Global Theater of the Strange: My Nuo Mask Connects to the Nine Hells

[The Day the World Went Digital, I Became a Forbidden Existence to the Gods]

When Lu Jiuxiao puts on a bronze Nuo mask at a secondhand market, the script of the entire world begins to unravel

Opera house audiences turn into marionettes and dance “Swan Lake of Death.” Swords rain down at an esports final. A delivery rider's phone displays a blood-red order from “The Midnight Ringing”...

“They say I was born to live inside a play.”

By day, I'm an embalmer at the Jiangcheng funeral home, using the [Skin-Painter] Nuo mask to make up the dead;

By night, I'm “Wuchang,” wanted across the dark web, wielding a soul-reaping blade to harvest the souls of the eerie theater troupe;

But my real identity is the “guardian” written in fresh ink on my younger sister's medical records.

Then, at the Yellow Springs Inn, I open the Book of Life and Death

and discover that every eerie play script bears the same line:

“Please kill the actor playing Lu Jiuxiao.”

(Highlighted stats, displayed as data) ↓

■ Eerie identities unlocked: Funeral Home Skin-Painter / Dark Web Judge / Star of the God-Slaying Troupe

■ Current Nuo mask corruption: 69% (Perform one more play, and I will no longer be human)

■ Countdown to the gods' awakening: 30 days

“Then let's livestream this god-slaying extravaganza to the whole world!”

At the moment the nine Nuo masks come together, I tear off my last mask on the Pacific battlefield

With the Judge's brush in my left hand, I rewrite life and death; with Meng Po's soup in my right, I get the gods drunk, while my sister on my back hums the “Requiem” that will bring everything to an end.