absurd deduction game.

Qu Xianqing was the first to run out of the dimly lit passageway, leaving the mycelium far behind. Her figure darted out like a swallow and landed steadily on the ground outside the exit.

Sensing the foul air around her, she immediately drew her sword and looked around, wary of possible attacks.

Before us lay a relatively open area of ​​ruins.

The distorted buildings thinned out here, and the ground was piled with rubble and indescribable organic debris. At the very end of this ruin, the distorted image of the church they were searching for was already within reach!
Its horn-like peaks pierced the writhing sky, its massive silhouette casting a suffocating shadow under the pale "starlight," just a few hundred meters away.

Qu Xianqing: "..."

Immediately afterwards, the actor's figure appeared silently not far from her side, like a ghost.

"Oh? Looks like we chose the right direction. We're really lucky." He remained composed, not even the hem of his clothes was disheveled, and a faint sense of pleasure inexplicably lingered on his face.

"That's quite a coincidence." Qu Xianqing turned his head, his lips curling downwards. "You weren't involved in this?"

The performer tilted his head slightly, his gaze falling on Qu Xianqing, who was still gripping the sword hilt tightly and whose breathing had not yet fully calmed down. An enigmatic smile appeared on his lips: "Are you trying to say that I led you all the way here?"

"So I really am doing good deeds anonymously. I knew the way all along, but instead of telling you directly, I helped you with the mission in a roundabout way. Tell me, what am I after, little girl?"

Qu Xianqing glanced at him coldly without responding, but tightened his grip on the sword. The killing intent emanating from him, which had not yet been fully contained, was like an invisible needle, forming a brief, silent standoff with the actor's unfathomable aura.

It felt as if an invisible string was taut in the air.

Just then, a hissing sound of mycelium being corroded came from the exit of the tunnel.

The next moment, Yu Xing's figure leaped out.

The black mist surrounding him had not completely subsided, surging like waves. It slowly dissipated after he landed, being drawn back into his skin. The black patterns appeared for a moment before disappearing.

Following closely behind him, from the deep tunnel exit, countless unwilling mycelia, like venomous snakes sniffing out, suddenly emerged again.

They wriggled, their fine, split teeth opening and closing, trying to seize the last chance to drag their escaped "prey" back to their fleshy lair.

However, when these hyphae are completely exposed to the air outside the tunnel...

The moist, sticky texture on the surface quickly became dry and wrinkled at a speed visible to the naked eye, as if the moisture had been instantly drained.

The originally turbid but vibrant milky white quickly faded into a lifeless gray color, and the chaotic and powerful energy fluctuations in the air seemed to have a strong repulsive reaction with the mycelium that originated from the "body" of the building.

"laugh--"

A very faint, burning sound came from the surface of the mycelium, and even a few wisps of almost invisible blue smoke rose up.

The mycelial tentacles twitched and curled up violently as if scalded, no longer daring to linger in the outside world for even a second. They retreated back into the darkness deep within the tunnel at an even faster speed than when they had extended out, leaving only a faint smell of burning in the air and a few pieces of rapidly carbonized and peeling mycelial fragments at the edge of the cave entrance.

Ultimately, they are parasites "within" this living city, unable to adapt for long to the "outside" environment, which belongs to the surface of the city of terror, and is more chaotic and directly exposed to distorted rules.

It seems we don't need to worry about these mushrooms.

Yu Xing silently mourned for a second for the plight of the translucent corpses in the passageway, wondering what the interior of the passageway would look like after this mushroom rampage.

He quickly glanced around, his gaze lingering on the nearby church before settling on the two figures locked in a delicate standoff. Seeing that the actor was indeed unharmed, he raised an eyebrow and said sarcastically, "You ran pretty fast."

The actor made no mention of what had just happened in the passageway, modestly replying, "So-so."

Qu Xianqing: ?

After a brief silence, the three decided to continue towards the church.

Admittedly, Qu Xianqing suspected that the actor was leading the way discreetly, but she had no evidence. After all, the church was indeed their current target, and she felt that Yu Xing could think of the same thing as her. Since she didn't press the matter now, it proved that Yu Xing had other plans.

She remained silent and followed beside Yu Xing.

At such a close distance, it was no longer a big problem for the three of them. There were still shadowy figures like guards lingering on the street, and reclusive "natives" in the sparse houses around.

