Eldritch Horror Theatre

The path of seeking defeat ends here. From now on, I will head deeper into the fallacy alone.

His growth was astonishing, yet riddled with wounds. Theoretically, the current Toolman A Fei was a completely flawless Tier 2 on the sword path, to the point where even his sense of self had been severed.

But as the culprit behind all this, Fu Qian had no intention of continuing to wield a blade that could not be sharpened any further.

It wasn't out of pity. Anywhere else might have been fine, but in this specific scenario, the core of "bloody exploitation" lay in the first word.

To be exploited like that, you had to actually be able to bleed.

He couldn't forget the repeatedly emphasized difference between a tool and a toolman.

The core purpose of choosing this toolman in the first place was to use him as a relatively independent entity to stir up karma and be tainted by the World Poison in his stead.

Therefore, Combat Power had always been secondary.

And wielding a pure, unfeeling tool—what was the essential difference between that and just grabbing a blade to hack at people himself?

Unfortunately, Fu Qian still had a lot left to do.

So far, he had only visited a single core location within this special research facility.

The platform inscribed with a "Prism," used to gaze toward Moore, definitely held significant meaning for this place in Fu Qian's eyes.

Especially considering one crucial point—creak!

Leaping back to the single entrance, Fu Qian casually pushed open the door and studied the outside, noting the sprawling trails of crystallization.

Sure enough, the whale's tail extended straight toward the location of the Prism.

First a torch pointing the way, and now spreading crystallization. He had to admit, the Prism had never lost its prestige.

...

His departure went completely unobstructed, whether by Tier 2 A Fei or the True King of the Abandoned Prison sitting nearby.

The former hadn't moved an inch, merely standing by the Crystal Lake with his sword. An unspeakable aura of worldly transcendence surrounded him, as if he had become a solitary guardian.

The latter, just as Fu Qian suspected, hadn't turned into a pure Statue.

He remained seated in place, but at that moment, crystals flowed across his body, perfectly bestowing a parting gaze upon the departing Mechanical King of the Abandoned Prison.

Fu Qian was confident that even by the time he stepped behind the door, that entity would still be "watching" him leave.

How could their bond be severed so easily, even if the Transcendent Perception he had briefly acquired earlier was now completely purged, returning him to a state of total insulation?

...

To be honest, the changes within the Back Room bordered on the unimaginable.

As for why A Fei's sword strike had been able to hack out a pile of raw materials, the reasoning had already been established: it was suspected to be the ultimate authority of the sword path, the Transcendent Architectural Great Disjunction.

That destructive power, which had seemingly touched the most fundamental level of supernatural strength, brought about the direct annihilation of transcendent forms.

Serving as a Divine Emissary corresponding to the normal Godhood Sequence—and an entirely unblemished version at that—wasn't Toolman A Fei somewhat similar to classmate Ariel right now?

Assuming this was the case, his ability to invoke a fraction of a Deity's power, much like Ariel, became quite easy to understand.

But hacking down a demigod was one thing. What was truly absurd was that it seemed to have flipped some sort of switch—both the Lord of Intellect and the True King of the Abandoned Prison had unexpectedly crystallized.

After all, Fu Qian didn't believe that even the Mycelium Sword Saint could have executed such a clean cut.

Fortunately, when combined with another lingering question, Fu Qian realized there might actually be an explanation.

That question was: after the demigod A Fei fell, the materials that burst from him were nothing but a scattering of crystals. Wasn't this transcendent architecture a little too pure?

...

"Weaving correctness." This was the Lord of Intellect's own explanation regarding the authority in his hands.

And he had indeed demonstrated the ability to manifest a demigod out of thin air, or even a True God.

Then came a very important question: where did the materials for this weaving come from?

Manifesting an extra demigod out of thin air was one thing, but producing an extra higher entity out of thin air? The required "transcendent materials" would be astronomical. Could they really just appear out of nowhere?

Looking at it now, the crystallization seemed to be the answer.

As a special form of power, all those "correct entities" were composed entirely of it.

A more straightforward metaphor would be using the "incorrect" blueprint of the Mechanical King of the Abandoned Prison as a baseline, automatically calculating the "correct" version, and then 3D printing it out using a specific material.

This printing material possessed incredibly versatile properties, exhibiting no rejection reaction to any form.

To a certain extent, this could even explain what the Academy Exploration Team had encountered back then.

Claudora had personally admitted that the crystallization could almost be considered a blessing.

Because for anyone infected by it, the effects appeared immensely beneficial. Their very forms seemed to undergo completion and Sublimation.

The most direct example was how she had even managed to acquire divinity later on.

Even when her state degraded into a complete mess at the very end, she had still retained one core attribute: the ability to fuse and absorb all transcendent materials.

This lined up perfectly with the versatile properties he had noted earlier.

And this wasn't even the only example—there was also the Blood of Thorns.

During his first mission in Shangjing, that special material extracted from a corpse—under Nepheli's meticulous tuning—had even allowed a Mid Tier transcendent to obtain divinity.

Compared to Claudora's example, wasn't this incredibly similar?

Even in later exchanges with technical personnel, Nepheli had personally admitted the core principle: although the Blood of Thorns was unclean, it could essentially be considered a "higher life form" that "could bridge the gap in talent through twisted means."

In contrast, the Warehouse's evaluation of it had been "a high concentration of pollution and errors, yet mistakenly believed by the ignorant to be an advanced form of life."

Not only did this perfectly align with Nepheli's words, but combining the two also matched Claudora's experience exactly—initial completion and Sublimation, followed by rotting and depravity.

It seemed everything was finally linking together.

However, even after all this analysis, it seemed he still hadn't answered why A Fei had been able to cut down the Lord of Intellect with a single sword strike.

It was very simple. The core takeaway from all this was a single point: "crystallization is material." And the unmoving Lord of Intellect over there right now—wasn't he also composed of this same material?

Then what essential difference was there between him and the shattered Sword Saint Ah Fei?

Fu Qian had found it strange earlier. How could the Lord of Intellect, an entity exhibiting barely any visible divinity, possess this kind of Deity-like authority?

Furthermore, the Vision Radar had clearly shown that the only entities with truly high Ranks in this place were The Lake underfoot and the whale within it.

Could the immense power the Lord of Intellect believed he wielded have been nothing but an illusion all along?

Was it possible that even his very existence was the same as Sword Saint Ah Fei's—nothing more than a 3D-printed product formed from the crystals in The Lake?

And A Fei's sword strike had merely shattered this illusion, forcing everything to reveal its true face.

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