Eldritch Horror Theatre

"You make it sound so simple! We're not just facing danger—people will die!"

"We took casualties from the two monsters we ran into on the outskirts, and you want us to push deeper inside?"

Fu Qian's words immediately provoked a fierce reaction—or rather, fierce opposition.

Pushing into the heart of the ruins...

Li Weixuan pondered this for a moment, glancing at Ji Liushuang and the others.

"What do you all think?"

"If we don't want to sit here waiting to die, venturing deeper to find a way out is our only option."

To his surprise, Ji Liushuang's stance was incredibly resolute.

"And we need to do it quickly, while most of us are still in fighting condition. Dragging this out is a slow death."

"Isn't the risk a bit too high?"

Yuan Xin suddenly chimed in.

"This entire ruin oozes weirdness. We have absolutely no idea what we'll face further inside. Plunging in headfirst is just too reckless."

To think he was actually standing his ground, daring to argue against his goddess.

Fu Qian shot Yuan Xin an amused look, only to find the young man glaring coldly back at him.

'I overestimated him. He's just upset that Ji Liushuang agreed with my proposal.'

"We aren't completely out of options yet. Some of us are wounded; I think the safer play is to rest and recuperate here for a bit."

Huang Zhaoyan quickly echoed his sentiment from the side.

He might butt heads with Yuan Xin on a regular basis, but that didn't mean he didn't value his own life.

"If the outside world goes a few days without hearing from us, they'll definitely realize something is wrong.

"Once they send a search party, we can coordinate with them from the inside to figure out a solution. The situation is far from desperate."

"Resting and waiting for rescue in a place where we could face an unknown threat at any second? What is going through your head? Do you even know how far the Academy is from here?"

Ji Liushuang sneered, snapping back without a shred of politeness.

Seeing the group devolve into a shouting match, Li Weixuan furrowed his brows.

His high skill level made him bold, and he personally leaned toward venturing deeper to investigate. But with lives on the line, a proper leader couldn't just ignore his students' opinions and force his own way.

"Idiots."

Fu Qian shook his head.

"What did you just say?"

Huang Zhaoyan had barely dared to look in Fu Qian's direction since earlier, but being called an idiot directly to his face meant he couldn't just sit there and take it.

"Have any of you considered a certain problem?"

Fu Qian swept his gaze across the group.

"This place has obviously been here for a very long time. Why do none of you have any data on it?"

That...

Fu Qian's words successfully plunged everyone into deep thought.

Put like that, it really was strange. The location was remote, true, but for such a perilous, unique place to exist for years without a single rumor leaking out? It just didn't make sense.

"Could there be another possibility?"

Fu Qian observed their reactions with satisfaction.

"The very instant you step foot in this place, your existence in the outside world is erased."

What?

The entire group froze.

"Is it that hard to grasp? Then let me ask you: has anyone ever heard reports of people going missing around here?"

"Not to my knowledge."

Ji Liushuang muttered, her eyes losing their focus.

"Then how do you explain that pile of hair and arms we ran into? Just judging from those two monsters, there have been plenty of victims.

"So the truth is, once you step foot in here, every trace of your existence in the outside world is wiped clean. No one will remember you. No one will perceive your existence—not your family, not your friends, not your lovers.

"Notice I said erased, not dead. They won't even retain the memory of you.

"Even if your wedding photo hangs above the bed, your closest partner will turn a blind eye to your face in the frame, only wondering why they ever bought two sets of cutlery."

Fu Qian winked at Ji Liushuang.

"So, beautiful, there's a very real possibility that right at this moment, your parents have completely forgotten they ever had a daughter like you."

...

"Bullshit! How is that possible?"

"That's absurd!"

"You're just fearmongering! I've never heard of anything like that!"

Fu Qian's casual, storytelling tone had painted a picture so horrifying that the group immediately lashed out in denial.

Could it really be true?

Ji Liushuang bit her lip. Thinking back on it now, some things really couldn't be explained away.

Before setting out for such an anomalous place, they had all done their homework, yet they hadn't uncovered a single shred of information about it.

Unless someone had deliberately covered it up...

But if what he said was true...

The mere image of vanishing entirely from her parents' world—not even leaving behind a single memory—made it hard to breathe, even for someone as strong as her.

"So, drop the pointless fantasies. No one is coming to save you."

Fu Qian twisted the knife.

"Unless we make it out ourselves."

...

In the end, Li Weixuan was the first to snap back to reality. Seeing the entire group stunned into silence, he took a deep breath.

"This place truly is bizarre. Sitting around waiting to die isn't the answer. Everyone, follow me. We're going to investigate the interior of the ruins."

This time, no voices rose in protest. Or rather, no voices rose at all.

Perfect!

Fu Qian snapped his fingers, incredibly satisfied with this outcome.

No matter what, he couldn't pass up on having a heavy hitter like Li Weixuan for his first foray into the ruins, which meant this group absolutely had to tag along.

Of course, everything he'd just said was technically still an unverified guess.

But people were often like this: as long as you offered an explanation for something, no matter how outlandish, a group without any better answers would inevitably start considering the possibility.

And the more they thought about it, the more terrifying it became.

Along the way, the team sank into an oppressive silence. Everyone looked utterly lost. Morale was effectively at negative ninety-nine.

All by himself, Fu Qian had successfully dragged the team's morale to the brink of collapse.

Li Weixuan wasn't as calm on the inside as he appeared, but as a true master among masters, he leveraged his strengths perfectly, successfully converting his anxiety into pure rage.

Wielding a Longsword he had temporarily requisitioned from a student, he took the lead the entire way. Anything that twitched was instantly met with a downpour of sword ki.

The eerie, malicious hair-monsters and the nimble, vicious severed hands—creatures that had caused the team massive headaches earlier—were all shredded to pieces under the furious sword ki of a Peak Tier 4.

His efficiency was so staggering that even Fu Qian abandoned the thought of kill-stealing.

Behind him, the students were all as mute as a winter cicada. Already mentally fragile, they were now completely terrified by this display of godlike wrath.

Led by a berserk Li Weixuan, the group practically swept away all opposition as they carved straight into the heart of the ruins.

The interior was even more bizarre than the outskirts.

Various types of buildings were stacked in layers, crammed together in unimaginable ways. At a glance, it looked as packed as the holiday travel rush. They couldn't even find a proper road; in many places, they had no choice but to travel across the rooftops.

Alongside the hair and hand monsters they had encountered before, a new creature appeared: gigantic white centipedes.

Looking closely, every single segment of these centipedes' bodies was formed by a human Skull.

The deformed craniums gaped their jaws wide, biting down hard onto the crown of the one behind it, stacking on and on in a never-ending chain.

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