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The recording time for a phonograph record was limited to less than five minutes.
In just a moment's conversation, the audition of "Butterfly" had already ended.
Zhou Xuan was already adept at this. He took out the "Butterfly" record and prepared to place the "Storm" record into the phonograph.
However, Wu Yun gestured that there was no need to continue playing it and said, "I just heard it. The one my beloved liked to listen to when she was alive is this opera."
"So it's settled?"
Xu Li didn't want any complications either, even though she thought "Butterfly" was the hardest to listen to among the four operas taught at the school. It was neither lively nor had any atmosphere, making it not very suitable for a funeral performance.
"It's settled."
Wu Yun asked Xu Li for a quote.
"Butterfly requires a total of six performances, each costing a thousand. If Chief Wu thinks six is too many, we can reduce the number."
"How about reducing it to three?"
"Three is fine too," Xu Li said, "One performance a day, complete in three days, and on the fourth day, we send it up the mountain. It's according to customs."
"Then three it is," Wu Yun agreed.
Xu Li looked much more relaxed. After Wu Yun paid a three-hundred Jing Country currency deposit, she immediately wanted to take Wu Yun to the old theater.
The old theater was where Zhou Family's Theater Troupe rehearsed, and the actors of all sizes were there on regular days.
Arranging for the guests to meet the actors and finalize the performance details was also part of the Netherworld Opera process.
Before leaving Luoying Hall, Xu Li instructed Zhou Xuan, "Xuanzi, I'm taking Mr. Wu to meet the stars. Can you help draft a document, and also, write a Mingjing for Miss Zheng?"
The document was the contract, and a Mingjing was akin to an ID tag. On a small banner, the guest's name, birth date, and status were written.
The Mingjing would be handed to the masters responsible for the Zhou Family's Troupe ceremony, useful for making funeral invitations, customizing Papermen and horses, and getting the academy masters to write eulogies.
On the day of the funeral, the Mingjing would be displayed in front of the coffin and, at the burial, would be removed and smoothly placed over the coffin before the soil was sprinkled for burial.
The Mingjing played a significant role in the funeral, so it needed someone with good handwriting to write it.
Zhou Xuan had taken a calligraphy class in his past life and had been practicing brush writing. His work had been selected for state exhibitions, and the white invitations for the old man's funeral a few days ago were drafted by him, which earned the approval of the Zhou Family's Troupe seniors.
After Xu Li and Wu Yun left, Zhou Xuan first supplemented the document.
He opened the Zhou Family's Netherworld Opera Documents template book and began transcribing. Once the main content was copied, he filled in details like the guest's name and the contract signing time, and it was done.
Overall, it was quite boring.
Zhou Xuan liked to listen to music when doing boring tasks, so he rummaged through the cabinet for a while and found a record with the cover "Voice of Famous Opera Singers," placing it into the phonograph.
"Willows are charming, blossoms are beautiful~ the voice of the oriole is sweet~ spring is again announcing its arrival to the human world~"
The singing was pure and melodious, yet without any pretense or coquettishness.
This invigorated Zhou Xuan as he transcribed the document.
In no time, he had written seven or eight lines,
but as he was enjoying the work, an annoying sound appeared again.
Sha~ sha~ sha,
sha~ sha~ sha,
it was the white noise of a pen tip scribbling on paper.
But this time, the white noise was much fiercer than the previous days, the volume louder, and the intervals between noises much shorter.
The noise lasted for a while, causing Zhou Xuan a splitting headache. He clutched his head, feeling very much in pain.
*Calm the mind, calm the mind.*
Zhou Xuan murmured to himself.
He had recently discovered some patterns in the white noise, such as its intensity being closely related to his emotions. If he controlled his emotions, the noise would quickly fade.
But this time,
it was useless,
he was already calm, felt that with a little more effort, he could become a monk, yet the white noise did not fade, but instead grew more intense.
*How intense was the noise?*
*Zhou Xuan felt as if an invisible person was pressing his head against the table and then writing fiercely on his scalp with a pen.*
Not only was there the "sha~ sha~ sha" sound of writing, but his scalp also felt the eerie sensation of the pen tip scraping across it vigorously.
Sha~ sha~ sha, Zhou Xuan felt his scalp was almost being scraped through, but at the same time, he could clearly sense that—
—that invisible pen was not scribbling aimlessly.
The strokes formed words!
Zhou Xuan endured the inhuman pain, focusing all his attention on deciphering the strokes. As each character was completed, he uttered it.
"He... is... here?!"
Eventually, after reading these three words awkwardly, he quickly linked them to read again.
"He is here? Who is this 'he'?"
Suddenly, Zhou Xuan somewhat understood that the invisible pen was warning him that someone was coming.
But who could be in Luoying Hall?
The only things making noise in the room were himself and the phonograph.
The only quiet one, could it be Zheng Meizhu?
*Could it be?*
Zhou Xuan immediately turned around and glanced sharply at Zheng Meizhu's corpse lying quietly in the corner; it was very still.
"He is here"—who exactly did that 'he' refer to?
The mystery remained unsolved, yet the white noise began to dissipate, the sound vanished without any warning.
The process of its disappearance was highly unnatural.
In the past, the noise would fade from loud to quiet and then disappear; the whole process was smooth and seamless.
This time, the disappearance was as if someone suddenly yanked the plug from a TV broadcasting a show.
Zhou Xuan felt an ominous premonition rising within him, and he immediately got up and walked toward the Luoying Hall's exit.
*A virtuous man does not stand beside a threatening wall.*, whether the white noise warned "he is here," or the noise was forcibly ended, it all suggested that an eerie event was very likely to occur.
