Eldritch Horror Theatre

"You..."

After continuously twisting and warping, the Shadow finally assumed the form of a human head atop an insect's body.

"I know you couldn't bear to part with me, Brother Persuader, but isn't showing up uninvited a little rude?"

Fu Qian remarked casually, looking at the familiar figure.

"Impossible! I didn't leave a single flaw. You couldn't have discovered me..."

The Shadow finally spoke. It was unmistakably the Persuader's voice, thick with disbelief.

"I have to admit, you put in quite the effort, trying your hardest to play dumb and act innocent the entire way."

Fu Qian shook his head.

"But I have a rich imagination, and I like asking 'why.' Remember the question I asked you? Why did your Divine Corrosion buff put me into a state of sensory Dislocation?"

"But at a certain point later on, a question suddenly hit me. Your ability might be real, but was it really influencing my momentum?"

"Could it be that from the very beginning, your target wasn't me, but yourself? That it didn't increase my chances of escaping, but yours?"

"Following that train of thought, I ran another deduction."

"If I hadn't noticed the sensory Dislocation back then, and instead acted like Qiu Chengyi, treating the pest as my own true body..."

"...and then, when faced with Liang Yuntian's threat, fully committed to fusing with it for survival and greater power—what would the consequences be?"

"Keep talking."

The Persuader's tone had calmed. He stood rooted in place, his voice ice-cold.

"There's a high probability that one of your claims was true: your abilities originate from The Corridor. This made your escape far more troublesome than mine. You had to use a special method—parasitism, for instance."

Fu Qian tapped his own head.

"And the greatest significance of the sensory Dislocation wasn't my acceptance of the pest, but my acceptance of your will."

"You must have been in a highly specific state back then. That sensory Dislocation likely consisted of two links: the pest, you, and me."

"After my five senses were blinded, the perception I linked up with wasn't the pest's. It was the pest's perception routed through you. There is a fundamental difference between the two."

"If I had opened my mind and body to accept the fusion then, I would have been opening my will to you, not to the pest."

"The ultimate consequence would be you silently parasitizing my consciousness, and I would never have noticed a thing."

"As expected of the God Corroder. That trap was both stealthy and vicious."

Fu Qian clicked his tongue in praise.

"It's a pity. I have a bit of an obsession with cleanliness in certain regards. I'd rather risk dying once to verify my suspicions, which ultimately pushed things beyond your expectations."

"Your behavior is indeed impossible to gauge with common sense."

"I'm flattered!"

Fu Qian seemed entirely deaf to the mockery in the Persuader's tone.

"Anyway, my actions bankrupted your plan. I managed a brief escape and entered The Corridor, and that was when you came up with plan B."

"You deliberately gave a half-true, half-false explanation to keep me on guard against you."

"Later, when I forced you to enter the Nightmare with me because of that, you agreed with feigned reluctance. You made it look like you were unwilling, but in reality, you were going all-in on that bet."

"That tattoo form you shifted into did force you to abandon most of your power, but the upside was that it made parasitizing me easier. It didn't even require my willing cooperation. Of course, the downside was that you couldn't control how things developed anymore—it all depended on my performance."

"To mislead me as much as possible, you even emphasized that even if I escaped smoothly, you wouldn't be able to reap any benefits, other than gaining some experience."

Looking at the Persuader's frozen body, Fu Qian shook his head.

"The highest realm of lying is nine truths and one lie. You're very experienced in that regard."

"But through my repeated probing later on, I found that whenever a critical moment arrived, you were overly anxious about failure. It didn't quite fit the persona of a detached bystander you'd built for yourself."

"Of course, I understand. After who knows how many years, finally seeing a glimmer of hope for escape... keeping those emotions perfectly in check would be difficult."

Fu Qian watched the Persuader.

Only just now had he truly realized the danger of this Grade 1 Item.

The Insect of Corrosion did not refer to those pests.

It was obvious now that the Persuader was the true target for Containment this time.

His own role in this mission was simply to act as bait, purely to draw the Persuader's attention.

The entity in front of him was undoubtedly an extremely special existence. Especially his Divine Corrosion ability—it could actually influence the very contents of the mission.

For example, the very first task he'd received had been to hide his own anomaly.

Information carrying such strong implications and misdirection was undeniably advantageous for the Persuader in hiding his true intentions.

This was likely also the momentum brought about by Divine Corrosion.

In fact, it was very likely this exact eerie power that had made him a target for Containment in the first place.

And only after successfully drawing the Persuader's attention and making him place his bets for escape on Fu Qian did the real gamble begin.

If he hadn't noticed the anomalies and had simply followed the prompts step by step—killing the child and breaking the Nightmare—his mission would still have been completed, because the mission itself had been distorted.

The only difference was that he would have brought the Persuader out of that place, allowing him to parasitize his mind and exert an imperceptible influence over him.

Or perhaps, one day, outright replace him.

But if he did notice it, then he would have the hope of truly completing the mission.

Just like now.

[Mission Complete. Designation 1-077 Containment successful.]

The familiar prompt rang in his ears for the second time.

At the same time, the Persuader's body right in front of him was already rapidly disintegrating.

"I still don't understand."

On the verge of death, the Persuader's tone was still thick with bitter resentment.

"Logically speaking, even if you knew of my existence, it shouldn't have mattered. When I hide in the deepest layers, nothing can detect me."

"Yet, at the exact moment my will manifested, you suddenly returned to this strange place. How could it be such a coincidence!"

"Of course it wasn't a coincidence!"

Fu Qian adjusted himself into a comfortable sitting position and rubbed his temples.

"What do you think I was doing sitting here for so long earlier?"

"After I sensed something was wrong, I kept thinking: if such a thing really existed, was there a way to drag it out?"

"It is formless and traceless, hiding deep in the mind. When it doesn't show its head, even this Warehouse can't detect any anomalies."

"It might even be able to monitor my thoughts, meaning even my intention to deal with it could be noticed."

"And the things I can rely on are truly too few."

"Until the very end, when I decided to try a method I had heard about before."

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