novelraw Chapter 291: The Forgotten Corner
Chapter 291: The Forgotten Corner
"Impossible... my joy... it actually has no effect on you?"
The greasepaint on The Smiling Clown's face twisted slightly.
A faint crack appeared in his eyes, hidden beneath the paint and consumed by madness.
The [Punch's Comedy Baton] in his hand had always been the embodiment of joy, the scepter of a "god."
No mortal could resist the soul-melting, intense euphoria it brought.
But this expressionless Eastern man in the black trench coat before him not only remained unmelted, he even seemed to cool the surrounding frenzy.
"Again!"
The Smiling Clown let out a sickly shriek!
Defiantly, he raised the wooden club in his hand once more, pouring even more and stronger psychic power into it.
A psychic storm, more ferocious than before, surged toward Lin Jie!Lin Jie did not adopt a defensive posture. He simply patted the [Serene Heart] that could guard his soul.
"Why... why aren't you laughing?!" The Smiling Clown's voice became hysterical. "My comedy is the most perfect, most joy-bringing art in the world! You should be laughing! All of you should be laughing!"
He began to frantically swing the [Comedy Baton] in his hand, launching futile attacks at Lin Jie again and again.
Lin Jie, meanwhile, moved like an excellent matador, calmly weaving and dodging through the gaps in the clown's attacks, which seemed frenzied but were actually born of utter disarray.
He was in no hurry to counterattack.
Against a lunatic who had long since completely walled himself off in his "stage world," physical attacks might even provoke a stronger, sicker desire to perform.
To defeat him, it was better to first understand him.
Understand that tragic one-man show, filled with pain and despair, that had never been performed for anyone.
Lin Jie's gaze swept rapidly across the entire theater.
He was searching for a safe corner, a place that could let him temporarily escape this endless one-man show, a place where he could calm his mind and listen to this theater's past.
Finally, his gaze locked onto the deepest part of the stage, the shadowy area leading to the backstage storage room, shrouded by the cap of the Laughing Madcap Mushroom.
That was the place with the densest network of mycelium in the entire theater, the defensive core of the mushroom's main body.
Logically, it should be the most dangerous place.
But precisely because of that, it was also the sanctuary where The Smiling Clown would least expect anyone to dare intrude.
Lin Jie hesitated no longer. Seizing a moment when the clown's attack missed, he pulled something from his pocket and threw it with all his might toward the other side of the stage!
It was a silver pocket watch, tracing a bright arc through the air.
"Ding-ling-ling--!"
The watch's shock alarm activated automatically upon hitting the ground, emitting a series of crisp, urgent rings.
The sudden noise instantly captured The Smiling Clown's attention!
"Who?! Who dares disrupt my performance?!" he shrieked in anger, instinctively charging toward the source of the sound!
"His mind really is messed up, falling for such an obvious lure," Lin Jie thought to himself.
He seized this tactical window of less than three seconds, pushed his speed to the limit, and plunged headfirst into that dark passage shrouded in heavy shadows, leading to the backstage!
"Hmph, trying to run?!"
Only then did the clown realize he'd been tricked. He turned and chased after the direction where Lin Jie had disappeared!
But when he charged into the dark passage, it was already empty.
Lin Jie, like a true ghost, had vanished within this theater that belonged to him.
...
Lin Jie hadn't actually run far.
He was simply holding his breath, pressing his body tightly against the back of the dusty, cobweb-covered wooden door to the backstage storage room.
He could hear The Smiling Clown's footsteps pacing back and forth in the passageway, searching.
Finally, after confirming he couldn't find any trace, the clown returned to the front stage, unwillingly, to "pacify" his disturbed "audience."
Only after confirming he was temporarily safe did Lin Jie slowly let out a sigh of relief.
He surveyed the room he was in.
It was a cramped, dimly lit prop storage room. The smell of rat droppings in the air was suffocating.
The room was piled high with all sorts of old, forgotten junk.
Puppets with broken legs, scripts with torn covers, and costumes covered in a thick layer of dust, all quietly rotting away in this forgotten corner.
