Eldritch Horror Theatre

If someone lands in the hospital after eating wild mushrooms, how do you prove whether the mushrooms were actually poisonous or just undercooked?

Simple. Cook them thoroughly and eat another batch.

What Fu Qian was doing right now followed the exact same logic.

If this really were a case of food poisoning, shouldn’t eating a second helping make the symptoms worse?

It might not serve as absolute proof, but it was more than enough to help him gauge the current situation.

Especially since he had already confirmed that eating the thing had little impact on the stability of the dream—did that mean it really wasn’t poisonous?

The second rose melted in his mouth just like the first, yet after finishing his repeat performance, Fu Qian found that he had gained even less this time.

The ”Blood” in his vision hadn’t grown any livelier, nor had it jumped up to perform a disco routine for him.

Everything remained as it was, including the complete absence of the Red Moon.

Compared to poison, then, did eating this thing work more like unlocking some kind of clearance?One pass was enough, so getting several more made no difference?

Though his fruitless insight yielded nothing new, it actually piqued Fu Qian’s interest all the more. True, it was still far from enough to reach a firm conclusion, and there was still no sign of the Red Moon.

Seen in that light, however, the sight before his eyes suddenly became intriguing.

It wasn’t poisoning at all; rather, just like that spark of inspiration back in the Full Moon Garden, it allowed something originally intangible to manifest within his vision?

Which meant that what he was seeing right now was actually much closer to the true nature of this dream?

Interesting. Then what did that true nature represent?

His mind racing, Fu Qian pressed his palms together and performed his vanishing-rose trick a third time.

While letting his imagination run, it wouldn’t hurt to solidify his earlier conclusion.

Sure enough, the facts proved that the mushrooms were innocent. Even after the third rose went down, his symptoms grew no worse.

”What are you doing?”

Meanwhile, this string of actions finally drew the attention of the ritual’s host.

Serana’s voice pierced his eardrums and reached straight into his mind.

...That wasn’t deliberate exaggeration. A voice coming from someone else really did sound different from before.

For instance, he could still tell for sure that it was Serana, yet the way he recognized her had turned strange.

To put it specifically, the instant that string of sounds reached him, it morphed directly into a name inside his consciousness.

At first glance, that might sound like completely normal human information processing.

Yet the name was far too concrete—it felt as if it had been slapped straight into his brain in broad daylight.

So much so that Fu Qian almost instantly recalled how he had felt upon meeting the Witch for the very first time.

As he had put it back then, her face seemed to bypass all worldly standards of judgment and pour the sheer concept of beauty directly into one’s consciousness.

Right now, he was feeling a faint sense of deja vu along those very same lines, which was why he had described her voice as ”reaching straight into his mind.”

”Just putting waste to good use.”

Evaluating the sensation didn’t delay Fu Qian’s reply in the slightest as he earnestly described what he was doing.

By comparison, his own voice seemed to lack that strange quality, sounding much the same as before.

The difference between bone conduction and air conduction? From a scientific standpoint, that might explain it, yet to Fu Qian it clearly wasn’t enough—perhaps he needed to bring philosophy into it?

Aside from the mode of transmission, the core difference between the two seemed to be that one originated from ”Me,” while the other originated from ”Her.”

After he swallowed the roses, this dream seemed to have grown increasingly conceptual.

...

Perhaps out of wariness over how dangerous Fu Qian was, the Serana who had spoken wasn’t the one standing closest to him.

Nor was the one who followed up with the next question.

To her, the fact that this uninvited menace was so willing to share was clearly a surprise.

Even if the answer grated on the ears a little, considering that the rose he called ”waste” symbolized her.

Under normal circumstances, faced with such rudeness, someone of her temperament would most likely have gone straight on mute.

”Did you find anything?”

Unfortunately, at a special moment like this, Serana still had to put the grand design of the Blood Clan first, swallowing her pride to fish for information.

”You could say that. What about you?” As if the uninvited menace were that easy to deal with, Fu Qian immediately turned the question around to check on her progress.

”...Nothing yet.”

Fu Qian’s answer lifted the spirits of the Seranas; none of them had expected a breakthrough on his side.

Yet the question that followed sent the mood plummeting again. After a moment’s hesitation, the one closest to him answered in a low voice and looked up toward the dome.

Even more figures had gathered up there than before, though it looked as if sheer numbers hadn’t made the work any easier.

”The vine didn’t pierce its way in from outside. It grows right inside the church, and its very root looks almost as if it were painted onto the surface.”

Still, the resilience mentioned earlier showed itself once again. Even though her efforts had been in vain, Serana did her best to share some of what she had observed.

And that was undoubtedly bad news.

From her perspective, ”following the guidance of the Starry Sky Rose” clearly pointed toward a few obvious lines of approach.

For example, finding the bloom that represented herself to see whether it would spark some special enlightenment—an attempt that had already failed earlier.

Or, more directly, tracing the rose vine all the way back to its source to see where it led.

After all that effort, however, even this path looked about to hit a dead end.

The very beginning of the vine even looked like a mural painted on the dome?

By sharing an observation like that, Serana was clearly doing everything she could to ask for advice.

”Got it. So that means the entire Blood Clan hatched out of stone?”

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, a single act of courage can earn you a lifetime of introversion. All the sincerity it had taken for her to muster her courage and push past her pride was rewarded only with Fu Qian’s silky sarcasm.

...

The rose vine was the bloodline chart of the Blood Clan, and it sprouted out of stone, which meant the Blood Clan had sprouted out of stone... That logic actually seemed watertight.

In the ensuing silence, the Seranas seemed to finally remember that the man standing before them was no kindly soul, but the very terminator of this advancement ritual.

”Perhaps you could dig a little deeper.”

Even so, as an academic leader, Fu Qian maintained his fine habit of offering actual advice in the end no matter how harshly he scolded someone first.

”It’s already painted onto the surface. How am I supposed to dig any deeper?”

Too bad the person on the receiving end of the scolding was already a bit dazed, blurting out the question without thinking.

”Then dig into the painting.”

Fu Qian rebuked her almost instantly, making it clear that she should never emphasize difficulties in front of him while lamenting how hopeless rigid thinking truly was.

Indeed, binding one’s own hands was always a foolish way to act.

Outlandish as his suggestion sounded, it was built on everything he had observed and analyzed along the way.

If gaining insight into the roses had made this dream more conceptual, then the rose vine itself had arguably been conceptual from the very start.

Not only did it precisely symbolize the Blood Clan, it even repaired itself automatically whenever it was damaged.

It was as if the very concept of bloodline had seeped through by means of the Starry Sky Rose.

Did it also originate from the underlying layer of the dream?

Hard to say, but either way, against a target like that, there was still plenty Serana could do.