He took out the self-heating rice meal, opened the packaging, and poured the rice, side dishes, and sauce packets all into the plastic bowl, added water, tore open the heating pack, placed it at the bottom of the outer packaging, added water, and put the plastic bowl on top, covering it with the lid.
Then it was just waiting to eat.
Some classmates might ask, in such a mysterious and unpredictable place, could Lu Ban eat?
The answer is yes, of course he could.
Man is iron, food is steel, and nothing could stop Lu Ban from eating his meal.
While waiting for the rice to mature on its own, Lu Ban shone his flashlight around the hall again randomly.
Due to the holes in the dome, the erosion in the theater hall was actually much more severe than in the corridors and dressing rooms, especially right under those holes.
Except for the pristine stage, the rest of the ground was covered with thick moss, very slippery and easy to fall on, and this dampness also spread from the broken parts of the dome; some plants grew on the ceiling, but only near the holes.
After nightfall, the temperature dropped, but Lu Ban didn't feel cold at all.
"Not bad at all," he said.
Lu Ban picked up his chopsticks and put a piece of beef brisket smothered in tomato sauce into his mouth, savoring it carefully.
The temperature of the self-heating rice wasn't very high, just enough to steam the processed rice, and the beef brisket was naturally pre-seasoned, its thick sauce masking the industrial taste. For a fast-food product, it was quite good.
Eating his meal and drinking cola, Lu Ban felt as though he hadn't come for a mystery adventure, but rather for an outdoor food vlog.
"Perhaps I could really try this next time?"
Lu Ban thought of some wild food YouTubers whose videos showed them eating better in the wilderness than in restaurants. If he did a food vlog in such a horror-stricken and bizarre place, and ate very well, wouldn't he also become popular?
While eating, he also started watching videos cached on his phone; there was almost no signal in this wasteland, but Lu Ban had come prepared.
The video he watched was of a paranormal exploration in a hotel rumored to be haunted. He didn't know if it boasted eighty stars, but from the outside, the building was in extreme disrepair. Coupled with the dark green netherworld filter, and the videographer's mystical chants, it had its fair share of terror.
As he watched the video, Lu Ban continued to eat the rice from his bowl.
When the video's host turned his flashlight and revealed a human face, Lu Ban gasped.
"That's terrifying!"
He couldn't help but take a big bite of his rice.
When the video ended, it was unclear what exactly was wrong with the hotel.
He watched, but it was as if he hadn't completely watched it.
Lu Ban finished his meal too, downed the cola in one gulp, collected the trash in a bag and placed it aside, and checked his phone—it was only eight o'clock.
Picking up his flashlight and crowbar, Lu Ban prepared to go check out the control room on the other side.
Out of habit, he shone his flashlight towards the control room on the other side, and saw those mannequins, their eyes drawn on, still standing by the window, monitoring his every move in the Jiangcheng Grand Theater hall.
He shone his light towards the control room opposite the stage, which was empty.
Lu Ban also casually illuminated the window of the control room he had visited earlier.
There, behind the broken glass of the previously pitch-black control room, stood the mannequins with black, eerie eyes drawn on them.
Click—
Lu Ban felt his heartbeat suddenly become very noisy, his blood rushed to his eardrums, causing his ears to ache, and then came a sensation of everything distancing from him. His gaze fixed on the faces of those mannequins, locked eyes with those strange eyes for a moment.
"Has it begun..."
Lu Ban suppressed the various imaginations and speculations that sprung up in his heart.
Having reached this point, he felt that there wasn't much to be afraid of anymore.
There really were ghosts in the Jiangcheng Grand Theater.
If he hadn't known what was causing the trouble, Lu Ban might have worried about being crushed by a steamroller falling from the sky, but now, understanding it was ghosts stirring up problems, he had a clear enemy.
Moreover, after what he had just seen and heard, Lu Ban quickly drew some conclusions about the ghosts.
"The ghosts in the theater can interfere with reality, whether it's making the piano produce sound or moving mannequins, they must rely on physical means."
"The ghosts here don't seem to be malevolent spirits that would directly appear and slaughter upon seeing a living person, either because their strength isn't strong enough to affect me, or because they have other intentions. Either way, if these ghosts were extremely dangerous then I should have already been dead when I walked into the control room."
"The mission's objective is to find the player, and there is only this one piano here, so I will definitely find the player on this stage in the end; there's no need to explore elsewhere."
Armed with this information, Lu Ban sat down again.
Although the mission had an exploration rating, Lu Ban felt that, as a common person with no real strength, exploring the Jiangcheng Grand Theater at night was not a wise choice.
Why not sit here, watch videos, and pass the time pleasantly?
He took out his phone again and continued watching another video he had previously downloaded.
The video talked about a woman who thought her house was haunted, so she called two "professional exorcists." The two men installed monitors inside the house and slept in the guest room, only to end up capturing footage of the female homeowner's head twisting around and her limbs crawling on the wall.
As Lu Ban watched the woman in pajamas crawl up the wall like a spider, her head grotesquely turning around, he distinctly heard the sound of something rolling on the ground from the entrance of the hall behind him.
He paused the video and turned around.
The area far from the dome's hollow was very dark, even darker near the doors. Lu Ban could only see clearly with the light from his flashlight.
The door was empty, with only the thick darkness outside that even the flashlight beam couldn't penetrate.
There was nothing.
No.
A thought struck Lu Ban, and he pointed the flashlight upward, lighting up the control room directly opposite the stage.
The mannequin in a tattered dress was now standing there, unknown when it had moved, its face pressed against the still-intact glass, its twisted, eerie eyes staring straight at Lu Ban.
Lu Ban's breathing stopped for a moment.
The deeper into the night it went, the more restless these things became.
Lu Ban picked up the crowbar, shining the flashlight to confirm the other two control rooms' mannequins.
Then he discovered that the mannequin initially in front of the first control room's window had disappeared!
"Do these mannequins move about on their own at night?" Lu Ban speculated.
"Is the player among these mannequins? Are they the victims of the fire, their resentment causing them to remain at the scene of the accident?"
"What exactly happened back then?"
As he pondered these questions, his flashlight swept through the theater's main hall.
The circular beam of light crossed the second floor, the private boxes, the back rows, the front rows, the entrance to the safety corridor, and the backstage area.
Just then, Lu Ban suddenly noticed at the entrance to the safety corridor, there seemed to be a person dressed in red standing there!