126: Chapter 126 Origin Rumble

New York, Madison Square Garden.

The final night of the "Resonance Era", Act I: "origin".

Opening countdown: - 00:07:32

Inside the venue, eighteen thousand seats had long since become a pitch-black, restless ocean.

The roar of noise crashed against the walls, echoing and layering under the meticulously designed dome, forming a nearly tangible sense of oppression.

The air was scorching, mixed with the smell of sweat, perfume, and ozone from electronic equipment.

The massive "origin" cube stood silently in the center of the stage, covered by a dark shroud like a dormant steel beast.

Backstage, heartbeats synchronized with the second hand.

Alex stood in the shadows of the entrance tunnel, eyes closed.

The pure black performance outfit was sharply tailored, wrapping around his body that had been enhanced by the third stage, the muscle lines under the fabric rising and falling slightly with his breathing.

In the earpiece, the cold reporting voices of the technical team confirming system statuses for the last time formed a strange duet with the boiling human voices coming from outside the tunnel.

"Information Reception Filtering" operated at full power, filtering out irrelevant noise into a low background hum, leaving only critical communications and his own steady heartbeat.

On the surface of his skin, "Spider-Sense" opened softly like the most delicate spider web, covering everything within a fifty-meter radius—from the slight tremor of the cables overhead, to the pressure accumulation sound of the hydraulic system under the stage floor, to the abnormally accelerated heartbeats of several audience members due to excessive excitement.

Everything was perceived and included in the calculation.

No nervousness, only a cold, focused clarity.

Like the absolute silence of a hunter before entering the hunting zone.

"System all green. 'origin' cube self-check complete, deformation sequence loaded."

"Global live stream confirmed, online viewer count has broken initial estimates... and is still skyrocketing."

"New York and Los Angeles municipal security final confirmation, all perimeter sentries ready."

"Alex, thirty seconds left."

He opened his eyes, his pupils reflecting the point of light at the end of the tunnel that belonged to the stage.

That was the battlefield he had built with countless plans, gambles, and creations, and it was also the altar where he would assault the final threshold.

Taylor's voice came through the earpiece, transmitted from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, calm and powerful: "I'm ready on my end. New York, it's up to you."

"Keep the line open." Alex replied in a low voice, a tiny arc appearing at the corner of his mouth.

Countdown to zero.

- 00:00:00

Suddenly!

The lights in the entire venue went out instantly, plunging into absolute darkness.

Before the audience's gasps could form a wave of sound, a beam of cold white light like a searchlight shot down straight from a great height, precisely piercing the darkness and enveloping the tunnel exit!

Alex's figure was outlined; he stepped forward and into the light beam.

The moment his feet landed—

"Boom!!!"

A deafening heartbeat sound, as if originating from the deep earth and amplified to the extreme, slammed into everyone's chest through the infrasonic speakers spread throughout the venue!

Immediately after, the second heartbeat.

"Boom!!!"

Heavier, deeper, as if the entire venue resonated with it.

Just as the aftertaste of the second heartbeat lingered, the massive shroud covering the "origin" cube was ripped away as if by an invisible giant!

The cold metal structure was exposed to the air, and engineering light strips outlined hard lines on its surface.

Then, it "came alive".

The low hydraulic roar was not background noise; it became part of the prelude.

The massive cubic structure began to rotate and disintegrate slowly and unstoppably.

Heavy metal plates slid smoothly, thick mechanical arms reached out from the inside, supporting new structures.

It was no longer a static stage, but a constantly growing, deforming mechanical life form, showcasing the most primitive and magnificent power aesthetics of the industrial age amidst the heartbeat-like heavy beats.

Alex started in the center of this deforming structure.

He used no wires or special effects, relying purely on his enhanced body and instincts formed through countless rehearsals to run, jump, and maneuver on the moving, tilting, and rising steel planes.

His movements were precisely locked into every node of the mechanical motion, as if he were another creature dancing with this steel beast.

