Big Eye

Big Eye

Mu Sichen used his own pickaxe and someone else's energy to trigger the "Undermine" skill, obtaining a Self Sticker.

The Self Sticker could help anyone stay clear-headed. It counted as a mental defense item, and its effect would improve as Mu Sichen grew stronger.

This skill gave Mu Sichen the distinct feeling that he had undermined both the Great Being of the Town of the Eye and Qin Zhou at the same time.

Mu Sichen felt this skill should not be called "Undermine." It should be called "Fleecing."

In any case, he had obtained his first useful item since arriving here.

Mu Sichen wanted to sneak into the town during "Night," search for the "Pillar" and a way to build a safe house, and complete the novice mission issued by the System.

To do that, he had to put on the cloak the Follower had brought. But this cloak did not look like anything good. He suspected that once he put it on, he would fall into a half-mad state and find it hard to complete the mission with a normal mind.

Fortunately, the Self Sticker had appeared right then and could be used to resist the cloak's contamination.

The System advised Mu Sichen to place the Self Sticker on the back of his neck, where it could protect his brain upward and his spinal central nerves downward, giving it a relatively comprehensive range of coverage.

Mu Sichen peeled off the sticker and stuck it to the back of his neck. The moment he put it on, the sticker disappeared.

Mu Sichen could not feel the sticker anymore, but he could sense a faint chill at the back of his neck. There should have been a tattoo-like pattern there now.

The coolness cleared Mu Sichen's head. His gaze fell on the food tray that had dropped to the floor.

The food the Follower had brought was simple: bread, eggs, mineral water, and a few cherry tomatoes. Earlier, Mu Sichen had thought the food looked quite normal. Now he saw a transparent eye floating in the water.

The Great Being of the Town of the Eye really was obsessed with eyes.

Luckily, the bread, eggs, and cherry tomatoes were normal. Mu Sichen had been hungry for a long time, and he wolfed them down so fast he nearly choked to death.

There were only five minutes left before eight o'clock. Mu Sichen picked up the pace and tied the Follower even more securely.

The Follower was still resisting stubbornly, muttering, "Fallen... eliminate... Xiangping Town... safe..."

To be safe, Mu Sichen gave the Follower another knock on the head with the pickaxe.

The Follower's HP bar dropped until only one-tenth remained, and he finally stopped talking.

Mu Sichen propped the Follower's head on the desk, placed the radio beside his ear, and turned the volume down to the lowest setting, low enough that only the Follower could hear what was playing.

He did this to prevent a problem after he left the room. Since he would not be able to lock the door from the inside, the Follower could escape from this room with even the smallest bit of strength, and then Mu Sichen would be in danger.

Of course, Mu Sichen did not intend to keep wearing this cloak marked "Townsperson No. 629" forever. He would look for a chance to switch identities.

He put useful items like the flashlight into his inventory, but the pickaxe could not be stored there.

Mu Sichen was worrying over how to conceal the pickaxe when the "ding-ding" of a system prompt rang in his mind.

He opened the System screen and saw that the weapon field now had an upgrade button.

It turned out that after subduing a Follower, the pickaxe had gained experience points and could be upgraded.

Mu Sichen: "..."

Why was the pickaxe the one gaining experience points instead of him?

He upgraded the pickaxe. The weapon, originally level 0, became level 1. The rusty pick head turned as good as new, giving off a silver-black metallic sheen.

At the same time, a dedicated weapon slot appeared in his inventory, allowing him to store weapons level 1 and above.

Mu Sichen hid the pickaxe away and practiced drawing and storing the weapon quickly, making sure he could take it out in an instant.

When everything was ready, he leaned beside the door and waited for "Night" to descend.

At 7:59:50, a dangerous thought suddenly rose in Mu Sichen's mind.

Because the Follower had come in, the outside of the door was no longer locked. Should he open the door he had locked from within at the fifty-ninth second and rush out early to take one look at "Daylight"?

This action might drive him insane, but the time would be extremely short, only an instant. With the power of the Self Sticker, perhaps he could stay clear-headed.

The Great Being was clearly the largest obstacle to lighting up the Town of the Eye icon. If he could not even look directly at the Great Being, he would have no chance of winning.

It was risky, but not without confidence.

The second hand on his watch had already reached 58. There was no time left to hesitate.

Mu Sichen touched the tattoo on the back of his neck and made his decision in a split second.

At the fifty-ninth second, he gently turned the knob, opened the door, and strode out.

He had only an instant, and Mu Sichen did not know what he would see.

His gaze swept aimlessly outside, from his surroundings up to the sky. In that single instant, a burning pain came from the back of Mu Sichen's neck. His eyes hurt violently, and it felt as if liquid inside his eyeballs were boiling, as if his eyes would burst open in the next second.

Mu Sichen raised a hand to cover his eyes. Blood seeped from his left eye and ran down through the gaps between his fingers.

In that instant, Mu Sichen could not say exactly what he had seen.

All he remembered was a gigantic bloodshot eye hanging in the sky. Its lashes were made of countless writhing red-black worms twisting around the eyeball, while innumerable white feathers fell from both sides of the eye. The feathers gave off a faint sacred glow, and as they drifted down, they broke apart into a pale luminous mist.

Deafening hymn-singing echoed in Mu Sichen's mind. His current Rationality could no longer make out the lyrics, but he felt as if, within the hymn-singing, a great door had opened to him. Countless feathers floated inside, as though heaven lay beyond the door. If he only walked in, he would never suffer again.