Yu Xing's gaze swept over the twisted buildings that were close together and of varying heights on both sides of the street.

"Let's go up there," he decided immediately.

Although the walls of these buildings are covered with disgusting, wriggling blood vessels, these vessels do not yet exhibit characteristics similar to a fungal carpet.

Using the dark red wall as leverage, Yu Xing lightly leaped onto a low, raised windowsill that resembled a melting wax figure. He landed precisely, avoiding the visibly pulsating cysts and blood vessels.

Qu Xianqing followed closely behind, her movements even more concise and swift, like a nimble cheetah, easily keeping up with her in just a few leaps.

Turning around, the actor's figure, seemingly weightless, floated up as well.

The three moved quickly between the roof and protrusions of the twisted building.

The sensations underfoot varied; sometimes it was a hardened, scaly surface, and sometimes it was a structure as elastic as some kind of biological tendon. But they carefully controlled their strength and landing point to avoid attracting unnecessary attention.

Looking down from above, the shadowy figures on the street below still drifted aimlessly, releasing a silent wave of despair, but they seemed completely unaware of the commotion on the rooftops.

Occasionally, one or two ghostly, empty "gazes" would sweep across the rooftop before quickly moving away, as if the rooftop belonged to another dimension beyond their reach.

The 100-meter distance was covered in the blink of an eye with such smooth stealth.

They eventually stopped on the top of the tallest building, the one closest to the church.

There was no suitable place to land ahead, and the twisted church was already close at hand. Its massive main entrance, which resembled the entrance to the lair of some dark creature, exuded a chilling aura, as if it were quietly waiting for their arrival.

The three men lurked atop the building closest to the church, carefully observing the distorted mirror image.

The overall outline of the church still vaguely resembles the Harvest Church, but all the details have been maliciously distorted and desecrated.

The once solemn spire has become like twisted demon horns, and the walls are covered with writhing veins and constantly opening and closing cracks like breathing holes.

The enormous main gate was no longer made of wood, but rather of some kind of dark metal and bone, with sharp bone spurs growing along its edges. In the center of the gate was carved a huge, upside-down symbol of the Mother Goddess, dripping black slime—withered ears of wheat and shattered stars.

An atmosphere of malice and madness far more intense and heavy than that on the street emanated from inside the church, suggesting that the mental pollution inside was extremely powerful.

"Go straight in?" Qu Xianqing asked in a low voice, his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to fight at any moment.

Yu Xing stared at the ominous door and slowly shook his head: "Let's take a look around first."

His gaze swept over the area around the church. To the side and behind the church, there was a relatively open courtyard, but the sculptures in the courtyard had long been twisted into indescribable monstrous shapes, and the ground was no longer stone slabs, but a dark red substance like congealed blood.

"Let's go around to the side and take a look; maybe we can find something," Yu Xing decided.

The three men moved silently, like shadows, along the top of the building toward the side of the church.

As they approached the stained-glass windows on the side of the church—if those eerie images pieced together from broken eyeballs, tangled entrails, and writhing dark veins could still be called "stained glass"—Yu Xing suddenly stopped.

He sensed an unusually strong, echoing pollution emanating from behind a particularly large stained-glass window depicting a distorted starry sky and falling figures.

The feeling was similar to when he saw "Starry Night" at an art exhibition.

“There’s something here,” Yu Xing whispered. He gestured to Qu Xianqing, the guards, and the people around him, while he gently pressed his palm against the “glass”.

In an instant——

The scene before me shook and distorted violently, like water on which a stone had been thrown. The view from the top of the building disappeared, and the surrounding city of terror seemed to be shrouded in a thick fog.

Yu Xing was suddenly confronted with a completely different scene, one that carried a strong sense of the past!

This is……

The scene was blurry and disjointed, like fragmented memories.

Inside the familiar Harvest Church, the atmosphere was solemn and dignified. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows, casting dappled shadows, but the atmosphere was oppressively suffocating.

The archbishop, much younger and whose hair was not yet completely white—or rather, at that time he was just a high-ranking deacon—was frowning as he spoke in hushed tones with several serious-looking church personnel, their gazes occasionally drifting anxiously toward the prayer hall.

