Facing an Ancient God for a Year

Chapter 2600: Chapter 2595: Setting Pen to Paper

The Inverted Lake has already been ”dried out,” and the play still isn’t over?

Fu Qian unfolded the script in his hand again, scrutinizing the marks on it as if seeing a screenwriter stuck with writer’s block.

Not only did the sixth act still fail to appear, there wasn’t even an extra word.

It was still just five lines in total, with the titles of the third and fifth acts both left blank.

After all those intense operations—sending Rom off, peeking at Doomsday, tearing the armor apart with bare hands—not a single new trace had been forced onto the page.

So it’s completely slacking off, just waiting for me, the character in the play, to fill it in myself?

Even though he’d done similar things before, Fu Qian couldn’t help complaining inwardly.

It was obviously different from that All Fools’ Day; this time, besides steering the plot, he even had to write his own summary.

In fact, the blank third act was already an example: no matter what, that segment was over, yet even the title hadn’t shown up.

This kind of laziness was not even hard to explain—given the same essay, people often come up with completely different ”main ideas.”

So what exactly did this act represent? A vast blank whiteness, nothing but spotless purity?

At a certain moment, Fu Qian really picked up that pen and looked around.

It wasn’t an exaggeration—back in the day, even the Jia Mansion getting confiscated probably wasn’t this thorough.

Not only had the research institute parts long since been wiped clean; even the Whale and the lake spread out beneath them had been utterly deformed by repeated disturbances.

The only thing that still carried a faint sense of the old scene turned out to be Ah Fei, who had only just arrived to report in during the fourth act.

He was even the only existence that, like Fu Qian, was slightly transcendent to that unfolding ”surface.”

Too bad that even so, he still had no intention of making a sound, treating the changes around them as if invisible.

So much so that, at a glance, there really didn’t seem to be much left for Fu Qian to do.

Aside from simply putting pen to paper, his only other option might be to take down this hard‑working support tool and see if the surroundings changed because of it.

...

Earlier he had analyzed the essence of Engraving Wisdom.

Aside from the absolutely dominant power of the Fool’s script, he himself was another absolute core.

So why, if they were both cores, could he still be trapped like this and even lose SAN Points?

It wasn’t contradictory at all; plenty of people get lost in their own overthinking, and a large part of human suffering already comes from the self.

What was reflected here was precisely the subtlety of Lord Fool’s script power, wrapping the person concerned right up inside it.

In short, aside from the two pillars, everyone else was just the various guest stars forced to make friendly cameos because they had once left traces.

For example the Judgment Chief and the others, Rom before his grand burial, and Ah Fei standing before him now...

Yes, no matter how weak he had seemed at first, the sliver of independent nature he still retained at this moment showed that Ah Fei likewise involved elements of a Superior Being.

And according to Rom, it had to be someone of a very exaggerated Ranking who left him here; after all, Rom’s escape plan back then relied on lowering his own Ranking to fool the script, make it disgusted with him and throw him out.

Fu Qian still tended to believe that point—at critical moments, lies have to be wrapped in truth. Lord Rom had roamed the worldly society for so many years; he should at least have that much street experience.

That he later didn’t really follow through and instead went after Fu Qian was merely a choice on the latter’s part.

It also fit reality quite well: even a mere walk‑on character needs some real‑world background support if he wants screen time.

In game terms, under this kind of stuck‑at‑the‑checkpoint situation, killing Ah Fei clearly remained one interactive option worth trying, and it wasn’t hard to execute.

But Fu Qian still didn’t throw away the pen and join the battle.

On the contrary, at that moment he lowered his head and watched himself—Second Phase, Demigod... his Ranking dropped rapidly step by step.

It seemed pointless; at a certain moment Fu Qian sighed softly, and the Ranking stopped falling.

As one of the pillars sustaining Engraving Wisdom, the method Lord Rom had shared was obviously unusable for him.

His Ranking had already fallen below Demigod, yet there was still no sign of him being thrown out.

Of course, that was only one takeaway. There was another area where he was being even more cold‑shouldered—where was the prompt for losing SAN Points?

...

One of the effects when Rom went all‑out was that, by drawing out more storms, the loss of SAN Points directly became a field aura.

It was only when he put on the Crystal Tyrant Mecha just now that, because its essence leaned toward the Fool, his SAN Points briefly stopped taking damage.

But now, even though he had already torn it apart with his bare hands and returned to himself, his SAN Points still hadn’t gone down... even after he actively lowered his Ranking.

Yes, that earlier move actually had two purposes.

First, naturally, was to test Lord Rom’s method; second was to probe the oddity surrounding SAN Points with a quick experiment.

After all, the process might have been brutal and costly, but Fu Qian was fairly confident that his cut had been very clean.

Thus one guess for why his SAN Points were no longer dropping was: maybe the current storm was a bit too mild to beat on something at the Tyrant level.

Don’t forget that back at the Burial Ground of Gods, the storms had come in waves.

Yet now, even after his Ranking had fallen this far, there was still no sign of change—this underlying reason was starting to feel quietly terrifying if you thought it through.

Because, compared with the ”storm pause” theory, there was another explanation for this situation that was even more straightforward—was the thing he ripped in half just now really the Crystal Tyrant?

The core prerequisite for SAN Point loss was his identity as one of the outsiders.

During that near‑limit operation just now, was there a chance that his self‑anchoring had slipped a bit, drifting further and further off, until the result was completely reversed?

The baby lost its placenta but kept the name, so its household registration changed at the root, and that special Instant Death Bar of SAN Points disappeared?

”No wonder people say sometimes it’s better not to overthink...”

Too much emphasis on logic can easily lead to outrageous conclusions.

Even though he was so confident in the operation back then, Fu Qian still let out a soft sigh.

Looking at the Whale beneath his feet, pieced together from shards of Crystal, he didn’t step straight onto it but carefully walked around, finally stopping at the initial storm.

Still nothing.

...

The storm spread out beneath him seemed to have become more humane as well, still not inflicting any fresh loss of SAN Points.

At the same time, the script in his hand remained firmly stuck.

This highly reversed shift in the situation still hadn’t coaxed a single spontaneous word onto it.

”Fine by me...”

[Crystal is the shattered condensation of the Transcendent.]

Fu Qian didn’t mind; he simply raised his hand and let the pen fall, writing the first sentence in the space for the fifth act.

Then he didn’t put the pen away at all. He just stared at the little patch of Doomsday scene before him and took a deep breath.

In the next instant his Ranking rose sharply, surpassing Demigod and Second Phase, surging all the way up to Abandonment King...

And then to a Mythical Form with all disguises stripped away.