Eldritch Horror Theatre

So this was the legendary solidification of thought?

It was indeed the Lord of Intellect. That brain, once brimming with ideological inclusivity, suddenly flashed with a strange light.

Fu Qian was certain it wasn't an illusion, because the man himself had noticed it too.

"Ah? Ah! Ah—"

Following a cry of sheer disbelief, he let out three distinct shouts. One could practically trace his entire emotional journey through them—

Disbelief; the defiant roar of 'my fate is my own'; and finally, a lament at the sheer injustice of the heavens...

As Fu Qian earnestly deciphered this display, the Lord of Intellect actually turned to "look" at him. He even raised an arm and pointed, looking as though he wanted to speak but had stopped himself.

Or perhaps it wasn't his own choice to stop. At that exact moment, the Lord of Intellect's entire silhouette had completely solidified, and that bizarre radiance grew even more blinding.

Just like the scattered remains of Sword Saint Ah Fei.

Even though he was standing quite a distance from Tier 2 Ah Fei, it was as if that sword strike had cleaved right into him as well.

He hadn't disintegrated, but his body turned translucent, its contours rapidly sharpening into jagged lines.

Even the folds of his exposed brain lost their previous softness. It perfectly demonstrated what it meant to sharpen one's thoughts, even carrying a sense of déjà vu regarding the "spiderwebs" from earlier.

And as for the actual "spiderwebs"?

For a brief moment, Fu Qian could actually see them writhing within those cerebral folds, seemingly desperate to flee outward.

Unfortunately, the brain tissue had already lost its elasticity to the crystallization process, denying them any such opportunity.

Barely a step behind the Lord of Intellect himself, they followed in his footsteps, similarly transforming into sparkling, crystallized clusters of solidified thought.

See, this was exactly why believing everything you read was worse than reading nothing at all.

When your thoughts were entirely dictated by someone else, any sudden solidification or sharpening on their end would plunge you into a highly agonizing predicament.

Casually extracting life wisdom from the spectacle before him, Fu Qian shook his head with a sigh. Yet what truly piqued his curiosity was why this was happening in the first place.

The Lord of Intellect had just offered a warning: he had better give up on the idea of solving the problem by killing him.

Truth be told, Fu Qian was inclined to believe it was the truth.

As the one who had found the "ultimate answer," the man's connection to this current scenario was undoubtedly profound. His every gesture wielded something akin to a Deity's authority, and he had even performed a resurrection not too long ago.

While Fu Qian didn't consider this a major issue for himself, if he truly set his mind to executing the man, the odds of the other party actually surviving it weren't that high.

It was just that doing so carried a significant risk of collapsing this entire place, which was why he wasn't inclined to take that route.

But had Brother A Fei just leveled up, and the residual wind from his sword strike had accidentally scraped this guy to death while killing someone else?

Frankly, that was a little hard to believe.

Fortunately, there was something even more unbelievable taking place. He wasn't the only thing crystallizing—

That translucent, glittering structure was rapidly spreading outward from the Lord of Intellect's body.

It infected the ground beneath their feet, even creeping up the sweeping staircases.

It wasn't an indiscriminate transformation, either. It was selective, adhering to some underlying pattern.

In certain spots, the crystals were simply slender and elegant threads.

Fu Qian recognized them in a heartbeat. They were the ubiquitous Silver Dot-Lines.

A massive number of them were crystallizing at an astonishing rate, weaving together to outline a bizarre and breathtaking spectacle.

A spectacle that also felt remarkably familiar—a whale?

...

And a whale raised in The Lake, no less.

As massive sections of the Back Room crystallized—especially around the base—the area turned entirely transparent. In an instant, it resembled a serene lake surface.

And a colossal leviathan was bobbing up and down across this glassy surface.

While some of its localized lines were still a bit too rigid, its streamlined body and flippers... One glance was all it took to identify the classic silhouette of a whale.

A large portion of its head was submerged beneath the surface, while the rear half of its body breached the water, aligning perfectly with the crystallized Silver Dot-Lines.

To sum it up, it was like a crystalline whale with the majority of its body miraculously embedded directly into the entire building.

It was as if the building's users had known about this, leaving behind deliberate outlines and traces in quite a few places.

He had to admit, if a shopping mall ever created a theme like this, he would be quite interested in taking a stroll through it.

Though this wasn't even the core area.

Almost instantly, Fu Qian shifted his gaze toward the resting place of a certain "ultimate answer."

That's right, the point of descent, which was also the Transcendent Terminus.

And as expected, the location was far from ordinary. Looking closely, it perfectly aligned with the whale's—blowhole?

While the whale's form wasn't entirely complete, the positioning was textbook. It was a distinctive groove situated just above the surface of the water.

If that wasn't convincing enough, there was an even more iconic detail: the blowhole was actually "spouting water."

Indeed, a towering crystalline pillar jutted out from it. A single glance was enough to convey the sheer sense of power contained within.

Looking closer, its artistic design was nothing short of a masterpiece. The crystalline shards intersected at only a handful of points, yet it relied on this exact structure to build a surging "spout of water."

It was just that the spout wasn't exactly straight...

Fu Qian carefully compared the coordinates, confirming that the intersection point between the water spout and the blowhole was the exact same spot that had previously devoured massive amounts of his SAN Value.

While it wasn't quite as twisted as the tunnels he had traversed earlier, it still possessed a remarkably forceful arc. Even though it was completely static, it gave off the visual sensation of spinning—was it not a water spout, but a storm?

A sudden thought flashed across Fu Qian's mind.

Was it possible the whale wasn't spouting water at all?

...

Was it literally swallowing the heavens and the earth?

Once some things begin, they are hard to go back from. After substituting in the idea of a Crystal Storm, Fu Qian found the resemblance growing more uncanny by the second.

Even the jagged, uneven edges of the column suddenly became much more evocative.

Those weren't flying water droplets; they were the scars left behind by a raging storm.

It looked exactly like a tornado tearing the very fabric of space apart, leaving a crisscrossing web of lacerations in its wake.

However, if that was the case, exactly what the whale was doing here became deeply intriguing.

It wasn't spouting water, but summoning a storm—or perhaps swallowing one?

Fu Qian quickly directed his attention to the base of the storm, easily spotting a much more peculiar detail—

The whale's head, which should have been its most resilient point, was heavily fractured. The crystallization there appeared significantly more shattered, tiny, and chaotic than anywhere else on its body.

While one could understand it as the modeling in that area being simply more intricate, once he factored in the destructive force of a storm, those traces fit perfectly.

It wasn't creating a storm. It looked as if it were using its flesh and blood as a shield to block this storm that had come from out of nowhere.

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