Lu Ban immediately gripped the crowbar in his hand.
He observed carefully and noticed that the mannequin's face seemed to have been damaged by something, revealing the contours of human features.
"Were these mannequins the cause of the fire?"
Lu Ban took two steps back and shone his flashlight around the electrical switch.
Not well-versed in electronics, he could only see that the fire was most intense near the switch and diminished further away from it.
"But how could a fire backstage lead to Du Danping's death?"
From the condition of the main hall of the theater, the fire had almost spread across the entire hall, even breaking a large hole in the dome. Could a fire that started backstage have evolved into this?
"There shouldn't have been many people in the theater at the time. If there were no other accidents, they should have been able to evacuate quickly. What was it that affected them?"
The more Lu Ban thought, the more he felt that something was amiss.
With ten or twenty people rehearsing here, how could no one have noticed the fire starting backstage, allowing it to expand to the point where it nearly destroyed the entire theater? Had these people all lost their wits, falling into a stupor?
At the same time, Lu Ban felt the heat around him was becoming excessively intense.
Sweat had already begun to soak his back and the heat continued rising.
Lu Ban turned around and to his shock, saw the entire theater engulfed in raging flames!
In that scorching hell, figures ablaze with fire were struggling, howling in agony, crawling towards Lu Ban, trying to drag him in as well.
Lu Ban looked down at his feet, where the mannequin with human facial contours was burning, extending its hand towards his pant leg.
He immediately swung the crowbar in his hand, striking the mannequin's head.
Crack—
The crowbar, powerful and unyielding, shattered the rotten mannequin's head with a single blow. As Lu Ban was about to run towards the stage exit, he found the entire theater hall had darkened again.
The fire just moments ago seemed to have been a mere illusion, the entire theater remained desolate, lonely, and dim.
Lu Ban looked at the thing shattered by the crowbar, which was not a mannequin at all, but just a common wooden rack placed there at random.
On his way out, the merged mannequins he had seen earlier had all disappeared, as if it were all a nightmare.
Lu Ban arrived beside the piano and turned back to shine his flashlight backstage, finding it empty.
Wiping the cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, Lu Ban realized the previous heat might indeed have been an illusion.
The flashlight's beam pointed towards the chaotic second floor, where there were no mannequins howling in pain, no flames searing the air, only silence.
However, when Lu Ban's flashlight confirmed the presence of those mannequins with eerie eyes in the control room opposite the stage, he was surprised to find that the mannequins which had been staring in his direction from the window had all vanished!!!
Where exactly had these mannequins gone, Lu Ban had many guesses.
"Are these the people who died in the fire, their grudges lingering here, trying to find the person who killed them?"
"If that's the case, they wouldn't harm me, they should even be helping me," he thought.
Feeling somewhat reassured by this thought, Lu Ban returned to his backpack in the front row.
After all, he was no famous detective able to solve cases just by sitting in a rocking chair. The police had investigated many times already; he surely couldn't find too many new leads about the case. Instead of putting in effort without reward, it was better to wait for the other party to appear.
Since the mission mentioned finding the musician, it meant there definitely would be a performance here at night, which was also mentioned by someone on the local forum.
Lu Ban sat back down, took a sip of water, and continued to watch videos on his phone.
Perhaps it was because his view of those eerie mannequins changed, for a period afterward, he did not encounter any strange phenomena.
To be exact, there were no phenomena that caught his attention.
Odd sounds that resembled footsteps from outside the hall, the clear tinkling of marbles bouncing off the floor, and the occasional appearance and disappearance of mannequins in front of the control room window—if he ignored these, it was indeed quite peaceful.
After midnight, Lu Ban checked the remaining power of his portable charger and looked up at the piano.
At that moment, the moon was right above the hole in the dome, its cool moonlight streaming straight down onto the piano, forming a natural spotlight.
A misty moonlight rose in the grand theater hall, making it considerably brighter.
Under this light, the originally sinister, dim, and strange grand hall of the theater seemed not so terrifying anymore.
A cloud slowly drifted by, covering up this pleasant scene.
Thud—
Suddenly, a sound of piano strings came from the piano.
Lu Ban immediately put away his phone, picked up his crowbar, and took a flashlight, heading towards the stage.
Thud—
Another piano sound, mechanical and sluggish, as if a physically disabled man with hemiplegia was struggling to press the keys.
Thud—
Lu Ban saw the black and white keys of the piano suddenly press down on their own, as if an invisible person was tuning it.
Thud—
By the fourth note, Lu Ban heard it sounding much more melodious, like a musician who hasn't touched an instrument for years, finally finding their touch.
Thud—
By the fifth note, there seemed to be a faint melody between the two piano sounds.
As the drifting clouds cleared and the moonlight once again illuminated the piano, the melody surged.
Contrary to the eerie atmosphere, the clear and melodious piano sounds filled the entire grand theater hall like flowing water, delighting the senses.
The piano's black and white keys kept undulating like the waves at dusk, creating melodies that Lu Ban had never heard before.
For a moment, he was captivated by the sound of the piano, as if the melody was all that remained in his mind.
The music continued to flow and leap as the grand theater hall quietly underwent changes.
Those decaying, silent, filthy things suddenly vibrated with color—red, green, blue, colors both within and beyond human imagination echoed throughout the grand hall of the theater.
Unnoticed, many mannequins with strange eyes simply stood in front of the control room window, in the ruined boxes, by the entrance, never stepping a foot into the grand hall, just watching the stage as if they were an audience anticipating a performance or devoted worshipers at a religious observance.
In the melody woven with contradictory emotions such as sacredness, solemnity, reverence, lightness, and liveliness, Lu Ban immersed himself, seemingly forgetting what he was there to do.
He could see, under the moonlight, on the stage, next to the piano, a performer was seated.
The performer wore a tailcoat, their fingers nimbly moving across the black and white keys like a master musician with supreme skill.
Only, that person, or the figure resembling a performer, was covered in charred marks, as if they had gone through the baptism of fire and were burnt to a ruin, their veins, muscles, and bones all having turned completely inhuman.
That sight snapped Lu Ban back to reality.
He clearly knew that this was the greatest anomaly of the Jiangcheng Grand Theater!