The Eldritch Files

The moment he stepped through the door, Han Su’s vision went black, and he stopped short.

He was still holding the unlucky bastard, propping him up in front of him. His gaze swept around quickly and warily from behind this ”shield.”

Whatever was inside this door, it definitely wasn’t a normal cake shop.

There were no counters, cake display cases, or any other fixtures. It wasn’t even decorated. The surrounding walls shimmered with an unreal, iridescent light, making the room feel more like some kind of crude, unstable, and surreal space.

Three or four meters directly in front of him, a simple but strange symbol was drawn on the floor.

In the middle of the symbol lay a corpse. It looked like it had been dead for a long time. Much of its flesh was rotten, but a crystalline luster was flashing on the rotten parts.

This was especially true for its head. The flesh had almost completely rotted away, and the exposed bone radiated a psychedelic array of colors.

From time to time, you could even see distorted halos of light seeping out of the corpse’s body and transforming into blurry shadows. They struggled and stretched, bypassed him, and drifted out through the door.

The shadows clinging to the living people outside were all seeping from this corpse.

’Where are Song Chushi and that Investigator of Strange Birds?’

The space was tiny, easy to take in at a glance, but there was no sign of anyone living. It was just him and the corpse.

’They clearly entered this ”door” before I did. Where are they now?’

As the thought crossed his mind, he raised the briefcase in his hand to block an attack from the side. Claws scraped against it with a loud SCRRREEECH.

It was the ”Crystal Plague Infected” from the street. He had pushed five or six of them through the door with him, and now they were desperately clawing at him.

They were once ordinary people, but after being infected, they had clearly gained astounding strength. Devoid of reason and fearless of death, they were like controlled puppets, striking with a sinister cruelty.

Outside the door, he would have stayed as far away from these things as possible. But inside this cramped space, a direct confrontation was unavoidable. Han Su flung the infected person he was holding away and switched to Investigator combat mode.

Shield in the left hand, sword in the right.

In simpler terms, he raised his briefcase with his left hand and grabbed his stun baton with his right.

While blocking the infected charging at him, he squeezed the trigger. Amidst a CRACKLE, electric light was Flashing as he jabbed the stun baton at the nearest infected.

He took down two infected in a row with the baton. As their bodies convulsed on the ground, the blurry shadows on their faces became much clearer.

But the infected charged forward without fear. With no time to use the electric shock, Han Su swung the baton down like a club.

This specially made Mysterious Sword from the Disaster Management Bureau was incredibly sturdy, even without the shock function. A blow to the head with it hit harder than an iron bar.

Even an infected person was brought to their knees by the blow.

’This Mysterious Sword really is useful...’

It could deliver an electric shock, and the power level was adjustable. At 30% intensity, it was enough to make an adult man lie on the ground convulsing for a good long while.

And 50% intensity was enough to considerably quell the frenzy of these infected.

He deftly brandished the stun baton, his reaction time—honed by countless escapes in the Ancient Castle—on full display.

As he dodged the hands grabbing for him, he would strike, shock, or trip them with his leg, quickly felling the few infected.

But compared to the ones outside, the infected inside this door seemed to have increased strength, power, and resilience, far surpassing ordinary people. Their bones were surprisingly hard.

When Han Su smashed the baton into their leg bones with all his might, a normal person would have collapsed, but they merely stumbled and fell.

Even those whose bones he broke with greater force showed signs of struggling to get back up. And for those who didn’t, the blurry shadows on their faces actually began to squirm free from their bodies and lunge at Han Su’s face.

But Han Su simply raised the briefcase in his left hand to block them.

After encountering these infected on Line 2 last time, Han Su had returned to base and asked Cui Qiao about them. That’s when he learned that the standard-issue briefcase every Investigator carried was actually quite a remarkable item.

Made of a special, low-sensitivity fiber material, it could not only slow the Penetration of Mysterious Power but was also bulletproof. Coupled with the fact that the left hand holding the briefcase was immune to contamination, Han Su had no reservations at all. He swung the briefcase, blocking the blurry shadows that lunged at him.

After a flurry of crackling, Flashing electricity, dull thuds, and the sound of breaking bones, Han Su saw that the infected had all been incapacitated. With the area around him clear, he quickly looked up and glanced outside the door.

To his surprise, it was quiet outside. No other infected were charging in.

His spirits lifted slightly. ’Did they stop them for me?’

’These teammates aren’t half bad...’

...

...

Outside the door, the infected who had been struck down by Miss Crow were still desperately trying to get up, as if they felt no pain.

