Circus of Horrors (11)
It was deathly silent.
Until a soft chuckle broke through the stillness.
The players all turned toward Fu Moyang in horror.
Was he insane?
What was there to laugh at in a situation this life-threatening?
Fu Moyang ignored the others’ stares. He lowered his head and whispered in the young master’s ear: “Young Master, it’s time for me to put on a show for you.”
Chen Li struggled hard not to glare at him.
Madman!
Joker let out a cold laugh and snapped his fingers, transporting everyone back into the circus tent.
This time, there were no blinding lights. The quiet was so unnatural it made people feel uneasy.
“I put a lot of effort into today’s performance,” Joker said gently. “I hope our two beast tamers won’t disappoint the audience.”
Though he said “two beast tamers,” his eyes were locked entirely on Fu Moyang—full of venom, as if he wished he could tear him apart on the spot.
But Fu Moyang didn’t spare him a single glance. His dismissive attitude only made Joker more furious.
With a twisted smile, Joker clapped his hands, summoning over a dozen tattered cotton bears from behind the circus’s massive black curtain.
Some dragged, some pushed, all working together to haul out a metal cage on four wheels. One even held a tiny flag, acting like a commander.
It kept chattering excitedly, probably cheering the others on.
Even knowing how capable Fu Moyang was, Chen Li couldn’t help feeling nervous. It had only taken four of those tattered bears to drag out the water tank last time—now it took over a dozen just to move this cage.
Unfortunately, the cage was completely covered in a black cloth, so no one could see what was inside.
A bear? A tiger?
Maybe a lion.
A wild, untrained beast could easily tear a person apart.
Soon, Joker showed them just how naive that thought was.
After delivering the cage, the lead bear grasped the curtain with its fluffy paw and yanked it off with a dramatic flourish.
“ROAR!”
“Help!!!”
“It hurts… it hurts so much…”
Multiple voices cried out from within the cage—screams, howls, and roars all tangled together.
Chen Li’s face went ghostly pale.
Nothing in his life had prepared him for the horror inside that cage.
Eight human heads with unnaturally long necks were twisted together, each neck over a meter long, weaving and knotting through each other. These heads all sprouted from a single massive ball of flesh. Arms and legs protruded at random from the grotesque body, with eleven legs on the bottom alone to support its weight. Other limbs jutted out chaotically, including one that looked like a baby’s tiny arm, flailing uncontrollably.
Among the eight heads and countless limbs, you could see men and women, young and old. The entire creature was an unnatural purplish-red, as if crushed or suffocated. Black veins were visibly crawling all over its body.
The players were so terrified they could barely stay on their feet.
This was the first time the circus had truly filled them with dread. They all tried to run toward the edges of the seating area in panic—but circus performers weren’t allowed into the audience seats. An invisible wall of air blocked them from escaping.
Joker paid them no mind, completely immersed in his twisted delight.
“I went to a mutated building to capture this for tonight’s performance. This… is a symbol of a family that, after mutation, can never be separated again.”
Naturally, that mutated building wasn’t part of this instance—it was from a high-level dungeon.
In the original storyline, the two beast tamers were only supposed to face a pair of hungry man-eating tigers and a giant carnivorous crocodile.
But Joker knew those kinds of beasts weren’t enough to deal with that damned player.
So from the start, he’d planned to increase the difficulty manually.
A creature of this level wouldn’t be hard for him to kill—but capturing it alive and bringing it across instances was something else entirely. Even for him, it had taken considerable effort—and he’d even suffered a minor injury.
The faint scent of blood Chen Li smelled this morning had come from that injury.
Chen Li’s heart pounded wildly. He could no longer sit still.
Suddenly, all his earlier suspicions made sense.
No wonder the first performance hadn’t included the beast tamers, even though Joker already had a grudge against Fu Moyang.
He’d been saving this thing for last.
Saving his ultimate move to ensure the kill.
Joker stood in front of the cage and flung his arms open.
“All the performances before this were just appetizers. Now, let’s enjoy the circus’s main course—the beast taming act!”
He grinned cruelly, the vivid red paint on his lips splitting wide to reveal sharp white teeth and a blue tongue.
As the final word fell, the monster inside the cage began to thrash violently. All eight of its heads were bound in black shackles, and the iron chain around its neck was tightly fastened to the base of the cage.
Ever since it had smelled human flesh, the eight heads hadn’t stopped drooling.
Finally, the first male head broke free of the iron chain. Then came the female head, the old man’s head…
Until the last child’s head snapped its chain—at last, the cage could no longer hold it.
All eight heads screamed in unison, for once speaking the same words: “Humans! I want to eat humans!”
It had broken out of the cage.
System 001: [Rising! Fear level rising! 10… 20… Still going up!]
Chen Li didn’t notice any of it—he wanted to scream in fear too, to get up and run like the other players.
But he was an NPC. All he could do was sit there, motionless, and face the terror head-on.
It felt like a giant hand was squeezing his heart, and the oxygen-starved pain in his brain was setting off alarms.
The players screamed in panic: “Why is it chasing us? We’re not the beast tamer!!”
The monster, now out of its cage, was attacking indiscriminately!
