Chapter 5 Seating Arrangement

“Everyone, sit down, they're already urging us,” Feng Bujue said. “We can't come up with a more reliable answer in a short time anyway. Standing might trigger a group annihilation, so we might as well sit down and try.”

As he spoke, he walked towards the square stool with the number “5” on it.

A second later, Ruoyu followed almost without thinking.

Seeing this, the others also successively went to the seats corresponding to the numbers Feng Bujue had mentioned earlier and sat down.

Just as everyone was seated, a “dang—” sounded, and the piano in the corner of the classroom made a sound on its own.

Then, the eighty-eight keys began to move on their own without anyone playing them…

Judging from this development, Brother Jue’s reasoning should have hit the mark, and the plot began to advance.

For the next three or four minutes, the unmanned piano played a solo with a fairly high standard; the melody was not complicated, but the performance was still very infectious… Although it was just instrumental music without any lyrics, the players seemed to be listening to a singer's light chanting and murmuring. The feeling of suppression and gloom was completely conveyed through the music and infected everyone present.

About four minutes later, the nameless piano piece came to an abrupt end.

As the reverberation lingered, the voice spoke again: 【Did you hear it clearly? Who among you will try to play a section according to the score?】

This request couldn't help but remind people of the sentence often heard in class as a child—“Which student can come up and solve this problem?”

Every time we heard this sentence, we would instinctively begin to use misdirection and silently chant in our hearts, “You can't see me… You can't see me… You can't see me…”

However, facts have proven that this kind of self-deceptive skill is useless…

“I'll do it.” Two seconds later, An Yueqin volunteered to stand up. “I've studied piano for a few years.”

At this moment, she stood up like those academic masters in our memory who saved all the class's underachievers from fire and water.

“Oh oh~ This Sister Huajian is really reliable.” When Gui Xiao saw someone taking the initiative, he immediately breathed a sigh of relief and casually praised the other party.

“Tch… I can play the piano too.” Feng Bujue replied with an indifferent tone.

“What? You can actually play the piano?” Gui Xiao turned to look at him, revealing an unbelievable expression.

“Yeah, Brother Jue can play Ode to Joy with one hand while looking at the numbered musical notation.” Xiao Tan mercilessly exposed the essence of Brother Jue's words.

“Hey! Have some shame, will you?” Hearing this, Gui Xiao took the opportunity to complain to Brother Jue, “Your behavior is even more arrogant than those who only use 'two-finger typing' and claim that they 'can type'!”

While the three boys were joking around, An Yueqin had already sat down in front of the piano in a proper manner.

After all, she had studied it, and her posture and eyes changed when she sat on the piano stool.

“Wait a moment… I haven't touched the piano for too long. I have to look at the score and gather my emotions…” After An Yueqin sat down, she reached out and took the page of music on the music stand and placed it on the piano, and greeted her teammates.

The sheet music on that music stand recorded the song just now; as mentioned earlier, this sheet music was incomplete, and only a few measures were visible on it, which happened to meet the requirements of the "play a section" task.

【Why haven't you started yet? Didn't you learn it even like this?】

An Yueqin had only waited for about thirty seconds when the creepy female voice began to urge again. Listening to this, it seemed that… not playing meant not living.

“Alright… it seems something bad will happen if I don't play.” Seeing this, Miss An had no choice but to bite the bullet and go for it.

In the next second, she stretched out her hands, gently clenched her fists, and moved her fingers a few times. Then, she took a deep breath and began to play.

Soon, a melody slowly emerged with the rhythm of her fingertips.

The players naturally remembered… that this was a part of the large piano piece just now, but the feeling when An Yueqin played it was completely different from before.

Music… as long as there is a slight difference in skill, emotion, and talent, the resulting product will be very different; and this "difference" produced by people, or rather, "uniqueness" and "irreproducibility," is precisely the charm of all art.

Before long, An Yueqin had finished playing the few measures on the score.

Also as the reverberation faded away, the voice said again: 【Hmm… so-so, passable, then… class dismissed.】

Bang—

Just as she said the word “class,” the large cabinet behind everyone suddenly made a strange noise and opened on its own.

The sound came quite abruptly, and Gui Xiao was so frightened that he jumped up… But just as he wanted to turn his head to look at the cabinet, another “chi—pa!” suddenly came from the other side, startling him so much that he looked left and right, unable to keep up.

But in fact… there was nothing to that other movement; it was just the sound of the music classroom door reopening.

“It seems the puzzle in this room ends here.” Feng Bujue was still very calm. He didn't even bother with the situation at the door, and the spotlight of his flashlight steadily shone on the cabinet by the wall.

At this time, the cabinet door was open, and the contents inside were revealed.

In the huge cabinet, a skeleton was lying horizontally. Although the corpse was still wearing clothes, it had long since turned into white bones, and judging from the clothing… this seemed to be the “female ghost” that Brother Jue had encountered at the door.

“She… can she still move?” After looking at the skeleton for a few seconds, Xiao Ling asked a very constructive question.

“What if she can move?” Feng Bujue said as he walked towards the cabinet. “It's just a skeleton. If it dares to move around… I'll use the piano to chop it up.”

“Hey… using the piano as a guillotine?” Gui Xiao had realized by now that, many times, as long as Feng Bujue said a word, he could divert his teammates' attention from scary things to some kind of funny point.

“I'm just suggesting an idea.” Feng Bujue said, “To be honest, it's not easy to chop people with a piano. The correct way to play is to use a car door to clamp the head and smash it.” As he said this, he began to search the corpse.

Feng Bujue searched very carefully. If the system hadn't stopped him, he probably would have stripped the skeleton completely naked.

