Eldritch Horror Theatre

Sure enough, a young girl’s heart was a tangled, unpredictable thing.

Judging by her outward appearance, it was truly hard to tell that Eva possessed such an intense inner world.

If handwriting truly reflected the person, the strokes on those final two pages looked ready to take a machete to someone’s neck in an unstoppable rampage.

Yet it was still easy to recognize that most of this content had been written with the exact same pen he had just used.

Aside from the highly structured Q&A format, the notebook’s contents also had a clear dividing line—the handwriting abruptly turned fierce and deranged from a specific point onward.

But that wasn’t even the main point.

In the sections before that turning point, the questions were written in the same color and handwriting as the words on his coat, but the answers were clearly written by someone else.

The penmanship and tone were completely different; even the characters themselves were much larger.

The color was a grim, dark red, glaringly obvious beneath the current lighting.

It was real blood.Fu Qian performed another amateur appraisal and felt quite certain of his conclusion.

...

So this was where Eva had gotten her ”taboo knowledge”?

Questions casually jotted down in a notebook, suddenly receiving a response one day?

Words of blood seeping out to form answers?

It was a very classic horror story setup, a case of different tunes played with equal skill compared to his previous exploration of the Old House.

Unbothered by his reading environment, Fu Qian finished skimming the entire Q&A in the blink of an eye.

To sum it up, it read like a dark version of an astrology magic book.

It was packed with the inner thoughts of a young woman who was outwardly cheerful but inwardly sensitive, mixed with eerie, horror-style speculations, school urban legends, and the like.

Meanwhile, the blood-red handwriting maintained a serious tone, answering practically every question asked.

Even though a large portion of it seemed to be pure nonsense.

Because if things really worked the way it claimed, someone in this school would be dropping dead every few days.

Regardless, when these dozens of nonsensical claims were pieced together, they successfully painted a picture of hell.

Or perhaps it should be called Bloodletting High School?

Fu Qian looked up at the gruesome scene inside the stall and shook his head.

In fact, looking back at his recent actions, he realized he had inevitably broken several of the notebook’s taboos.

According to the rules written within, that should have resulted in quadriplegia at the very least.

This point alone seemed enough to prove it was spouting nonsense—though that wasn’t necessarily true.

Even Truth was divided into absolute and relative forms. Was it faintly possible that the contents of this book were actually true at a certain point in time?

For example, before the end of All Fools’ Day?

This wasn’t just a random, baseless leap of logic. After reading the entire notebook, there was one thing Fu Qian could confirm—although the blood-written answers were wildly absurd, they simply answered the questions honestly. There was no obvious attempt to instigate or systematically drive the questioner mad.

That made Eva’s seemingly deranged self-interrogations in the later pages feel somewhat abrupt.

Simply put, for a pen pal to suddenly stop responding, Eva’s reaction was a bit too extreme. It almost gave off the feeling that her entire worldview had collapsed.

It was so extreme that, even though it wasn’t written in the notebook, it gave the lingering impression that she might have verified the earlier contents in some way. There might have even been interactions involving Transcendent Tier properties, forging a connection far deeper than what appeared on the surface, which led to such severe withdrawal symptoms after suddenly losing it again.

...

What exact role did Transcendent Tier power play in this mission?

This was a question Fu Qian had been seeking an answer to for a long time.

First of all, they definitely existed, and even dictated the theme of some scripts.

But at the same time, they were overly theatrical. Their specific manifestations felt like urban legends coming out to play for the holidays, entirely different from the style of anomalies he usually dealt with.

He had deduced this conclusion primarily from the previous exploration of the Old House.

Add to that the fact that the Containment Object this time was called All Fools’ Day, and the Containment Fulfillment Conditions required completing all scripts.

It wasn’t hard to imagine a possibility: these special Transcendent Tier entities existed by clinging to the concept of All Fools’ Day, much like Santa Claus to Christmas.

And what he needed to do was use his Mortal Body to find the weaknesses within their theatrical boundaries one by one and eliminate them.

But what about the School of Twilight this time?

Under Mister Wolf’s continuous investigation and guidance, this seemingly terrifying and bizarre night had long since shed its magical facade, proving to be nothing more than the evil deeds of ordinary people.

A script that seemed far more complex and eerie than the Old House surprisingly lacked any Transcendent Tier manifestations, seemingly overturning his previous conclusions at a stroke.

While taking action earlier, Fu Qian had been pondering this contradiction without finding any meaningful explanation—until he got his hands on this notebook.

The excessively distinct changes within it reminded him of something.

Was it possible that the core theme of this school script was the aftereffects caused by the absence of the Transcendent Tier?

Were the deranged high schoolers he had encountered along the way actually all suffering from withdrawal symptoms, which ultimately led to this lively weekend?

While this made his next course of action seem ambiguous once again, the overall outline of the incident had grown much clearer.

The three scripts so far could once again be unified under the concept of All Fools’ Day.

But that brought up another problem. If he wasn’t meant to deal with the Transcendent Tier, how exactly was he supposed to ”correctly” complete the script?

Survive?

Whether it was the first script or this third one, as long as a person wasn’t so cowardly they died of fright, there didn’t seem to be much pressure to survive.

Uncover the truth? That seemed a bit too broad.

To be honest, each of the three scripts so far still had unanswered questions. He was far from uncovering the full truth.

In fact, Fu Qian had come to the restroom specifically to test this issue.

Finally closing the notebook in his hand, he carefully avoided the bloodstains on the floor and approached Salma once again.

Her wounds were simply too deep; even her eyes were somewhat shattered.

Staring at that gruesome face, Fu Qian applied some force, lifting the mangled head to slip the notebook underneath it.

As mentioned earlier, the notebook was quite small.

Just as Fu Qian adjusted its position so that her dangling long hair could perfectly conceal it, the light shining down on him suddenly extinguished.

At the same time, the head in his hands began to move.

...

Very nice.

Plunged into sudden darkness, the trembling long hair whipped against his face.

This sudden change would be considered a high-energy jump scare even in a horror movie.

Yet, in that moment, Fu Qian felt joy rather than shock. He didn’t relax his grip in the slightest, maintaining his posture to keep the head pressed tightly against himself.

Even when two hands quickly shot up to claw frantically at him, they couldn’t make him budge in the slightest.

About a breath later, having adapted to the change in lighting, he used the faint slivers of light to clearly see his surroundings.

As expected, a new script had begun.