Eldritch Horror Theatre

The scene flashed, and Fu Qian found himself already sitting in the Warehouse.

[Identity verification complete. Today’s work begins.]

Ignoring the daily routine greeting, Fu Qian moved with lightning speed, swiftly pulling a ring from his finger and placing it on the table.

Considering he was operating at the Academy, he had brought almost nothing else with him besides a few rings.

The one he had just taken off was the one he had acquired most recently—[Favor].

Without a second of hesitation, he slipped his mask back on.

[Warning, breach—]

The breach warning hadn’t even finished.

As expected, the scenery before his eyes continued to shift rapidly, completely unrestricted.

As a top-tier task runner, the Warehouse clearly wasn’t going to fuss over him bypassing standard procedures with his Reassignment authority....

The moment he returned to his seat in the conference room, the sensation of being marked hit him instantly.

Chaumont was indeed pulling his old trick again.

At the same time, gasps of alarm erupted throughout the room.

While not everyone was as perceptive as Fu Qian, the faint light illuminating the entire room in response to Chaumont’s actions was undeniably terrifying. It looked exactly like the prelude to a total massacre.

He had even specifically checked the roster...

Recalling Chaumont’s earlier actions, someone finally couldn’t sit still.

”Excellency Chaumont, what is the meaning of this?”

The one who spoke up was none other than Professor Yang, a demigod from Linghui Courtyard.

”Don’t worry. It’s just a simple inspection.”

Chaumont shot him a glance and offered a supremely perfunctory reply.

An inspection?

What kind of inspection warranted a Divine Emissary rushing over from thousands of miles away?

The explanation was utterly unconvincing.

...

As a renowned master, Professor Yang had his pride. Having been brushed off so casually, he couldn’t bring himself to press the issue and instead cast a subconscious glance at Li Weixuan beside him.

In fact, nearly half the room did the exact same thing.

Unfortunately, Li Weixuan remained silent. His expression was somber as he merely gave a slight nod, signaling for everyone to stay calm.

While Li Weixuan usually commanded great respect, such a subtle reaction did little to reassure them in what felt like a life-or-death situation.

Fortunately, quite a few people had noticed the same glowing mark flash beneath Li Weixuan’s feet earlier.

Realizing that he was subject to the same treatment, the group finally managed to suppress their mounting panic.

Hmm?

However, this forced composure lasted barely a few seconds. Under everyone’s terrified gazes, Chaumont flipped his wrist and produced a dark blue metallic cylinder adorned with exceptionally exquisite patterns.

Despite the cylinder clearly being sealed incredibly tight, an unsettling aura of distortion still leaked from within.

What exactly was he trying to do?

Click!

He didn’t torture their nerves for long. The very next moment, the metal cylinder slid open to the side.

An ear?

Fu Qian immediately caught a clear glimpse of what lay inside.

It was a normal-sized left ear. Its shape was practically standard, looking as if it had just been ripped off someone’s head.

If there was anything peculiar about it, it was that one half was swollen while the other half was shriveled, intertwining to create a deeply unnatural sense of distortion.

And right as Fu Qian observed it, he felt the ear follow Chaumont’s mark and ”look” at him.

Yes, despite being an ear, it gave the distinct sensation of an eye locking onto a person.

It didn’t end there. A moment later, the ear canal squirmed before suddenly snapping open like a mouth.

Boom!

Some incomprehensible raving instantly echoed through the room. A maddening tearing sensation ripped through his mind and spread all the way to his physical body.

At the same time, using this raving as a conduit, Fu Qian felt a gaze that could only be described as supreme flash past. A seemingly familiar stretch of night sky momentarily appeared before his eyes.

However, before he could observe it closely, the raving came to an abrupt halt.

With a click, the metallic cylinder snapped shut, securely sealing the ear away once again.

The sense of being watched didn’t entirely vanish, of course, because Chaumont was still staring in his direction.

Facing the Divine Emissary’s slightly solemn scrutiny, Fu Qian—who had kept himself completely under control and shown no particular reaction the entire time—simply allowed the man to study him.

Between Chaumont’s bizarre stunt and the maddening ravings from earlier, he already had a faint guess as to what the man’s purpose was.

The decision to put away the Favor ring had undoubtedly been the right one.

Catching from the corner of his eye that everything outside the window remained perfectly normal and the Red Moon hadn’t appeared, Fu Qian mentally gave his own decisiveness a thumbs-up.

From his previous experiences, he knew that even if there were rarely any outward signs, his so-called ”Mother” was essentially always watching him.

Any high-level existence imposing itself on him could potentially trigger a reaction from her. Yasui Tokiyuki from last time was a prime example.

In fact, he had relied on exactly that to pinpoint Yasui Tokiyuki’s arrival back then.

...

Chaumont naturally wasn’t actually here to silence everyone. The Night Watchers weren’t brain-dead enough to pull something like that.

While he couldn’t immediately confirm what Chaumont was here for, the man’s marking tactic had instantly put Fu Qian on high alert.

This bizarre and intricate method was obviously just a preliminary step. Inside the Unseen Hill, the real follow-up would be Old Man Stoss’s killing blow—a strike bordering on authority.

The power of the Favor ring undeniably stemmed from the Red Moon. Keeping it on his person would only make the Red Moon’s gaze tighter and more sensitive.

Under those circumstances, if another high-tier force descended upon him, the chances of a blood moon lighting up the sky would be terrifyingly high.

And such an anomaly would almost certainly draw the Night Watchers’ attention and be linked back to the Ye Island incident.

Now that he had left the ring behind, that fleeting gaze from moments ago had clearly failed to provoke a reaction from ”Mother.”

Better yet, Fu Qian had also deduced a crucial piece of information in reverse: the fleeting scene he had just glimpsed felt seemingly familiar. He had seen it during the task where he had to deliver the four doses of sedatives in order.

And if he remembered correctly, the task summary mentioned that his actions had essentially helped blind a messenger the Night Watchers had planted near some source of evil, preventing Yasui Tokiyuki’s ascension from being interrupted.

After all this time, had the Night Watchers finally caught onto his little trick?

Chaumont’s stunt just now seemed to rely on something extracted from that very source of evil to test everyone. He hadn’t come for Yi’an at all, which explained why he had completely ignored what Li Weixuan and the others were talking about.

Swiftly weighing the plausibility of this theory, Fu Qian didn’t rush to speak up. Naturally, someone else was bound to test the waters for him.

At this point, the conference room had already erupted into chaos.

”What on earth is going on?”

Professor Yang’s face was completely icy.

”Excellency Chaumont, I demand an explanation.”

Beside him, Li Weixuan’s tone was equally severe.

An explanation?

Chaumont swept his gaze over the room and gave a slow nod.

”Yasui Tokiyuki is dead.”