Regarding eerie events, Zhou Xuan had his understanding. He never forgot how he had come to Ping Shui Prefecture in Jing Country.
Leaving Luoying Hall, the sooner, the better.
As he was leaving, the phonograph clicked and the singing suddenly stopped.
*Could it be a needle jam?*
The phonograph made sound through the friction of the needle and record, but the needle's tip is a fragile component, always prone to various mishaps during friction.
For example, the needle tip might get bent, or it might slip off the record's groove and get stuck, and so on.
This type of problem usually needed manual repair, but this time, without anyone fixing it, in just a second or two, the phonograph automatically resumed.*
The record continued to rotate, but this time, what came out was not the "voice of famous opera singers," but instead...
"Today I won't talk about lengthy stories, nor short tales. I'll just share a peculiar story I encountered recently."
At the end of the opening words, "bang," a muffled sound of a gavel hitting the table rang out from the record.
"A story without a title doesn't go far, although it's just a peculiar encounter of mine, according to custom, it needs a title. My literary skills are poor, my knowledge limited, so I dare to suggest the title, calling it 'The Living Doll'!"
In his past life, when traveling to different places for work and feeling bored, Zhou Xuan enjoyed listening to music, reading novels, and listening to old storytelling tunes.
From terms like "lengthy story, short tales," he realized that what the phonograph was playing wasn't music anymore, but storytelling.
In storytelling, there was special jargon, "lengthy story" referred to long series, "short tales" to short stories.
*Indeed, something eerie appeared.*
When Zhou Xuan was young, he had listened to pirated tapes. Back then, mixtapes of popular hits were in vogue, combining over a dozen trending songs into one tape, which sold very well.
*But no matter how they were mixed, they never combined storytelling and music, as they were different genres.*
It seemed that the "he" mentioned in the noise, was referring to the storyteller in the phonograph.
"The Living Doll was in his mother's womb, and he was alive, but his mother was already dead.
If the mother was dead, could the unborn baby survive?
According to common sense, naturally, there is no way for the baby to survive, but the baby's father turned out to be quite a formidable figure, who knew a method of resurrection called—the resentful fetus technique."
*Haha, it's not telling a proper story, but an eerie little tale.*
By this time, Zhou Xuan had already exited the Luoying Hall, walked into the courtyard of the Zhou Family's Troupe, the warm and gentle sunlight gave him an enormous sense of security.
The bizarre story told by the storyteller, which might have been unsettling, didn't faze Zhou Xuan one bit. In fact, he felt like laughing.
"What is the resentful fetus technique? There's a saying, after a person dies, within six hours, they still retain awareness, still experience pain and pleasure...
That baby's father was well aware of this rule, so after he strangled the baby's mother, not only did he not stop, but he escalated the situation, plucking out the mother's fingernails and cutting off an inch of her tongue.
The ten fingers are connected to the heart, and the tongue tip is the pinnacle of human pain,
Once pulled out or cut off, the agony is indescribable.
Although the mother was dead, she could still sense pain, the intense pain generating immense resentment.
This resentment lingered within the mother's body, unable to dissipate, and within twelve hours, it seeped into the baby's body in her womb.
Resentment, nurtured the baby, granted him a Dao Level, enabling him to master the Ghost Baby Technique on his own!"
Upon hearing this, Zhou Xuan even glanced back at the hands of Zheng Meizhu's corpse in Luoying Hall.
Her sleeves were long, eight fingers were hidden within the sleeves, but just from the two that were exposed, it was clear they had no nails.
*Indeed, something eerie was happening. Fortunately, my quick thinking and quick escape saved me; had I been a little curious and stayed in the room a bit longer, something major might have happened.*
Zhou Xuan strode towards the inner courtyard of Zhou Family's Troupe, aiming to find Zhou Lingyi.
From the last seance, it was clear this sister had impressive skills, and they weren't shallow.
Once he found her, he planned to briefly recount what happened in the Luoying Hall, and how to deal with the eeriness inside would no longer be his concern.
*Professional matters should be handled by professionals, amateurs would only cause trouble,*
was a principle Zhou Xuan abided by throughout his years in the corporate world.
He was almost under the willow tree in the courtyard, and there wasn't much distance left to the inner courtyard, but he stopped.
He knew that continuing forward would be futile.
The trunk of the unusually thick willow tree didn't have the thousands of red eyes on it.
Second Master's Wife Song Jie had claimed that the willow was the Ancestor Tree of Zhou Family's Troupe, and the thousands of eyes on it were painted using blood, which had to be repainted promptly once they faded.
Currently, the willow tree had no eyes, which could only mean,
this willow wasn't the real Ancestor Tree.
*"I still didn't escape."*
Zhou Xuan looked up at the sky, his eyes slightly filled with disappointment, but he wasn't too surprised.
He murmured, "It got dark!"
The sun in the sky went out more easily than a candle, a gust of eerie wind blew over, and the warm sunlight disappeared without a trace.
In the next instant, Zhou Xuan found himself back at the writing desk in Luoying Hall, as if he had never left.
"Bang!"
The door suddenly closed with a loud noise.
The hall became pitch black, and the electric lights seemed to get the signal, turning on automatically.
The few beams of light didn't provide any sense of security; they only added to the ghastly and eerie atmosphere in the hall.
"Wah, wah, wah!"
The miserable cries of a baby sounded from every corner of the room.
As the cries rang out, the lights in the room flickered rapidly.
The intense fear wrapped Zhou Xuan like a piece of plastic, enveloping him tightly.
The Living Doll had shown its means.
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