absurd deduction game.

"Crack...crack..."

Accompanying the elevator's creaking sound, like old bones grinding together, was a massive, awe-inspiring, constantly writhing, contracting, and expanding dark red mass of flesh.

Its volume occupies almost a third of the spherical space, and its surface is covered with countless painful and distorted human face reliefs. These faces are constantly changing, silently roaring, and exuding an extremely intense negative emotion of fear, despair, and madness.

These emotions, like tangible black mist, rose from the surface of the heart and permeated the entire space. At first glance, they seemed somewhat similar to the power of a curse, but they were completely different concepts.

Yu Xing observed the enormous mass of flesh before him.

The heartbeat was slow and powerful. With each contraction, the entire spherical space trembled slightly, and all the blood vessels and nerve bundles pulsated in sync. With each expansion, a denser black mist surged out. At the same time, an invisible energy wave carrying coordinate information, centered on the heart, penetrated the barrier of matter and spread towards the dark universe revealed above, pierced by the spire of the clock tower.

Through the translucent tube walls, he could vaguely see that some parts of the intricate mechanical structure of the clock tower surrounding the heart were trembling and shifting unnaturally, while the writhing biological tissues were also experiencing abnormal spasms.

The heart seems to be consuming all the nutrients to nourish itself.

Like a fetus born from its mother's womb, its blood vessels are deeply embedded in the clock tower, gradually consuming the clock tower's vitality.

Yu Xing let out a breath. Just standing here, staring at that heart, she could feel her soul being swallowed by endless negative emotions, her reason teetering on the edge of madness.

Suddenly, with a soft crack, the protective badge he had just shown Edgar shattered into two pieces, lying pitifully in his pocket, rendered useless.

Here, the blessings of the true God vanish in the heartbeat of evil.

“Truly… a magnificent yet ugly creation.” The actor looked up at the enormous, beating heart, a look of bewilderment and longing appearing on his face for the first time. However, because he was standing at the back, neither Yu Xing nor Qu Xianqing noticed him.

Their attention was focused on the heart.

All three could sense that the power contained within this heart far surpassed any monster they had encountered in Yorickf Town—even the Blood Moon of the Riel family was somewhat inferior; it was merely a projection. In the City of Terror, projections like the Blood Moon were ubiquitous in the sky. This heart truly possessed the flesh and blood of an ancient god.

It simply throbs to indicate that it is "alive," without making any other movements, yet it exudes an aura of danger.

Yu Xing quietly spread his senses, trying to decipher the structure of this heart.

However, the feedback was chaotic and violent, like facing a vortex of pure negative emotions. He "saw" his heart in a state of confusion, containing a vast amount of energy that was enough to distort reality. The only clear thing was a malicious coordinate fluctuation that was constantly being sent into the deep space of the universe.

What did Edgar say again?

To open the door out of the city of terror, you must destroy its heart.

To destroy this heart, one must either find its 'resonance frequency' and break it, or corrupt and cover it with something more powerful that can suppress the essence of the ancient god's power.

Frankly speaking, the former is suicidal. Although the three people present are all of high status and have high resistance to pollution, actively seeking a resonance frequency with an ancient god of the Kreece system, to put it bluntly, is to synchronize their brains with this indescribable thing and actively accept all its thoughts. Even if they are deducers, as long as they do this, the only way out is to either mutate into a monster like Edgar or die with their heads exploding.

Of course, Edgar didn't seem to be trying to lead them to their deaths.

Edgar had been assimilated by the clock tower for too long. Although he spoke clearly and logically, a large part of his brain was actually being driven by mechanical gears. It was understandable that he would unconsciously say some seemingly normal but actually strange things.

So now the only option is to compare the pollution of the heart with something more powerful.

Yu Xing immediately thought of the eerie divine markings on her abdomen.

It wasn't just the one left on his abdomen; in fact, he had quite a few marks on his body that were of higher rank than the "Ancient Gods." The ring-shaped snake pattern on his chest, the tree-shaped black pattern on the back of his hand, and the blood-red eye on the tip of his tongue could also be counted.

