Eldritch Horror Theatre

A magnificent, sturdy treasure chest—only to reveal a lethal poison when opened.

For Fu Qian, such a scenario wasn't entirely unheard of.

Never mind poison—having your head swallowed whole was practically a common occurrence.

But situations like that usually relied on a single premise: before opening the chest, there was absolutely no way to peer inside.

Yet for entities like the Mother of Gospel, the barrier shouldn't have possessed such an exaggerated isolating effect, right?

Not to mention the arrangements made by the Ji Clan Golden Generation—he had personally eradicated one of the seeds they had planted inside the barrier.

Even if their true bodies couldn't enter, sneaking a peek at the situation inside shouldn't have been too difficult.

Yet under these circumstances, a whole group of them were still tirelessly trying to open the treasure chest?

He had long wondered what charm this small world beneath the barrier possessed to draw the covetous gazes of so many cosmic higher entities. Now, he was even more puzzled.

In fact, there appeared to be at least one absolutely terrible thing.

After all, even a chaotic place like The Abyss could be labeled a world pillar by the Warehouse—it was, essentially, a stable state.

Only this Transcendent Terminus stood out with a truly exceptional aura.

To put it bluntly, if a transcendent virus like the crystal could truly be sealed tightly behind the barrier, it was hard to say who exactly the barrier was meant to protect.

Could it be... they were here to shatter the virus petri dish and let the crystal rule everything?

Always maintaining his good habit of asking questions and trying to answer them, Fu Qian looked at the illogical conclusions he had derived along the way and quickly ventured a rather wild explanation.

But it was indeed a bit too wild. Going through all that hardship, seeking neither fame nor fortune, just to drag every transcendent down to eat shit together?

Just what kind of grievance would one have to suffer to make such an extreme, self-destructive "when will this day perish" choice?

Or perhaps, it wasn't actually that negative?

Perhaps they had discovered this virus-filled box, felt deeply concerned about its disruption to the harmony of the entire transcendent realm, and wanted to nip the problem in the bud by coming in to dispose of it?

Honestly, that felt a bit too positive. It was hard to believe the Mother of Gospel could be such a righteous, upstanding figure.

In comparison, it was more likely that while the barrier was sturdy, it hadn't actually stopped the poison of the crystal, which was still seeping outward.

And as victims tracing the source, they had finally discovered this place and were preparing to come in for a thorough purge.

That sounded slightly more reasonable, but this third guess seemed to face a fatal flaw—they hadn't purged it either, had they?

If the apocalypse from nineteen years ago was real, and the result was the very scene he had just witnessed, then it didn't look like a completed purge at all. It could only be called a massive outbreak of the crystal's poison.

Even the Mother of Gospel alone was a deeply scheming figure; she wouldn't be so inept, right?

This line of thought seemed to have entered a dead end as well.

Of course, looking on the bright side, a dead end at least proved that the path was blocked—a necessary step in the process of elimination.

And as everyone knew, lacking absolute proof, the process of elimination was just bouncing back and forth. Whichever side had the bigger flaw, one could simply pivot back to check the other side—cough, cough!

Amidst another fit of coughing, Fu Qian gradually kneaded himself back into a human shape—so as not to scare any children—and stood up a bit straighter, gazing at the sight before him.

If the audience outside the barrier coming for the crystal—this rather novel viewpoint—didn't hold up, then it seemed he had to return to the idea that they were coveting something.

But if the premise that 'all the good things are here' was indeed too contrived... was there anything else special inside the barrier besides the crystal curse?

There actually was. The sea of mind.

...

After a bout of reasoning, an interesting answer really did squeeze out from the cracks of the elimination process.

If there was anything exceptionally special in the Bookstore World, Fu Qian would definitely rank the sea of mind ahead of places like The Abyss.

After all, no matter how unfriendly The Abyss was, it didn't put up a sign saying 'outsiders prohibited'.

Yet in his previous three attempts to explore the sea of mind, even with a local helping to guide the way, he had been cleanly and decisively shut out. Just thinking about it was infuriating.

If this was just a minor 'special' trait, it wouldn't seem to hold any significance for higher entities.

But first, he recalled that outsiders didn't seem to be the only victims of this double standard—

During the third round of experiments in the sea of mind, according to the recorder Su Gao's description, the higher entity's lackey, Sunny, could enter the sea of mind, but her state was detached, making interaction difficult.

Based on that, he had guessed at the time that higher entities also suffered some form of rejection.

Of course, considering Sunny belonged to the Scales of the Dragon King, and the latter was recognized by the Warehouse as a Cosmic Deity, he couldn't rule out the possibility that this restriction was targeted solely at that specific group.

But regardless, higher entities were clearly also victims of this double standard.

Of course, Fu Qian highly doubted that higher entities operated on brain circuits like, "No one has ever refused me," or "Woman, you have successfully caught my attention."

If they were pursuing the sea of mind, then it must possess definitive value.

Which brought him to his next point: he had seemingly witnessed this very thing in the World of the Witch.

The last time he went there to resolve the issue with his Transcendent Perception, he had encountered something similar to the sea of mind—or rather, it should be called the Dead Sea of the Mind.

That place, frozen by the Witch's own power and turned into a part of the Nightmare Aggregate, gave off an intense sense of déjà vu, as if it were a dried-up sea of mind.

There was an empty suit of Armor inside, and after discussing it with the Witch, his final conclusion was the suspicion that the Armor's owner had likely used the sea of mind to conduct some sort of ritual.

That place which rejected higher entities seemed to paradoxically hold some special significance for them.

So, would this world be similar?

...

Not bad. His framework of knowledge seemed to be building up more and more systematically.

In that moment, for Fu Qian, certain things were like interlocking gears, faintly piecing together to verify one another.

So the Mother of Gospel and the others might not have come for a transcendent virus like the crystal, nor for an overabundance of transcendent resources.

But purely for a specific, special thing inside, even willing to brave extraordinary risks for it?

Honestly, even though it was a conclusion derived step by step, it still sounded somewhat counterintuitive.

In front of such entities, shouldn't the wisdom of mere mortals be shallow and fragile? What was the point?

But then again, he actually seemed to have seen a minor piece of evidence for this counterintuitive notion—

In the apocalypse that Yuhun had shown him back then, the very first thing the Mother of Gospel did upon her Descent seemed to be manipulating the sea of mind, conveniently trapping him in the process.

On another note, he was still trapped right now, wasn't he?

As his thoughts raced, Fu Qian's hand—which had just barely recovered its human shape—once again took out the script he had put away.

Act Five was still empty.

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