In the front row of the prayer hall, a middle-aged man named Riel, dressed in fine clothes but with a frenzied expression and sunken eyes, was kneeling on the ground, clutching his hair tightly with both hands, and screaming incoherently at the statue of the Mother Goddess:

"Light! So many eyes! It's looking at me! It saw me!"

"No...don't come any closer...the starry sky...the starry sky is alive!"

"Mother Goddess? Where is Mother Goddess? Why won't you save me!"

Although Yu Xing didn't know why this scene suddenly appeared in his mind, he still recognized him. Wasn't this Riel?

But what's going on here?

In that shattered scene, church personnel tried to comfort Riel, but to little avail; the young archbishop's face was filled with worry and a deep sense of powerlessness.

Intense fear, the despair of collapsing faith, and a chilling sense of being watched from the depths of the starry sky descended from above.

Yu Xing, however, only felt that it was not real.

Isn't this right?

Riel was only suspected of going astray back then; it's impossible that he would have gone mad in front of the Mother Goddess in front of so many church members. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been just surveillance; he would never have had the chance to go home.

Moreover, this scene is filled with a false sense of dreamlike reality; even if it is a memory, it must be distorted.

The fragments were still leaping, and Yu Xing focused his attention on the next scene.

The side hall of the church was dimly lit.

The young archbishop is talking to a pale-faced man dressed in the clothes often worn by traveling writers... That must be Edgar White?
Edgar's eyes were filled with exhaustion and fear, but also with a stubborn desire to explore.

Their voices were indistinct to Yu Xing, as if he could hear them through water.

Edgar: "...Your Excellency, Riel...that couldn't be ordinary madness! I've checked the records, that delirium, that fear of the stars...and some of the historical records..."

The archbishop said gravely, “Mr. White, I know your concerns. But there are things the Church is dealing with. Knowing too much won’t do you any good.”

Edgar exclaimed excitedly, "Handle it? How do we handle it? Cover it up like those previous 'accidents'? I've found out some things... about 'Secret Cult'... they..."

The archbishop abruptly interrupted, his voice stern yet carrying a barely perceptible warning: "Enough! Mr. White, stop your investigation! For your own sake, and for the sake of your family, there are some things you should not touch."

Ripples spread across the hazy water's surface, and Yu Xing sensed Edgar's stubbornness and fear, the archbishop's warning and implicit helplessness, and a suffocating feeling of being shrouded in a vast shadow from within those ripples.

The next second, the scene changed again.

In a secluded archive room beneath the church, only Edgar could be seen.

He sneaked into the place under the cover of night, carrying a dim oil lamp, and was quickly flipping through some old, dusty documents.

His fingers trembled as he traced the twisted symbols drawn on a scroll of parchment—the original version of the Three-Eyed symbol! Beside it were hastily written annotations: “...the blasphemous eye, pointing to the evil of the stars...a symbol revered in esoteric Buddhism…”

When Edgar saw a crucial piece of information, he suddenly covered his eyes, his body trembling violently, as if he had suffered a tremendous mental shock.

The light from the oil lamp cast his terrified, distorted shadow on the wall, and that shadow... seemed to move on its own, revealing a smile that didn't belong to Edgar.

An overwhelming fear surged through him, and a cold sensation, as if he had been "marked" by something, came from the depths of his soul.

Edgar suddenly looked up and met Yu Xing's gaze, who was acting as a spectator.

A buzzing sound filled his mind, and the scene made a sound like glass shattering. No, it really shattered. Yu Xing abruptly withdrew his senses. The stained glass in front of him was now covered with spiderweb-like cracks. As he moved, the glass crashed down and shattered on the ground, revealing the rooms inside the church.

"How is it?" Qu Xianqing immediately came over and asked with concern.

The actors also cast inquiring glances their way.

Yu Xing took a deep breath, calmed her surging mental energy, pondered for a moment, and shared the memory fragments she had seen with the two of them.

"Rail went mad inside the Church of the Harvest Mother, and Edgar sneaked into the church archives in the middle of the night?" Qu Xianqing repeated in a strange tone, "Is someone dreaming?"

These fragments cannot be real memories; they simply don't make logical sense.

Could it be that Edgar, after entering the City of Horrors, went insane under the influence of the pollution, unknowingly distorting his memories of the real world?

Then, this distorted memory, due to its intense emotional impact, was reflected in this area? (End of Chapter)