Eldritch Horror Theatre

It was quite rare for Excellency Patches to spend a full fifteen minutes making small talk.

Beneath his casual understatement, the situation was already shifting.

What had originally been a mere wisp of a deity’s residual dream had been casually expanded by Excellency Patches, once again enveloping the entire Archipelago.

On one hand, this naturally demonstrated the mighty power of this Cosmic Deity.

He might seem approachable on an ordinary day, but at his core, he was still an existence at the very pinnacle of the Transcendent Tier.

On the other hand, it also meant they were finally getting to the main topic.

The transition seemed abrupt, but Fu Qian felt no dissatisfaction.

Just as he had noted earlier, Patches revealing himself at his reminder was one thing, but it was never to catch up on old times.

Perhaps they had no irreconcilable conflicts on the surface, making an exchange of intelligence a good idea.

But one couldn’t forget that entities like him strictly adhered to keeping a low profile; if they didn’t have to show themselves, they absolutely wouldn’t.A trivial matter alone—one still fraught with mutual deception and dubious credibility—simply wasn’t worth the effort.

The reason Patches had accepted the invitation and revealed himself was very simple. When Fu Qian warned that ”fifty had arrived,” the threat was never about killing him; it was a signal that if he didn’t show up, Fu Qian would destroy this place.

This deity’s residual dream—a place that might hold traces of Annalise.

Patches’s decisive response made his stance obvious: he also found this place highly valuable and didn’t want to see it ruined by a vulgar display of destruction.

Yes, the entire process was just like their initial conversation. There was no moon in the night sky, so even though Fu Qian had been staring right at it, he saw nothing.

Yet this act of ”seeing nothing” had still piqued Patches’s interest enough to forge a shared goal.

In short, what looked like a threat was essentially an invitation.

Of course, it had to be said that Brother Patches had a strong streak of finding amusement in everything.

Even though he clearly believed this place was valuable, he had still manufactured a cognitive blind spot to induce Fu Qian to ruin the place with vulgar brutality.

”Aren’t you worried I might have actually made a move up there just now?”

While placing high hopes on Master, Fu Qian didn’t rush to ask Patches who he thought would lose their patience first. Instead, he gestured toward the high spot where he had just been standing, rivaling the White Tower in height.

”Heh heh—it would be a waste, true, but not much of a pity.”

Patches chuckled, his meaning perfectly clear.

”If you could only reach that level, it wouldn’t be worth wasting any more effort on you.”

Sure enough, it was a test.

Fu Qian shook his head; the saying about these higher entities being overly cautious was entirely correct.

Patches’s meaning was already clear.

He had done something seemingly contradictory: despite following Fu Qian here and clearly realizing how bizarre this place was...

...he had still played a trick to guide Fu Qian’s logic into a dead end, making him think the location held no more exploration value to prompt its immediate destruction.

There was only one reason for this baffling behavior: if Fu Qian truly couldn’t break out of that mental dead end, then there would be no need for them to meet, let alone for Patches to expend so much effort.

A person who couldn’t even see through that kind of misdirection could aptly be described as lacking vision. Even with Patches’s help, such a person wouldn’t discover anything here anyway.

It was cruel and arrogant, but not without reason.

Furthermore, the words carried a clear implication: Patches could only play a supporting role in exploring this place. The core work still had to be done by Fu Qian.

”Let me think... that fake Codex power in here was actually channeled using me as the core?”

Fu Qian, who liked to ask ”why” about everything, naturally pondered the reason for his own importance.

”I’m not omnipotent, after all. Besides, when I ran into you before, I knew you had a deep connection to this thing.”

Patches admitted it straightforwardly.

I knew it.

Aside from the connection to the moon, the other crucial element in this Divine Dream was related to the Law.

And it just so happened that he possessed Misanthropy, which served as a Counterfeit Law Core.

Even so, Excellency Patches’s immense capabilities were clearly evident.

At that moment, Fu Qian noted that the trickster’s reputation was well-deserved indeed. He could handle something as unreasonable as the Law time and time again with effortless ease.

Last time in the West Plain, when facing the three thousand Laws that had already been woven into form, he had casually deceived the world, successfully buying a group of people the chance for a peaceful death.

This time, realizing there was a blank in this aspect within the residual dream, he had adapted to the situation instantly, directly seeking out the King of the Abandoned Prison as this false Core of Law.

Ultimately, he had successfully used Fu Qian as an Anchor Point to selectively replicate a copy of the White Tower Codex to operate within the residual dream—its biggest effect actually being to misdirect Fu Qian himself.

He had to admit, the move was played beautifully.

It also made him a bit more optimistic about their upcoming cooperation.

”Actually, the way you handled those parts was quite interesting, too. It let me witness an amusing scene.”

Just as Fu Qian was fully acknowledging the other’s methods, Patches tossed a compliment back. His words naturally referred to the Finger Pulp.

”You’re welcome. Didn’t you invite me to admire the wedding of the Goddess of Sins last time?”

Waving a hand to show he shouldn’t mind it, Fu Qian brought up the fireworks he had once seen at the Solitary King Court.

”Heh heh—there are indeed some similarities. I’m glad you’ve maintained an interest in this regard... The results are out, and it looks like you guessed right.”

It was gratifying that, amid his sly chuckles, Patches had something new to share, hinting that the Finger Pulp and his own past actions shared the marvel of achieving equally excellent results through different methods.

Unfortunately, in the very next moment, the topic shifted right back to the original matter.

The Order of Blood, of course.

In response, Fu Qian merely remarked inwardly that it had always been a priority project for him anyway, and he had even made quite a few gains with it recently.

In fact, one of the reasons he had chosen to use the Finger Pulp just now was precisely to put on a show for a certain pair of eyes watching from the dark.

”Are you crazy?”

As for Patches saying he had ”guessed right,” he was naturally referring to his earlier speculation about who would lose their patience and start yelling first.

He could only say that Master truly lived up to being Employee 001 of The Club. Facing the completely ruined Laboratory, he had lost control of his emotions even faster than Old Man Lu and the others, caught in a mix of shock and fury.

However, the words ”Are you crazy?” were not directed at their side.

After all, it was obvious that the chat between the two mighty figures here wouldn’t join that shared wave of sound to be heard by anyone else.

Otherwise, Master wouldn’t have dared to make a sound right now.

As for exactly who was being furiously berated by him—”Is that all you have to say?”

The response came in an equally familiar voice. It was none other than Old Man Ibu, whom he hadn’t managed to meet face-to-face this entire trip.

The commotion over at the Laboratory had indeed been discovered, and the new King of the White Tower, who had been overseeing things up front this whole time, had actually shown up at the very first moment, aggressively demanding accountability.