The Final Curtain

Rule One: The audience wants you to die spectacularly.

Rule Two: The more rational you are, the sooner you die.

Rule Three: Only those who slay the gods may survive the tenth day.

Chen Ling’s scalpel still reeks of the formaldehyde in the lab when he’s thrown into a theater draped with curtains made of human skin.

A crimson countdown flashes overhead.

A mathematician tries to solve the puzzle with equations, then explodes into a firework of flesh and blood.

A soldier sweeps the ghosts with his gun, only to be booed and crushed to pieces.

As his teammates kneel and beg the gods for mercy, Chen Ling suddenly smiles and slashes his wrist.

“Dear audience, this tragedy…”

His blood splashes across the curtain like roses. He bows.

“I’m turning it into a comedy!”

[Madness Is a Weapon]

He dances a tango in the morgue, rousing the dead to dance along, and his absurdity meter soars, turning the tables on certain death.

He writes a love letter to a murderer, and romantic tension breaks the killing program.

He stages his teammates’ sacrifice as a heroic epic, and the tears of the audience gods become bargaining chips for survival…

Slaying the gods comes at a price.

When the announcement “The end arrives on the tenth day” echoes through the theater, Chen Ling is driving his scalpel into the spine of the godlike screenwriter.

The souls of countless humans burn in the audience seats as he dons a clown mask and ascends the steps through blood.

The giant eye in the dome, the audience god, trembles for the first time.

All the despair, schemes, and resistance…

They’re all part of the ultimate script this man devised!

“Final act cue:”

He spreads his arms and falls into the abyss, his laughter tearing through countless dimensions.

“Applause is the fuse…”

“Dear audience, join me in going out with a bang!”

When the world is a puppet show controlled by the gods,

either make them go bankrupt,

or go mad enough to blow up the world.