Eldritch Horror Theatre

[Task Evaluation: I'm Not Sick]

The notification for a successful Containment arrived right on schedule. Behind him, the peaceful years of Demon Mountain silently faded away.

As his vision shifted from bright to dark, Fu Qian successfully returned to the ever-supportive Warehouse and sat back down in his own seat.

However, the task evaluation that followed sounded a little...

[The best way to prove to a doctor that you aren't sick is to turn the doctor into a patient too.

Unfortunately, the young Lasik never realized this.

From the first day she found herself deeply trapped, she tried everything she could to prove herself.

Goodwill, harmlessness, rationality... even her dark yet intensely human petty schemes.

Yet in this process, not only did she gradually realize a force was controlling the entire Sanitarium, she also brushed against the darkness of the human heart more than once.

And when she realized that time itself could be warped by that human darkness, Lasik's fear ballooned to its absolute peak.

She could no longer distinguish which thoughts were truly her own, not even the urge to leave.

'Maybe staying here wouldn't be so bad?'

Unable to accept that such a thought had actually occurred to her, she finally ignored her inner vigilance and used that Key, and then used the notebook in the safe.

That action ultimately doomed her beyond redemption. Even if her eyes opened again, would the person sent out of the Sanitarium truly still be her?

In contrast, even with the Sword of Judgment hanging over your head, you still deftly dodged trap after trap, enjoying the twisted tranquility of the Sanitarium.

Then, you adopted the most difficult yet most reliable method, violently eradicating all the forces trying to make you stay.

Most impressively, when faced with the True Word Notebook, you didn't even once try to verify if it truly possessed supernatural effects; as long as it was "useful," that was enough.

This mix of madness and Transcendence earned you special recognition, because truth is not the essence of the notebook; lies are.

In fact, that is also why those dregs from the sea of mind could manipulate this cage it projected.]

[Kills: None]

[Reward: SAN Value +20]

[Special Reward: Annalise's Lies]

[Current SAN Value: 155]

[Play event recap?]

...

It seemed the detail he cared about most was missing. Was it still too sensitive?

After quietly listening through the entire summary, even though the evaluation was theoretically quite high, Fu Qian still sighed inwardly for a moment.

Nonsensical title aside, frankly speaking, the amount of information in the task summary was actually quite large.

First, perhaps because his exploration of the side branches had been so thorough, a surprisingly large portion of it actually focused on Ms. Lasik.

From beginning to end, it could be said to have vividly depicted her psychological journey.

Her specific actions were more or less what he had deduced, and it revealed that Servis truly hadn't been lying.

After her mind was completely broken, she really had been sent out by him.

Furthermore, it proved that Lasik was indeed different from him. She hadn't faced a threat like Judgment Day; she only needed to find a way out of her predicament.

Even that rather cryptic line—"would the person sent out of the Sanitarium truly still be her?"—seemed to subtly answer one of his earlier questions: if she wasn't an administrator, why had Lasik been thrown into the Sanitarium in the first place?

It sounded as if the place was treated as some sort of reeducation camp. After a bout of torture, Lasik's very "self" had mutated.

For instance, having waded through those lies, she could no longer distinguish which thoughts were truly her own.

So she was deliberately processed this way, and then tossed over to Virtue?

...

That was a bit too tragic. The problem was, what was the benefit of processing her like that?

For a moment, Lasik's pity factor skyrocketed once again. Even as Fu Qian lamented her fate, it seemed an answer to this question wouldn't be easy to confirm right now.

However, that mention of "lies," he had to say, was undeniably intriguing.

"The essence of the True Word Notebook is not truth, but lies?"

That statement was staggering. It completely overturned his perception, and even caused the Abyss Notes to take on a somewhat different flavor.

But the task summary stated it with utmost solemnity, and even used it to explain the issue with the Well of Time—

The Sanitarium itself was a projection of the True Word Notebook, and the latter was actually not the pure object one might imagine, but was instead entangled in lies.

So much so that the "dregs" from the sea of mind could manipulate the time it projected.

The term "dregs" sounded a bit abrupt at first, but phrasing it differently made it perfectly easy to understand: the darkness of the human heart inside the Sanitarium.

It turned out that the very things he had been carefully avoiding all along were actually connected to the sea of mind once again.

No wonder the atmosphere had been so bleak.

Additionally, it sounded like he had accidentally unlocked a special achievement during the task: never testing the properties of the True Word Notebook.

Simply put, from start to finish, he had never written down anything that would be erased by it.

So much so that, just as he had remarked before, replacing the True Word Notebook with any ordinary booklet seemingly wouldn't have made a difference?

When dealing with such an item, that truly could be called a rare achievement.

Even though it wasn't a coincidence.

Yes, although he hadn't deliberately gone out of his way to maintain it, Fu Qian had indeed done it on purpose.

The Sanitarium felt wrong, and the notebook inside the safe felt even more wrong.

So, since he had already planned how to use it, realizing there was seemingly no need to verify its authenticity, Fu Qian decisively chose not to proactively test it.

No matter how laid-back he might seem, he could absolutely never afford to be careless at the crucial moments.

This was touching the Transcendent Tier with a Mortal Body; any unnecessary action could very well leave him at the mercy of others.

All in all, this could be considered a case of "opportunities are left for those who are prepared."

He just wondered if such a special achievement would cause the reward content to Sublimate a little.

After all, his SAN Value hadn't been increased by even a single point; after all that hard work, it had actually decreased.

That aside, there was the biggest regret mentioned earlier—was there really no content related to the date?

That's right. For Fu Qian, tirelessly going through all those operations and striving to dig up every piece of information was, on the one hand, out of professional pride, but there was also an additional reason—when he opened his eyes, the date the task began was the 48th.

If his calculations were correct, excluding the two extra tasks he had triggered himself, the numbered Containment Object assigned to him by the Warehouse was also exactly the 48th.

Was it really a pure coincidence?

If it wasn't a pure coincidence, then what special hidden meaning would Judgment Day have 13 days later?

Was there only enough time left for 13 tasks? Or 13 days?

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