Eldritch Horror Theatre

It was true: to do good work, one must first sharpen one’s tools.

As the night deepened, Fu Qian sat behind the counter, once again savoring the gift Red Moon had given him.

Never mind whether it matched the decor—wasn’t it just absurdly cool and domineering?

Save where you must, spend where you should. Who made a rule that a Bookstore Owner couldn’t sit in total comfort?

Looking out at the sparse bookshelves, Fu Qian ran his fingers one by one over the Spikes on the chair’s armrests.

Even though not a single soul wandered the aisles, it did nothing to diminish that aura of a king ruling over the world.

Naturally, Fu Qian hadn’t forgotten Red Moon’s latest gift.

As his fingers shifted, four doors alternately materialized. They were four genuine teleportation points, yet he chose not to activate a single one.

Doing business required patience. If you just calmed down and waited, you would realize you were losing money even faster.

The appetite for knowledge in Shangjing seemed lacking lately. Time ticked by, from dusk’s first glowing lamps to the brilliant illumination of deep night, yet absolutely no one attempted to dive into the ocean of learning. Not a single person had even wandered in out of mere curiosity.[The joys of the mundane cannot withstand the gaze of an immortal.]

Fortunately, as the boss, he could always choose to take a swim himself.

Sinking into an increasingly comfortable posture as time went on, Fu Qian silently savored a specific line from his mission summary.

The Warehouse had essentially confirmed it this time: the restriction preventing a higher entity from entering was a fundamental attribute of the sea of mind.

As for exactly why they couldn’t enter, the Warehouse’s phrasing had been quite subtle.

The joys of the mundane cannot withstand a gaze... The immediate impression this sentence gave was one of profound fragility.

It seemed there was a fundamental distinction between ordinary people—or even an ordinary transcendent—and a higher entity. The term ”immortal” clearly referred to the latter.

Excellency Father’s Amnion was a glaring example. After finally managing to assert His influence, He instantly triggered an immune rejection response within the sea of mind.

So what exactly was this fundamental distinction? Return.

The moment he pondered the question, that classic word surfaced in his mind.

It was common knowledge that higher entities were incredibly difficult to kill.

In fact, many of the missions he had completed so far essentially boiled down to slapping down their nasty habits of trying to resurface.

Take the Goddess of Sins, or the Blasphemy Monarch... or even the Dragon King, one of the kingslayers from back then. Despite enduring massive setbacks, none of them were truly dead. One by one, they used methods like Covenanters to restore their power.

Could this stubborn refusal to die be the manifestation of that fundamental distinction?

...

Reaching the end of the immortal path and gaining a few privileges seemed perfectly reasonable, didn’t it?

He didn’t consider this unkillable attribute to be a cheat; in fact, it made perfect sense to him.

What intrigued him was the underlying reason—why they were so hard to kill, and why they persisted after death.

If he could figure that out, he felt there was a good chance it would also explain why they were barred from entering the sea of mind.

Did it have something to do with authority?

An explanation actually came to Fu Qian very quickly.

[The so-called New God is simply the complete mastery of a certain authority.]

That was what Dean Cass had said.

[Not an emissary of authority, but a False God.]

That was the Warehouse’s evaluation when he completed the Pseudo-God Ritual.

With a slight comparison, the fundamental distinction between Tier 2 and Tier 1 became clear.

One could utilize authority, while the other completely controlled it.

The one who controlled the authority would naturally receive nourishment in return. As long as the authority endured, they themselves would endure—this was indeed a fairly common line of logic.

There was also a slightly inexact example: the endpoint of cultivation.

It might have once sounded far more ethereal than traditional progression paths. However, not long ago at the Academy, Fu Qian had substituted himself as an inner demon to personally taste the ”sweetness” of the Heavenly Dao.

For the Chan path walked by Master Yuhun, its endpoint provided a stark, undeniable sense of absolute stability.

Undying and imperishable, coexisting with the universe itself.

Anyone who reached the endpoint of this cultivation path simply became a ”title” representing that undying nature, or perhaps one of its manifest forms.

And it wasn’t even an exclusive title. Aside from Yuhun, he had heard another name at the time: Impermanence.

Could the traditional transcendent Divine Path operate on a similar logic?

Once you reached the end, your name merged with an authority, permanently carving your mark into it?

It sounded plausible enough... but if that was true, he had to consider a very special edge case: did he currently count as one of them?

The Witch had personally vouched for it: right now, he was arguably more of a Tyrant than the Tyrant itself.

His control over authority was already proven—like how he had directly neutralized Excellency Nepheli’s Miracle.

So, if another Night of Regicide were to happen right now, and it actually succeeded, would he be able to come back to life?

Honestly, it felt a bit precarious... He hadn’t tested it, but that was Fu Qian’s immediate gut feeling.

Just look at His Excellency the Ancient Tyrant. Even after enduring a cursed ambush and being hacked to pieces, He had still managed to leave His traces on certain things.

That was until Fu Qian chose His Skin to drape over his own shoulders, stepping in step by step like a turtledove occupying the magpie’s nest.

Yet even in this state, during his few brief windows of sensory recovery each day, Fu Qian’s intuition told him that if he died, he would simply die. He wouldn’t have a chance to ”return” like the rest of those beings.

Why? Because he didn’t have a local household registration.

It was undoubtedly a good question, and fortunately, it seemed to have an equally good answer.

His attribute as an outsider, and even his SAN Value... their relationship with authority felt incredibly subtle, perhaps even touching upon the true, essential mysteries of the Transcendent Tier.

So, was there anyone willing to help him test it out?

Quickly narrowing the problem down to a few key concepts, Fu Qian began mentally filtering through his list of available beasts of burden— Creak!

Just at this moment of eager ambition, the quiet of the night was suddenly broken.

Fu Qian lifted the finger he had been pressing against the armrest, allowing The Bookstore’s door to revert to its normal appearance in his eyes. He sized up his first customer of the evening—someone who truly fit the profile of a night visitor.

Gray hair and red eyes. It was Serana Gulade, arriving without making the slightest effort to disguise her appearance.

Her demeanor was flawlessly casual. She even took a stroll through the bookshelves before approaching, as if hunting for a favorite read.

”Welcome.”

Exuding utmost professionalism, Fu Qian followed the customer with his eyes along her entire route. Only when she stopped at the counter and looked his way did he offer a polite greeting.

...

Like they said, heaven rewards diligence—didn’t a customer just arrive?

Even though he had previously mocked it for lacking imagination, he had to admit that Excellency Annalise’s aesthetic taste was quite good.

Set against her pale face, those scarlet eyes devoured a person’s gaze like genuine rubies.

Standing there in momentary silence, Serana locked eyes with Fu Qian, staring as if she wanted to hollow him out and examine every last secret inside.