Chapter 13: 013. [Who's Playing the Piano]_1
The moment he touched that pale skull, Lu Ban thought he heard a faint laughter near his ear.
Boom——
The skull silently exploded, bouncing between the pages, with piles of white bones accumulating to form the text of the task.
[Who's Playing the Piano]
[Who is it that sings exuberantly in the theater at midnight, playing forbidden movements, with only the lonely applause echoing in the empty audience seats]
[In the theater destroyed by the fire, there is always a sorrowful moan like sobbing and complaining. You come here, unaware that you have already become a character on stage]
[Do not stop playing, trust me, you wouldn't want to witness that scene]
[Task Difficulty: Mortal]
[Task Requirements: Arrive at Jiangcheng Grand Theater after sunset tomorrow, find the musician, and survive until dawn the next day to complete the task]
["His playing is so divine that even the gods favor it"]
"...Survive until dawn?"
When Lu Ban saw this description, he had a bad feeling.
Speaking seriously, if there was no danger, there wouldn't be such a survival game-like restriction.
To find some unknown musician in an abandoned theater and to stay alive until daylight sounded dangerous no matter how you looked at it.
But looking at the task difficulty, it was merely at the Mortal level.
Lu Ban didn't know what a Mortal difficulty task entailed, but [Under-bed Friend] was also Mortal level, so perhaps similar?
He guessed it might just involve staying in the abandoned theater and hearing some inexplicable sounds, seeing some mysterious figures.
Glancing under his own bed, Lu Ban felt that it shouldn't be a big problem.
Having learned the relevant task information, he went online to surf, looking for clues.
After entering the name of the Jiangcheng Grand Theater, it didn't take long for Lu Ban to see that there indeed used to be a grand theater in Jiangcheng.
This theater was located at the junction of the current new and old districts of Jiangcheng, with a history of more than fifty years, all the way up to the 1990s, it was the leisure choice for the people of Jiangcheng on weekends.
But with the development of movies and later the proliferation of the internet, the Jiangcheng Grand Theater gradually declined, and at last, around the turn of the century due to electrical issues, a serious fire occurred that left it beyond repair.
The owner of the theater had planned to demolish it and sell the land to real estate developers, but later, due to some unknown events, the deal was shelved, and the place became an unmanaged wasteland to this very day.
After all, these incidents happened over twenty years ago, and the internet wasn't well-developed at the time, so it seemed reasonable that Lu Ban couldn't find much.
Rumors about the Jiangcheng Grand Theater were mostly found on local forums, Tieba, and other places that had fallen out of relevance, with many of their pages no longer accessible. But Lu Ban still found some clues.
"...Legend has it that the great fire was caused by an affair between a boss's wife and a theater actor, and after their affair was exposed, they were tied up on stage and burned alive in the theater!"
"No, that's wrong. The people in the theater used it for illegal transactions behind the scenes, and a disagreement over the spoils led to an arson that destroyed the whole theater. I saw the police surround the place with my own eyes!"
"You're all just believing rumors, in fact, it's because this theater was originally built on an ancient battlefield. There were so many dead, the yin energy was too strong, so of course it's often haunted. That's why the theater was never sold, because of the haunting!"
"I heard from my nephew's classmate's mother that in that theater, there are people singing and playing music at night, really scary!"
"All this supernatural nonsense, it's the 21st century and you still believe this? In my opinion, there might be a problem with the geomagnetic field there, causing people to hallucinate. It can all be explained scientifically!"
Such statements, for the most part, disappeared into the long river of internet history with the crude web pages, visible only through snapshots.
As for more in-depth materials, Lu Ban felt that it would be difficult to find them online, and that he needed to go to the library.
Tomorrow during the day, he would go to the library to look up archives of newspapers from that year; by evening, he would check out the Jiangcheng Grand Theater.
Having made his decision, he actually felt calmer, without the excitement of a primary school student who was going on a spring outing the next day.
After washing up, Lu Ban took another look under the bed; it was empty.
Even though that incident made him hesitant, he had nowhere else to sleep right now.
When you're poor, you can even sleep in a haunted mourning hall.
After turning off the light and browsing videos in bed for a while, Lu Ban gradually succumbed to drowsiness.
In his groggy state, Lu Ban suddenly felt something pressing down on him.
He tried to open his eyes and get up, but his eyelids were as heavy as stone, his body was stiff as if he were dead, and he felt a crushing pressure on his chest, hardly able to breathe, about to suffocate.
This feeling was just like the one he had the night before when he was about to wake from a dream within a dream.
While struggling subconsciously, Lu Ban's right hand suddenly touched an ice-cold, soft, and delicate hand.
It was as if the hand was trying to soothe Lu Ban, gently grasping his fingers and rubbing the palm of his hand.
With the touch of this hand, the pressure on Lu Ban's body suddenly lessened a lot. Although he still couldn't lift his eyelids and his limbs were immobile, Lu Ban felt much more relaxed, and his consciousness wasn't as foggy.
His left fingertip moved slightly, and a silver revolver with a long barrel and large caliber appeared there.
Bang—
Lu Ban's consciousness fired the pistol, and a voice began to play in his head, resonating in the room along with the movement of his lips.
"Good fortune comes, I wish you good fortune comes, good fortune brings both joy and love, good fortune comes to us all..."
It was "Good Fortune Comes."
Lu Ban had loaded five Speech Bullets, including a snippet of "Good Fortune Comes," in its original singer's version.
Don't ask; asking means it wards off evil.
Whether it was the cheerful melody of the song or the use of Lu Ban's abilities, the oppressive feeling on his body disappeared all at once.
Lu Ban opened his eyes.
In the dimly lit room, the cabinet cast a deep shadow under the faint light, and an unidentified shadow behind the curtains stirred and swayed. Lu Ban first felt his shoulders subconsciously to make sure there was nothing else on them before climbing out of bed by the light of his cell phone, to the sound of "Good Fortune Comes."
He turned on the light and glanced under the bed.
It was completely empty.
Getting up, Lu Ban carefully opened the cabinet.
Creak—
The sound of the cabinet doors opening and closing rang out, and Lu Ban saw an eye staring back at him among his neatly folded clothes!
"!!!"
Lu Ban's heart skipped a beat, and he took a half step back.
But soon, he saw clearly that the eye was just a print on a sweater.
"There's probably something in this room."
By now, even Lu Ban could understand that there was likely something eerie in his room.
And not just one thing.
At least the thing that immobilized him and the ice-cold, soft hand were two different entities.
Lu Ban thought for a moment.
He turned on the computer and began playing a playlist from the Spring Festival Gala, filling the room with cheery music.
Lying in bed, to the melodious tune of "Unforgettable Tonight," Lu Ban peacefully drifted off to sleep.
*
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