"You..."
The speech was right — but strange coming from a scholar.
The young scholar wasn't stupid. His eyes went wide, catching sothing off in Crown's fervor. But in that conflicted mont, he chose not to expose Crown's identity. Instead, a darker thought slithered through his mind:
'If the Void Mass-Energy Departnt's experint failed, why can't the Consciousness Faith Departnt's experint fail too?'
'Professor Gluo's experint lost to a deity. San Dales' experint is about to lose to a mortal. And that mortal looks suspiciously like one of That deity's believers.'
'Doesn't that prove the Void Mass-Energy experint — which failed because of a higher existence — was far closer to Them than the Consciousness Faith experint, which threw massive resources at the problem only to be undone by a single commoner?'
Whether or not this logic honored Truth, in that mont the young scholar's bitterness outweighed his commitnt to Truth's will. So he said nothing. He lowered his head and left.
He couldn't convince himself the man was a real scholar — but he could pretend he'd never seen this experintal variable.
Crown obviously realized his excessive excitent had blown his cover. But the crisis resolved itself.
He glanced at the scholar's retreating back, then scrambled up the shaft ladder and returned to San Dales.
The unconscious scholar in the alley hadn't been found. Crown swapped clothes back and retreated to his theater.
The three Players had climbed out well ahead of him. When Zhang Jizu saw Crown carefully repositioning the manhole cover to hide his incursion, he chuckled, shook his head, and lifted the cover once more — setting it at exactly the sa careless angle the scholar had left it. Identical. Flawless.
Cheng Shi teased: "Impressive mory, Mi Laozhang."
Zhang Jizu smiled. The other two didn't press it. All three moved quickly, re-entering the theater doors.
This ti the ti-skip was clearly larger. When Cheng Shi's trio erged into the marketplace, Crown had already assembled a makeshift stage at the market's center and was standing on it, surrounded by an ocean of curious residents.
Everyone was intrigued by the clown's antics. But the cold drained their patience. A chorus of heckling demanded he hurry up, while a few spirited hecklers cheered him on and deliberately obstructed the municipal enforcers trying to drag him off the platform.
As the crowd swelled, Crown's heart hamred harder.
He couldn't be sure whether underground scholars or observers were out there among them. But he could no longer endure the tornt eating him alive. The ti had co to speak the truth.
Even if today would be his last. He was ready.
He refused to let San Dales' people live under deception. He refused to let his "dear audience" inhabit a false world. The reason he'd built this open-air stage was to reveal San Dales' greatest secret to all!
So his opening line was:
"Friends — we've been deceived!
We live in a fake world. We're nothing but observed test subjects — pitiful wretches being manipulated without even knowing it."
The entire market fell silent. Even mid-transaction vendors froze, turning to look at him.
The clown stood tall atop the tallest plank, brave unto death. He looked down at the crowd and cried from the bottom of his heart:
"San Dales isn't a city — it's a cage!
Beneath our feet, deep under the permafrost, observers — the most brilliant scholars alive — are studying our lives, monitoring our every move.
Everything we know is what they want us to know. The world we perceive is the one they fabricated for us.
There is no apocalypse. Faith is not a dead end.
The outside world is blessed by the gods. Only here... only San Dales was abandoned — a wasteland no deity deigns to visit."
Crown choked up. A lifeti of deception crashed over him at once, nearly drowning his voice. But nobody anticipated that his brief pause would give the audience...
An opportunity to cheer and applaud.
"Brilliant!"
"Magnificent!"
"My God — my soul is trembling! I've never heard such an incredible story!"
The crowd erupted!
Nearly everyone present was cheering for the fresh new tale pouring from Crown's mouth. Wide eyes devoured its novelty and horror. Others hopped with joy, thrilled to finally hear sothing genuinely entertaining. Still others were already spreading the word:
"See? I told you Crown had potential. He hasn't been handing out flyers lately — all that saved ti finally produced this phenonal story!
We're prisoners? Ha — praise the imagination!"
More voices piled on: "This is the greatest story born on San Dales soil since the apocalypse. I apologize for my earlier disdain — Crown of the Joy Theater is a master storyteller. Perhaps I should take my family to hear one of his shows."
The crowd was euphoric. In the numbness of survival and the frost of existence, they'd finally found — in a clown's mouth — sothing that jolted their frozen nerves awake.
People laughed. They chanted Crown's na. "More! More!"
This was everything Crown had ever dread of. But now...
Surrounded by the adoring audience he'd yearned for his entire life, the clown wept.
"What are you doing?
Why won't you believe ?
I'm telling the truth! This world is fake! We're nothing but disposable test subjects!
Please believe !"
He wept on stage until his heart and lungs cracked. Below, the audience — witnessing such raw, masterful acting — cheered even louder.
"My God, his performance is so real — I'll never forget this mont. Crown is a born actor."
"The script, the dialogue, the craft — he could fill an entire theater on his own!"
"Crown, I'll be your fan from now on. If you have more stories like this, please let
know — I promise I won't toss your flyer in the trash this ti. I'll be there. Really!"
"..."
The praise rained down like a blizzard. But none of it ward Crown's heart. It was ice — through and through.
Crown's mind broke. His brain humd without ceasing. He couldn't understand how an utterly sincere exposé had turned into... this. All he knew was that the courage he'd gathered over two weeks had beco a joke — a cody he could never have achieved before today, on a plane he could never have reached.
Today didn't beco the last day of Crown's life. But it beca the most "successful" day of his career as a clown.
The absurdity was so total that Ai Si, black-faced, wanted nothing more than to kill every fool in sight.
Cheng Shi caught her arm just in ti. His expression defied description; he couldn't muster a trace of laughter either.
"You can take this?" Ai Si turned on him.
"Taking it or not taking it isn't up to . It's up to him.
Long Jing — this is his story. Not ours."
Ai Si — no, Long Jing's face shifted several tis before he reined in his fury and stepped back.
He was angry, yes — but within limits. It wasn't pure empathy for a fellow clown. He suspected this clown might very well be Lord Yu Xi before ascension.
So his impulse wasn't just shared despair — it was a calculated "approach," an attempt to draw nearer to the lord. But in front of these two, the maneuver had no chance of succeeding.
Zhang Jizu was also lost in thought — wondering whether Crown was the forr Yu Xi, or whether it was this clown's existence that made the mask called "Yu Xi" possible in the first place.
If Cheng Shi was right, then everything about Yu Xi suddenly made sense — including why the Secret Peeping Ear was here. Because San Dales was the birthplace of "Yu Xi."
Zhang Jizu's eyes narrowed. He grew more eager for what lay beyond the next few doors.
"You seem moved?" He smiled, glancing at Cheng Shi.
Cheng Shi nodded, his tone heavy with rue.
"This clown... is truly a clown."
...
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