Eldritch Horror Theatre

"I'll head back first. Get some rest."

Having left Ray's Dao heart churning with a single sentence, Fu Qian took his leave with thoroughly vicious casualness, not even looking back.

Inside the room, Ray's face already held undisguised murderous intent as he stared fixedly at Fu Qian casually closing the door behind him.

Stepping out of the inn, Fu Qian encountered no questioning from the officers.

Clearly, to the surveillance personnel, nothing about their conversation had seemed particularly strange—at most, it leaned a bit toward chuuni.

Of course, the parties involved certainly did not see it that way.

......

The fire had been lit and its direction pointed out. Let's see if Brother Ray, as a seasoned veteran of this second-time-around loop, could bring him any surprises!

Rather than wandering aimlessly, Fu Qian chose to head straight back to his accommodation for the night.

Or to be precise, a provocation to the Lasik residing within him.

This round of mutual probing had ended in an almost complete victory for Fu Qian.

Taken together, Ray's few questions had very simple objectives: first, he wanted to confirm whether Mrs. Harold's corpse had been discovered; second, under Fu Qian's guidance, he instinctively wanted to eliminate the unknown.

Addressing these two demands, on one hand, Fu Qian informed him that the cat was not yet out of the bag, so running for it wasn't strictly necessary just yet.

On the other hand, Fu Qian clearly knew a great deal yet had not informed the police. Such an ambiguous posture had undoubtedly steered Ray's train of thought.

Acting furtively, with a purpose wrapped in mystery, he seemed to be secretly orchestrating events while coldly observing from the sidelines.

Every single one of these elements seemed to herald that a massive conspiracy enveloped this Small Town, and that Fu Qian himself was either the mastermind pulling the strings or one of their cohorts.

For a shattered soul desperately searching for a way out, a concept like this posed a fatal temptation.

Originally, despite exhausting every possible method and going to any lengths, his ultimate end had been getting frightened out of his wits, unable to transcend his fate.

Now, suddenly, everything appeared explicable through the lens of some grand conspiracy. As long as the Lasik within him did not dissipate too quickly, Fu Qian felt certain Ray would take action.

As for how he would act?

Presumably, much like an amnesiac protagonist in the movies, he would risk everything to shatter a wicked conspiracy.

......

Choosing to do this did not stem from any twisted amusement on Fu Qian's part.

Right from the beginning, he had been pondering the true nature of this mission.

Although his first moments in the mission had placed him inside a gloomy old estate, at its core, this was a remarkably normal story—nothing more than a vacation getaway for a few young people.

Then, after he completed his first task, a countdown had appeared.

Calculating from the events before and after, this appeared to be an endless time loop lasting under forty-eight hours.

It resembled a videocassette of that exact length.

Whenever the film ended, it would simply replay from the beginning.

His own task was to act as a character within the film and bring its playback to a halt.

If that were true, no matter how he looked at it, this was an act of crossing the dimensional barrier.

He could perhaps employ any method to influence the progression of the film's plot and piece together whatever ending he desired.

Yet that would still merely be the film's ending, which was fundamentally a different concept from stopping the videotape's playback, making it difficult to imagine what kind of impact it could have.

In fact, during his subsequent actions, the reproduction of Lasik's behavior had basically confirmed this.

Although he could no longer even be considered a shattered soul, occasional scraps of information leaking through still revealed that this Lasik was clearly no ordinary character.

Casually belittling the efforts of others was foolish.

Used as a point of reference, a clever, ruthless brother who was bending a hundred times without breaking, with a will as tough as steel wire, had ultimately been reduced to this state within such a loop.

No matter how one looked at it, this deadlock seemed entirely insoluble, strongly corroborating his earlier speculation.

But at this juncture, a new question arose.

At this very moment, after who knew how many cycles of samsara, he had been sent in to execute Containment, which proved that transcending samsara was definitively achievable.

These two points undoubtedly stood in contradiction.

Where lay the difference, then? Between himself and Lasik.

As a man who valued logic, this question had been echoing in Fu Qian's mind ever since.

And at a certain moment, he realized where the crux of this contradiction lay—a fixed mindset.

Why assume that Lasik was in a role identical to his own?

Why be so certain that he had also entered by accepting a task?

In past missions, he had seen more than one predecessor fail disastrously, so upon encountering similar behavior, he always instinctively categorized it as being of the same nature.

Consequently, in the earlier tasks, upon discovering Lasik's tragic fate, he had naturally assumed a solution existed for his predicament as well.

What if the dilemma facing Lasik was inherently insoluble?

No matter how hard he tried, a failed ending was his predetermined destiny, where bending a hundred times without breaking bought him nothing more than getting frightened out of his wits and endless torment?

Once he figured this out, recognizing the difference between himself and Lasik was easy—it lay in Lasik himself.

The difference between the plights facing him and Lasik was that he, relatively speaking, possessed this variable in Lasik.

That first task to find Lasik was absolutely not without meaning.

Even after locating him, his new task was tied to him—Transcend Reincarnation with Lasik.

Precisely because of his existence, the possibility of transcending samsara had been brought about.

Therefore, to complete his task, he had to make proper use of this variable, Lasik.

Moreover, if this conjecture proved true, one had to admit that Brother Lasik had met a truly tragic fate.

Countless efforts within his predicament, struggles that tore him apart until his soul shattered, seemingly held no meaning other than turning him into a Key for someone else to use.

......

"You're back."

Upon returning to Sheriff Jones's house, he found the couple just as they had been during their very first encounter—one sitting on the sofa watching television, the other tidying up the tableware.

Mrs. Mary, however, undoubtedly had shallower cultivation; as she greeted Fu Qian, her expression was slightly unnatural.

He didn't know if she still harbored opinions regarding his previous "false accusation."

Regrettably, feelings of guilt were exceedingly difficult for Fu Qian to experience.

"Yes. How is Fran right now?"

Maintaining his usual expression, Fu Qian responded with a beaming smile, even taking the opportunity to inquire about his companion.

"She looked a bit tired and went back to rest just a moment ago. You can go knock on her door and see if she's fallen asleep."

Unable to read anything from Fu Qian's face, Mrs. Mary nodded and gestured upstairs.

Fu Qian offered his thanks. And until he lightened his footsteps and reached the upper floor, Sheriff Jones on the couch never once turned his head, seemingly having abandoned this opportunity for observation.

"You're back?"

After just two knocks, the door opened from the inside.

Fran stood inside the doorway, looking at Fu Qian with a somewhat weary expression as she delivered the exact same line as Mrs. Mary.

Oh? She changed back.

The moment he laid eyes on her, Fu Qian made his judgment.

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