In short… the final search yielded four items. First, a quest item…

【Name: Five-Pointed Star Sunglasses】

【Type: Plot Related】

【Quality: Normal】

【Function: Unknown】

【Can be brought out of this scenario: Yes】

【Remarks: A stylish retro-style pair of sunglasses.】

Compared to the previous toupee, this "item that can be brought out of the scenario" seemed even more inexplicable. If this scenario took place in an American disco in the eighties, finding this thing wouldn't be strange, but who would have thought that such a thing would appear in a small school campus in the Showa era?

Then, let’s talk about the second item, which is also a quest item…

【Name: “It's” Lung】

【Type: Plot Related】

【Quality: Normal】

【Function: Can be embedded in "It's" torso.】

【Can be brought out of this scenario: No】

【Remarks: A miniature organ made of green jade, faintly revealing spiritual energy.】

The description of this item clearly indicated its use—this was one of the props to unlock the altar puppet near the “exit.”

Next, the third item was a piece of paper.

This was a crumpled piece of white paper, about the size of a photo, with the following sentence written on it—“Sanjiyuan is my best student. She reminds me of myself when I was young.”

Combining this with the situation in this classroom, this should have been written by the corpse in front of them when she was alive, and her identity was probably the music teacher of this school.

Finally, the fourth item… was the [Key to the Biology Classroom]. This key also clearly pointed the players to their next destination.

“Hmm… this paper doesn't have an item description.” After taking out the four items one by one and displaying them, Feng Bujue said, “That means… the words on this paper are either some kind of hint, or just used to flesh out the plot.”

“I feel… the possibility of fleshing out the plot is higher.” An Yueqin replied, “When the system generates the scenario and assigns the roles, it must have taken into account that I can play the piano, so when I used this ability to solve the puzzle just now, we found a piece of paper to supplement the setting that the character ‘Sanjiyuan’ has musical talent.”

“Ah, perhaps…” Feng Bujue said, stuffing the note into the inside pocket of his clothes. “But, if it's a hint, it's okay too. Just remember it.” After saying that, he stuffed the other items into his clothes pockets, snapped his fingers, pointed towards the door, and said, “Let's go, next room.”

At this moment, the other five people tacitly reached a consensus and cleared a path.

Obviously, after the previous series of events, the players had a more three-dimensional and intuitive concept of the overall story style and horror level of this scenario, so… they all strongly agreed—it was better to let Brother Jue take the lead.

…………

In short, two minutes later, the group arrived at the door of the biology classroom.

The moment Feng Bujue inserted the key into the lock, the five people behind him all held their breath… They were all prepared to be scared by a sudden horror scene.

Zi, chi—

Brother Jue calmly opened the lock. As the key turned into white light and disappeared, he had already pulled open the door.

As a result, nothing happened…

At least visually and audibly, there was no impactful scare scene.

However…

“I went to… what's that smell?” Gui Xiao was the first to speak again. It must be admitted that, even though his puzzle-solving ability was rather worrying, his reactions were still very quick, and his senses were also very sharp.

“It's some kind of… no… it should be said, ‘multiple’ expired organic solvents.” This time, the one who answered him was Wang Tanzhi.

“Hehe… as expected of Doctor Wang. Does smelling this kind of smell make you calm down instead?” Feng Bujue turned his head back half-jokingly and said to Xiao Tan.

“Hmm… yes.” After thinking about it, Xiao Tan actually found that… it was indeed so.

“Very good, then let's get a move on.” As Feng Bujue spoke, he had already stepped into the door, and the investigation of the biology classroom also began.

The biology classroom was the smallest room they had entered so far. There was a rectangular laboratory table in the center of the classroom. Judging from the height of the table, elementary school students had to stand to operate on it, and perhaps that was why… there were no seats in this room at all.

Some exhibits were placed on both sides of the classroom, mostly specimens soaked or dried. Animal illustrations with simple text descriptions were pasted on the surrounding walls. There was also a sink in the corner of the classroom, and the strange smell in the room mainly came from there…

This time, the players were particularly careful during the investigation.

There were two reasons for this. First, not triggering any horror events when opening the door made the players feel uneasy. Second, Xiao Tan specifically reminded everyone that expired organic solvents were not only harmful to the body, but also could cause fires.

So, about ten minutes later, the players completed the investigation of the biology classroom, and the results were as follows—

One, all the drawers around the laboratory table were "unable to be opened." Various tools, including scalpels, and more than a dozen different solutions were scattered on the table. However… the writing on all the bottles containing the solutions was blurry, making it difficult to confirm the nature of the liquids.

Two, the surrounding specimens were normal.

Three, it was temporarily impossible to see any clues from the illustrations on the wall, but Brother Jue still read all the content and memorized it.

Four, although this classroom did not have windows facing the corridor, it did have windows facing outside the school. Through the window glass, you could see the country road under the moonlight, telephone poles, and trees… everything seemed so peaceful and normal, forming a stark contrast with the oppressive space inside the school.

Of course, these two windows were also "sealed by the power of darkness" and could not be broken.

Five, the drain of the sink was obviously blocked, and a lot of dirty liquid had accumulated in the sink, completely obscuring the bottom of the sink. The only faucet could be turned on, but no water flowed out of the water pipe.

“Okay… everyone, turn off your flashlights.” After the investigation and communication were completed, the work of making decisions naturally fell on Brother Jue's shoulders again. “Hmm…” He pondered for half a second and recited, “Everyone has seen it, all the tools on the laboratory table are not ‘plot-related’ items, so, if there are any clues to be found in this classroom…”

Speaking up to this point, Feng Bujue turned his gaze towards the sink, his intention self-evident.

“You can't see me… You can't see me…” At this moment, Gui Xiao was already silently chanting the five-word mantra in his heart and using misdirection in his mind.

Unexpectedly, at this time…

“I'll do it.” Xiao Tan actually volunteered to stand up.