Eldritch Horror Theatre

Is it a dream or not?

Ever since becoming the Dream Dominator, he had never felt anything quite like this.

His consciousness wandered the boundary between dream and reality. It felt entirely within his grasp, yet transient as dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows—an indescribably marvelous sensation.

Fu Qian didn’t share Madam Jill’s line of sight, but a deeper sensation still pulsed through the unique connection forged by Crimson Frenzy.

While it was never difficult for him to force a distinction between dream and reality, this sensation was bizarre—it felt as though an extra dimension of time had been layered on top.

The Anchor Point of the ”present” had vanished. For a fleeting moment, he felt as if he were drifting through history—and something was hiding deep within this surreal state.

[Current task updated: Kill the Holy Infant Calamity Star whose Rebirth has halted.]

The moment Fu Qian locked onto that sensation, a new system prompt echoed in his mind.

...

So it had devolved into his favorite kind of assassination mission after all. But this target—the Holy Infant Calamity Star?It sounded rather imposing.

The specific mention of Rebirth made it hard to equate this being with a typical Divine Child—the sort that higher entities seemed to pop out whenever they were bored.

Or perhaps... this was actually the honorific name of a higher entity itself?

This wasn’t just baseless speculation. An instant later, Fu Qian—whose footsteps hadn’t stopped once—traced his sensory lock to something highly unusual up ahead.

A Statue?

It stood quietly up ahead, its face turned to the side. It was clearly a woman.

She was the height of an ordinary person, and lacked a pedestal beneath her feet, yet nothing about her looked truly human.

Her head was bowed and her gaze lowered, yet she exuded an elegant, luxurious aura, her face even obscured by a thin veil.

Even so, that didn’t stop Fu Qian from recognizing those features. It was the spitting image of Jill.

Was this La Nina?

That would perfectly align with his earlier theory: the parasite incubating inside Jill shared her exact face.

Furthermore, her concealment skills were absurdly high. He had to plunder his way through the entire place to scrape together enough resources for an audience.

It made perfect sense, flawlessly proving the importance of letting logic dictate action in a complex environment.

The only issue was the title of Virgo. A maiden was generally supposed to be unmarried at the very least, so how was she pregnant?

Yes, pregnant. The Statue before him—its body, garments, and every single detail—was carved from a pristine, translucent material. It looked exactly like an ice sculpture, even radiating a genuine chill.

Because of that clarity, a single glance was enough to see her abnormally swollen lower abdomen, as well as the seemingly frozen fetus suspended inside.

It was the only thing within the body that possessed any color.

Blood-red threads, much like those of the Scarlet Angel, densely and intricately outlined every part of its body.

At the same time, seeing this crystalline material—which he had stared at countless times by now—converge into this specific shape made it suddenly difficult to look at directly. For a moment, it even made Fu Qian feel distinctly frail and insignificant.

The last time he experienced a sensation like this was when the true body of the Blazing Rainbow enacted its Descent.

Although the intensity was far less than back then, it implicitly validated his earlier, half-baked theory—

This thing wasn’t an Offspring or a mere extension of a higher entity’s power. It was a true higher entity itself.

”Its development looks pretty normal.”

Naturally, none of that stopped Fu Qian from staring openly. He scrutinized every detail, practically giving it a visual 4D ultrasound.

...

It wasn’t a baseless conclusion. Even with his professional eye, he couldn’t spot a single structural deformity.

This creation, which shouldn’t have been human at all, lacked a single non-human trait.

And that wasn’t even the only strange part.

His thorough examination hadn’t been driven by morbid curiosity. Through his observation, Fu Qian arrived at a purely intuitive conclusion: this wasn’t some incomplete, juvenile form. This was this higher entity’s normal state.

It didn’t need to break out and grow up. It could complete its Rebirth right there in the womb, and was currently just one step away from doing exactly that.

Unfortunately, that final step seemed to be frozen.

The proof was that every blood-red thread composing the Holy Infant seemed to be permeated by the frost of the outside ice crystals, halting their pulsation entirely.

At a glance, the sculpture looked like an exquisite piece of art, where pristine materials and flawless carving had come together in a masterpiece surpassing nature’s craft.

It wasn’t just the entity, either. The incubation of the Crimson Frenzy within Fu Qian’s own body had also ground to a halt.

Not to mention, the wording of the newly updated task—referencing a ”halted Rebirth”—also confirmed this frozen state.

As for the cause... Fu Qian suspected he couldn’t escape the title of prime culprit.

While admiring the artwork, he didn’t forget to take stock of his surroundings.

The cold stone prison was gone, and Jill and the others were nowhere to be seen.

In its place stood the fully upgraded Crystal Prison.

The architectural style remained exactly the same. The layout was deeply familiar, right down to the inverted, downward-bulging dome he could see overhead.

However, everything was now constructed entirely from exquisite, translucent ice crystals that radiated a piercing chill.

It was as if the Frozen Sea had finally breached the interior, assimilating everything.

The final ripples left behind by the Knights of the Apocalypse could also be detected here.

Pestilence, crystallization, agony—not a single one was missing from his senses, and visually, they shared the exact same lineage.

But this abstract scenery wasn’t the main issue. The main issue was that standing within it, Fu Qian seemed to feel his own foulness.

It felt as though the chaotic core trait of the Resplendent Tyrant had undergone further magnification and Sublimation.

Simply standing there was enough to earn him the illustrious title of world’s bane—the sort that couldn’t be left unpurged to appease heaven and earth.

In short, through his final burst of nitrogen acceleration, he had managed to pinpoint his target. By tracing their connection, he synchronized into the time and space where it was hiding—a plane far more transcendent than reality—and successfully introduced his disorder.

The Rebirth, which could have been completed upon the descent of the four Knights of the Apocalypse, had been forcibly paused by him, a pollutant.

Now, all he needed to do was further execute this Excellency, the Holy Infant.

Crackle—

Of course, the other party would also execute him.

After all, who would like dirty things?

While rapidly making deductions, Fu Qian watched helplessly as clusters of electrical arcs began climbing and converging across the crystal-clear dome above.

He wasn’t surprised by the attack. Given its appearance earlier, he had expected some kind of extreme freezing assault, but it turned out to be a Tesla coil?

For a moment, Fu Qian couldn’t help but marvel at the unpredictability of the world.

Furthermore, although he had crossed paths with more than one High-Tier Transcendent who commanded similar powers, this relatively unassuming electrical current was absolutely not something those flashy lightning storms could compare to.

Whoosh—

He casually fired an Air Bullet at the Statue. Simultaneously, an ordinary-looking bolt of lightning abruptly crashed down from overhead.

Although this target...

A rather terrible premonition prompted Fu Qian to trigger Blood Crusade, but the flash in his vision smashed directly into the Statue.