Chapter 61 Sudden Realization

Xu Chen carefully put away the documents bought with Elder Ge's life, and then picked up another sealed file bag.

Tearing open the seal, he reached his hand into the bag, pulled out the document, and scanned the text with his eyes.

【Joint Investigation Report on the Two Academicians】

As for the part recording the events concerning Elder Ge, Xu Chen was an eyewitness himself. He merely glanced briefly at the beginning and end of the matter and skipped past it.

However, he was quite curious about what had actually happened to Academician Tang.

The document recorded everything from the moment Academician Tang met Meng Hua, who was Elder Ge's student, up until the events that followed.

Despite the intervention of the joint criminal investigation task force, supported by a large number of criminal investigation experts from two provinces and various advanced pieces of equipment, this part of the case still yielded no trace of conventional criminal methods.

Then the military took over everything.

From the very beginning, Xu Chen had learned some inside information. After discovering certain clues, Tang had left a note for Meng Hua, then unhesitatingly set out to decipher the information left behind by Elder Ge, ultimately perishing in the attempt. This could not help but fill Xu Chen with deep reverence.

From these cold and merciless records, he saw Academician Tang’s fearless determination.

This made him think of a saying: Courage is the song of humanity.

If it were him facing such a situation, it would probably be very difficult to muster this kind of awareness.

After finishing it, Xu Chen felt a sense of regret. Even though Academician Tang had keenly perceived something and left behind a note sufficient to expose the clues, against an existence he simply could not comprehend, he was ultimately a step behind, and the information on the note had been quietly tampered with by "Him."

What a pity. If the note were still around, perhaps they could have deduced something... That old bastard Cthulhu simply reached out too far with his tentacles.

After the Academician Tang incident was taken over by the military, a meeting was convened, and the intrusion by Professor He and Captain Chu was also recorded in detail. The minutes of this meeting were filed and placed into this folder.

He looked through it and finally understood why he was held in such high regard, what his specific mission was, and that there were still quite a few people like Academician Tang who dared to press forward wave after wave for this cause.

However, what he least expected was that Captain Chu seemed to have also fallen victim and was not expected to live much longer.

Even under such circumstances, did Captain Chu still believe that he was an extremely special existence?

When Xu Chen saw this, he found it somewhat bizarre. Judging by Captain Chu's words, he himself had practically become a non-human entity; in Chu's eyes, it seemed he was akin to transcendent creatures like Cthulhu and Taihao.

He felt both solemn and somewhat wryly amused. If he were truly that powerful and possessed transcendent abilities, what couldn't he do? Would he still need to be here living in fear?

He was probably less reliable than Taihao...

Later on, Captain Chu submitted another piece of information, and upon glancing at it, Xu Chen almost jumped up.

【Eight patients with Taihao disease suffered brain death. Their deaths served to exempt us from paying a certain price; perhaps I should not inquire further...】

【Due to information pollution, I cannot utter information about 'Him'; it seems completely meaningless...】

【Xu Chen is extremely special; his inspiration stat is very high. According to President Yang's statement, only he can fully acquire certain information...】

This piece of information carried an immense amount of data, and it took Xu Chen half a day of thinking to figure out what was going on.

Back when he was chanting Cthulhu's true name, he had actually already felt puzzled. He had clearly felt "His" gaze, but why was it that with so many people sitting there, they acted as if nothing had happened after hearing it? It was very un-Cthulhu-like—at least give some kind of reaction.

So the damage had been transferred.

Yet the authority of this "Taihao" seemed even more abstract... No matter how Xu Chen looked at it, he found it strange.

This method was really not very honorable, and the actions of "Taihao" differed somewhat from what he had imagined.

Later on, Captain Chu had delved deeply into the matter, but it seemed there was no useful information? At least the intelligence he obtained was of no help to the current situation, which was why he called it meaningless.

And then there was his own inspiration...

Is inspiration really that important? And that cleansing wash as well.

Xu Chen racked his brains for a while before remembering that, under the Cthulhu worldview, this term was indeed an attribute that transcended ordinary people. Such individuals were often famous artists and musicians who could perceive things that ordinary humans could not, and thus create works that surpassed mortals.

Having been washed away by decades of memories, this concept was on the verge of oblivion and almost completely forgotten.

Fortunately, it hadn't been forgotten thoroughly. Prompted by this information, he finally remembered it; otherwise, he would have been left completely baffled once again.

He came to a sudden realization. The scenes that had previously emerged from the photographs were probably hallucinations brought about by his high inspiration, along with those very abrupt flashes of insight and premonitions. Seen in this light, these were all effects brought about by having high inspiration.

No wonder the hallucinations he saw in the photographs were so abstract, resembling recorded epics. If he knew how to paint, he could probably paint them and create a shocking, world-shaking masterpiece titled 《The Ancient City in the Black Wheat Fields》.

As for why his inspiration was so strong, Xu Chen thought about it and guessed it was related to his transmigration.

After understanding this point, more doubts began to well up in his mind.

One of them was that, in his understanding, having high inspiration was not necessarily good news. In the books about Cthulhu he had read, people with this trait rarely came to a good end...

Immediately afterward, he recalled that Elder Ge seemed to have said something before.

Pondering for a moment, he remembered that when Elder Ge was finally leaving, he had once said that he himself was "sturdier than them" and not afraid of being washed.

This metaphor was something he had heard many times; it seemed to be Grandfather Yang's evaluation, and Yang appeared to consider this a very precious trait.

Connecting the clues together, he suddenly understood somewhat.

This was probably something similar to mental resistance, and this resistance was extremely powerful—so powerful that he hadn't even been consciously aware of it. Incredible things must have happened to him, yet when he encountered them, he acted as if nothing was wrong, to the extent that he had simply ignored them directly.

Xu Chen thought back to the last time he had openly uttered Cthulhu's true name. At that time, he hadn't remembered or known the consequences of calling upon Cthulhu, so he had spoken His true name without taking any precautions, and he had even called it twice.

Relating this to the price paid just now, Xu Chen realized that even those who merely heard it had to be substituted in death by Taihao disease patients just to block the backlash. How could he possibly have suffered no ill effects at all after directly shouting Cthulhu's true name? The first time, he at least suffered from aphasia, feeling "His" gaze and oppression; the second time, because of the jade pendant, he didn't even have the symptoms of aphasia.

Among all this, the trait of resistance to cleansing was probably playing a role. He just didn't know whether this resistance-to-cleansing trait was also brought by his transmigration.

Xu Chen's brain CPU temporarily overloaded, and he finally reached a conclusion.

He was probably even more special than he had imagined—so special that even the official authorities considered him an indispensable pillar of support.

He put down the documents in a daze, unable to figure out how he had suddenly transformed from a sheltered bystander into someone holding up the collapsing sky.

At this point, it was do or die; if he didn't work hard, everyone would likely be doomed together.