The Eldritch Files

The moment Han Su entered, he knew the Doctor's guess was right once again.

This was indeed a transit station for smuggled relics.

The warehouse wasn't large, filled with shelves and miscellaneous items.

Vases, ironware, fragments of ancient computers, and damaged books and CDs were scattered everywhere. Each item possessed a quality that seemed close to the modern era, yet upon closer inspection, was distinctly different. It was as if they could transport one back thousands of years.

Many of the objects were still covered in dust and mud, looking as if they had been recently unearthed.

Judging by the importance the Administrative Hall placed on these relics, turning them in would count as cracking a major case.

However, Han Su was in no mood to bother with any of that. A quick scan of the room revealed two figures standing behind a shelf in the middle of the storage room, their backs to him.

They were clearly standing right there, yet he couldn't hear them breathing at all.

Han Su raised the hand holding the stun baton to cover his left eye. After a quick scan revealed nothing out of the ordinary, he slowly began to walk forward.

Once he rounded the shelf, he saw the two people standing side by side.

They were drenched in layers of sweat, and the smell was foul. They didn't react to Han Su's approach at all, their eyes fixed on something in front of them.

As he got closer, Han Su could sense the aura of living people on them, but they also gave off a feeling of being completely empty, like two hollow, human-shaped sacs. It felt as if the true living things were awakening within their bodies.

Han Su restrained himself from acting for the moment. Following their gaze, he saw an oil painting propped up in the corner.

His pupils constricted slightly. 'This is the source of the contamination?'

The painting depicted something like an ancient altar, packed with figures in various locations. Some wore black Sacrificial Robes, others wore white followers' robes. All in all, there appeared to be as many as twenty people, arranged like a group photo.

Each of the two men was staring at a different figure in the painting. And as they watched, the figures they stared at began to fade, as if the paint itself was evaporating, turning the vivid characters into faint shadows.

There were at least a dozen such faded, blank shadows on the canvas already.

'Figures disappearing from the painting, Two-bodied People appearing in reality...'

'So, the people from the painting are entering the real world, occupying their bodies, and moving about in society?'

'...'

Penetration meant entering reality.

It seemed this painting's contamination of reality worked through "gazing"—occupying the body of the gazer.

'This job is simpler than I thought!'

Han Su quickly came to a conclusion. The anomaly here was still only in Tier One of its contamination.

Anomalies that had successfully completed their Penetration usually had a specific purpose in the real world.

Some aimed to proselytize, making more people believe in the Gods they worshipped. Others sought to build some kind of mysterious altar. And some were simply trying to carry out a special directive.

But this painting hadn't finished its Penetration yet. The instincts of the Two-bodied People outside were only focused on protecting the painting so it could complete the process. As long as he interrupted it now, he could effectively snuff out its Penetration.

Seeing that the wills of the two men beside him were fading more and more severely, Han Su no longer hesitated.

He gripped the stun baton, and with a loud CRACKLE, jabbed it directly into one of the men.

The man didn't even make a sound as the powerful current sent him flying. He crashed into a shelf, knocking down countless bottles and jars.

But after receiving such a strong shock, the man suddenly started gasping for breath. For a moment, a flicker of life returned to his eyes. His throat seemed constricted as he struggled to plead with Han Su for help.

"Help... help me..."

"..."

Han Su ignored his plea. He simply walked over, gave him another jolt with the stun baton to knock him out completely, and then did the same to the other man.

Only then did he turn back to face the painting alone.

As if meeting Han Su's gaze, the pupils of the remaining figures in the painting suddenly shifted their angles in unison.

It looked as if they had all turned their heads at once to focus their attention on Han Su.

Han Su, however, had already stuck the stun baton back into his briefcase. He reached out with his right hand and began to chant in a low voice:

[Submit to my will!]

[...]

Zero Sequence Spell No. 06.

It could effectively seal or even erase the Spiritual Activity of people or objects, causing them to lose their contaminating properties for a short time.

As the Spell was spoken, a faint tremor filled the air. It felt as if a colossal, invisible presence was slowly emerging from the deepest void, like something rising from the depths of space to the surface of water.

As the final syllable of Han Su's Spell faded, shadows gathered behind him, coalescing into a massive, shadowy form that floated in mid-air.

As Han Su extended his right hand, the giant shadow mirrored his movement, slowly extending its own right hand.

Its outstretched hand, through some mysterious resonance, merged with Han Su's right hand, and together they pressed down toward the oil painting.

"HUMMM!"

But at the very instant Han Su touched the painting, the sound of whispers seemed to emerge from the air.

