Eldritch Horror Theatre

How could anyone dare call themselves a wanderer of the jianghu without a bit of traveling experience?

With an ability so perfectly suited for an ambush, no matter how confused the Long-Haired Demigod appeared at that moment, it could not deceive him in the slightest.

And although taking the blow directly to the chest would not have caused him any real harm, Fu Qian felt that handling it this way delivered more visual impact.

"What... exactly are you?"

The other party's reaction was surprisingly cooperative. With his ambush so casually dismantled, the Long-Haired Demigod's normally gloomy face turned rather pale.

Of course, Fu Qian was never one to flatter himself. He knew the fearsome reputation of Dayun Mingwang likely only accounted for a fraction of that reaction.

The main reason for the shift was that the Long-Haired Demigod had subconsciously taken two steps back, bringing himself much closer to a white GG Card.

"Are you sure you want to ask such a stupid question?"

Fu Qian had no intention of rattling off those empty titles again. Facing his shocked opponent, he merely tossed the question back.

The Long-Haired Demigod evidently still possessed some composure. Faced with Fu Qian's retort, he suddenly realized that if they were to continue this conversation, it was his turn to introduce himself.

And in true jianghu fashion, after a brief hesitation, he offered up nothing more than an alias.

That was fine, though. When running around in these circles, this was exactly the desired effect.

There was no need to waste breath; casually dropping a name achieved the effect of Who in the World Does Not Know You.

This was not some friendly mutual flattery. Fu Qian genuinely had never met the man, but the title actually sounded familiar.

The Lord—a title that had popped up in something the late Ballard once said.

After Fu Qian crushed his skull, and the man tenaciously patched it back together using his warhorse, Ballard had a conversation with Spider-Silk Queen Akasha that inadvertently played into the tense atmosphere Fu Qian had cultivated.

The subject of that conversation was a warning from Prophet Yuan Fang.

Two demigods were suspected to have been killed by an outsider, and the Lord was one of them.

...

"Since when did you start doing things like this? This isn't your style."

The rank was right, and the title matched. There couldn't possibly be such a coincidental overlap in names.

At that moment, Fu Qian naturally linked the man standing before him to the supposed victim from back then.

Viewed in this light, however, another comment Ballard made suddenly sounded a bit peculiar—he had mentioned that under normal circumstances, one would assume those two were just hiding out together hatching some evil scheme.

Clearly, in the eyes of any champion of justice, these victims did not have the best reputations; they fell more into the category of supervillains.

Yet after Ballard disappeared, the Lord had actually started undertaking the same sort of righteous deeds he had?

"...That is none of your business. Have we met before?"

Fu Qian's overly familiar line of questioning successfully provoked a much stronger reaction than a generic pleasantry would have.

At that moment, the Lord's face was beyond just gloomy. As he asked the question, he blatantly took another two steps back.

Distancing oneself from an uncontrollable situation as quickly as possible—for a high-tier transcendent who was usually the superior force in any given scenario, such a habitual response was completely normal.

"No."

Fu Qian shook his head honestly, then raised his hand and tapped the empty air several times.

Crack! Crack, crack!

Another series of crisp shattering sounds echoed out as three more invisible attacks were successfully intercepted.

Choosing to distance oneself when facing an uncontrollable situation was common sense, but it was also a predictable mental inertia that could be exploited.

Launching a sneak attack under such circumstances would boost the success rate by at least a few percentage points.

He truly lived up to being the Lord that Ballard had so thoroughly despised. His acting was impeccable, his methods were utterly ruthless, and he possessed absolutely no moral baseline to speak of.

With characters like this running rampant, Ballard's life before his death must have been quite colorful indeed.

Moreover, he had to admit... the man was remarkably persistent.

Even when facing such a threat, he still wanted to seize every possible opening to finish off the Carriage Devourer.

That was right—this new sneak attack was not aimed at Fu Qian. Instead, it carved a tricky arc, slicing straight toward that dying lump of flesh.

This was also why Fu Qian had abandoned the Divine Flicking Art, opting to intercept it with an Air Bullet instead.

The force behind it was naturally much weaker than the earlier sledgehammer attack. However, the rescued Carriage Devourer's Health Bar was already nearing the bottom.

Had the attack actually landed, it likely would have finished the job.

"...What exactly are you trying to do?"

Now that his attempt had failed again, the Lord's voice grew increasingly low when he finally spoke, stripping away any feigned shock from his face.

...

His origins were a mystery, his goals were unknown, and he casually controlled the situation with every movement. Even after repeatedly seeing through the Lord's deceptions, he displayed no emotion whatsoever.

Running into a character like this would make it impossible for any normal person to relax.

Aside from his shift in demeanor, the Lord's question changing from "Who are you?" to "What exactly are you trying to do?" seemed to perfectly illustrate this point.

Right now, it was no longer a question of whether he could still accomplish his goal. Just based on the methods this stranger had displayed, even the success rate of fleeing had to be taken into account.

"I've actually answered that already... I'm here to get a bit more familiar with this place."

Fu Qian offered a soft sigh at that, choosing not to hold it against him.

Up to this point, he had already exchanged blows with a demigod multiple times, yet the task prompt still had not appeared.

Combined with some of Unseen Hill's unique characteristics, this truly felt like an ominous sign.

"It's been a while since I last visited. This place seems to have changed a lot. Did something happen?"

Surveying his surroundings, Fu Qian's phrasing grew more uninhibited, not even bothering to conceal his identity as an outsider.

"Outsider..."

The Lord instantly caught onto that fact, but he seemed to have learned his lesson and did not attempt to ask about it.

"Something did indeed happen. The Prophet is dead."

In fact, faced with such consistent sincerity, he finally offered something in return, delivering a truly explosive piece of information.

...

Yuan Fang was dead?

The "Prophet" of Unseen Hill—this title was by no means unfamiliar to Fu Qian.

He was arguably one of the characters Fu Qian had interacted with the most during his last visit.

The image of that potbellied man lounging in his chair, putting the title of "charlatan" to shame, felt as vivid as if he were right in front of him.

Yet that very character, who seemed to share the tightest bond with Unseen Hill, had actually just died?

Back when they had cooperated to diagnose Ji Feng, they had even dreamed about the new era together.

Taking in the Lord's news, Fu Qian clicked his tongue and sighed, deeply lamenting the sheer unpredictability of the world.

Furthermore, it had to be said that even without any world-shattering outward signs, an event like "the Prophet is dead" truly qualified as a catastrophic upheaval for Unseen Hill.

Perhaps he had never displayed any extraordinary combat power, but a character capable of contacting high-tier transcendents at any time—and even predicting the future—could be said to shape the very ecosystem of this place to a certain extent.

And now, everyone would have to get used to an era without the Prophet.

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