However, he still couldn't remember how he got the patterns Qianjie gave him. The memory that was forcibly lost always made Yu Xing feel that there was some hidden danger, so he tried not to touch it as much as possible.

The tree-shaped patterns are the power of the Ghostfall Tree, but they weren't personally branded by the Ghostfall in Yin-Yang City. Instead, they are the source of the ability that Yu Xing gradually unlocked as he was released from his restrictions. The one on the tip of his tongue is similar; it was given by the system and, as it stands, is also the curse ability and manifestation of the Ghostfall.

The most useful one is still [His] pattern. After all, Yu Xing and [His] have actually met twice. The [His] who descended upon the faceless doctor is quite easy to talk to and won't yell at him just because the pattern is used as a weapon.

So Yu Xing tested it once at Blood Moon and concluded that this pattern is extremely useful in the Crypt Lord dungeon, and it should be able to contaminate the heart in front of him without any problem.

But there's still a problem.

With the musician here, Yu Xing didn't want to reveal any of his trump cards. This freak was very clever. If Yu Xing used [His] strange divine runes to solve the problem, the musician would definitely realize that he had some kind of cooperative relationship with [His], and might use that to his advantage in Yin Yang City.

Qu Xianqing has a ticket from the system, which is the [Book], given to him by Yu Xing. It is currently unknown what special function it has. Rather than revealing his trump card, Yu Xing would rather take this opportunity to see the actor's abilities.

The actor is too mysterious. He has been hiding in the system for so many years. Apart from the curse power of the Ghostly Tree, who knows how many other things he has hidden? Time, space, soul and body, none of them are weak.

Thinking of this, Yu Xing slowly turned her head.

He said to the actor, "You have secretly guided us along the way, which has saved us a lot of effort to get here. Now you can say what you want."

He looked at the actor's unchanging expression and smiled: "The destination of this trip is the clock tower. You seemed very interested in Edgar's mechanized body just now, and so is this heart. It is a perfect creation of machinery and biology. With each beat, I can hear the sound of its parts."

"Is this what you want?"

The actor then let out a soft sigh.

"So you've already noticed it too. Yes, I am indeed very interested in this thing."

He walked forward slowly, and this time no one stopped him. He easily approached the beating giant heart, deftly removed the glove from his right hand, and gently touched the surface of the heart with his clean but calloused hand.

The actor closed his eyes, feeling the mechanical vibrations in his palm, and said softly, "Young Master, I never intended to harm you this time. I've actually helped you quite a bit, even now..."

"What I want is none of your business."

"How about I handle this? That's the answer you wanted to hear from me, isn't it?" Qu Xianqing frowned, feeling that the actor was like a fanatical scientist who had found a research subject, which sent a chill down her spine.

She looked at Yu Xing uncertainly: "Are we really going to hand it over to him? What is he really like...?"

Yu Xingchong nodded to Qu Xianqing, indicating that she didn't need to worry.

Then he said to the actor, "It's up to you now. Although I don't agree with your hobbies, you did a good job today. Consider this a reward for doing the task honestly."

Qu Xianqing: "Hobbies?"

Her eye twitched slightly, and she looked uncertainly at the beating heart, asking Yu Xing with her eyes: Is this the kind of ugly thing that entertainers like? What kind of weird fetish is this?
Yu Xing chuckled and mouthed, "I'll tell you after we leave the instance. For now, step back a bit."

The two retreated to the elevator position, leaving the entire spherical space to the performer.

The performer glanced back at them with a faint smile on his face, then turned back and chuckled, "You get rewards for doing your tasks honestly, young master. I never thought such a healthy reward and punishment system could exist between us."

He made this remark, almost as if it were a joke.

Immediately, the air temperature dropped sharply, and a chill emanated from the actor's body. Patches of dark green moss quickly spread outwards from him, covering the entire space in the blink of an eye.

As the moss spread, the temperature of the entire spherical space plummeted, and tiny ice crystals condensed in the air.

The huge, dark red heart was covered in moss. As if sensing danger, it beat faster, but was quickly enveloped, as if draped in a strange vegetation.

The heartbeat instantly became erratic and rapid, like prey struggling in its death throes. The distorted, pained face relief on its surface twisted even more violently, and the silent roar transformed into a tangible mental shock, attempting to dispel this sudden onslaught.

