Eldritch Horror Theatre

’Did I scare the little kid? Another mark added to my long list of sins.’

A sudden variable arose during this tense moment, yet Fu Qian remained unfazed. Instead, he found himself reflecting on his tendency to frighten others.

A person had to have empathy. This was a festive occasion, sure, but if the revelry went too far, it would still exceed the participants’ psychological limits.

Children were in a critical stage of development, after all. If they whipped out an Umbilical Cord in a fit of displeasure and strangled someone with it, one could hardly complain.

Yes, at that very moment, Fu Qian truly felt the Umbilical Cord tighten around his neck.

Suffocation—but on a mental level.

To be honest, given his body’s current state, having his neck snapped wouldn’t be a big deal. Any random spot on his form was in far more gruesome condition than that.

Yet at that moment, even with his inspiration currently at zero, he clearly felt a distinct abnormality.

Peaceful slumber—that was the first phrase that sprang to Fu Qian’s mind.

It was as if the sensation of the fetus’s swaddling clothes had been transferred to him through the crying.Quiet, gentle, undisturbed—and utterly beyond his control.

The resplendent hall was still right before his eyes, yet it was completely out of reach.

The Flame of Frenzy still surged from his body, blotting out the sky, yet it could no longer affect a single thing.

Correspondingly, the other self within his body instantly ceased all activity.

Even the all-eroding Fire of Sin vanished completely.

...

A startling realization.

Admittedly, this abrupt change truly challenged human comprehension.

Theoretically, what had just occurred was a clash between at least three beings who could be called higher entities. After a bout of entanglement, the situation had escalated to the brink of a fight to the death.

Yet without even a moment’s buffer, a single wail instantly severed all ties and engagements between them.

If it were only that, Fu Qian would have interpreted it as a high-level banishment.

An effect that even a higher entity could not resist, ignoring all entanglements on the Deity level to directly isolate him from the battlefield.

While he could no longer crash the bridal chamber, it also spared him from the newlyweds’ wrath.

The problem, however, was that apart from this Deity-level isolation, there was another change that made the situation incomprehensible—the color of the fire was changing.

Yes, the Frenzied Flame still gushed from his body, but it was surprisingly no longer golden.

It wasn’t even the red-tinged gold that resulted from being tainted by the Fire of Sin; it was a dull, murky grayish-black.

Not only had the color lost all its festive cheer, but its texture had grown viscous and heavy, like the endlessly scattering, withering ashes of a dying world.

Visual effects were one thing, but Fu Qian was absolutely certain that was merely the most trivial aspect—the very essence of the Flame of Frenzy was changing.

Yes, it was still his authority, impossible for anyone else to seize.

Yet as its wielder, he felt the destructive traits seeping from it growing unfamiliar.

His authority was transforming?

In that instant, Fu Qian arrived at a chilling conclusion.

This was truly an eye-opener.

Even during his initial research into the Fruit and Sugar framework, he had only compared various authorities to sugar that never lost its fundamental taste.

It could be extracted from fruit or used as a substitute, but its essence remained unchanged—it was the very foundation of the transcendent world.

However, the scene before him was entirely subversive—had he not merely been banished from the world, but exiled completely from the transcendent sequence?

Rather than generating the dread that ”mysticism no longer exists,” this astonishing discovery drove Fu Qian’s mind into a state of unprecedented excitement.

The decision to play Ariel to the very end during this task seemed to be a stellar choice after all.

As he mentally gave himself a thumbs-up, a memory of a past conversation quickly surfaced in his mind.

What followed was an equally bizarre conclusion.

...

If a new Divine Trait were to emerge, information about its existence—and even its very nature—would be broadcast before it was even fully formed...

The only variable was whether your Rank was high enough and your perception sharp enough to notice it—just like Blazing Rainbow.

Yes, Fu Qian had just recalled that survivor of the Long Night—an entity he had dealt with frequently but had only ever met once in the Sacred Night Capital.

He had asked Him a question back then: given that he was walking a completely new Divine Path—one that could even be called a fallacy—how had He known the exact nature of his Divine Trait, allowing Him to actively conceal it while simultaneously leaving a decoy for him in the Deity Burial Ground?

The God in question had answered that the reason He could instantly sense the emergence of a new Divine Trait—and even directly use the Eternity trait to mislead him—was because no matter how chaotic the transcendent world became, its underlying logic remained a unified whole.

Any fragmentation, rebirth, or distortion would immediately feed back into the entire system.

It was like receiving an ID badge—you had to be recognizable before you could interact with one another.

Although they both wished the other would drop dead in the very next breath, Fu Qian had to admit he rather agreed with that explanation.

It might have been slightly abstract, but the moment this worldview-shattering scene unfolded, he recalled that very theory.

Such was the charm of knowledge.

Following that, a multitude of doubts seemed to clear up all at once.

All he had to do was add an ”outside” to that foundation of a ”unified whole.”

How could his authority transform? He clearly hadn’t suffered any extra damage.

The answer: because its ID badge was gone.

This banishment didn’t just isolate him from that couple—it was akin to being driven directly outside the transcendent sequence.

An authority stripped of its definition was like a balloon tossed into a vacuum—and the exact same applied to him.

Fu Qian could clearly feel that although the honorific name King of the Abandoned Prison remained a unified whole, it was similarly entering a state of zero-pressure expansion.

The specific manifestation was that even this very body was undergoing a peculiar deformation.

Limbs, eyeballs, and even erratic, wave-like patterns of divinity—various features manifested interchangeably.

Aside from there still being only one ”me,” every other definition was losing its Anchor Point...

He had to admit, while it wasn’t a lethal skill—and might not last long even if he ignored it—the effect was truly astonishing—Waaah!

At that exact moment, Fu Qian could clearly see that in the world he was temporarily severed from, amidst the baby’s increasingly piercing wails, His Excellency the Solitary King’s stomach was already stretching out of shape.

’So it really was your doing?’

After putting in the effort to drive away the troublemaker and securing a brief moment of peace, it seemed this truly noble Divine Child could no longer wait to be born.

’This must be the legendary double blessing descending upon the house.’

Hehehe...

It seemed Fu Qian wasn’t the only one who felt that way; he could faintly hear the laughter of the guests.