At this moment, they stood at the center of the world stage.
People dressed in their finest sat in the audience, reduced to a silent backdrop. Under the gaze of countless eyes, the pouring bright golden light transformed in an instant into flying cards, swirling and surging along the edge of the stage, tearing through the storm and shattering the rain curtain as they rose high into the air!
Every card was gilded with gold, depicting a woman in magnificent and noble attire, her lips as red as blood. Dark red roses bloomed from her eyes—it was countless Queen of Hearts!
All sound was suppressed.
In this moment,
silence was a gargantuan roar.
Tang Xin looked up, meeting those clear eyes. A syllable hung in her throat. She wanted to softly call the girl's name, yet feared it was merely her own delusion. It wasn't until the girl's voice pierced through the silence of the storm, as the "Storm Song" soaring above the theater reached its climax.
"It's me."
Xu Xiaoyou's voice echoed in her ears like flowing water in the night. Tang Xin's gaze became incredibly clear for a moment, only to quickly blur as she could barely make out the long golden hair fluttering in the silent storm.
Their eyes were each other's eighth ocean. In this moment, their silent understanding surpassed all words.
In each other's eyes, they found the answers and meaning to all their doubts.
Before the crowd could recover from their shock, a sudden change occurred!
At the judges' table, the body of Zeal, seated in the Withered Flower family's spot, suddenly began to convulse violently. His well-fitted suit stretched infinitely like a distorted image, transforming into an elegant tailcoat.
The man clutched his face in pain as black mist emanated from him. A surging deathly silence formed a demonic phantom behind him. Hard keratin grew from the corners of his eyes, quickly covering half his face in a dense layer. The smiling silent mask reflected a strange light.
The violent storm swept through the world once more. All sound vanished into the silence. The finale of a grand performance required only solemnity, not ostentation.
"'The Artist'!?"
In the stands, someone screamed the name in terror, only to have their head exploded in the next instant by an invisible giant hand hovering over the theater. Blood, pale bone fragments, and milky-white brain matter flew everywhere, splattering the entire seat.
"Shh..."
"The Artist" made a hushing gesture, sitting motionless where he was.
No matter how much the people's hearts surged with horror, no one dared to make another sound, fearing they would be the next to die.
Meanwhile, in the head's office of the Shell Street Tuner's Office, Katina slammed her desk and stood up. It was easy to see the shock in her heart from her trembling pupils.
"Damn it, it's 'The Artist.' How could it revive at a time like this!"
The intensity of this revival was infinitely close to the level when it was first born. Every monitoring device in the city was blaring with alarms.
Even at the Aurora Tower, the headquarters of the Fixer Association millions of kilometers away, the super AI the Miserere had initiated the highest level 5 warning state. Beneath that long red hair, many high-ranking members of the association were urgently convening a meeting.
Just then, the door to the head's office was pushed open. Black Dog rushed in with his men, slamming his hand on the desk: "Director, get everyone ready! There are still many students and tourists from all over the world at the Starry Art Academy!"
Katina held her forehead in silence. After weighing the options, she suddenly made a decision: "Notify the entire office. Without my permission, no one is allowed to take anyone to the top of Mount Olympus for a rescue mission."
Black Dog couldn't believe his ears. His eyes widened. "Director, what are you saying? Tens of thousands of people are trapped in that opera house. Are we just going to watch them be killed?"
"A large-scale operation requires an execution order signed by the elders of the Starry Gallery," Katina said as she slowly sat back down, leisurely picking up a cup of bitter coffee and taking a sip.
"Are you joking with me, Director? All five elders, including Belvedere, are inside the theater right now. Who could sign..." Black Dog trailed off as he realized what the woman was planning, his anger fizzling out into silence.
No matter how reckless he usually was, he could understand the situation before him. "Then what about those innocent people?"
There was no doubt that if the five elders, including Belvedere, all died in this 'accident,' the upper power structure of the Starry Kingdom would undergo a massive reshuffle.
Perhaps this would become the turning point for this city to be rekindled from the ashes and welcome a new life.
Katina chuckled. "Who knows? Maybe, after doing this, everything will be different than before."
"Perhaps more people will be saved, even if it means sacrificing a small portion."
For some reason, she recalled the blonde girl she had met in the underground ruins not long ago. Before leaving, Dark Gold Rose had spoken to her in a voice barely audible.
"Would you sacrifice a few to save the many?"
She hadn't given an answer then.
But now, she seemed to understand the state of mind the other person was in when she spoke those words.
As for the accountability from the Life Daybreak human rights organization and the association, she already had her excuses ready. Besides, even if she wanted to save them, what could she really do?
