Opera Life: Restarting the Future

The decaying stage lit up with faint blue candles the moment Xie Qing stepped on it. The old man in opera robe emerged from behind the gold-painted screen, wearing a white porcelain mask with no facial features on his face. His fingers like dead branches touched the nine masks on the desk, eight of which were full of cracks. "You are born clean and ugly, you are a fairy, a tiger or a dog." The old man's voice sounded like metal friction, "In this world of roles, which one do you think is the most suitable for you?" Xie Qing stepped back and hit the theater box with his lower back. In the gap where the lid of the box was opened, he saw countless faces of himself smiling strangely in the mirror - each smile was delayed by three seconds from reality. The most frightening thing was that the same black flames that were in the depths of his nightmare were beating in those mirrored pupils.