginning.

Later, through step-by-step testing, he had managed to find a reasonable explanation.

Namely, as long as they met and Fu Qian locked onto Him with Calamity, even if He ran out of sight, He still wouldn't be able to escape the execution of the Calamity Eyes.

And "connection" possessed spatial attributes. To put it bluntly, He needed to stay close to Fu Qian to transmit the fetters of destiny.

If He tried to run, He would only be met with Fu Qian's unilateral long-range bombardment, so He might as well stay in place and trade Health Bars.

So from the moment that door opened, this had truly been a genuine "execution" process.

But even with this doubt explained, it made Fu Qian increasingly sensitive to another abnormality—He talked too much.

Although He spoke in nothing but riddles, from their meeting up until the end, Excellency Destiny Serpent had still revealed a few interesting pieces of information—

He had been anticipating his arrival...

Fu Qian had no idea what he was doing...

The Warehouse was a fool...

Of course, this could be interpreted as Him making an empty show of strength to weaken Fu Qian's resolve. But Fu Qian believed his subsequent actions would have made the entity fully aware that this was meaningless.

Yet Excellency Destiny Serpent still showed no sign of saving His breath, which made one suspect whether these words—which completely failed to change His opponent's actions—held some other meaning: Record of Recollection.

He had actually encountered such an example before.

There was no need to change an opponent's actions; cognition itself carried power.

If he failed to kill Him when the time came, what would happen when paired with the information he had received?

Would he agree more with the "fool" statement, question the mighty power of the Warehouse, and even doubt the possibility of completing this mission?

And this was a question coming from the majestic King of the Abandoned Prison. Was it possible that, just like the Record of Recollection in the past, He could use this consensus to strike at the Warehouse?

And then thoroughly give up on containing Him, or perhaps—

"I clearly didn't lose, but an unreasonable failure ending appeared anyway? Is this that fool's authority?"

Seizing the final sliver of time, Fu Qian confirmed a certain thought with the annihilating Serpent of Destiny.

"And you anticipated my arrival, hoping I could help you break it?"

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