262: Your ticket stub has been invalidated.

Chapter 262: Your Ticket Stub Has Been Voided. Boom!

Blue flames soared into the sky, burning straight through the ceiling.

That temperature was no longer simple heat.

It was a destructive radiation storm.

With Chen Mo at the center, the seats, carpets, and even the closest rows of "audience members" within a ten-meter radius were instantly vaporized.

Not even ashes remained.

Sound waves?

In the face of absolute high temperatures, even the air was scorched dry; how could sound still travel?

"Now."

Chen Mo stepped out from the sea of fire.

With every step he took, the surrounding space warped.

His eyes had turned completely blue—no whites, no pupils, only pure energy flowing within.

He looked at the Raincoat Man on the stage, whose smile had frozen.

"It's my turn to request a song."

Chen Mo raised his hand, aiming his palm at the audience seating.

"This one is called 'Requiem'."

Boom—!

A thick pillar of blue light swept out.

It was like an eraser being wiped across a drawing.

The three hundred-plus "audience members" on the left stands, along with the Sonic Cannons in their mouths, vanished within a tenth of a second.

A bottomless trench was burned into the theater's load-bearing wall.

Cold wind poured in from outside, only to be swiftly devoured by the high temperature.

"Bastard!"

The Raincoat Man finally lost his composure.

He hadn't expected Chen Mo to be an absolute lunatic.

This was a desperate gambler.

"Kill him! Kill him for me!"

The Raincoat Man frantically pressed the remote control in his hand.

The remaining "audience members" stopped firing sound waves and instead leaped from their seats like beasts, charging at Chen Mo on all fours.

Several more massive dark figures rushed out from backstage.

Those were stitched monstrosities.

Each was two stories tall, with countless hands and feet sewn onto their bodies, wielding rusted iron chains.

"Good timing."

Instead of retreating, Chen Mo advanced.

He transformed into a blue meteor and crashed into the crowd of corpses.

This wasn't a battle.

It was a massacre.

And a suicide.

His skin was cracking, his muscles were dissolving, and his bones were burning.

But he didn't care.

He grabbed the chain of a Stitched Monstrosity and yanked hard.

The multi-ton monster was pulled over like a kite.

Chen Mo punched it in the stomach.

The terrifying heat burned a large hole right through it, and the flesh around the wound carbonized instantly.

"Die!!"

Chen Mo roared.

He lifted the burning monster and hurled it at the stage like a bowling ball.

Bang!

Half of the stage collapsed.

The Raincoat Man rolled back in a panic, his once-elegant wine glass shattering to pieces.

"Chen Mo! You'll die! You'll burn yourself to death!"

The Raincoat Man scrambled up, his voice laced with fear.

His meticulously designed trap and perfect script had become a joke in the face of this unreasonable brute.

"Die?"

Chen Mo stood in a sea of fire.

His left arm already exposed its metal skeleton, but he still stood perfectly straight.

He was a demon crawling out of hell.

"I've already died once."

Chen Mo stepped over the wreckage of the last row of seats and onto the stairs leading to the stage.

The wooden steps instantly turned to ash beneath his feet.

He stepped upon the flames in the void, closing in step by step.

"Hold onto your ticket stub."

Chen Mo raised his only remaining intact right hand, fingers splayed, as the blue light in his palm condensed to a terrifying brightness.

"This performance..."

"...I am not satisfied with."

"Refund."

Boom!!!

A blue sun exploded in the center of the theater.

Hot.

There wasn't even oxygen in the air, only the stinging sensation of alveoli being scorched.

The dome of the Jiangcheng Grand Theater was gone, revealing the pitch-black night sky and the continuous drizzle.

Before the rain could hit the ground, it was evaporated in mid-air by the residual heat, turning into a vast white mist that shrouded the ruins.

Chen Mo stood in the center of the giant crater that had been burned out.

The blue light on his body was slowly fading, replaced by the teeth-gritting sounds of metal cooling.

Ka, ka, sizzle—

The flesh on his left arm had completely vanished, revealing a full length of dull alloy skeleton.

Several hydraulic tubes were severed, spraying out pale green coolant.

The once-smooth skin on his chest now looked like a piece of mottled charcoal, shedding flakes with every breath.

"You really look ugly right now."

Ruan Qiushui floated before him, somehow wielding a virtual fan and fanning vigorously. "Like a half-burned reject that just crawled out of a crematorium."

"Shut up."

Chen Mo opened his mouth and exhaled a puff of black smoke laced with sparks.

His voice was as raspy as two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

He looked down at his left hand.

The alloy fingers twitched, making the crisp sound of precision gears engaging.

Though the flesh was gone, his grip strength seemed even greater.

"Still works."

Chen Mo stepped over a glowing red beam and walked toward the edge of the ruins.

That was where the stage used to be.

Now, only a large pit flowing with magma remained.

And at the edge of the pit hung half a body.

It was the Raincoat Man.

Or rather, what was left of the Raincoat Man.

His legs and the left half of his body had vaporized; the remaining right half of his torso was charred and stuck to a concrete slab.

The comical clown mask had half-melted onto his face, revealing the unrecognizable dark red muscle beneath.

But he was still alive.

His single eye was still rolling, staring fixedly at the approaching Chen Mo.

"Cough... cough cough..."

A black foam welled up from the Raincoat Man's mouth, and a sound like a broken bellows came from his throat. "Splen... did..."

Chen Mo knelt down in front of him.

His alloy left hand reached out and gripped the other's remaining neck.

"Where is Wang Daoming?"

Chen Mo's fingers tightened without a shred of mercy.

"Hehe..."

On the Raincoat Man's mangled face, a smile actually managed to form. "You think... this is the end?"

He laboriously raised his only remaining right hand and pointed at the surrounding ashes.

"Look... around..."

Chen Mo frowned.

He activated his thermal imaging vision.

The ashes that should have cooled—the remains of the "audience"—were actually still glowing.

It wasn't residual heat.

It was an eerie flow of energy.

All the ashes were vibrating slightly, as if a giant magnet buried beneath was pulling them.

Countless tiny energy lines followed the cracks in the ground, converging underground.

"Do you... really think... I don't understand... your ability?"

The Raincoat Man's voice grew fainter, but the mockery in his eyes intensified. "Nuclear energy... high temperature... radiation..."

"This is... the switch."

"We... are just firewood..."

"And you... Chen Mo... you are... the lighter..."

Chen Mo's pupils constricted.

He'd been played.

This wasn't an ambush or a trap at all.

This was a sacrifice.

Wang Daoming had used those modified corpses to set up a massive energy collection field.

He knew Chen Mo would release massive thermal energy when losing control, so he specifically arranged for these "audience members" to die.

The moment these specially modified corpses were vaporized by high temperatures, they released a type of bio-electric energy that was "ignited" by Chen Mo's flames.

Rumble—

The ground beneath his feet began to shake.

It wasn't an aftershock.

It was the sound of heavy machinery operating deep underground.

"Thank you... for your... fire..."

After the Raincoat Man finished these last words, the light in his single eye quickly dimmed.

His body seemed to lose all support, turning into a puddle of black sludge that slid through Chen Mo's fingers.

He was dead.

But things had become even worse.

"Chen Mo! There's something underground!"

Ruan Qiushui screamed, pointing at the still-smoking stage pit. "The energy readings are off the charts! Run!"

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