Chapter 1525: NO.140: Beast King: Who Are You?

NO. 140: Beast King: Who Are You?

Because everyone defines "qi" differently, seeking the strange is a very common and diverse label.

Liking Uma Musume fanfiction is a form of seeking the strange; her enjoying trying unfamiliar local cuisine is also a form of seeking the strange; it wanting to see all unseen novel things is likewise a form of seeking the strange, but the actual manifestations of these hobbies are clearly different.

Not to say worlds apart, at least they are far apart.

But when enough similar people exist, a relatively universal value standard will naturally arise.

This is like the repertoire of Gu Lan Ji Nie Er Ju Yuan Theater, which has always been undisputed, heavy-taste strange fare, frequently receiving anonymous reports from peers each year and also often being inspected by police.

This clearly proves its growth and strength without dilution in purity, yet Aomo Lindun is indeed visiting such a place for the first time.

Admittedly, the repertoire and audience here should match his taste for observation, but he is ultimately just a young person with limited experience.

He is still young, hasn't seen enough, which is to say—he still has many unfamiliar landscapes to see, and there are still plenty of people and things for him to observe and enjoy; thus this kind of luxury entertainment, whose ticket price alone is high, will be pushed to the margins.

In the age when expenses are still tight, the young man named Aomo Lindun can only intersect with this place through...

... part-time work.

But unfortunately, although the Grand Puppet Theater has little fame among outsiders, it is a top-tier presence among insiders.

In this situation, job opportunities are harder to come by than audience tickets.

After repeated careful selection, the professional positions naturally leave no room for underage workers to take long-term holiday jobs.

Fortunately, there is still the internet.

The key also lies in the internet!

Precisely because of the internet's bustling flow of topics, Aomo Lindun has room to play.

Especially now!

After all, he hasn't yet learned the three-headed, six-armed puppet manipulation.

Previously, his schedule was packed full, to the point that he had to prioritize online information gathering, then use personal connections, and finally ask others for help or delegate tasks.

But frankly, even the first method had already, since the second half of last year, taken over the second: his online information work began to be screened and organized by the Witch Beast, so he no longer had to handle the entire process alone.

Entrusting important matters to others is like making a decision.

It is a decision one can believe in yet still hesitate to believe—after years of struggling alone, finally trying to hand over some of one's decisions to others.

You trust that person's ability and are willing to let them share part of your career and life's composition.

At the same time, you lose the right to feel at ease even if the result fails, attributing it to your own inadequacy.

This is not your full effort; others are involved.

If the person you trust drops the ball, should you be responsible, or should you not be? You can't help but wonder whether, if that link weren't outsourced but handled by yourself, the outcome might be different.

It can be said that over the past half year or so, Aomo has indeed changed a great deal as a person.

Although the biggest change outsiders see is merely that he is no longer single, and some of his demonic traits have also changed.

But that is only superficial.

Beneath the surface is that he no longer acts alone, but begins to let others participate in his daily life and even his life's affairs.

This undoubtedly raises his ability limits and action efficiency considerably.

Yet he has not abandoned the mindset that, when facing a matter, he always assumes "I alone am responsible" as the premise for scrutiny.

In other words—he values every element of a matter, just as he values every variable involved in the process of an experiment.

Therefore, when he learns about Gu Lan Ji Nie Er Ju Yuan Theater, he will not overlook its special staff composition.

This theater can accommodate an audience of one hundred thousand, yet its staff numbers fewer than one thousand.

After setting aside publicity, finance, and the like, those responsible for the literal front‑and‑back of the stage amount to only a few hundred.

This is extremely rare among peers—so rare that a single interview once shocked the industry, prompting countless competitors to lay off staff and overhaul. Although the industry itself is niche, no matter how much it shakes, it cannot sway those who dislike this taste, so even if the theater boldly employs followers of evil gods, few make a fuss about it.

After all, to be frank, this theater is less the lair of evil‑god believers and more like their prison.

Their abilities are greatly restricted, their expression greatly limited; audiences, who come out of curiosity, arrive fully equipped, resulting not only in a bunch of specialized blessing charms but also in a fixed procedure when they look back at the hospital—just like those early patrons who brought their own antidote yet still had to eat poisonous mushrooms and pufferfish.

With such patrons, it is only fitting that the theater has police show up every few days, and it is miraculous that the theater can keep operating; it is hard to say whether the evenly distributed audiences across all industries are collectively exerting force.

However, since no real accident has ever occurred, the legality of its operations is not something Aomo will quibble over.

He still hopes that "although I'm busy now and can't get away, maybe I'll be able to come later," so naturally he doesn't care about the theater's current sore points.

But the current situation is slightly out of control; amid the uncertainty of whether this is a bug from a drama test or someone meddling, Aomo's first thought is about the thing he usually doesn't care about.

—an experiment, the greatest and most basic variable of a drama: the actors.

Applied to the Grand Puppet Theater, this obviously refers to the puppeteers behind the scenes—are these guys trying to go to prison?

This speculation is not baseless; after all, he clearly remembers that when he once beat a yellow‑clad subordinate on the mountain, he was harassed by its followers, and he even once reported a few who had received some pocket money.

If these cultists had their own little circle, that information would probably have circulated long ago, but he has never really cared about the state of his private mailbox, always paying others to handle it, only occasionally opening a few "human observation" chats when bored, so he doesn't know what goes on in those circles.

Heaven's calculations are endless, human calculations have limits—who could have guessed that a few months later he would end up here?

—

"From that cross‑world transmission, to the order's affection, to today's meeting, three times expanding one's horizons—Aomo Lindun truly has a unique fate, don't you think?"

Gu Lan Ji Nie Er Yuan Theater's opposite Extinct Beast Park Revival Hall.

A man dressed loosely, appearing unkempt, with a gloomy, decadent face, stands in the sparsely populated corridor, gazing at the ferocious giant beast on the screen, raising his hand to reveal a striking black‑and‑white tattooed arm.

Like ink, like the two principles, just as his ancient Eastern Yan attire resembles, alongside the black armor and black helmet bearing a goat skull on the chest, the helmet devilishly fierce—this Western audience is utterly out of place.

But to be frank, he is the newcomer; before he arrived here, the tall viewer in black armor and helmet had already been staring intently at this spot for over ten minutes.

Each of those once‑existing but now extinct giant beasts can cause a faint rhythm of blood light to appear beneath his eye sockets.

"What you want to see is him—why bother asking me?"

"Isn't asking you the most appropriate? I even think you're worth seeing more than Aomo Lindun; if you don't feel the same, that's really a pity."

"... He and his, this world, are indeed more chaotic than my place."