The lights followed him, projecting every silhouette full of power onto the giant circular screen behind him.

The audience forgot to breathe, their senses held captive by this unprecedented symbiosis and dance between human and giant machine.

The deformation of the mechanical structure reached its first climax, forming a tilted, twenty-meter-long steel runway.

Alex accelerated, leaping with all his might at the end of the runway—the height and hang time of that leap exceeded the scope of human common sense, drawing a mountain-shaking gasp!

He turned in the air, and upon landing, the first line of lyrics tore through the air, erupting in sync with a booming sound effect and the sudden full illumination of the venue's lights:

"I'm waking up to ash and dust..."

It was "Radioactive"!

But it wasn't a simple cover.

The arrangement was intensified, the rhythm was fiercer, and with the mechanical structure still slowly deforming behind him, every line sounded like a declaration of war, a proclamation of the arrival of Rebirth and power.

His voice was full of explosive power, turning into tangible sound waves through the top-tier sound system, washing over every inch of the space.

The whole place was ignited!

The opening song ended with a burst at the last drum beat, and the lights dimmed suddenly.

But before the cheers reached their peak, a soft spotlight came on, shining on Alex, who had quietly moved to the front of the stage.

He panted slightly, sweat on his face, and gave a real, slightly tired yet excited smile to the audience.

"New York!" he shouted into the microphone, his voice reaching every corner through the speakers, "Tell me, are you ready?!"

"Aaaaah—!!!" The response was a roar capable of overturning the roof.

"I'm ready too." He smiled, his breath calming down quickly, "But tonight, it's not just me and this big guy."

He pointed to the temporarily static mechanical structure behind him, "And it's not just you."

He paused, his gaze seeming to pierce through the venue, looking toward the west.

"Three thousand miles away, in Los Angeles, there is another stage, and another group of people waiting for a miracle."

"And here, in my heart, there is a voice that has been echoing."

"It's about distance, about time difference, about those moments that are forever 'almost' perfect... But perhaps, it is that 'almost' that makes everything real, makes everything worth cherishing."

As his voice fell, the stage lights changed again, becoming hazy and full of spatial sense.

On the big screen behind, the real-time footage from inside the Staples Center in Los Angeles cut in, showing the audience, which was also packed under the "Eternity" dome, as well as Taylor standing in the center of the stage under a beam of light.

The two images were side-by-side, the distance across the country erased at this moment.

"Taylor," Alex looked at her on the screen, "Can you hear my heartbeat here?"

In the Los Angeles footage, Taylor looked up, as if she were truly listening.

She smiled at the camera, and at the New York audience: "I hear more than just heartbeats. I hear... Echo."

In the New York venue's sound system, Taylor's clear and slightly ethereal humming came through, the prelude motif of "half-step echo".

At the same time, Alex also gently hummed another melodic line.

The two melodies were initially independent, one ringing out in the New York venue, the other coming from Los Angeles, chasing and intertwining in the huge venue through a meticulously tuned sound field.

Then, a slight, clearly perceptible delay appeared.

Taylor's voice was always a fraction of a second slower than Alex's, like a real Echo in a valley.

This "imperfect" synchronization, far from weakening the effect, created a strange, tension-filled sense of dialogue across time and space.

The simple humming caused the venue, which had just been boiling, to quickly settle into a focused and moved silence.

This was the debut of the "Error Aesthetics".

It wasn't a technical glitch; it was a meticulously designed artistic language.

The humming grew, intertwined, and finally merged and dissipated on a harmonious note.

Applause, like a late tide, erupted, even more enthusiastic than at the opening, full of emotional resonance.

Alex knew the first emotional anchor had been successfully set.

He felt the collective emotion surging in the air, nearly tangible, and looked at the system interface that only he could see, where the historical popularity number was jumping and rising at an unprecedented speed.

The massive emotional energy to hit one hundred million points was accelerating and converging in these two venues and in front of countless screens around the world.

And the show had only just begun.