Mu Sichen's feet shifted forward beyond his control. Just then, a blast of cold suddenly came from the back of his neck, shot down his spine, and reached his limbs in an instant. The freezing pain pricked densely into both his legs like needles.

The cold and the pain stopped Mu Sichen in place, keeping him from moving farther forward.

That single instant of clarity was enough for the door in the void before him to close, and the hymn-singing in his mind vanished as well.

Mu Sichen trembled all over and sat on the ground, panting heavily. With his still largely intact right eye, he glanced at his watch.

It was exactly eight o'clock.

Just now, he felt as though he had suffered for days in hell, yet time had advanced by only one second.

He had merely looked at the "Great Being" once, and he had not even seen Its full form.

The power of the Self Sticker was completely exhausted. Mu Sichen could no longer rely on external force to resist mental contamination. Wrapped in the cloak, he would occasionally hear the choir song. The sound was simply not as loud, and it seemed very far away, so his Rationality could still withstand it.

That one second, that one glance, had cost him dearly.

But it had not been without reward!

Mu Sichen lowered his head, covering his eyes, and used the cloak to hide the smile at the corner of his mouth.

[The player has perfectly resisted one strike from "Hidden Star," activating the SAN System.]

[The player has successfully gazed upon "Hidden Star" and obtained knowledge related to "Hidden Star."]

There was a long description beneath each system notification, but Mu Sichen did not need to read them. That information had flooded into his mind together with the deadly mental blow from just now.

This world was strangely peculiar. "Understanding" an unnamable thing would contaminate the mind and drive a person mad. They would either go insane and die, or attach themselves to the unnamable thing and survive only by becoming its appendage.

And "gazing upon" an unnamable thing meant certain death, ten times out of ten. If someone somehow survived by sheer luck, they could obtain knowledge and power.

That one look just now had activated the SAN System, which was the Sanity Value System.

From now on, Mu Sichen could see how much total SAN he had and how much remained, allowing him to judge whether he could endure mental contamination, and for how long.

If Mu Sichen had not risked taking one look at the Great Being in "Daylight," he would never have activated the SAN System. He would have been like someone walking blindfolded through a trap full of land mines, unable to take a single step.

At the same time, he had also obtained knowledge related to the "Great Being," knowledge that he could never have pried from the mouths of Apostles or Followers.

The System had said just now that he had suffered a strike from "Hidden Star." "Hidden Star" referred to the level of the Great Being in the Town of the Eye.

Above "Hidden Star," there were two further levels: "Sun-Eclipsing" and "Sky-Shrouding." These all belonged to the divine domain, knowledge that could not be told to ordinary people.

"Hidden Star" was the threshold of the god-class domain. Only by reaching "Hidden Star" could one become an Unnamable in and of itself, but it was still only a threshold, the dividing line between human beings and the Unnamable.

But ordinary people could never know this knowledge, nor the method for becoming "Hidden Star." Even if a certain "Hidden Star" wanted to tell someone, the mere act of saying the term aloud would cause any ordinary person who heard it to suffer a mental collapse and die.

Only a person with an exceptionally strong mind, someone who risked death to gaze upon a god and blaspheme the divine domain, could possibly steal this knowledge.

It was not that the System had refused to tell Mu Sichen these things. It was unable to transmit this information.

The "Great Being" of the Town of the Eye was a "Hidden Star" currently evolving toward "Sun-Eclipsing." Once He could maintain "Daylight" forever, He would become "Sun-Eclipsing."

Mu Sichen had not seen the method for stepping into the divine domain, but he had obtained one word: "Pillar."

Whether it was a human becoming Hidden Star or a Hidden Star becoming Sun-Eclipsing, all of it required a "Pillar." This was also the thing the System had asked Mu Sichen to search for.

Although he still did not know what the "Pillar" was, at least he had a direction for his guesses.

After gazing just now, Mu Sichen decided to temporarily call the "Hidden Star" of the Town of the Eye Big Eye. Most of what this Big Eye did inside the Town of the Eye was preparation for strengthening His "Pillar." As long as Mu Sichen figured out what the Apostles and Followers did every day and summarized the patterns, he should be able to guess the truth of the "Pillar."

It really was true that fortune came from taking risks. If he had not taken that look, he would never have understood the meaning of "Pillar." He might even have stupidly searched the Town of the Eye for a giant literal pillar.

Of course, that had truly been extraordinarily dangerous.

Mu Sichen blinked. His right eye was still more or less intact, but his left eye saw only a sheet of blood-red. He could not see anything through it.

At the same time, the unceasing choir song rang beside his ear, constantly affecting his mind.

Mu Sichen could see his own SAN now. His current maximum SAN was 100. After enduring one glance from Big Eye, he had 88 left, which was an auspicious number, at least.

But wearing the cloak reduced his SAN by 3 points every hour. Likewise, the song also reduced his SAN by 3 points every hour.

That was 6 points per hour. After the 12 hours of "Night" passed, he would lose 72 SAN, leaving only 16.

Once his Sanity Value dropped to only 16 points, he would not be far from madness.

I need to find a way out of this predicament, the Mu Sichen who was still rational for now thought silently.

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Author's Note:

Big Eye: Someone stole a glance at me.

Qin Zhou: I looked at That Person many times.