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Chapter 130: The Fishing Rod and the Centaur
The sudden, monstrous roar instantly gripped the audience with terror.
Amidst the panic, a massive foot stepped out from the blizzard, followed by a towering figure covered entirely in coarse white fur.
It was a man—a towering, four-meter-tall behemoth that looked exactly like a Yeti!
The Yeti Man spotted the Two-Headed Girl trembling in the swirling snow.
He rubbed his eyes.
This small, bizarrely humorous gesture broke the crushing tension, drawing chuckles from the crowd.
But the vast majority of the audience remained on the edge of their seats, terrified for the girl's fate.
The Yeti Man wasn't deterred by the girl's abnormality. He reached out with a gigantic, fur-covered hand to snatch her.
It looked as though the girl's delicate waist would snap like a twig in his grasp, sending gasps rippling through the theater.
Because in the next second, the Yeti Man lifted his colossal hand, looking as if he were about to toss the girl straight into his gaping maw.
Just then, a fishing line zipped out from the darkness, precisely wrapping around the Yeti Man's arm. As the line was viciously yanked, the behemoth bellowed in pain and released the Two-Headed Girl.
The girl plummeted into the snow—one head deathly calm, the other screaming in terror.
A woman dressed in mountaineering gear emerged from the blizzard. In her hands, she gripped a fishing rod.
The line went completely taut. The enraged Yeti Man had grabbed the wire and was trying to reel the woman in.
The audience held their breath—Snap! The sharp sound of a breaking line echoed through the theater.
The massive Yeti Man stumbled forward, crashing to the stage.
His colossal frame kicked up a spray of ice and snow, but the Two-Headed Girl was no longer where he landed.
A full-blooded Demi-Human Centaur had charged onto the stage! With impossibly swift and elegant movements, he snatched the girl out from under the Yeti Man's crushing weight just in the nick of time.
One of the girl's heads practically sprouted pink hearts, swooning over her savior. The other head wore a look of utter disgust and revulsion.
Ronin's attention, however, was entirely focused on the woman with the fishing rod and the Centaur.
With Nen focused in his eyes, he was absolutely certain they were both Nen users!
The woman with the fishing rod was completely normal, physically speaking. But the Centaur... Ronin strongly suspected the entire lower half of his body was Conjured.
This intuition came from the fact that the aura covering his lower half was remarkably potent and seamless. It didn't feel disjointed; it flowed with a systemic, structural perfection.
Especially around his groin—the aura's outline was entirely smooth, lacking any anatomically accurate protrusions.
Interesting, Ronin thought to himself.
He had rarely seen Conjuration used to fabricate missing body parts like this.
Plenty of fighters at Heaven's Arena suffered dismemberment during their Nen baptisms, but they usually opted for mechanical prosthetics and focused their Nen training elsewhere.
The play continued.
The tense atmosphere was perfectly balanced with side-splitting comedic relief. Various deformed performers took the stage one by one, each bringing a unique flair that integrated flawlessly into the narrative.
The only performer on stage without any deformities—the woman with the fishing rod—was named Abaki.
Her fishing rod became the central prop of the entire show. After finding a sturdier line, she demonstrated an incredible ability to fish out anything.
She fished out the Yeti Man's lost companion, the Miniature Woman.
She even fished out the hidden, true feelings buried deep within the Two-Headed Girl's heart. The play brilliantly conceptualized the fishing rod as a metaphorical tool.
By the climax, the rod was literally fishing out the audience's prejudice, hostility, and malice toward the deformed performers.
The Troupe had clearly polished the script to perfection. Even with the rod elevated to mythical status, the audience never found it jarring; they were completely swept up in the raw emotional depth of the story.
It was an utterly spectacular performance.
Even Ronin briefly forgot that the Centaur and Abaki were Nen users, fully immersing himself in the plot.
"I'm officially a die-hard Freak Show Troupe fan," Neon smiled brightly, though tears still clung to her eyelashes.
"Let's make sure the Troupe survives tonight first," Shizuku remarked, her face as impassive as ever. The emotional performance hadn't shaken her in the slightest.
Neon scratched her head, exasperated.
The stage lights shifted once more. When Abaki used her rod to fish up a headless body and gifted it to the Two-Headed Girl, the play entered its grand finale.
When Ronin saw the Two-Headed Girl actually split her heads and occupy the two separate bodies, he was utterly dumbfounded.
How the hell did she do that?
The audience was completely blown away. The crowd erupted into a standing ovation, roaring in awe and applause.
The cast members filed onto the stage, taking their final bows.
The house lights flared, the performers exited, and the clowns returned to usher the audience out.
Ronin was genuinely shocked. Even with his keen eyes, he hadn't been able to figure out how the Two-Headed Girl pulled off that final split.
Was Abaki's fishing rod really that insanely overpowered?
Or was the Two-Headed Girl a Nen user all along, disguised so flawlessly as a normal human that even a veteran like him couldn't pierce the veil?
Ronin felt a strong urge to meet them and find out.
But if he unraveled all the mysteries behind the stage magic, the sheer wonder of the performance would probably vanish.
Leaving the mystery of the 'split' unsolved to become an unforgettable memory doesn't sound too bad.
Standing up with the crowd, Ronin knew Petter was about to make his move. But attacking him right this second wasn't smart.
The timing wasn't right.
Before leaving, however, he casually dropped a kunai under his seat.
A crystal ball materialized in his hand. While watching the show, he had memorized the aura signatures of Abaki and the Centaur.
Now that he was leaving the theater, he could use the [Telescope Technique] to spy on them whenever he wanted.
The moment he spotted trouble, the kunai stashed under his seat would serve as the anchor point for his [Flying Thunder God Jutsu].
Unless the janitors did an absurdly thorough sweep under every single chair, the kunai would remain undetected.
Besides, as Ronin moved toward the exit, he didn't see a single cleaning crew enter the hall. It seemed Petter was far too impatient to get his hands on the Troupe to bother with tidying up.
Glancing back toward the stage, he noticed several of the actors had re-emerged from backstage. They were looking up at the VIP section with a mix of anticipation and anxiety.
Clearly, it hadn't even crossed their minds that Petter Glam harbored nothing but malicious intent toward them.
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