novelraw Chapter 292: Curtain Call
Chapter 292: Curtain Call
The theater's front hall remained that same eerily brightly lit stage setting.
The Smiling Clown stood at the center of the stage with his back to the backstage area, passionately performing a one-man show for his dead audience, a performance no one could understand.
"...And then, Mr. Punch, with his magical and righteous comedy baton, smashed it hard onto the head of that evil policeman who always wanted to lock him in a cage!"
"Bang!"
As he spoke, he mimicked the beating motion with the [Punch's Comedy Baton] in his hand, striking fiercely at the empty air.
"Did you hear it? That wonderful sound! That is the sound of joy! The policeman has fallen, the law has fallen, all those things that tried to restrain and lecture us have fallen! We... are free! Ha... hahahaha!"
He let out a burst of sickeningly shrill, wildly echoing, insane laughter that reverberated endlessly in the empty theater.
However, as his laughter gradually subsided and he slowly turned around, the smile on the clown's face froze.
Lin Jie had appeared, at some unknown time, less than twenty yards away from him, at the boundary between the audience seating and the stage.
"Your one-man show should end now." Lin Jie's voice reached the clown's ears."End?" The Smiling Clown seemed to have heard the funniest joke in the world, bursting into another fit of hysterical laughter, "No... no no no! The performance... has only just begun!"
"I've decided... to make you, the grand finale star of my magnificent comedy!"
A sick, insane light erupted from his eyes!
He raised the [Punch's Comedy Baton] in his hand, pouring all the hallucinogenic power he could muster from the Laughing Madcap Mushroom into it.
Same old trick.
"You still don't get it, do you? You've already lost."
Lin Jie raised [Serene Heart], aiming the muzzle at the clown on stage who was about to launch a fatal strike.
In the instant before that mental storm could touch his body—
He pulled the trigger.
The [Sensation-Nullifying Bullet], coated with a layer of translucent mucus and tempered with jellyfish neurotoxin, instantly pierced through space.
That bullet silently passed through the storm of false joy and struck the clown's right arm, the one tightly gripping the [Punch's Comedy Baton].
The wound was tiny, so small it could be almost ignored.
The mental storm capable of making people succumb slammed into Lin Jie's body at the same time.
This time, Lin Jie's brow furrowed slightly. [Serene Heart]'s guardian force field blocked most of the false joy outside the gates of his mind, but some of it still seeped through.
Meanwhile, on stage, the Smiling Clown's body suddenly stiffened.
He felt something was wrong.
He could see the [Comedy Baton] in his hand still radiating powerful euphoric energy, but he couldn't feel its presence anymore.
He couldn't feel that short club carved from warm wood that had accompanied him through countless days and nights, that familiar, perfectly fitting sensation in his palm.
He also couldn't feel his right hand, the one wearing the white glove that gripped the club, the extension of his power.
He could see his right hand still attached to his wrist, but he couldn't feel it anymore. It felt like a piece of wood that didn't belong to his body.
"Ah... ah?"
He let out a meaningless moan.
He tried to swing the weapon in his hand, but the swing command his brain sent out sank like a stone after reaching his right shoulder, with no further response.
The connection between him and the only weapon that brought him joy and power had been forcibly severed at a conceptual level!
"My... my hand...?"
In panic, he used his still-intact left hand to touch, to claw at his now-alien right hand.
"Ah—!!!!"
The [Punch's Comedy Baton] in the clown's hand lost its grip due to the loss of sensation in his arm muscles and fell to the floor with a clatter.
"No... NO!!!! Give it back!! Give my joy back to me!!!"
The Smiling Clown descended into madness. He was like a broken child whose beloved toy had been snatched away, no, he was even worse than a child.
He knelt on the floor, frantically bashing his head against the hard stage floor, using his intact left hand to tear and pound at that right arm that no longer belonged to him!
Two streaks of liquid, a mix of tears and bloodstains, flowed down his face painted with ridiculous greasepaint.
He finally couldn't laugh anymore.
Lin Jie walked onto the stage.
He bent down and picked up the [Punch's Comedy Baton] that had fallen to the floor, now stained with dust and blood.
The moment Lin Jie's hand grasped that short club, a powerful, seductive hallucinatory force trying to make him burst into laughter immediately surged from his palm into his body.
"An ordinary person definitely can't use this thing..." The sensation made him feel a belated fear. Fortunately, he had the Zen Guardian of [Serene Heart].
He then walked over to the clown, who was howling like a beast, and raised the [Punch's Comedy Baton] in his hand.
"Weren't you... always wanting everyone to share your joy?"
Lin Jie's voice was icy, yet carried a strange trace of pity.
"Now, I'll grant your wish."
He gently touched the tip of the short club to the Smiling Clown's forehead.
Then, he channeled his own immensely powerful, far surpassing this madman's own, tempered spiritual energy through this club and poured it in!
A joy storm of unprecedented scale detonated with a roar within the clown's shattered mental world!
"Ah... ah... haha..."
The Smiling Clown's wails of pain and collapse stopped.
What followed was a dull, foolish giggle.
The madness and hatred in his eyes vanished. He saw a happy childhood he had never possessed.
He saw a pair of warm, large hands lifting him from the cold storage room. He smelled the sweet, sun-warmed fragrance of his mother. He tasted the first candy of his life, sweet enough to reach the depths of his heart.
He sat on his father's broad shoulders, watching the joyous performances in the circus...
Everything he had lost, everything he had yearned for, descended upon him at this moment in a perfectly gentle way.
"Haha... hahahahahaha..."
He began to laugh heartily.
The laughter was no longer as piercing as before, but an innocent joy coming from the heart.
He laughed and laughed, two streams of tears slowly trickling down his face.
Amidst his laughter, his body began to convulse violently.
Amidst his laughter, white foam began to froth from his mouth.
Amidst his laughter, his overburdened heart finally stopped beating.
In the end, his face, wearing the purest, happiest smile, froze.
It became an eternal mask.
Lin Jie withdrew the [Comedy Baton] in his hand.
He looked at the corpse before him, which had met its final curtain call in extreme joy, and remained silent for a long time.
"A hateful person must have a pitiable aspect." This was his final judgment on the clown.
Then Lin Jie turned, and consigned this wooden short club full of sin and tragedy, along with the Laughing Madcap Mushroom that was the source of the sin, to the flames.
Raging flames consumed this theater of false joy.
They also consumed a pitiable soul that had never been treated kindly by this world.