Eldritch Horror Theatre

So this was how it actually came about?

Although he had considered the possibility just a moment ago, watching the evolutionary process unfold right before his eyes still left Fu Qian feeling a touch of lament.

Was this the ultimate extreme of the curse of knowledge?

While the contents within Etched Intellect might not be entirely reliable, some things were simply too difficult to chalk up to mere coincidence.

For instance, the issue mentioned earlier: the two missing notes, plus the result The Thinker had forgotten.

Assuming they shared some underlying consistency, it seemed quite easy to draw a conclusion: the closer you get to the answer, the further away from it you become.

You could pursue it, yearn for it, and crave it... but when you truly approached it, the repulsive force would rapidly become infinite, keeping it forever out of reach.

Just by putting oneself in their shoes for a moment, one could understand what kind of torment that would be for an academic.

Seeking Truth in the world of the Transcendent Tier was truly a far more arduous endeavor.

And the most harrowing scene of this particular case was currently playing out before him—Riiip!A second tentacle had been torn out of The Thinker’s body, this time erupting from his left leg.

As for his other leg, it violently dragged his entire lower half along, nearly tearing his body in two as it pinned him to a distant corner of the cage.

At this rate, it wouldn’t even take two minutes for The Thinker to accomplish a groundbreaking feat: ripping himself to absolute shreds.

Watching this scene, Fu Qian neither stopped him nor urged him on; he simply stepped aside a little to avoid obstructing the calculations.

...

Earlier, The Thinker mentioned that he had been calculating here for a long time. Frankly speaking, it was hard to believe he had been doing it in this manner.

But one thing seemed believable: his algorithm this time was very likely correct, otherwise it wouldn’t have been so agonizing—even if the coordinates weren’t entirely right.

Fu Qian estimated the distance. Even without factoring in the vertical drop, the falling point in his memory was roughly ten meters away from this location.

Meanwhile, apart from his head still resting on that seat, the rest of The Thinker’s body resembled a violently torn ragdoll, its ”stuffing” scattering everywhere.

With his brain at the center, over ten tentacles radiated outward, pulled taut like rubber bands. They were pinned in every direction within this peculiar space, sketching out a bizarre pattern.

In short, unless he could evolve further into the size of a giant squid, he had already reached his limit.

...

How truly fascinating.

Fu Qian still wasn’t in a rush to dismiss it. Beyond just the pattern sketched by the tentacles, he even combined them with the dots and lines on the ground, silently sensing the connections.

“Help me—”

This behavior actually seemed to prepare for a rainy day; in the very next moment, he received a plea for help from The Thinker.

Though The Thinker had long since lost his vocal organs, he evidently now possessed the abilities of those earlier jellyfish, able to transmit information without needing mundane physical structures.

“Help me...”

The only problem was that the transmitted message lacked any real substance. It was just a repetitive cry for help, without even a hint on how to assist him, fully demonstrating the true meaning of bewilderment.

“I’ll try.”

Fu Qian was exceedingly generous and agreed directly.

He didn’t even take a deep breath to use a Gospel Shockwave this time; instead, he stood up and stepped outside the cage.

There were many ways to help, but given the current state of the person before him, a Gospel Shockwave would likely only serve as torture.

Fortunately for The Thinker, even though his own actions were quite abstract, he had managed to seek help from a fellow abstract player...

Fu Qian had never forgotten his identity as an academic worker, and thanks to his earlier preparations, he had already faintly grasped something—

“It should be here, right?”

Muttering to himself, he gave a light leap and actually went up to the layer above, standing in front of another cage.

Naturally, it was completely empty inside, yet he studied it with great relish.

Click!

In the next moment, he casually opened it and sat on the Chair in the middle.

Finally enjoying VIP treatment, Fu Qian’s movements were utterly relaxed. He leaned back lazily, imagining the scene of numerous scholars seeking answers within this kind of self-imprisonment.

Indeed, rather than actually imprisoning anyone, he was now more inclined to believe the theory about private booths.

It was both a cage and a domain—an undisturbed Mind Space.

Thinking about it from this angle, it vaguely resembled his own Sweet Dream Head Cage, like different tunes played with equal skill.

Of course, Fu Qian didn’t actually begin calculating.

Not even knowing the formulas, just leaning forward and abruptly comprehending someone else’s crystallization of wisdom—anyone who believed such a thing clearly wasn’t a technical professional.

In this place, he was ultimately just a layman.

Fu Qian didn’t think that merely taking a couple of glances would allow him to complete The Thinker’s train of thought—if he could help spark even a little bit of memory, that would be good enough.

...

Yes, what Fu Qian was doing was very simple: trying to understand The Thinker’s situation.

Assuming the previous deduction was true, and The Thinker’s amnesia was due to getting closer to the answer, then theoretically, it meant one thing: if he truly remembered, the result of his calculations should point toward the coordinates in his memory.

The question was, how could he reach it?

The Thinker had already pushed himself to the absolute limit inside that cage, yet his mind still appeared trapped, and there was no visible connection to that specific location—but there were connections to other places.

That’s right; this was exactly what Fu Qian had gleaned from sensing the details just now.

That extremely abstract pattern was, in some intuitive manner, faintly ”pointing” toward certain locations from afar.

Not the falling point, but elsewhere.

The cage he was currently sitting in was one of those targets, and in Fu Qian’s eyes, it was the one with the strongest inclination.

Taking this a step further, the earlier question of ”where exactly did the problem lie” seemed to have gained a lightly founded hypothesis—was it possible that he needed to stand on the shoulders of giants?

Not a sudden inspiration from a single person, but the result of pooling collective wisdom: did this place need a Computation Matrix?

Combined with his earlier assessment of this place, it suddenly felt somewhat reasonable.

It was precisely out of this consideration that Fu Qian chose to sit here, telling The Thinker where the next computation node was to help him recall the synchronization work he might have forgotten.

Nothing more than that.

After all, turning into a jellyfish might be easy, but as he had said before, he didn’t understand the algorithms at all.

As for whether he had guessed wrong, or if this could provide some degree of enlightenment, that would depend entirely on The Thinker’s own serendipity.

“Good... Good!”

As it turned out, his serendipity was profound.

Even though his own position was completely out of the line of sight from the previous cage, Brother Thinker still reacted with astonishing speed.

Fu Qian had been sitting there for less than five seconds when the jellyfish’s excitement erupted like a Volcano.

And that voice, striking straight to the heart, induced an irrepressible sense of empathy—and even resonance.

At the exact same moment the voice arrived, strip after strip of something resembling jellyfish tentacles materialized out of thin air within his field of vision.

And by the time Fu Qian stepped down from the seat, another brain had manifested right there.