Eldritch Horror Theatre

Wasn't this a bit much?

The notion that whatever you saw through the Eldest Son's Vision was "wrong the moment you thought about it" seemed to materialize in that very moment.

He had managed to describe it, but the result severely challenged human comprehension.

It wasn't real; it was little more than an echo of history that had unfolded in this place.

Yet that history possessed enough tangible force to ruthlessly carve a blade into any latecomer.

The wound healed in an instant, though the shock of it lingered.

Withdrawing his gaze from his shoulder, Fu Qian took another step forward.

The strike that had just torn him open seemed meant entirely to stop this exact movement.

However, now that he was no longer looking through the Eldest Son's Vision, he met no further resistance.

He kept moving, weaving his way through yet another roiling storm as the winding Ruins faded into the distance behind him.

Ever since he walked through the door this time, that underlying sense that something was horribly off had only grown stronger—

Past footprints remained but went undiscovered; mingled powers of a higher entity had somehow established barriers against one another; and a history that belonged strictly to the past could still physically injure someone in the present...

Beneath its deceptively tranquil exterior, this former sanctuary was clearly breeding something extremely twisted—so why was that?

Suddenly, Fu Qian stepped backward.

Giving up his stubborn push forward, he let himself drift with the tide, walking backward through the storm and retreating step by step to where he had started.

He didn't do this with any grand purpose in mind.

It was simply a matter of adapting to local customs. With the atmosphere this bizarre, this seat might as well play along.

...

The return journey was noticeably faster than the trip in. Irregular spatial jumps were far less frequent, letting him fully appreciate the Ruins' enthusiastic attempts to make him stay.

Even so, Fu Qian did his best to retrace his exact steps, such as finding the spot where he had originally gone downstairs.

With a few light consecutive leaps, he arrived back at Liliana's Observation Point.

From there, he turned and walked down step by step along the path he had initially taken to come up.

This created a distinct sense of two negatives make a positive, playing out almost like a perfect rewind of his previous actions.

Unfortunately, this display of borderline performance art didn't trigger anything special.

Even when Fu Qian walked all the way back to the corner where the footprints had first begun, Senior Liliana was still missing. Not a single trace of her remained.

But it was a decent haul nonetheless.

Fu Qian wasn't disappointed.

Though they hadn't managed to hold a normal conversation, this senior had already provided him with quite a lot.

Since there had been a mention that disturbing the Night Watchers wasn't a good idea, there was no need to resort to drastic measures.

Without lingering any longer, Fu Qian walked straight through the illusory door.

It felt much like his trip "home" to the Half-Step Moon not so long ago.

...

Unfortunately, the cutthroat world of business allowed for no rest.

Unsurprisingly, he reappeared behind the counter of The Bookstore and glanced out the window.

During his brief round trip, the sun had fully risen.

Shangjing had roused itself from its brief tranquility and officially begun a new day.

And as the old saying went, a day's plan begins in the morning—Fu Qian reached out and pressed his middle finger against the Spikes on his chair.

Truth be told, his quick return trip was never about preparing the shop for insomniac customers.

The state of the Deity Burial Ground was indeed a sensitive matter, and the temporal bubbles did seem fully sealed off from one another.

But he wasn't going to let his thinking grow rigid; after all, he still had two doors leading to that place.

There was a scent of the Blood Lake in the senior's hideout? Yet he couldn't walk over to the Blood Lake to see what was actually going on?

Apologies, but having a save point meant you could do whatever you wanted.

Back then, he had used the Ring—the one deeply tied to Su Gao—to record a coordinate inside the Blood Lake.

So, could the Phoenix—whose metallic blood had been harvested—still manage to be reborn over and over again? It didn't look like it.

The door, seeping with blood, slowly opened before him. An instant later, a refreshing scent drifted into Fu Qian's nose.

...

So what was the situation here now?

Fu Qian stood in silence, studying the scarlet hue that flooded his vision.

It was definitely the right place. It was always this color, brimming with vitality and even sin force.

Yet the place felt a little different. The elements mixed into that color, for instance, seemed visibly richer than before.

Ignoring the slimy texture, Fu Qian bent down and fished a long object out of the viscous sludge.

It looked extremely familiar. It was the very same Phoenix feather he had seen back when he was searching for Eternity.

Unfortunately, it seemed utterly ruined by the aura of decay. The moment it left the pool of blood, it lost its shape and sloughed apart like melting mud.

Such a sight undeniably hammered home the feeling that things remain while people change—it looked as if a final, struggling obsession had completely dissipated.

Fu Qian didn't even need to dive down to easily confirm the truth: the egg-bearing Phoenixes were stripped of their former grandeur, reduced to a few deformed scraps of bone.

Sure enough, without the support of Eternity, certain miracles could never happen again.

The silver lining was that where there was decay, there was also new life—like right here.

Crossing a vast distance in a single bound, Fu Qian landed behind a pillar-like structure, then took another step into an inconspicuous corner.

Bending over, he brushed his fingers over a cluster of "plants."

Yes, red petals, red leaves. At first glance, it was hard to tell if the bouquet of flowers was fashioned out of actual flesh and blood.

More importantly, the shape of those petals was far too familiar.

...

First Generation Dark Moon?

Yes, describing the scent earlier as refreshing hadn't just been sarcasm.

Even without Transcendent Perception, Fu Qian immediately sniffed out a distinct trace hidden within that foul stench.

It was precisely by following that scent that he had found this spot so quickly.

And he had to admit, what he ultimately found sparked quite a few theories.

Aside from the blood-dyed hue, these were exactly the same shape as the flowers he had seen in the Manyuan Garden.

And as was well known, those things seemed deeply tied to the Witch's Mother.

In fact, from the night the Tyrant fell, one could tell that the First Generation Dark Moon and the Dragon King really had been teammates acting together.

And yet elements related to Him were appearing here?

No matter how you looked at it, this seemed to strongly support his earlier theory.

Meaning the Dragon King hadn't been entirely annihilated, and this truly was His burial ground...

The next moment, Fu Qian's hand reached up past the bouquet. When he pulled it back, there was a new object pinched between two fingers.

It was the size of a palm, bearing a single wing as geometrically regular as a drawn shape...

Yes, a Soul Butterfly.

The precious transcendent material coveted by the group of adventurers back at the Dragon Peak Inn.

It had seemingly been drawn in by the fragrance just now, wanting to land on the scarlet petals.

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