However, the moss of the performers was no ordinary plant; it wriggled like a living thing, taking deep root in the tissues of the heart and beginning to frantically absorb its life force and energy.

Countless tiny, dark spots, like eyes, appeared on the surface of the moss, exuding an unsettling aura of decay and demise.

"Heh..." The musician chuckled softly, his right hand still lightly pressed on the surface of his heart, but his left hand snapped his fingers, and the aura around him became even more profound and unpredictable. It was no longer the curse power that belonged only to the Ghostly Tree, but a strange power that was more ancient and closer to chaos.

"May you sleep peacefully."

He uttered four words in a low voice, each syllable causing the temperature in the space to drop a little more. The moss covering his heart suddenly turned black and rotted, emitting a strong stench, as if it had experienced a thousand years of decay in an instant!

The heart, covered in moss, seemed to have been injected with the most deadly poison, and its beating suddenly stopped!
Immediately afterward, under the watchful eyes of Yu Xing and Qu Xianqing, this enormous heart, which contained terrifying energy, began to deteriorate and shrink at a visible rate.

Its dark red surface quickly faded, turning into a lifeless gray, and the bas-reliefs of suffering faces blurred and collapsed like melting wax figures, eventually vanishing into nothingness.

The thick blood vessels broke apart, and a black, viscous liquid seeped out, only to be quickly absorbed by the decaying moss.

The heartbeats grew weaker and weaker, the intervals longer and longer, until finally—

It stopped beating completely.

The tremors of the entire spherical space ceased, and the blood vessels and nerve bundles that had been converging toward the heart drooped limply, their light dimming.

The heart, having lost all vitality and energy, eventually shrank into a dark gray, wrinkled mass, like a huge, dehydrated skin, hanging limply in mid-air, emitting an indescribable stench.

Just as the heart completely stopped beating—

Above the spherical space, the pitch-black universe revealed by the piercing of the clock tower's spire suddenly underwent a strange change.

Those stars that had been cold and vast, gazing down below, seemed to have their important connection suddenly severed, and their light flashed intensely all at once!
Immediately afterwards, countless indescribable, malicious gazes, as if they were tangible, descended from those stars... These gazes were not light, but a kind of oppression and probing that acted directly on the soul, carrying a certain displeasure and inquiry of being disturbed.

The air within the entire spherical space seemed to freeze, and a pressure far more ancient, vast, and indescribable than that of the heart itself descended.

Those gazes swept frantically throughout the entire city of terror, trying to find the reason for the disappearance of the coordinates, and to find the "blasphemers" who dared to disrupt their layout.

Yu Xing and the other two instantly felt a shiver originating from their life instincts, as if they were being watched simultaneously by countless colossal beings beyond their comprehension.

However, the spherical space at the top of the clock tower is itself a relatively enclosed area.

The thick barrier, made of peristaltic membranes and ancient mechanical structures, along with the remnants of the energy barrier formed during the heart's previous operation, to some extent isolated the direct connection between the inside and outside.

So, it took a few seconds for our gazes to enter this space.

They still came in.

Like a searchlight, it swept back and forth across the space, passing over the withered, foul-smelling remnants of the heart, over the surrounding stagnant blood vessels and nerve bundles, and even sweeping past the location of the three people several times—

But they seemed to ignore it.

They could sense the disappearance of the coordinates and the anomaly of the place, but they could not pinpoint the three "tiny" entities that caused it all. Their gazes revealed a mixture of confusion and indifferent anger, as if they had been offended by ants.

The feeling of being "watched" closely yet "ignored" by an incomprehensible being is more chilling than direct confrontation. The actor, with his eyes closed, seemed to be receiving what he was absorbing from his heart. In the dim light, Yu Xing seemed to hear the moss making childlike laughter.

The moss blocked their view, making the three of them disappear from sight!

Time seemed to have passed for a long time, yet it also seemed to have only been a moment.

Finally, after their futile search yielded nothing, the gazes of the stars, carrying a chilling indifference that seemed to freeze the soul, slowly receded like the tide. (End of Chapter)