Eldritch Horror Theatre

The Greed Worms were the tools the Dominator of Death used in its struggle to survive.

No matter how the situation shifted, or what they themselves believed, this fact was undeniable.

But how exactly did these tools work?

Now, in this extraordinary place, it finally seemed possible to seek an answer to that initial question.

Compared to everyone else, Laurie's group was undeniably an anomaly in this Realm of the Dead.

And the sole purpose of the Gospel Shockwave was to force that anomaly to fully manifest.

Three birds with nearly identical, hideous silhouettes. Coupled with a visual similarity to the Bone Spirit Realm, their forms had to carry some specific underlying meaning.

Phantoms of the Dominator of Death? Or the standard uniform for the Dominator's pawns?

Looking up, he could even see the three birds rapidly synchronizing their movements, chasing and circling each other to a bizarre rhythm.

The sense of déjà vu was so strong that Fu Qian was tempted to make a sarcastic remark.

Regardless, it was clear that Laurie and the others weren't "waking up" to embrace death like the old man.

Quite the opposite. Their personal wills had been completely purged from this space, leaving behind nothing but pure imprints of power.

"Is this... a ritual to call upon the Dominator of Death?"

Beside him, Serana—who had yet to receive an answer—was undoubtedly stunned by the sight and offered a timely guess.

"I hope so."

Fu Qian finally responded, expressing this fond hope without looking away.

...

"You don't seem worried about your situation at all. You certainly don't look like someone in their god's good graces."

The situation was escalating far too wildly, and Serana was clearly having a hard time making sense of it.

Unleashing consecutive shockwaves to send three people flying into the sky—just to summon the Dominator of Death?

If that was truly his goal, then regardless of whether the man beside her was a retainer of the Dominator of Death, he was altogether too brave.

Then again, given this place and these circumstances, such an outcome made a certain amount of sense.

"I'm not worried."

Fu Qian's response remained brief, his conviction so firm it felt almost tangible.

"Understood. However, your ritual seems to be missing a few conditions. There clearly aren't enough of them."

His attitude was somewhat cold, but Excellency Serana wasn't going to be scared off by something so trivial.

As she continued to watch, she even pointed out a glaring flaw in the ritual.

"There aren't."

Delivering the cold shoulder for the third consecutive time, Fu Qian offered another brief agreement.

She wasn't just talking nonsense; her powers of observation were quite sharp.

While the movements of the three birds echoed one another, a closer look revealed that their synchronization was clearly part of a much larger system.

And to complete that system, a considerable number of them were still required.

It wasn't surprising. The ranks of the Greed Worms he had seen with his own eyes numbered over a dozen, yet only three had shown up here.

"It looks like you miscalculated as well. You didn't expect them to be this cautious, did you? Even out of the four who came, one is missing."

Excellency Serana's tone carried a hint of gloating.

"So, did you ask them about Gene's whereabouts?"

The Blood Clan Demigod was relishing a rare moment of triumph. Fu Qian magnanimously took the taunt in stride; rather than dodging the topic, he even pressed her with a question of his own.

"Unfortunately, it seems no one knows... Laurie simply refused to answer."

For a moment, Serana found it hard to press her attack. She immediately admitted she had indeed asked that question earlier, though the results had been less than stellar.

"Now that is truly disappointing."

Despite his lament, Fu Qian's voice was completely devoid of emotion as he kept his unblinking gaze fixed on the three birds.

...

"Solondil might be arriving soon."

Fu Qian's reaction was so muted that it left Serana in a rather awkward position, unsure of what to do next.

If this truly was a ritual to awaken the Dominator of Death, then in the event of its failure, the man beside her ought to be taking further action, allowing her to simply spectate. Instead, things weren't playing out as she had hoped.

Yet, if it wasn't a ritual... she honestly couldn't draw any other conclusion.

The same eerie green glow, the same silhouettes of single-winged, human-faced birds. Although the white bones dotting their bodies varied slightly, there was no obvious pattern.

They couldn't even be pieced together to form a complete skeleton, because there were obvious duplicates among the claws and talons.

...

So that's how it is... twenty-two segments.

Putting himself in Excellency Serana's shoes, Fu Qian finally arrived at the true conclusion, letting out a heavy internal sigh.

No wonder the Warehouse had issued a mission back in Shangjing for him to sever Jiang En's opportunity.

Tallying up the number of Greed Worms he had seen, and adding Jiang En to the mix, it seemed the group was nearing completion.

It was an easy line of thought to assume that the white bones on the birds could be assembled into a complete skeleton, and that this skeleton would be the true God of Death.

But it was also undeniable that there were duplicates among the white bones, to the point that just a few extra glances would dismiss that theory.

But how could the mystery of a Deity be so shallow?

Excellency Serana was looking at the exact same things he was, yet she gained no insight. Her mental laziness was to blame.

In reality, they were not birds.

With a little careful observation and a bit of imagination, one could easily break their structure down into two distinct parts.

The bird-like silhouette was undeniably the most striking feature. However, the human-like head and the slender neck behind it could actually be separated from that silhouette.

Cordyceps... that was the easiest comparison to make.

In short, a human-faced worm had hollowed out the bird and turned it into a tool for soaring through the sky.

Once that became clear, the rest was simple.

If the bird portion was irrelevant, what if the return of the God of Death depended solely on the worms themselves?

And looking at the worm portion of the three birds, one could see that each possessed only a single ring of white bone, all located in different positions.

What Fu Qian had just done was quite simple: based on the length and layout, he counted the total number of segments there could be.

And the resulting number was rather startling.

If he remembered correctly, the Greed Worms in Shangjing had already numbered nearly twenty, plus the Beyond Categorization entity, Wei...

No wonder the Warehouse had ordered him to destroy Jiang En's opportunity.

If it only depended on the number of segments in this chain of Greed Worms, then the God of Death's tools were likely on the verge of serving their purpose.

Even if it wasn't the return of the Dominator of Death, something catastrophic was bound to happen.

He could only admit it was a fascinating method. There were no Rank requirements, nor did it require scouring the world for resources to offer the God of Death.

It just required a bit of patience. Only one segment could grow per year, meaning that even if everything progressed smoothly without a single setback, it would take twenty-two years.

It suddenly made even more sense why the mission objective back then had leaned toward making him destroy Jiang En's opportunity rather than just killing him.

Simply killing him left open the possibility of amputating the damaged part to survive. But leaving an extra necrotic segment behind would make growing a new one far more difficult.

Looked at in that light, Jiang En's value to the Warehouse was somewhat similar to Sunny's.

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