It took two prism grade fixers working together just to barely kill "The Artist" during its last revival, and the price was more than a third of the King's District being reduced to ruins. She was already prepared for the price of demotion and punishment.
The sunken-eyed Belvedere glanced at "The Artist" sitting not far from him, seemingly unsurprised. He then turned his gaze toward a tall figure clad in heavy armor on the other side.
Benson Hamlet.
The latter raised the meteor hammer in his hand. With every step he took, the heavy armor clattered in heavy collisions.
He walked in front of "The Artist," hot breath surging from beneath his dull mask, then carefully lifted his leg and bypassed him.
The people present watched as the original tuner, known to the outside world as the 'Immortal Demon Armor' and the self-annihilator who wielded the meteor hammer of destruction, scurried out of the theater through the emergency exit. The last glimmer of hope in their hearts vanished.
"The Artist" had revived too suddenly. No one was coming to save them.
Xu Xiaoyou met the gaze behind that silent mask. The Queen of Hearts cards swirling in the air finally fell, scattering across the stage as everything returned to a state of wordless oppression and silence.
Above the stage, on the ceiling made of a mosaic of murals, a black tide surged out from the "Storm Song," forming an inverted pitch-black ocean. Countless dead beings wailed in the rolling waves. Looking closely, one would realize that those layered black waves were not flowing water, but countless overlapping black palms.
These hands were using their lives to perform a gloomy and sorrowful tune. The wails of the beings seemed etched into the murals, echoing in the ears of everyone present, making them shudder.
"The Artist" crossed his legs and looked at the two girls on stage, his gender-neutral voice resonating throughout the theater:
"Dark Gold Rose, before tonight's performance ends, what kind of surprise will you bring me?"
As soon as these words were spoken, the entire venue fell silent.
Startled gazes fell upon the blonde girl in the center of the stage. She wore no mask, nor did she wear her iconic windbreaker, and she didn't hold her two pitch-black butler twin blades. She looked like an ordinary girl from high society, not radiating any particularly powerful aura.
Yet this "Artist" claimed she was "Dark Gold Rose"?
The luminous prism grade fixer where mystery and beauty coexisted.
"Tonight, I am merely an audience member. Perhaps I will share some of my small thoughts on this performance when the curtain falls. Please, continue your show." "The Artist" said as he snapped his fingers. All the lights in the opera house focused on Belvedere at the judges' table and the two girls on stage.
The world fell into silence. Fear had stolen the voices of the spectators. Invisible silk threads turned the audience above into marionettes, forced to sit in their seats with dignified posture, watching this final act as bystanders.
"Ignorant concepts, prejudiced views, arrogant accusations, clumsy performances, self-righteous innocence... such a ridiculous display."
Fluctuations finally appeared in Belvedere's deep, dark-red eyes. Blood that had been frozen for a hundred years began to flow faster, turning scorching hot. Boiling flames burned away the charred ruins in his heart. Even if his expression remained unchanged, this old vampire was already beyond furious.
"This city is my life's work, the artistic crystallization I have condensed over a hundred years. it is the great creation I have pursued my entire life. I am autocratic and dictatorial because my eyes cannot tolerate a single grain of filthy sand in this artwork."
"Paranoia and arrogance exist because I cannot endure the shame of being surrounded by fools."
"Refusing to listen to others? Why should I listen to the voices of those idiots? They only obstruct the emergence of this great artwork time and again, preventing art from reaching its final glory. A human has no need to argue with cats and dogs."
"I never need to reflect, because I have never done anything wrong."
"It took less than a hundred years for this city to transform from being dull and colorless to being so complex and beautiful. I turned a wasteland into a star of the universe. I have already presented the highest-standard answer to the people."
"And you, you only see the suffering and torment people endure, yet you never see the monuments established in the history of art. You never see that this is the moment in thousands of years that art has come closest to a golden age. You have never been grateful that I pulled you from ignorance across the border where truth is confined."
"Soon, you will be able to witness the sublime, to open the door of truth and see what lies behind it. Yet you turn around to question me, to count my sins with your pretty, high-sounding words."
"Who exactly is the one using pretty, high-sounding words to hijack art?" Xu Xiaoyou spoke calmly. "Belvedere?"
"Art is the focus lens of an era."
"Two and a half million years ago, in an era before the ancestors of humanity had even walked out of their caves, they used stones to strike sparks and light the first torch. The moment they first illuminated the dark plains and peeked at the world outside the cave—could that be called art?"
"When the ancestors used their wisdom to chisel through hard stones with tools, developing habitats, building water conservation projects, irrigating fields, and dancing in the joy of a harvest that came from the heart—could that be called art?"
