Chapter 1912: Audience Entry

As he finished speaking, Tianhuai and Huaimang simultaneously reached out and grasped the red threads on their chests.

Immediately after,

the red threads condensed in their palms...

becoming a performance invitation letter covered in complex patterns.

"Audience: Tianhuai."

"Audience: Huaimang."

"Registration complete. Please enter."

Small text flashed across the invitation, and the next second, the two felt a blur before their eyes.

Their figures passed directly through the fourth wall between reality and the theater. When they regained consciousness, they were already standing in a vast auditorium...

"Is there really a theater here?" Pu Xiazhan stood next to Huaimang, his mouth agape in shock as he saw the scene around him.

"That curtain... it seems like you can see outside," the assassin Cui Ran rubbed his chin, lost in thought.

"What does that mean? Is our world a giant performance?"

"Heh... perhaps."

Li Shengmen's voice drifted lazily from the back row. "But it doesn't matter anymore... If our world really is a performance, then we've all wrapped up filming by now."

"...Putting it that way, I suppose you're right."

"Right? Filming is done, and we can still sit down and be the audience. I think that's pretty good."

Li Shengmen calmly picked a chair and sat down, fingers interlaced, watching the stage with great interest.

Seeing Li Shengmen sit down, Huaimang, Cui Ran, and Pu Xiazhan each found a place to sit. Tu Tian remained standing in the aisle, his eyes fixed on Chen Ling for a long time... finally, he sighed helplessly.

He silently found the nearest seat and sat down without a word.

"Hmm?"

"Officer Han Meng."

Pu Xiazhan saw a familiar figure passing by and waved enthusiastically. "You've wrapped up filming too?"

The hem of the law enforcement officer's trench coat fluttered with Han Meng's footsteps. Hearing Pu Xiazhan's call, he glanced over... then nodded politely.

He walked straight toward the front rows.

In his hand, he was clutching an invitation letter tightly.

"Audience: Han Meng."

"Registration complete. Please enter."

Han Meng passed through the gathered Fusion Faction, through the whispering Floating Life Painting, and squeezed through the bustling Twilight Society members... finally, he arrived at the first row, closest to the stage.

He scanned his surroundings, and after seeing a familiar figure, he remained silent for a moment before walking straight over and sitting down beside him.

"Officer Han Meng, long time no see," Wen Shilin turned to look at him and said with a smile.

"...Yeah."

"It's incredible, isn't it?"

"When Chen Ling snatched us away from the Ghost Path Ancient Treasury, I thought we would be stuck in that umbrella forever," Han Meng looked around, his gaze somewhat complex. "Now... it's just like a dream."

"I understand you. I arrived a bit earlier than you all," Wen Shilin paused, his eyes as bright as stars. "But Chen Ling is just that kind of person—someone who can constantly create surprises for others, isn't he?"

"But there are some things I still don't understand."

"What?"

"Are we, as we are now, the real us, or... are we just 'audience members' whose memories have been rewritten?"

Wen Shilin looked at him quietly for a long time, his gaze returning to the stage.

"I actually think... it doesn't matter."

"If we are still us, that's naturally for the best. If we are essentially 'audience members'... at least we are more meaningful than we were before, aren't we?"

"He gave each of us our own story. Each of us has stood on the stage of life and lived once..."

"The malice and resentment have been washed away. What fills us now might be justice, might be fairness, or might be something else..."

"No matter what we once were... now, we are just us."

Han Meng froze.

He remained silent for a long time, his gaze also falling upon the stage...

"...You're right," a sense of relief appeared in Han Meng's eyes.

"Now, we are just us."

More and more figures took their seats in the auditorium.

A mischievous child, with white ash on his nose, plopped down in the first row;

beside him, a young girl in a yellow dress, carrying a suitcase, also sat down gently, her eyes warm and bright as she looked at the actor on stage;

besides the Twilight Society, law enforcement officers, and others who had connections to Chen Ling, the vast majority of the public had also entered. Although they might not understand the slaughter of the Red Star consciousness or what a theater was, they could feel that this place brought them peace of mind.

No longer needing to drift in the Ghost Path Ancient Treasury as spirits, no longer needing to wander outside in fear of dissipating, and no longer needing to be isolated from the world in a red umbrella...

This place seemed like a good final destination.

However, outside the theater,

there were still some figures standing still with cold faces.

The Silver King looked at the invitation in his hand, snorted coldly, threw it aside, and rushed toward the outside of the consciousness world without looking back.

But now, he was only a soul—a soul locked by Chen Ling—and he couldn't use the God-Stealing Path at all. Just as he took two steps, something white slapped onto his face in the wind.

The Silver King looked down...

It was another invitation.

His expression grew even uglier, and he tore it to shreds in his hands.

Immediately after, a second, third, and fourth invitation hit his face like snowflakes. The once-neat handwriting gradually became sloppy and impatient. And whether it was the Silver King's imagination or not, the invitations hitting his face seemed to be getting heavier... stinging like he'd been slapped.

In the end, the Silver King saw only five characters on the invitation:

—"You don't know what's good for you."

Before he could recover, a force of soul-control forcibly grabbed his body, dragging him backward toward the bright red paper umbrella. In a daze, he seemed to see the endless purgatory that made him wish for death, beckoning to him...

The Silver King's heart shook, painful memories flooding back. In the end, he gritted his teeth and grabbed the invitation.

His figure passed through the fourth wall and was dragged directly to the very corner of the auditorium, nearly stumbling to the ground.

At this moment, everyone in the auditorium had basically taken their seats.

The Silver King knew there was no other way, so he sat in the corner with a cold face, silently pulling out a chair.

The spotlight converged into a single point on the stage.

The red-clad actor slowly looked up...

Chen Ling looked at the bustling auditorium before him, his gaze more complex than ever before.

Once upon a time, he had been terrified by the dark, hideous audience beneath the stage... Along the way, the malicious audience had now become the familiar faces that had once appeared in his life.

At this moment, Chen Ling was even a bit dazed.

Perhaps because of their arrival, this theater no longer seemed so eerie and gloomy to Chen Ling; it felt a bit like...

a real theater.