Art Gallery: A Preliminary Exploration

Fan Ning finally understood.

Why people in this world had racked their brains without making any headway, thinking only that these were beautiful musical materials.

That included Professor Anton, as well as the original owner of this body before Fan Ning crossed over.

It was like popular songs. Only after hearing a piece many times could someone recognize it instantly from just a few chords of the intro, even without hearing the melody.

Their previous research methods had indeed treated them merely as musical materials, partially extracting, dismantling, and recombining them to aid their own compositions.

But as the professor's diary had said, another part—the "Mystic Chord"—was mixed into these musical scales, making their tonal colors somewhat uncanny.

He still remembered his teacher's previous warning:

"Those Mystic Chords must never be played casually. Even if you want to roughly test how they sound, you have to mix them extensively with other materials or avoid using the sustain pedal, to prevent the sounds from resonating together."

For example, Fan Ning read out one sequence: C, F-sharp, B, E one octave higher, A one octave higher, D two octaves higher...

The notes in this chord were stacked mostly in perfect fourths, augmented fourths, and similar intervals, completely unlike the tertian structure of conventional chords.

Fan Ning could roughly imagine how it would sound: cool and distant in color, hollow, with a hint of eeriness.

Even Professor Anton, who had never heard these classical musical works, could discover their jarring qualities. He simply could not understand why they were like that, and had therefore studied them painstakingly.

As for Fan Ning, this could interfere with him even less.

He closed his eyes, rested the back of his head against the wall, and fell into thought.

"Beethoven's 'Tempest Sonata'? Chopin's 'Black Key Étude'? Tchaikovsky's 'Symphony No. 4'?..."

Fan Ning repeatedly mulled over the names of these eleven works and his auditory memories, but he still could not find any special meaning.

"Clip-clop, clip-clop..." The sound of the carriage continued.

When he opened his eyes again, Fan Ning stared at the densely packed notes and finally grasped a clue!

These eleven Remnants of the Musical Scale had all been recorded in the simplest keys—in C major or A minor, where every key on the piano was white.

But the eleven works hidden behind them had certainly been in different keys!

It was as if, when they had been recorded as musical scales, they had all been uniformly transposed into the simplest keys!

Like raising or lowering the key of an original song when singing it, turning everything into the same key.

Why?

To deliberately erase the differences between their keys?

Key...

Fan Ning's gaze flickered. He pulled a small notebook from his inner pocket and unscrewed his fountain pen.

He wrote them out again.

First: Beethoven's "Piano Sonata No. 17, 'Tempest,'" in D minor.

Second: Beethoven's "Piano Sonata No. 21, 'Dawn,'" in C major.

Third: Bach's "Goldberg Variations," in G major.

Fourth: Schubert's "Piano Sonata No. 21," in B-flat major.

Fifth: Mozart's "Clarinet Concerto," in A major.

Sixth: Liszt's "Sonata in B Minor," in B minor.

Seventh: Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 9," in E-flat major.

Eighth: Chopin's "Black Key Étude," in G-flat major.

Ninth: Mendelssohn's "Violin Concerto," in E minor.

Tenth: Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 4," in F minor.

Eleventh: Chopin's "Polonaise in A-flat Major," in A-flat major.

"I understand."

There were only twelve note names in the world: the piano's seven white keys and five black keys.

The keys corresponding to the eleven works occupied eleven of them.

The only one missing was—

C-sharp! The Do raised by a semitone!

It was missing.

C-sharp? So what?

"East Mechelen District, Lunwan Avenue. We've arrived, sir." The coachman's voice interrupted Fan Ning's thoughts.

"Rip, rip, rip..." Fan Ning tore the paper into shreds, crumpled them into a ball, and got out of the carriage.

No. 115 Lunwan Avenue was a small, simply built row house that currently served as his residence. It was not far from the art gallery and had once been used to house four or five gallery employees.

The air was damp and cold. The wrought-iron patterns on the stair railings were greasy and gray-black. Fan Ning climbed the steps one by one, passed the yellowed posters pasted over them, and opened the front door.

It had a living room, a simple kitchen, and a basement storage room. Upstairs were two small rooms that could serve as bedrooms, along with a private washroom. Though the space was not large, it was more than enough for one person.

More importantly, in an era when many members of the middle class needed to rent their homes, this place belonged entirely to Fan Ning. Its current market value was estimated at around five hundred to six hundred pounds.

Fan Ning opened the money box on the second floor, added several shillings to the money in his trouser pocket, and then changed into an old tea-colored windbreaker that allowed him to move more freely.

Finally, after thinking it over, he tucked a butter candle and a small box of phosphorus matches into his pocket.

Once he had finished preparing, he set off on foot for the Turner Art Gallery.

He walked past the row houses in the area, crossed an alley lined with ramshackle buildings, and arrived at Leiteqi Street, which ran parallel to Lunwan Avenue.

This was the busiest part of the East Mechelen District. Carriages and automobiles streamed past without pause, while crowds wove through one another.

After walking a little farther east, he passed a bright, clean café and turned inward at a spot marked by an animal sculpture.

Down a narrow sloping alley, more than three hundred meters away, he saw the courtyard gate and the large three-story building within.

The deeper the alley went, the dimmer the light became. The courtyard's iron railings were already covered in rust, and the iron gate was unlocked, hanging half-shut without strength.

Fan Ning pulled it open, producing an irritating creak, and stepped inside.

In this city permeated with industrial fumes, acid rain, and dust, everything was being eroded at twice the usual speed.

Uneven stone bricks lay beneath his feet. Clumps of unknown, withered yellow weeds grew through the gaps, then drooped bleakly across the ground. Several piles of miscellaneous old objects were heaped in the corner of the courtyard.

The art gallery before him no longer had the colors in his memories. Under the night sky, its walls were a deep gray-black, while all the oval windows folded into the long, narrow arches on the first floor had been locked tight.

He climbed the steps, moved aside the dusty, greasy notice stand announcing the closure, leaned his chest toward the upper section, and used the key hanging around his neck to open the heavy brass lock.

A rotten, moldy smell mixed with dust and poured toward him.

The empty entrance hall contained only a reception desk whose color could no longer be made out.

Following his memories, Fan Ning felt around behind the desk and found an empty lantern. He poured out the dust, replaced it with the butter candle in his pocket, and lit it with a phosphorus match.

He then closed and locked the main door.

The air here was filled with the smell of rot, mold, and dust, yet breathing was not difficult at all. The ventilation openings throughout the building should still have been functioning normally.

His hearing, however, had fallen into absolute silence, while his vision was swallowed by extreme darkness.

Only the faint light of the lantern in his hand gave him a few meters of visibility.

Fan Ning felt this space becoming increasingly unfamiliar and unreal.

A chill suddenly ran through him, and instinctively he wanted to turn around and open the door, letting what little light there was outside spill in.

But after hesitating for a moment, he abandoned the idea out of caution.

There was no longer any water supply or lighting here. In such a large area, with an upper floor as well, what use would a little light from the entrance be?

Besides, leaving the door open would mainly be unsafe.

After calming himself, Fan Ning began searching through the original owner's memories from two or three years ago in the darkness.

After a while, he suddenly furrowed his brow.

Amid the various complex and unpleasant smells, there seemed to be a faint trace of rotting stench.

A dead rat? The drain beneath a long-neglected washroom? Or...

Better not scare myself.

Fan Ning steadied his mind, raised the lantern, and started walking, planning to inspect the first-floor traveling exhibition hall first.