Lu Ban immediately tightened his grip on the crowbar.
He examined it carefully and found that the mannequin's face seemed to have been damaged by something, revealing the outlines of human features.
"Were these mannequins what started the fire back then?"
Lu Ban took two steps back and shone his flashlight around the circuit breaker.
He did not understand much about electrical circuits. He could only see that the flames were concentrated around the circuit breaker and became weaker farther out.
"But if the backstage area caught fire, why did that result in Du Danping's death?"
Judging from the state of the theater hall, the fire had spread through almost the entire hall, even blasting a huge hole in the dome. Could a fire that started backstage really have developed into this?
"There probably weren't many people in the theater at the time. If nothing else had gone wrong, they should have been able to evacuate quickly. What affected them?"
The more Lu Ban thought about it, the more something seemed wrong.
A dozen or twenty people had been rehearsing here, yet no one noticed the fire backstage, allowing it to spread until it nearly destroyed the entire theater. Could they all have lost their minds and fallen asleep?
At the same time, Lu Ban felt that the surroundings had become absurdly hot.
Sweat had already seeped across his back, and the heat was still rising continuously.
When Lu Ban turned around, he saw the entire theater burning fiercely!
In that hell of scorching heat, humanoid figures covered in flames struggled and wailed in agony as they wriggled and crawled toward Lu Ban, trying to drag him into it as well.
Lu Ban looked down and saw the mannequin with the outline of a human face burning beside his feet. It reached a hand toward his pant leg.
He immediately swung the crowbar in his hand and brought it down on the mannequin's head.
Crack—
The crowbar smashed through it with unstoppable force. The mannequin's head, already rotten, shattered with a single blow. Lu Ban was just about to run off the stage when he found that the entire theater hall had dimmed again.
The raging fire from just now seemed to have been a momentary hallucination. The theater remained cold, desolate, and dim.
Lu Ban looked at the thing he had smashed with the crowbar. It was not a mannequin, but merely an ordinary wooden frame that had been left there.
As he made his way out, all the fused mannequins he had seen earlier vanished, as if they had only been part of a nightmare.
Lu Ban reached the piano and turned around, shining his flashlight backstage. There was nothing there.
Only after wiping the cold sweat from his brow with the back of his hand did Lu Ban realize that the heat he had felt earlier might truly have been an illusion.
The flashlight illuminated the chaotic second floor. There were no mannequins wailing in Affliction, nor any blazing flames rising into the air—only silence.
However, when Lu Ban's flashlight confirmed the mannequins with eerie eyes in the control room directly opposite the stage, he was astonished to discover that all the mannequins that had originally been staring over from the windows had disappeared!!!
Lu Ban had many guesses about where those mannequins had gone.
"Are these the people who died in the fire back then? Did their resentment remain here, trying to find the people who killed them?"
"If that's really the case, then not only should they not hurt me, they should even help me."
Thinking this, he seemed to feel considerably more at ease.
Lu Ban returned to his backpack beside the first row.
After all, he was not some famous detective who could solve cases while sitting in a rocking chair. The police had already investigated this place so many times, so he certainly could not find many new clues about the case. Rather than exhausting himself for nothing, he might as well wait for the other party to appear.
Since the mission said he had to find the performer, that meant there would definitely be a performance here at night. Someone on the local forum had mentioned this as well.
Lu Ban sat back down, took a drink of water, and continued watching videos on his phone.
Perhaps because his view of those strange mannequins had changed, he did not encounter any bizarre phenomena for quite some time afterward.
More precisely, he did not encounter anything worth his attention.
Strange sounds that resembled footsteps occasionally came from outside the hall, along with the crisp sound of marbles bouncing off the floor. Every so often, a mannequin appeared and disappeared before the control room window. If one ignored all that, things were indeed rather peaceful.
After midnight passed, Lu Ban checked the remaining charge on his power bank, then looked up at the piano.
The moon happened to be directly above the hole in the dome. Clear moonlight poured down, striking the piano in a straight beam and forming a natural spotlight.
A hazy layer of moonlight spread across the theater hall, making it considerably brighter.
Under this glow, the theater hall, which had originally been gloomy, dark, and eerie, did not seem quite so frightening anymore.
A cloud slowly drifted past, blocking out this beauty.
Dong—
Suddenly, a single note rang out from the piano.
Lu Ban immediately put away his phone, grabbed the crowbar and flashlight, and walked toward the stage.
Dong—
Another piano note rang out. It sounded stiff, wooden, and halting, as if a paralyzed person with difficulty was raising a hand to press a key.
Dong—
Lu Ban saw the piano's black and white keys abruptly depress on their own, as if an invisible person were tuning the instrument.
Dong—
When the fourth note sounded, Lu Ban heard that it was much more pleasant, as if a musician who had not touched an instrument for many years had finally regained their feel.
Dong—
By the fifth note, an indistinct melody seemed to have formed between the notes.
As the drifting clouds scattered and moonlight once again spilled over the piano, the melody surged.
Completely at odds with the eerie atmosphere, clear and melodious piano music filled the entire theater hall like flowing water, refreshing the mind and soothing the spirit.
The piano's black and white keys rose and fell without pause, like waves rippling beneath the evening sky, sending forth a melody Lu Ban had never heard before.
For a moment, he was captivated by the music. It was as if this melody were all that remained in his mind.
The music continued to flow and leap, and the theater hall quietly began to change.
The decayed, dead, and filthy things suddenly gained color. Red, green, blue—colors that humans could imagine and colors they could not—echoed throughout the theater hall.
Before he knew it, many mannequins with eerie eyes had appeared before the control room windows, stood inside the ruined boxes, and gathered at the entrance. Not one stepped into the theater hall. They simply watched the stage, like spectators awaiting a performance, or devout believers worshiping at a shrine.
Within the melody, where contradictory emotions—sacred, solemn, dignified, light, graceful, and lively—intertwined, Lu Ban became immersed in it, seemingly forgetting what he had come here to do.
He could see a performer sitting beside the piano beneath the moonlight, upon the stage.
The performer wore a tailcoat, fingers dancing across the black and white keys as fluidly as those of a master with the highest level of skill.
However, that person—or humanoid performer—was covered in charred marks, like a corpse that had endured the baptism of raging flames and been burned to nothing in the end. Its blood vessels, muscles, and bones had all become completely inhuman.
When Lu Ban saw this scene, he suddenly came to his senses.
He knew clearly that this was the greatest anomaly in Jiangcheng Grand Theater!
Before you continue