Its eight heads roared, drooling strong acid from their mouths.
Joker shrugged casually: “Oops. Forgot to mention—it eats any human it sees. It only stops if the beast tamer dies… or subdues it.”
In other words, they were all likely going to die here.
The players lost it.
The female dancer, being the slowest, nearly had her legs bitten off. The male dancer threw an item just in time for his girlfriend to narrowly escape.
He shouted in rage: “Beast tamer, do something! Are you trying to get us all killed?!”
The beast tamer pissed himself—literally. The stench of urine filled the air. Tears and snot streamed down his face as he bolted: “I won’t! Why should I be the one to die?! You’re all veteran players! You have items!”
He babbled madly: “Yeah! Yeah! Let’s all fight it together! We can beat it if we team up!”
But no one listened to him.
“Die, you coward!” shouted the dart thrower next to him, sticking out a leg and tripping him to the ground.
Every player ran past him without a second glance.
The beast tamer reached out, desperate: “No! Please, I’m begging you! I have money! Lots of it! I’ll give it all to you when we get out!”
Not a single one stopped.
The monster reached him. All eight heads opened their jaws at once—then started arguing over who got the first bite. Their mouths, full of sharp teeth and the stench of blood, emitted awful, screeching voices.
The beast tamer froze, unable to stand: “Don’t eat me! Please, I’m begging you, please!”
His face twisted with terror. As he collapsed, memories of his past life flashed before his eyes like a spinning lantern show.
Everyone who comes to this Horror Game is already someone on the brink of death—whether from an accident or illness, this place is their last chance at survival.
He still remembered how it had all started. He’d just played a little trick, withholding wages from some workers. Then on his way home, one of them stabbed him in the stomach. When he opened his eyes again, he was in this game.
But how was that his fault?! The world had never been fair. He was born to be a boss. Those damn workers were just paid a few months late, and they dared do that to him? He didn’t deserve to die! The ones who should die were those lowly ants—scum from the bottom of society!
The middle-aged man suddenly burst into maniacal laughter and shakily pulled out the whip that came with his beast-tamer outfit.
His fear had now twisted into a new kind of madness.
What stood before him no longer appeared as terrifying, man-eating monsters—but as the detestable, hateful workers he despised.
Yes! He was going to kill it! Aaaaahhh!!!
He opened his mouth wide and screamed, raising the whip high into the air.
Crack. Snap.
The sickening sound of bones breaking echoed out.
He never even got the chance to stand up. Still kneeling with the whip raised high, his head was bitten off in one clean chomp.
The monster chewed noisily, some white brain matter dripping from the corner of its mouth.
The “Husband”—one of the creature’s eight heads—had won. It had successfully outshouted the others, and its mouth grew massive as it tore off the head of this noisy prey, claiming the most nutritious part of the body.
“So tasty… So, so good!”
“That was my meat! Don’t steal it!”
“It’s all mine! Mine! Smells so good!!”
The remaining seven heads, impatiently waiting for the “Husband” to finish, surged forward and tore into the headless corpse, frantically devouring it.
Blood spread across the ground.
One of the child heads, entangled with the grandpa head, couldn’t turn to reach the meat and began to wail.
Upon hearing the crying, a female head with ragged, yellowing hair bit off a piece of thigh and fed it to the child.
The child’s face was smeared with blood as it chewed: “Yummy! Gahaha! So yummy!”
In its eagerness, it even bit off a piece of the female head’s mouth.
She didn’t mind at all and continued feeding it.
This grotesque show of “tenderness” looked only horrifying to the onlookers.
They all knew—that corpse wouldn’t last long.
Two minutes at most, and it would be gone.
The dart thrower, who had initially tripped, shouted toward the VIP seats at Fu Moyang: “You’ve got to get down here!”
Everyone’s eyes turned upward.
Even though he knew they weren’t looking at him, Chen Li still felt a chill of fear.
[System, can I use my points to redeem an item?]
System 001, cold and ruthless: [No.]
His host was still too naive.
Someone like Fu Moyang didn’t need his help. He’d be lucky if Fu Moyang didn’t rip Joker apart along the way.
The dart thrower panicked and even threw a dart upward recklessly.
Although the dart was aimed at Fu Moyang, it veered slightly off course and almost hit Chen Li instead.
The young noble sat quietly in his seat, completely unfazed by the dart that had come flying straight toward his face.
Of course, that was how it looked from the outside—in truth, he was just too stunned to react.
The dart was intercepted mere centimeters from Chen Li by Fu Moyang, who caught it barehanded with a cold, unflinching gaze.
With a squeeze of his hand, the sharp blade warped, and when he let go, it clattered to the ground as nothing more than a scrap of useless metal.
The dart thrower was too frightened to say a word, and the other players fell silent.
Fu Moyang walked up to Chen Li and turned to face him. In front of everyone, he dropped to one knee. In a voice only Chen Li could hear, his eyes as deep and dark as an abyss: “Young Master, from this moment on… please keep your eyes on me.”
Give him your full attention, your entire heart and mind—focus on him alone, until you’re completely his.
Author’s note:
Someone: (Getting ready to show off like a peacock)
Side note: Let’s all work together to oppose animal performances~