The next moment, Han Su suddenly felt the air around him become extremely crowded, pressing in on him with an overwhelming sense of discomfort.

His vision blurred, as if the signal had been cut.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself surrounded by people who had appeared from nowhere.

There were seven or eight of them. Some wore ornate Sacrificial Robes, while others were in cheap, white sackcloth clerical shirts. They were all crammed into the narrow space of the storage room with him, their expressions pale, hollow, and numb.

They crowded around him, slowly extending their hands, a dense forest of palms pressing onto his shoulders, chest, back, and arms.

A cold presence emanated from every point of contact, slithering into his body like a snake.

'Contaminate me?'

Han Su's eyes narrowed. He knew his attempt to seal the painting had provoked it, and now it was trying to fight back.

'Is this the danger Miss Ai warned me about?'

Since he had been on guard the whole time, Han Su wasn't panicked by this development. Instead, he immediately began calculating how to counter it.

It was only then that he realized what made this mission different.

Neither the Two-bodied People contaminated by the painting nor its own Penetration ability were particularly frightening.

Although its mission level was comparable to the Crystal Skull's, the danger was nowhere near the same.

Until he made contact with the source.

The contaminating power that erupted from the painting in that instant was on a completely different scale from its initial manifestation.

This burst of contamination felt like a dozen people trained in Mysterious Power attacking him all at once.

[I shall enter the Abyss!]

Without a second thought, he immediately recited Spell No. 01, attempting to extract his own existence from beneath the weight of so much contamination. But to his surprise, Spell No. 01, which had never failed him before, only caused his form to flicker violently before he reappeared in the same spot.

Immediately following this, his Spiritual Power was completely drained, with almost nothing left.

'This is bad...'

Alarm bells screamed in Han Su's mind.

The "people" from the painting were relentlessly contaminating him. In this situation, his existence couldn't be extracted. Forcing the spell had only served to needlessly drain his Spiritual Power.

If it weren't for his "battery swapping" ability, he would have been a sitting duck.

But even with the ability to swap batteries, while waiting for the new supply of Spiritual Power to connect, he clearly saw the seven or eight hands on him actually sink *into* his body. There were no wounds where they made contact; it was as if their flesh was merging with his.

An indescribable sense of eeriness washed over him, accompanied by a numbing sensation in his brain.

It was like dozing off; in the blink of an eye, he was in a dream.

And in this dream, he was far from the modern age, traveling backward and backward through the river of time, leaving modern civilization behind.

He passed the entire Reconstruction Era, arriving at a negligible point in the long-distant Radiation Age.

He found himself living in an underground shelter strained to its absolute limit, facing scarce resources and a broken-down ecological simulation system.

Outside the thick lead walls was a world that had collapsed centuries ago. A brutal sun hung in the sky, casting down intense radiation that could melt flesh from bone. Beside him were newborn infants with degenerated eyes and webbed fingers.

He could even hear himself muttering, "The evolution is too fast, way too fast..."

"It's been less than a hundred years, and evolution has already started. We've only had three generations, and the children are evolving into... rats..."

"We have to get out. We have to walk the earth again. If this world won't let us live, then we'll adapt to it. The animals can become active again, they can adapt to the new environment, and so can we..."

"..."

"Hah..."

Han Su suddenly snapped awake, his eyes darting to one of the figures in front of him.

This one had also come from the painting. He wore a black Priest's Robe, and his hand was already fused inside Han Su's body.

It was him. He had just tried to overwrite Han Su's will, to turn Han Su into him.

These ancestors from a bygone era were using the painting as a medium to assimilate his will!

The shock of this realization was terrifying. But just then, Han Su finally felt a new surge of Spiritual Power. The battery swap was successful. He held nothing back and immediately began to chant in a deep, low voice:

[The Gods issue their decree!]

The Sea of Spiritual was instantly activated, pushing back against the painting's mental contamination!

The moment the Fishing Song left his lips, he felt his Sea of Spiritual boil, and the countless people crowded around him were forced back.

He could even see the hordes of people pressed against him writhing in pain and screaming silently.

But his own Spiritual Power was also being consumed at a furious rate. In the blink of an eye, it was gone again. The figures that had nearly been expelled now pressed in even closer, invading his body even more deeply.

Some had their entire arms buried inside him. Others had even pushed half their bodies in, leaving only their legs dangling outside.

In an instant, he had become a monster with seven or eight heads and three feet growing out of his stomach.

In that same instant, Han Su was filled with dread: 'My Spiritual Power is too low. I can't withstand the contamination from the last era...'

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