The black velvet cloth covering the entire iron cage suddenly burst into countless brilliant golden flames, completely incinerating the murky gray miasma that had settled throughout the circus.
Each swirling streak of fire tore through the oppressive darkness, revealing Adrian’s enormous true form as he coiled around the rusted iron bars. Layer upon layer of metallic scales clashed together with an elegant yet crisp clang... clang.... Adrian’s proud sapphire-blue eyes stared straight down into the sandy arena, radiating a savage pressure that completely swallowed the stench of rotting death mingled with the sickly sweetness of spoiled cotton candy.
Nick, dressed in a garish clown costume, immediately yanked hard on the trunk’s latch. The iron cage door burst open with a thunderous BANG!
Ember did not hesitate. He planted one foot atop a bloodstained iron spike, while the chain wrapped around the leather whip in his hand swept through the air in a perfect arc.
SMACK!
The sound of the whip tearing through the air echoed throughout the stands. The tip of the chain whip coiled tightly around the great serpent’s neck just below its head. Borrowing the thousand-pound pulling force from Ember’s arm, its veins bulging with blood, Adrian’s colossal dragon body shot into the air, hurtling straight toward the first grotesquely swaying green ring of fire.
The instant Adrian approached, the iron ring suddenly contracted. The demonic flames erupted violently, transforming into screaming demonic faces that opened mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth, intent on tearing the dragon’s body to pieces. At the same time, thousands of razor-sharp iron spikes shot upward from beneath the sand like a rain of poisoned arrows, aiming directly at Ember’s abdomen and eyes on the ground.
It was an overt trap meant to take the actor’s life in the middle of the performance!
"Change the script!" Adrian’s telepathic voice rang inside Ember’s mind.
Ember pivoted on the tip of the spike, violently yanking the chain whip back. His golden body twisted through a mesmerizing 360-degree turn in midair, while his dragon tail, armored in diamond-hard scales, swept out in a powerful semicircular arc.
BOOM!
The shockwave from the sweep of his tail blasted the entire rain of iron spikes beneath him away, reducing them to scattered ash. Immediately afterward, Adrian opened his jaws wide and unleashed a brilliant golden pillar of Dragon Breath straight from his throat.
WHOOSH...!!!
The column of dragonfire spiraled straight through the centers of all four green rings of fire. It was unmistakably shaped like a gigantic serpent, yet it could breathe fire as well, as though it were literally bringing the title of this performance to life.
The vicious demonic flames were instantly swallowed up, transforming into countless golden sparks that scattered through the air like a magnificent shower of fireworks. The enormous serpent’s body swept through the centers of the rings before descending onto the stage, its massive, winding form making the entire space seem pitifully cramped.
Adrian opened his jaws wide and roared. The entire circus immediately trembled as though it were about to collapse. Adrian’s razor-sharp fangs, each capable of piercing through ten people’s heads at once, flashed brilliantly, carrying a cold, keen, and dangerous gleam.
Ember retracted the whip and braced one hand against Adrian’s body, his muscular chest and sinewy shoulders thrown into sharp relief beneath the spotlight. Adrian raised his chin slightly and let out a low growl with a high, mesmerizing resonance.
A flawless combination of absolute power, breathtaking speed, and supreme artistry!
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!
The entire crowd of rag dolls in the stands stared blankly for two seconds before shooting to their feet in unison. The dry, lifeless applause quickly transformed into wild, feverish roars. The rag dolls frantically slapped their stitched hands together, their button eyes flashing with golden excitement unlike anything they had ever shown before.
At the same time, Lily and the others suddenly realized that some of the restrictions placed upon their bodies had been removed. They were like wooden puppets violently yanked upright from their seats, their hands mechanically clapping together without pause to express their appreciation for the performance onstage.
[THIS IS PEAK! Now THAT’S what you call a circus performance!]
[Adrian really put his whole heart into this]
[hahaha can you guys please stop talking about him like that? I’m genuinely afraid he’ll read the comments]
[Maybe he’d actually be happy if he heard us talking like that]
[Am I the only one who thinks Ember is genuinely perfect for getting into trouble alongside Adrian? He’s staying in character just as well as Adrian]
[Nick over there could probably finish two bags of popcorn by now]
At that moment, Lily and the others also realized that the score, which had been plummeting disastrously, suddenly stopped falling and shot back up into the safe green zone.
Ringmaster Jack stood dumbfounded in the middle of the sandy arena, his fedora hanging crookedly on his head. His blood-red pupils trembled violently as he watched the score on his chest (-200) begin flashing repeatedly, the audience’s satisfaction now completely directed toward the new group of players.
"No... No way! You stupid dolls!"
He screamed, his voice rasping and grinding like rusted metal being crushed. The cracks at both corners of his mouth tore all the way to his ears, rotten gray fluid streaming down onto the collar of his tailcoat. He raised the enormous iron scissors and frantically swung them, hacking wildly into his own throat!
BLACK BLOOD ERUPTED!
Thick, poisonous black blood gushed from his neck and sprayed straight onto the tattered red velvet curtain backstage. The velvet curtain immediately burst into gloomy gray flames, melting completely into a rotten, formless void.
"You dare ruin the stage of the Night Circus?!" Ringmaster Jack threw back his lumpy head and screamed viciously. "If you cannot perform by the rules... then taste the greatest, bloodiest performance I have ever created with my own hands — The Pastor and the Wolves!"
BOOM... BOOM... BOOM!
All eight brick walls surrounding the sandy arena exploded simultaneously. From the deep, pitch-black recesses, hundreds of blood-red eyes lit up at once. The stench of rotten flesh mingled with the pungent smell of rust, surging outward and suffocating the entire circus.
Malformed creatures taller than three meters charged out of the darkness. Their bodies belonged to enormous gray wolves clad in rusted iron armor, but their heads were those of broken-necked Pastors, their eyes rolled upward into milky whites as their faces desperately recited bloodstained prayers.
The wolves let out ear-splitting howls and charged frenziedly toward the sandy arena, targeting Adrian, Ember, Nick, and the stands where the players were still locked in place!
The sound of blood-spattered prayers mingled with the agonized moans from the limp, broken Pastor heads, making the already death-stench-filled air even thicker and more oppressive. More than fifty mutated wolves crawled out from the crumbling sections of wall all at once. Rusted iron chains were hooked directly into the rotten flesh along their spines, dragging across the sand with a maddening clank... clank....
"Blasphemy! Blasphemous heretics!"
The Pastor heads fused to the wolves’ necks screamed in unison, their voices rasping like metal scraping against stone. Their milky-white eyes, devoid of pupils, rolled upward, while thick streams of ash-gray blood trickled from the corners of their mouths.
"Destroy them! Turn them into a sacrifice for the Supreme One!" Ringmaster Jack stood atop a raised wooden platform, waving the iron scissors drenched in black blood as he shrieked his orders in a frenzy.
CRACK... CLACK!
Along with the Ringmaster’s roar, the iron chains around the seats of the players in the stands suddenly tightened to twice their previous strength. Lily clenched her teeth, a streak of fresh red blood spilling from the corner of her mouth as the spikes on the chains dug deep into her flesh. She struggled to raise her head and look down into the sandy arena, her frozen eyes filled with worry. Although the strength of Adrian’s group was undeniable, the sheer number of the Pastor Wolves, combined with the oppressive rules of this circus, remained far too great an unknown.
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