Eldritch Horror Theatre

So this was the legendary exchanging glances on the road, huh? Walking down the street and having someone hand you an eye.

Staring at the round orb before him, Fu Qian felt a profound sense that public morals were improving by the day.

It was even freshly plucked. Not only was the pupil clear and profound, but the cluster of tissue trailing behind it still wriggled faintly, its physiological functions not yet completely halted.

Truly a generous gift.

Worthy of someone confident enough to decisively initiate a death match. This move by Master Yuhun was a genuine open scheme.

First off, there was no way this eyeball was simple. If he actually took it and popped it in, the risk factor would be terrifyingly high.

But if he didn’t take it... then it wouldn’t just be a matter of risk.

They were in the middle of a tug-of-war. Flinching in the face of an opponent’s move—that sheer lack of confidence would be enough to cause his hard-won Health Bar to plummet right back down.

”Thank you.”

Faced with this choice, Fu Qian didn’t waste a single second. In the very next moment, he had already accepted the eyeball and offered his thanks.Holding the eyeball in his hand, he didn’t forget to compare it before casually stuffing it into the socket on the same side as his opponent’s missing eye.

That was right—he didn’t gouge his own eye out first. He simply shoved the new one in right alongside it.

For one thing, as a flesh-and-blood combatant, this was hardly a difficult feat.

For another, Fu Qian had absolute faith in just how bizarre this eyeball was. It shouldn’t require any special integration.

...

No wonder they said double pupils paved the path to invincibility. This feeling was truly something else.

Perhaps because he had accepted the gift a bit too quickly, Master Yuhun remained silent for a moment. Fu Qian clearly didn’t care, entirely focused on experiencing the changes.

It didn’t disappoint. There wasn’t the slightest hint of rejection; the instant he shoved it in, Fu Qian gained the vision of a third eye.

As for what he actually saw, it was even somewhat seemingly familiar.

Once, back at the Academy, when he was helping Professor Ah Kai recreate the image of the miraculous creature Huo, the professor had cast a Miracle on him called Yesterday Once More, discovered by the runaway Dean Nepheli.

Its effect back then had allowed him to scan through his past experiences from a unique perspective, as if time itself had become a visible dimension.

The sensation right now was strikingly similar. Winter Academy still existed around him, but it occupied only a tiny fraction of his vision.

He saw the Academy’s past, and himself within that past... He saw the pasts of the Academy that had never come to pass, and the unseen versions of himself within them.

That was right. Fu Qian even saw the apocalyptic scene he had experienced not long ago. More than that, he saw the apocalyptic scene where he didn’t exist at all.

All of this overlapped and intertwined in utter chaos, yet it was distinctly different from what he had seen in Yesterday Once More. Every single layer was just as real as the Winter Academy right in front of him.

In addition to that, Fu Qian also saw the numerous times he had used Lucid Dream within the Academy’s grounds.

Despite them clearly being the contents of dreams, as a Sovereign he couldn’t sense any difference whatsoever. They existed entirely in parallel with the various realities he had just witnessed.

Coupled with the fact that his timeline of appearing at the Academy had already been chaotic due to his missions, the final overlapping effect was staggering. At a single glance, not only was the space completely incomprehensible, but the very concept of time seemed to collapse alongside it.

”By what metric do you distinguish reality from a dream? Is it more stable? More painful? Or is it because you can actually die?”

Amidst this wondrous visual experience, Master Yuhun’s enlightenment appropriately echoed out.

”Is it possible that these have never been anything more than illusions? There is no fundamental difference between them—only a difference in Depth.

”Even the concept of Depth is merely another illusion. Only experience is real.”

His tone was serene yet deafeningly profound, making it easy to imagine how this man must have looked while giving a lecture.

”You have learned very well. Language, and even cognitive symbols, have been nothing but a poison to wisdom since the very moment of their conception.

”And my greatest mistake was once treating them as treasures, trying to organize them to achieve ’correctness.’ Tell me, what do you see yourself bringing to this world?”

In the very next moment, he even threw out the legendary pop quiz.

”Chaos. It’s like forcibly sifting through a pile of sand to find every six-sided grain, numbering them, and calling it order.”

Fortunately, Fu Qian’s comprehension was quite exceptional. Fully grasping the core theme of this lecture, he provided his answer without hesitation.

”Indeed. That is why the power behind you is a mistake, and you yourself are the most extreme manifestation of that mistake.”

...

”The greater the power, the greater the harm, is that it?”

Despite being explicitly praised, Fu Qian didn’t let it go to his head, continuing to read between the lines.

His conversational style was certainly a bit cultish, but from Fu Qian’s perspective, Master Yuhun was already being as straightforward as possible; the obscurity wasn’t intentional.

The actual substance of it wasn’t overly complex to understand, either. To summarize, it was simply proving his previous statement—there had never been any ’correctness.’ The things the Warehouse drove him to do were only making everything even more wrong.

So-called reality was nothing more than a slightly deeper dream. Looking through this person’s eyes, one could know that there was no fundamental difference between the two.

Because every object and every person were merely delusions born from his ”attachment to form.”

And his own ongoing efforts to contain leaks, preventing futures that shouldn’t exist from becoming reality, were just wishful thinking. Aside from adding to the chaos, they held absolutely no meaning.

In fact, because he was far too efficient, the harm he caused was even greater than that of his predecessors.

Even the Warehouse backing him was nothing more than a manifestation of his obsession.

Although, up until now, Master Yuhun didn’t seem entirely capable of controlling this obsession.

Otherwise, when he had been tossed over to the Mother of Gospel earlier, the man ought to have been able to yank him right back.

All in all, while his train of thought sounded quite wild, it instantly brought the Red Moon’s warning to mind—do not become intoxicated by the Lie.

Placed in this context, the phrase was inexplicably fitting.

Logically speaking, of all the concepts the other party had put forth so far, absolutely nothing Fu Qian had seen or experienced since entering the Bookstore World could actually prove any of them false.

”It doesn’t matter. The greater the harm, the greater the harvest upon taking care of it. Using it as the beginning of this world is entirely fitting.”

Just as Fu Qian was marveling once again at the bizarre nature of this world, Master Yuhun made no attempt to deny the extent of his harmfulness.

His tone was calm and resolute. Clearly, after achieving complete enlightenment, his Dao heart would never again be clouded by dust.

”Just like Akons?”

Fortunately, Fu Qian hadn’t been counting on any room for negotiation to begin with.

”Yes. Running away is never the answer. It is time to deal with the mistake that is the outsider.”

Master Yuhun readily admitted to Akons’s crimes.

”So, it was that experience back then that solidified your resolve to kill me?”

Clicking his tongue, Fu Qian quickly realized that this current situation might actually involve elements of a work-related injury.

”No. The destructive Meteor targeting the ’past’—the moment I saw it, I knew it was time for everything to begin... much like the enlightenment I received when I first became aware of the ’past’ back there.”

Uh... so this wasn’t an issue on the administrator’s end, but rather a work-related injury belonging to the Night Watchers Special Operations Consultant?