However, Lin Jie's eyes showed not a trace of disdain.
On the contrary, they shone with the bright light of someone who had discovered ruins.
Because this was the place he was looking for.
This was the only refuge of that thin, lonely boy.
He began systematically contacting and interpreting the relics in this room, objects that carried intense emotional memories.
The first thing he picked up was a crude puppet control rod lying quietly in a corner, broken in the middle.
When his fingertip touched the cold wood—
[Reverberation Touch], activate.
"Boom—!"
A fragment of memory, mixed with pain, fear, and humiliation, flooded his consciousness.
He saw a boy, probably only seven or eight years old, thin and frail like a kitten, with blond hair, curled up trembling in a corner of this storage room.
The door was kicked open violently.
A burly man with a meaty face, reeking of strong alcohol—the circus owner—walked in like a devil.
"You damn little bastard who only knows how to waste food!" Filthy curses spewed from the man's mouth. "You messed up the performance again today! Made me lose all face in front of those distinguished guests!"
He cursed as he unbuckled the belt from his waist.
But when he saw the precious "Mr. Punch" control rod in the boy's hand, accidentally broken by him, his rage peaked!
He threw the belt aside, snatched the broken control rod, and began whipping it down viciously on the boy's thin, defenseless body!
"Whack!"
Each strike was accompanied by the boy's suppressed, pained sobs and the man's crazed roars, full of sadistic pleasure.
Lin Jie's own body shuddered violently from the intense, empathetic pain that felt all too real.
He quickly withdrew from this memory filled with violence and darkness.
Cold sweat already dotted his forehead.
Silently, he placed the broken control rod back where it was.
Then his gaze fell on a nearby fairy tale book with a torn cover, its title no longer legible.
He reached out and touched it again.
This time, he heard, across countless long, dark nights of beatings and confinement,
that blond boy, curled up in this lightless corner, using a trembling, faint voice to tell himself the story from the book, over and over again.
"...The prince... he had a heart of gold. He gave his sapphire eyes to the poor girl, he gave the ruby from his sword hilt to the hungry boy... Though he lost everything, he was always smiling. Because... he was the happiest... the Happy Prince..."
This fairy tale by Oscar Wilde, depicting self-sacrifice and compassion, became the only faint glimmer of light this poor child could grasp in the endless darkness.
Lin Jie's heart tightened painfully.
Finally, his gaze locked onto a clown mask that looked cheap and crude, carelessly tossed on a pile of old costumes.
Exaggerated blue teardrops were painted at the corners of the mask's eyes.
But its mouth was fixed in a forever upturned, comically smiling curve.
When Lin Jie's hand touched that cold, plastic-feeling mask—
He felt it.
He felt the moment when the boy, after a successful escape, secretly put this mask belonging to the "clown" on his own small face, still wet with tears and scars.
The moment the mask went on, the whole world seemed to fall silent.
The voices that mocked him disappeared.
The fists that beat him disappeared.
He was no longer that thin, pitiful little bastard who was bullied by everyone.
He became another person, a character allowed to perform any comical, exaggerated, even aggressive actions without facing any punishment.
The mask became his face.
And that real face hidden beneath the mask, already scarred and battered, was forgotten by him forever.
Lin Jie put down the mask.
There was no need to see more.
Through these three fragmented yet intensely emotional memory puzzles,
he had already completely constructed the tragic, tear-and-blood-soaked, madness-filled past of this Smiling Clown.
A pitiful child who, from a young age, suffered brutal, inhuman abuse in the circus backstage, ignored and bullied by everyone, treated as a "boring, non-laughing" freak.
The puppet theater, filled with violence and false laughter, was the only spiritual refuge that could let him temporarily forget the pain of reality.
And the "Mr. Punch" in the show, who could freely beat authority (the police), beat family (his wife and child), even beat gods and demons (the devil), yet never face any punishment and instead receive the audience's enthusiastic applause, became the ultimate projection of his twisted, antisocial personality.
"So he just wanted everyone to laugh with him," Lin Jie murmured softly.