"When the world's first steam engine roared and humanity took giant strides toward industrial civilization—could that be called art?"
"When the stars began to chase the fields, and the night was filled with the lights of ten thousand homes; the moment people were no longer limited to thinking and began to explore the vast universe—could that be called art?"
"When a doctor restores light to a patient, letting them see this colorful world clearly—does that count as another kind of art?"
"When our predecessors led the people through struggle to liberate them from oppression, taught them how to think, proclaimed the truth of art, broke the shackles of thought, and allowed them to truly walk free and close their eyes filled with love. Isn't that what art was supposed to look like in the beginning?"
"Belvedere, who exactly is the one full of hot blood? Who is being grandiose?" Xu Xiaoyou said, "Are the artistic monuments you speak of those paintings that others cannot understand, or those obscure and difficult poems?"
"If so, your so-called monuments are merely a sea established with fake gold-plating, built upon the bones of our predecessors."
"Such art will never become a lighthouse, because it was born in a pile of mire."
"Great artists hope that people can find the path to the future through unyielding struggle in art. But instead, people are immersed in a fake joy of harvest, their steps bound and halted by invisible things."
"They planted a seed for the distant future, hoping that one day the seed would sprout through the efforts of those who hold the same vision."
"And you." Xu Xiaoyou took in Belvedere's furious appearance. "It was you who dug up that seed leading to the distant future, betraying the path originally practiced by our predecessors."
"It was you,"
"who hijacked art in the most barbaric way!"
These words were like mountain spring water, silently soaking into the hearts of everyone watching the live broadcast of this finale.
Enlightenment was never meant to be grand and explosive. Its meaning lay in shooting an arrow before the people. Only when that arrow completed its great circle and struck the center of their foreheads would its mission truly be fulfilled.
"Sophistry! Utter nonsense!"
Terrifying bloodshot veins filled Belvedere's eyes. "What do you know?"
"The effort I put in for art, the lifeblood I invested in this city!"
"I have never deviated from this path."
"If Raquel and Michiro are watching from above, they would surely approve of my efforts, of the struggle of my entire life."
"I haven't done anything wrong. I only followed their last wishes to let more people see art. Art was never meant to be understood by the incompetent!"
"I don't need to argue with you." Belvedere's eyes were full of blood as he glared at "The Artist" beside him.
"What are you still hesitating for?"
"Kill her!"
"Have you forgotten the contract between us? Only I can show you the destination of art!"
The people held their breath in silence, staring intently at "The Artist." Any move he made was enough to decide any of their lives.
He would decide how this great play should finally end.
After a brief yet incredibly long period of time.
"The Artist" grinned, revealing pale teeth: "I only see two insects speaking arrogantly of art in this elegant hall."
He snapped his fingers.
Belvedere exploded into a mist of blood.
Following that, he turned his gaze toward the blonde girl on stage: "Unfortunately, Miss Dark Gold Rose, I am very disappointed in your performance. The show ends here."
Death whispered, despair spread, and deathly silence grew wantonly in the stillness.
Just as he reached his hand toward Xu Xiaoyou, the blonde girl who had remained silent until then slowly raised her head. Dark golden eyes opened in the darkness, a strand of hair falling to her pale red lips, which curved into an imperceptible smile.
Thunder cracked and lightning flashed. A scorching wave of steam surged through the venue. A giant die descended behind Xu Xiaoyou, and a brilliant light swallowed her figure as her long hair billowed in the storm. The hundred-faced die spun wildly in an overload state,
emitting a piercing mechanical roar. Countless scarlet eyes opened in the darkness behind her.
They were mocking, jeering, clamoring, reveling, and shrieking, with endless pleasure swirling in their eyes.
The irregular die suddenly ceased its rotation. Every face was locked on the flowing bright red number—1000! 1000! 1000!
Destiny Moment!
"Destiny: Grant 'Destiny Moment' to the designated target!"
"Anya!" Xu Xiaoyou roared.
In the next instant, a spear shot out from the darkness, turning into a bolt of black lightning that sliced through the void. Wherever it passed, layers of space shattered. The silent shackles of rules were blasted to pieces layer by layer by the sharp spear tip, like a kaleidoscope blooming infinitely outward.
Broken fragments flew in a hurricane that swept across the entire world, each piece reflecting "The Artist's" stunned face.
At the center of that storm, phantom and reality overlapped. A brilliant spiral manifested in that moment, piercing through time and space to form a sharp arrow that broke through the final barrier, erupting into an incomparably blinding white light.
In a flash, the Abyssal White Flower pierced "The Artist" through, greeting its bloom!
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