If only one hand could move, they would use that hand to desperately grab onto something. If only a mouth could move, they would use that mouth to bite onto something.

But Miss Crow, standing at the edge of the shadows, simply watched with an indifferent expression. Her hands were raised ethereally in the air, but the shadow at her feet writhed and coiled, blocking the way with an inhuman coldness that shielded the entire doorway.

If a leg could move, she twisted it until it broke.

If an arm could move, she twisted it until it broke.

If a mouth could move, she broke their jaw.

It was cold, grim, and nothing but pure, crushing violence, without a trace of human emotion.

In this bizarre scene, if the people on the street looked like madmen, then Miss Crow, in their midst, was like a meat grinder among them.

This side of her was completely different from her usual quiet and easygoing self—in fact, one could say it was the polar opposite.

It even made one wonder if one of these two versions of her had to be an illusion.

Black Tiger watched all this, a sense of incomprehension dawning on him.

When he first saw the people on this street, he felt like he was back on that battlefield, once again facing those frenzied and terrifying believers. But now, he suddenly felt that wasn’t right.

This Miss Crow beside him was far more like the unforgettable nightmare from his past.

The Doctor, however, watched these strange scenes with wonder, his eyes Flashing with amazement. ”How wonderful...”

”This power that transcends the boundaries of reality... it’s so captivating...”

”...”

”...”

THUD! THUD! THUD!

After quickly dealing with the few infected who had rushed in, Han Su immediately used his left hand to throw them out the door one by one.

He was eager to observe the situation inside the door when, suddenly, a chill ran down his spine.

A faint but strange sound, like bones and joints knocking together, came from behind him. It was as if countless tiny streams were weaving around him, their distant, subtle sounds now active in his ears.

He glanced out of the corner of his eye and his body suddenly went rigid.

Not far behind him, the corpse was still lying quietly inside the mysterious symbol.

It revealed a ghastly, rotten face with deep eye sockets, staring right at him.

But the crucial thing was, the corpse hadn’t been in this position a moment ago.

It had been lying on its side, facing inward.

Now, it was facing him directly. It was as if it had silently rolled over while he was dealing with the infected.

There was no life in that face. Its eyes had even rotted away into empty sockets, but within those hollows, a strange light seemed to be brewing.

A chill ran down Han Su’s back, and the hair on his arms stood on end.

’I felt no fear facing those frenzied infected, but now, facing this dead body, I’m actually getting nervous?’

He didn’t know if it was because his nerves were stretched too taut or because the space behind the door was filled with that dense, bizarre power, but for a moment, Han Su hallucinated. The corpse facing him... its jaw seemed to tremble slightly, as if it had said something.

Han Su wasn’t sure if the corpse had actually spoken, but he could clearly feel that something new had suddenly appeared in this strange world behind the door.

It was a strange energy that seemed to have a life of its own, and it began to spread throughout the world behind the door.

”Mosuohaye...”

It sounded vaguely like singing, or perhaps like someone talking so fast that the words blurred together.

Han Su could clearly perceive the sound’s presence, but he couldn’t detect it traveling through the air.

It was more like it had appeared directly inside his head.

The sound carried a sense of assimilation and suffocation.

Han Su felt as if he had been plunged into a lake where he couldn’t see the sky above or touch the bottom below. An endless expanse of water surged in from all directions, trying to force its way into his body through his nostrils, his mouth, his ears—even through every pore on his skin.

At the same time, the corpse began to emit a large number of distorted, blurry shadows. Each one had the faint shape of a person and a painful aura, like a host of Ghosts lunging toward him.

’Is this corpse trying to contaminate me?’

Before the blurry shadows could reach his body, a sudden coldness in Han Su’s right hand snapped him back to his senses.

The gap in his right hand was exuding Spiritual Power, helping him break free from that suffocating feeling.

Realizing what was happening, he was instantly on high alert.

He had already learned from the files Miss Ai provided that the greatest threat from this kind of Crystal Skull was contamination. It caused normal people to become infected with the Crystal Plague, their will and thoughts completely controlled.

This transmission was the Crystal Skull—or rather, the mystery the Crystal Skull represented—and its Penetration into the real world.

Faced with such a massive amount of contamination, he knew he couldn’t block it with his stun baton or the Cross Copper Scar on his left hand. He made a split-second decision, spun around, and stretched his hand out toward the Crystal Skull on the floor, chanting in a low voice:

”The Gods have bestowed a revelation!”