Chapter 209: The Clown ‘s Stage Play

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

In Ancheng.

In an ordinary house.

“It’s raining again today.”

Yang Huan, sprawled on the sofa, stood up, took a can of cola from the fridge, stretched lazily, and walked to his room.

Tomorrow is a day off. No work… and no overtime.

Yang Huan pulled back the curtains, stood by the window, watching the night sky, listening to the rain pouring outside.

He opened the cola can with a hiss.

A rainy night, alone at home, with no work the next day…

Ever since graduating from university, Yang Huan hadn’t relaxed like this in a long time.

He took a big gulp of the chilled cola, exhaled deeply, and took out a game disc from his bag.

[ A Stage Play by a Clown ]

Directly translated, it could be… The Clown’s Stage Play.

But given it’s translated with a bit more interpretation, there must be a reason for that.

Yang Huan was a typical office worker, with a regular job after graduation, a boss who liked making empty promises, and a supervisor who boasted to newcomers.

His salary was decent; after deducting rent and living expenses, he could save a little each month.

Besides being an office worker, he was a horror game enthusiast. With the pressures of modern urban life, Yang Huan enjoyed the relaxation that came after the heart-pounding thrill of horror games.

A Stage Play by a Clown was a newly released popular game, creating quite a buzz online lately. There were rumors that the game was so scary it had actually caused deaths.

Yang Huan scoffed at these claims, knowing them to be marketing tactics.

These “game-induced death” rumors were common and obviously fabricated by the game’s project managers.

The game cost 444 Dayan currency. Originally, Yang Huan had planned to ask the receptionist at his office out for a movie, but she already had plans.

With the rain making going out inconvenient, she had to resort to a home date with someone else.

The game’s box depicted a clown in circus attire, with colorful hair. Beneath that, however, was a skull with no flesh.

This was a skeletal clown, its face flesh scraped off, revealing a grinning skull with eyes in the sockets.

Feeling uncomfortable under the gaze of the skeletal clown, Yang Huan quickly unwrapped the box and placed it face down on the table.

He rummaged through the box and took out a gold coin.

Of course, the coin wasn’t real gold. It was a bonus with the collector’s edition of the game. After all, it would be stingy not to include something extra with a collector’s edition.

On one side of the coin was the image of the skeletal clown, and on the other, a bunch of black roses—

This was mentioned in the game’s lore; black roses were the clown’s favorite flowers.

Yang Huan inserted the game disc into his computer to start playing, meanwhile reflecting on the history of technology development on Yuan Xing.

Computers that were over a hundred years old could still read video discs. With the advent of dedicated players, it seemed like computers would lose this function. But then game manufacturers stepped in, creating game discs to be played on computers.

He had heard that major foreign manufacturers were starting to develop machines dedicated solely to gaming…

Yang Huan felt a twinge of anticipation, followed by the sobering thought of his salary, realizing he’d have to save for a while to afford the new gaming technology.

In the meantime, the game finished installing. He entered the activation code, and an image of the skeletal clown appeared on the screen.

Sipping his icy cola, Yang Huan began to explore and navigate the game.

The protagonist, a circus clown, wakes up one night to find himself in an abandoned amusement park. The park is overgrown and dilapidated. Beside him lies the head of a large dog he recognizes as Angie, a star performer of the circus and a crowd favorite.

As a circus clown, he had always envied Angie. Now, her eyes were gouged out, blood streaming from the empty sockets. In one of her eye sockets, the clown finds a note with cryptic information.

The note warns that the clown must leave the abandoned park before dawn or be trapped there forever. Additionally, there are disjointed, dirty scribbles that serve as hints for the player, such as “You are a lion,” “I am an elephant,” “The tiger will eat you,” “It’s safe inside the tiger’s stomach,” “The prince is a princess,” “The princess has a horse’s head,” and other such bizarre phrases.

Yang Huan, reading these hints, understands that the game involves puzzle-solving elements. He controls the clown, moving through the amusement park, relying on his gaming experience and the save/load feature to pass one level after another.

Each level is inhabited by humanoid monsters, grotesque and ferocious. The clown struggles to kill them, advancing toward his goal.

Finally, in the last level, he arrives in front of a castle. The castle in the amusement park is exaggerated in the game, not as high or grand as a real one.

According to the note, a princess lives in this castle. She lets down her hair, and the clown, like a brave prince, climbs up to the castle using her hair.

However, upon reaching the top, he realizes that what awaited him near the window was not the princess, but a head stuck in the window.

It’s a beautiful head with golden hair and pale blue eyes, sparkling like gems..