Eldritch Horror Theatre

Was this... the end of the world?

Based on his earlier analysis, if His Excellency the Fool had truly held back the Transcendent Terminus single-handedly, then this location was undoubtedly the most vital point in the entire Bookstore World.

Even if this fell under the domain of his Etched Intellect and was theoretically unreal, there could still be some underlying connection.

That was why Fu Qian had operated quite cautiously throughout his investigation. When executing His Excellency Rom, for instance, he had deliberately used a single-target skill, avoiding even a scratch on the nearby whale.

Who could have guessed that, at this very moment, the whale would still end up beached anyway?

That's right. As he watched the changes unfolding before him, Fu Qian decided that was the only fitting word.

His Excellency Rom certainly lived up to his reputation; even his Death Rattle produced astonishing effects.

It didn't look particularly violent, but those scattering blood-red crystals acted as the final straw, directly triggering a chain reaction.

Following his earlier Eight Consecutive Slashes, the crystal fractures spanning the space had already been crisscrossing and on the verge of collapse. Now, they finally shattered completely.

It wasn't like a normal window breaking to reveal what lay behind it; rather, the shattered glass collapsed into a table full of puzzle pieces.

They remained right there, yet the pieces flowed seamlessly among one another, instantly rendering the entire scene unrecognizable.

Even the whale, serving as one of the absolute cores of this space, couldn't escape this fate.

If the entity had previously appeared to be constructed from interlocking crystals, the structural alignment of those crystals had now shifted from three dimensions to two, dismantled and laid flat with a crash.

Yes, it was a rather unique form of beaching.

Naturally, one might wonder: with a beaching like this, was the lake's surface area actually large enough?

It certainly was, because the lake was beaching right alongside it.

The unfolding wasn't limited to the whale. In that moment, even the placid surface of the water abstractly spread outward.

Judging by that rapidly expanding surface area, it seemed the very concept of the lake's depth had been incorporated into the spread.

So this was a Dual-Vector Foil world-ending strike after all?

...

The analogy wasn't entirely perfect, but for a split second, Fu Qian genuinely thought of that famous weapon.

If it were merely the earlier shattering and Dislocation, he wouldn't have found it too difficult to comprehend.

Because if memory served, he had witnessed a similar scene once before—during That Long Night a thousand years ago.

When Classmate Su Gao had lost all her senses and he was standing guard over her, he had incidentally paid attention to the starry sky outside.

He had noticed a peculiar phenomenon back then. The seemingly seamless night sky appeared to have fragmented into completely disjointed patches that circled and flowed past one another, with the laws of reality only taking effect in localized pockets.

Wasn't that somewhat similar to the scene before him?

He had wondered about the cause at the time, and Su Gao had shared what she felt: "The starry sky, minds, The Abyss, and the tide of the storm flood every corner..." "Nothing is spared, and nothing is immune to shattering."

The "tide of the storm" suddenly seemed to match the Crystal Storm perfectly.

He had just been pondering a question earlier: where did the storm raging above the whale's head come from?

He had easily traced the connection to the Burial Ground of the Gods, but a new question had subsequently arisen: where did the storm at the burial ground originate?

Judging by the intense déjà vu he was experiencing right now, could it have come directly from a thousand years ago?

Had those ripples that caused all living beings to struggle never truly faded away? Had they simply been churning ceaselessly within that resting place of the gods?

And had His Excellency the Fool been resisting them all along, keeping them fiercely locked outside this fragile Real World?

If that were true, the "doomsday" from nineteen years ago suddenly took on an entirely different interpretation.

Was it really the higher entities glaring covetously from outside the barrier who had simply destroyed everything in passing once their desires were fulfilled? Or had their actions triggered some kind of chain reaction?

Just like now, the situation His Excellency the Fool had fought so bitterly to maintain took a hit, ultimately causing everything to collapse in this bizarre manner.

Another point he had to acknowledge was that this Etched Intellect was resilient to an absurd degree. The situation had escalated all the way to the apocalypse, yet it amazingly still hadn't ended.

Come to think of it, could he see the starry sky just now?

...

It was starting to make a lot of sense.

While piecing together this new theory of the apocalypse in his head, Fu Qian realized he had made another discovery.

Just as he had been recalling the night sky from a thousand years ago, the murky chaos above his head suddenly cleared, and he could actually see stars.

The stars were not only unnaturally bright, but a quick glance revealed that their arrangement was off, completely different from what he remembered—wait, actually, it was fine.

A second after noting the bizarre visual, Fu Qian deduced the explanation himself.

That starry sky did look incredibly wrong at first glance, but if it was in the same unfolded state as the Inverted Lake beneath his feet, the positions and visual appearance of the stars suddenly became a bit more logical.

It was just that the strike radius of this Dual-Vector Foil seemed a bit too massive. Had the crystal curse already spread outside the barrier? Or was this merely caused by his vantage point?

Sighing to himself again, Fu Qian even thought of the "barrier" enveloping the Bookstore World, the very thing keeping the Mother of Gospel and the others at bay.

He could only conclude that the exact form of the barrier was becoming rather incomprehensible.

Even the current position of the stars felt incredibly abstract. They were clearly a vast distance away, yet they looked close enough to touch.

The sea beneath the night sky was the same.

Distance itself had seemingly turned into an abstract concept. It wasn't just the stars that were clear; looking past the unfolded Inverted Lake, he could even see the ash enclosing the outside, the seawater beyond that, and the even further boundaries of the ocean.

Moore?

In that moment, Fu Qian realized that a certain location he had constantly looked out for but never managed to spot had suddenly appeared in his line of sight.

It was even "Moore within the storm."

Even though it was completely unrecognizable, Fu Qian still recognized that what he was looking at was the "Wise Dead," rather than its normal version.

His reasoning was simple: the crystallized fragments composing it were entirely saturated with the concept of a storm.

Yes, it wasn't merely surrounding or shrouding it. The attribute that Moore only existed within a storm had—much like distance earlier—been directly abstracted into a concept, which clustered together with other concepts to form it.

From this perspective, it was clearly much more than just the Dual-Vector Foil unfolding he had thought of earlier.

Though it remained just as dead and lifeless.

Crystal solidification was terrifying to this degree?

The only pity was that his recovered perception still had its limits. Aside from these new elements, he couldn't see anything more.

But honestly, this was already quite good. His Excellency Rom had truly embodied the phrase "the candle burns to ash before its tears dry up." Even the radiant glow of his cremation was helping illuminate the world for him—wait a minute, was the cremation not over yet?

Just as Fu Qian was feeling that he had reaped a bountiful harvest, he noticed another change.

The traces left behind by His Excellency Rom—whether the dissipating crystals or the collapsed remnants of the storm—were actually congregating quietly together, causing the blood-red hue to suddenly intensify.

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