Eldritch Horror Theatre

The ”taste” was a bit strange.

Although he had just finished a night shift, Fu Qian didn’t worry too much about calories. He swallowed half the arm in a single bite.

As it turned out, although it was a backup plan, it was ultimately a final measure taken when at the end of one’s rope.

If it had gone unnoticed, it might have become a troublesome hidden danger.

It truly used authority as a bridge to execute a covert maneuver under the cover of a diversion, fighting for a chance at possession.

Unfortunately, it had chosen the wrong target.

Under the professional handling of the King of the Abandoned Prison, it failed to put up any decent resistance, even with a slight stress reaction at the last moment.

Consistent with his impressions from previous missions, the ”food’s” final struggles manifested a highly complex flavor profile that left a lasting aftertaste.

The entire process didn’t last long. Soon, this higher entity’s pinned hopes were cleanly digested, happily welcoming Insight.

Danger also meant opportunity.Back when the Warehouse indicated it wouldn’t help restore his status, Fu Qian had wondered if he could turn this drop in treatment to his advantage and bring some extra benefits out of his missions.

It just went to show that a person really must have dreams. With his opponent’s cooperation, the very first attempt yielded an unexpected harvest.

Even the specific details of this harvest were somewhat unusual.

[Through a body of flesh and blood, recreate the ancient face and spew the breath of destruction. The breath is so pure it can be called the purest symbol of power. The only problem is that there are three ancient faces.]

...

Recreating the ancient face on his body and spewing the pure symbol of destruction?

This description naturally brought to mind the Three Rings of Fire, Lightning, and Blood that had precipitated in his palm earlier.

Even the quantity matched, except that instead of rings nested within rings, it was now three faces side by side.

As for the last sentence—why having three faces was considered a problem... Fu Qian turned his head and gazed deep into the Warehouse.

At the same time, the Rank that brought immense pressure to the surroundings finally lowered slowly.

After returning to Tier 2, Fu Qian thought for a moment and directly activated his newly acquired skill.

Roar—

Almost instantly, the brightness before his eyes surged.

A beam of orange-red flame, carrying an endless scorching intent of destruction, spewed directly from his chest.

Thick as a raging torrent, it blasted all the way into the depths of the Warehouse.

It was actually a face?

Not in a hurry to interrupt the process, Fu Qian looked down to examine his outfit, which had been completely ruined once again.

He saw that the large mouth he had just used for Insight had undergone another mutation in flesh and blood.

It was truly a more complete head by comparison, though obviously not human.

Sharp horns, thick scales, fangs—the face was clearly closer to a reptile’s, like the various giant dragons he had seen before.

It actually looked quite majestic and domineering.

Watching the flames spew from that large mouth, Fu Qian offered his commentary while turning slightly, allowing the zone of destruction to expand into a fan shape.

Of course, he didn’t intentionally destroy his workstation; he always managed to avoid the shelves.

However, this surging, pure destruction was indeed worthy of being a higher entity’s lingering echo; it felt like it possessed at least a Tier 1 level of power.

And although the Warehouse didn’t seem as tense as when he incarnated as the King of the Abandoned Prison, it still appeared to be under a certain amount of pressure.

Furthermore, such a scene faintly reminded him of an old acquaintance.

Fu Qian silently evaluated the situation. Not wanting to push it too far, he finally canceled the flame breath.

Roar—

In the next moment, however, a blinding cluster of electrical arcs swept out from his chest in an extremely tyrannical manner.

So it really was like this... fire, lightning, and blood.

Fu Qian was absolutely certain this wasn’t his own choice; whatever he breathed out appeared automatically.

The three faces seemed to endow this skill with excessive randomness, including the faces themselves.

Compared to the previous dragon head, the head appearing on his chest at this moment had a distinctly different shape.

It was vaguely non-human, vaguely resembling a reptile, but definitely not the same one.

A single eye, no horns, and eerie long whiskers flying amidst bluish scales.

As the breath wreaked havoc, this face slowly migrated—until it stopped at the unhealed stump of his severed arm.

...

He couldn’t choose what to spew, but he could choose where to spew it from.

As a flesh and blood expert, Fu Qian didn’t even need to turn his body this time; by simply shifting the face’s position, he successfully achieved a fan-shaped strike zone.

As for the old acquaintance he remembered... Fu Qian raised the arm that now ended in a dragon’s head.

Once upon a time, that person had assumed the exact same form to demonstrate the power of limb grafting to him on the waters of the Archipelago.

That’s right, he was referring to one of the founders of the Rebirth Club, Old Man Lu.

The fan-shaped flames from earlier had almost instantly brought to mind their past shared travels.

So much so that when he activated the skill again, Fu Qian attempted a slight adjustment to his appearance.

It turned out that while he couldn’t choose the face’s type, it wasn’t strictly confined to his chest.

At this moment, his appearance was infinitely close to orthodox limb grafting.

And the power level of this lightning breath was in no way inferior to the previous flames.

With this unexpected harvest, it seemed he could easily play the role of someone who had successfully grafted the power of a Deity?

Old Man Lu, working with painstaking dedication and solitary devotion, had finally proven to the world that limb grafting was the future...

Roar—

Under Fu Qian’s careful adjustments, the third breath appeared directly from his severed arm. He didn’t even forget to tweak the face and hairstyle.

As a result, at a glance, it looked exactly like the glorious return of Old Man Lu Ming.

Moreover, what spewed out this time was flames again, and the shape of the dragon’s head was completely identical to the first one.

That’s right—not only could he not choose, but they didn’t even appear in order. It was truly random.

The imagined blood-attribute breath was still nowhere to be seen—and it seemed he wouldn’t be seeing it for the time being.

Just like the previous Quiet Reflection and Wandering, the breath didn’t consume his own energy, but relatively speaking, it required independent charging.

After three consecutive uses, the new skill could no longer be activated. Instead, it needed time to accumulate and recover.

Fortunately, he wasn’t in that much of a hurry. Repeatedly causing offense was already impolite enough.

This time, the flames were only spewed for a brief instant before Fu Qian ended it early, leaving time for the repair work on his severed elbow.

He was already quite satisfied.

When fully charged, it provided three consecutive Tier 1 level attacks, and even boasted excellent recognizability and deceptive qualities.

For a mission labeled number 3 to yield this level of harvest, what more could he ask for?

Even though he still hadn’t heard the honorific name, just the form of this skill could still faintly help him further understand the state of that Ancient Higher Being.

The pure randomness alone seemed enough to let one sense a certain extreme chaos, let alone these three incompatible faces—could it be that it wasn’t the authority of the Divine Station that was too chaotic, but rather that it was a chaotic Divine Station to begin with?

Did the three faces originally belong to three different ”Hims”?