Eldritch Horror Theatre

Biding one’s time in silence while nursing the grievances of a wronged victim, only to erupt one day, Slay Any God in the Way, and wipe away past humiliation—that was certainly a common enough trope in stories.

Yet as the saying went, art came from life and rose above it. In truth, most people who actually had that kind of explosive strength rarely sank to the position of the wronged victim in the first place.

Far more likely, someone who kept swallowing their grievances would simply keep right on swallowing them, much like the wound First Apostle Herbert had never managed to put to use.

Or, if they were a bit cleverer, they would take the path of form is emptiness, finding a way to negate all that accumulated pain altogether.

All in all, for Fu Qian to believe that the King of Nightmares had suddenly risen to power in a single stroke, there had to be at least one reason for that rise beyond mere patience.

By comparison, the characterization of the Primordial Moon held together seamlessly from start to finish.

An abdication with obvious ulterior motives—

Having come into contact with dreams long before that, and faintly knowing the Long Night was approaching—

Annalise receiving guidance from that entity within a dream—

And after the Progenitor of the Blood Clan fell, a higher entity who also took the moon as a symbol emerging and accomplishing great feats during the Long Night—When all of that was lined up together, didn’t the continuity look remarkably strong?

It seemed he had underestimated the Primordial Moon’s initiative earlier.

Facing the grim situation ahead, that entity hadn’t simply looked for a stand-in legal representative to serve a prison sentence in its stead.

On the contrary, had it used that as a transition, reinventing itself to meet the Long Night head-on?

Put like that, the whole thing suddenly sounded downright inspiring—except for the poor soul caught in the middle as the transitional stepping stone.

Of course, for this hypothesis to hold water, a few premises had to be met.

For instance, the Primordial Moon hadn’t just discovered the King of Nightmares, but had brought him under complete control.

Yes, in a potential history like this, the King of Nightmares would almost certainly have been reduced to a pure tool.

The stakes were immense; this was genuinely a matter of putting one’s ”life” on the line.

From the Primordial Moon’s standpoint, simple cooperation would never have been enough.

In fact, once the Primordial Moon realized the King of Nightmares existed, pulling it off wouldn’t even have been that difficult.

Excellency Patches had just mentioned that apart from a nominal claim and a somewhat transcendent status within dreams, that entity possessed almost no authority of his own.

Rather than believing such a figure had lured the Primordial Moon into obsession and quietly seized its body, it made far more sense that the Primordial Moon’s apparent obsession was actually the process of turning the King of Nightmares into a handy tool.

”So the earliest Moon God was one of the fewer than eighteen people who knew the King of Nightmares existed?”

Breaking the brief silence, Fu Qian casually confirmed the detail.

”Almost the very first to know.”

Sure enough, Patches confirmed it outright.

”Almost? Was the actual first person to know you?”

Fu Qian blinked.

”Hehe—it was me.”

The Deceiver let out a sly chuckle, confirming it once again.

Just as he thought. There really was a reason this fellow had taken such an interest.

White, blood, blue, red—up to this point, the Chronicles of the Moon certainly looked fascinating.

Yet as Fu Qian saw it, as the grand Deceiver, Patches had no shortage of ways to amuse himself—like earlier, when he had set off fireworks using three higher entities.

Instead, he had placed so much weight on the moon, chasing the matter all the way to Shangjing after a single meeting on Ye Island.

Later on, he had even risked taking a beating from the Red Moon to pull strings behind the scenes and deliver the Nightmare Notebook into Fu Qian’s hands.

Explaining away that kind of startling follow-through as a mere whim was far too simplistic.

Comparing it to his own experiences, Fu Qian felt it looked much more like a key project that had been set up long ago, one that had suddenly stumbled upon a breakthrough and sprung into immediate operation.

Even the fact that Patches could name a minor figure like Herbert proved he had put a great deal of thought into this.

And now, what Patches said faintly pointed to the source behind that guesswork—because he knew of the King of Nightmares, he read the events surrounding the moon in a completely different light.

By extension, he also held a different view of matters tied to the Long Night.

Yes, no matter how much he acted like someone just in it for the fun, as one of the old guard, Patches couldn’t possibly stay completely above the fray. More likely than not, just like Blazing Rainbow and the others, he was dealing with certain survival pressures of his own.

His condition might even be worse than theirs—after all, he was already developing a Covenanter.

As for the source of that survival pressure, judging from earlier findings, every sign pointed to the Long Night.

So to Fu Qian, it was only natural that Patches took an interest in related matters.

And as one of the select few who knew the King of Nightmares existed, Patches had noticed certain signs from that angle and connected them to the lunar lineage, making the whole picture fit together even more smoothly.

Even the reason Patches had been the very first to know didn’t strike Fu Qian as strange at all.

For a Deceiver who delighted in tricking others, wasn’t it completely normal to be a little more sensitive to something as illusory as dreams?

Birds of a feather, after all.

Of course, following this line of thought further, the Primordial Moon—who had also found out very early on—looked even more suspicious in certain respects: discovering the King of Nightmares, easily seizing control of and even refining that wronged victim, and taking a step further in the realm of dreams than all the other gods.

Knowing the Long Night was approaching, finding Annalise to serve as a tool, and manipulating the situation through a divine oracle.

Ultimately guiding Annalise step by step into losing herself in dreams, while stopping Herbert from waking her to the danger.

And at the very end, seizing her body to achieve rebirth without a soul knowing, then using authority to thoroughly erase every trace of it right up to the present day.

What was that? It sounded plausible, yet remained pure speculation lacking solid evidence?

In theory, there actually was a piece of evidence, subtle though it might be—God’s First Dream.

Yes, the very concept he had picked up during his last mission.

Certified officially by the Warehouse, Annalise, who had ascended from mortality, had dreamed the first dream of a Deity.

At the time, it had been somewhat baffling. The gods manipulated dreams as easily as drinking broth—how could there not have been a first dream until then?

Looking at it now, the key to that first dream hadn’t been manipulation at all, had it, but total immersion?

No matter how intricate the dreams crafted by previous Deities had been, they lacked true depth because their makers always knew it was a dream.

By contrast, Annalise had been the very first to truly ”fall asleep.”

Perhaps because she had once been human and retained that old fondness, she had lost herself completely in that world, forgetting she was dreaming at all.

Upon realizing this, Herbert had fought desperately to warn her, though unfortunately to no avail.

Understood from that angle, God’s First Dream finally made sense.

And alongside that, a very simple counterproof emerged: if Annalise was the first God to fall asleep, didn’t that mean the Primordial Moon never had?

If the Primordial Moon had never fallen asleep, then between that entity and the King of Nightmares, the scales tipped pretty clearly toward who had refined whom into a tool.

Now only one question remained to be answered: why go to such lengths?

Aside from scheming Annalise to death, after going around in such a huge circle, what could it all mean for the Primordial Moon?

”The Order of Blood?”

Fu Qian glanced at Patches.