Eldritch Horror Theatre

No matter how he looked at it, this "vulgar scoundrel" was definitely referring to him.

Examining his special reward, Fu Qian shamelessly claimed the title for himself.

What appeared in his hand was a short sword slightly longer than his forearm.

It had an exquisite hilt and a standard crossguard, but beyond that, the blade's shape was rather unique.

At a glance, the slender blade seemed divided into three sections, each curving inward at a distinct angle. A deep vermilion mark ran all the way from the hilt to the tip.

Seeing this shape, Fu Qian naturally thought of the bone claw he had snapped off Akasha.

It seemed highly likely that this special reward was a result of that specific action.

In all fairness, the sword looked quite good.

The effects of the Curse of Oblivion also sounded rather brutal.

He wondered—if he had ripped off the entire limb back then, would the reward have turned into a Longsword?

Letting his imagination run wild, Fu Qian casually toyed with the Limb-Tip Shortsword.

Although both rewards were quite interesting, there was no doubt that the greatest value of this mission was the intelligence he had gathered.

Aside from the clue regarding Ji Feng, there was one more crucial point—the hostile God he had forged an enmity with.

Whether it was the mental pollution Brother Jifeng had encountered or that blatantly hateful posture, it all reeked of malice. He had no idea which evil God this was, nor what its actual intentions were.

Since he had forged somewhat of an ill-fated connection with the higher-ups of the Night Watchers this time, he could find an opportunity to consult them later and see if they had any relevant intelligence.

Amid his thoughts, Fu Qian placed the short sword on the table, setting it right next to the sedatives.

[Today's work is complete. You may now leave the Warehouse. Weekly work progress: 3/4]

The prompt appeared at just the right time, signaling that this highly intense night shift had finally come to an end.

Fu Qian didn't hesitate, immediately activating his Wrist Mark.

...

Right on time, as expected.

With a blur of his vision, Fu Qian reappeared on his living room sofa.

The TV, which had been left on the entire time, was ticking down the very last second to midnight.

'Theoretically, if I go back right now, I can happily process a new leak, right?'

That was the first thought that popped into Fu Qian's head as he watched the screen.

Of course, he didn't love working quite that much. However, dealing with problems in the middle of the night wasn't exactly a rare experience for him, either.

Turning off the TV, Fu Qian sat in the darkness for a few seconds before suddenly remembering something.

A moment later, he walked over to the side and dug out a black laptop.

He had bought the device before his annual salary hit ten million, and its appearance was rather ordinary.

But under his principle of spending money where it mattered most, its performance was quite excellent. Even after sitting idle for so many days, the battery was still fully charged.

Booting it up with practiced ease, Fu Qian immediately typed in a web address.

...

As a freelancer, an irregular sleep schedule was practically an innate trait.

Long before he became a task runner, working through the middle of the night had been an everyday occurrence for him.

The webpage loaded, revealing a forum with an incredibly crude layout.

It was almost entirely blue and white, the formatting was a complete disaster, and all of its content was dumped under a single category.

At a glance, it looked so primitive it felt like stepping twenty years into the past.

And yet, even in a place like this, the level of activity at midnight remained remarkably high.

The reason was simple: its legendary, top-tier privacy alone was enough to have people flocking like ducks to it.

As everyone knew, in the Information Age, the definition of a private space was no longer limited to physical locations like secret basements.

Over the years, this private haven—existing in an entirely different dimension—had earned the approval of countless weirdos who thought differently from ordinary people. Here, they would exchange all sorts of insane, whimsical ideas.

Of course, Fu Qian didn't really care much for any of that.

The only reason he even visited the site was to solicit customers.

In a general sense, when people thought of the term "freelancer," their first reaction might be a writer hugging a laptop and lingering in various cafes. Or perhaps a photographer with flowing long hair, hauling professional equipment around and booking hotel rooms everywhere. Then there were translators, designers... the list went on.

But in Fu Qian's eyes, if one was going to be a freelancer, how could they possibly constrain themselves to the traditional models of their predecessors?

And so, aside from writing a bit of copy for unscrupulous game developers, Fu Qian had actually invented an entirely new profession for himself. He called it being a Razor Consultant.

With the word "consultant" in the title, it was easy to mistake it for some kind of advisory firm at first glance.

And in truth, the nature of the work was somewhat similar.

However, Fu Qian had honed it to a single point—focusing purely on the niche, vertical field of "persuading people to give up."

The work itself was also incredibly simple.

As everyone knew, people often fell into deep dilemmas over whether or not they should give up on a certain matter.

Most of the time, this resulted in a tug-of-war of rapid flip-flopping, and the entire process was exceedingly painful.

But if you were willing to pay a small fee, Fu Qian would step in to find an irrefutable reason for you to give up, helping you breeze through the crisis.

He hadn't come up with this idea on a whim. It was the result of careful consideration, custom-tailored to his own strengths—as someone who absolutely despised doing meaningless things, the one skill he had excelled at since childhood was finding a reason not to do something.

When Fu Qian had previously told Tan Ying's classmates that his hobby was exploring human nature, he hadn't just been talking nonsense.

...

As it turned out, the number of people who needed this kind of help was far greater than one might imagine.

Fu Qian had been in this industry for several years now. He had gone from being completely unknown in the beginning to achieving widespread notoriety later on, and the time in between had been quite an eventful journey.

By now, his consultation fees were anything but cheap.

However, since his business promotion relied heavily on word of mouth, and he was quite picky about his cases—flat-out refusing to take any that he didn't like—his income had never been particularly stable.

And ever since he became a task runner, he had neglected the business for quite a long time.

At this moment, Fu Qian logged into his long-dormant account and began sorting through his backend private messages—surprisingly, there was a substantial number of them.

Staring at the row of unread messages before him, Fu Qian's fingers flew across the keyboard. He quickly checked the boxes and hit delete without a second of hesitation.

The time was not right for these people, making them difficult to guide.

But after casually deleting the bulk of his "lucky audience," Fu Qian's gaze landed on one particular message.

The reason was simple: it wasn't a new inquiry, but a reply to a previous consultation.

In other words, it came from a former customer.

Now this was something new.

Based on past experience, every customer who had received his consultation might have had no doubts about his professionalism, but once the process was complete, almost none of them were ever willing to pop up and chat with him again.

The main reason for this was that the consultation process itself was simply too traumatizing to look back on; it left them completely devastated, both physically and mentally.

Sighing with emotion, Fu Qian clicked the message open.

[I don't know if you're free lately? If possible, I'd like to thank you in person]

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