Old-time musicians

The conversation between Vasius and Roy has ended.

He blew the smoke condensed by the "Illusion Man" further into the path of the "Ashless Door".

As the "phantom man" struggled all the way, the cold and silent auras in the path began to overlap, gradually losing the profound sense of intertwined textures, the stacked scenery began to melt and peel off, and the pale white pagoda in the deepest part became difficult to see clearly.

In the process of passing through the door, only the passerby can experience various complex transcendental feelings, but for the observer, it is just a picture confined to a corner of the plane.

Under the control of Vasius, the smoke that had drifted far away from the door was pulled into shape again and turned back.

The "phantom man" seems to have gained some kind of gnosis, and those crystal-clear and dazzling scenes are distorted, at least, that's how it appears under everyone's observation.

The human face is still screaming and struggling, but there have been many changes in details. The ferocious expression has become calmer, and the weird and exaggerated facial features have also become peaceful. The inspiration it brings is more oppressive, but it has intangible power. The power seems to be still completely suppressed by the pipe ritual.

Vasius made an inhaling motion similar to Benjamin's, put it back into the pipe and closed the lid of the wooden box with a bang.

"Very good, there are only three minutes left." He looked very satisfied and adjusted his top hat. "Miss Nehemiah, thank you for your cooperation. Otherwise, if the time is delayed for a while, I will have to wait until dawn." Returning without success and finding another opportunity to get entangled with various occult factors is also a troublesome matter.

Vasius turned around his pocket watch again: "Mr. Fanning, after we go out, let's go back to the Special Inspection Hall to have a good chat. First, we will talk about the fragments of the audio series, and then we will talk about your Turner Art Museum..."

"No, you don't have to go back."

Fan Ning, who had been thinking silently for a long time, suddenly brightened his eyes and smiled.

These inexplicable words first stunned Vasius for a moment.

And when he saw Fan Ning holding up the "Fierce Sun Guidance" in his hand, spitting out simple words, and the strange and pale room became slightly brighter, he was very surprised and said: "What? Are you going to take action? I thought You are a smart person."

He was not sure whether violating the warning on the ground would involve everyone, but at least the saboteurs would most likely not be able to escape.

Who knew that Fan Ning didn't even look at Vasius. He stretched a thread of inspiration toward the illusory sky, and another thread... delineated an animal puppet hanging from the ceiling.

"Caron, what are you doing!!??"

Before Fan Ning raised the "Fire Sun Guidance", Xilan's eyes happened to glance at the blood-red writing on the ground that said "No random destruction of objects!!", and she turned pale with fear.

"You are really looking for death." Wasius shook his head and smiled lightly, "Have you forgotten, you, you, you?"

Vasius, who originally had an understated expression, suddenly opened his eyes and his speech became stuck. The volume rose slightly at first, but then gradually fell silent like a kite with a broken string.

Joan, who was standing blankly facing the wall, finally realized that something was wrong behind her and turned around.

Just like a basin of water poured onto the thin layer of the still-dry painting, the various colors on Wasius's body were instantly washed away and diluted by some invisible flowing thing, and the lines also changed from swollen to stretched to no longer. live.

Several more waves of water washed away the paint, and after just two or three breaths, Vasius's entire body and clothes completely disappeared into this room full of dolls!

"Zoo? No. 2? I see, I'm leaving without sending you away." Fan Ning stared at the spot where the investigator once stood, shook his head and sneered.

Chopin's "Waltz in D flat major", which he performed at a village banquet, had a name that was more familiar to him in his previous life -

"Puppy Waltz."

There are only 11 fragments of the music sequence, and the floor covered with seven-color lights is only on 11F. It lacks the tonality of "C sharp" or "D flat" as the main note.

This sound ranks second among the 12 sound names.

When the puppy doll with the symbol of occultism is destroyed, it means that the exhibition number 2 and its owner will also end up with the same reflection of "non-existence".

"Caron" Sheeran looked at Fan Ning with lingering fear, "You destroyed the object, why is Vasius gone?"

"It's forbidden to destroy objects at will." Fan Ning smiled, "I'm not doing it randomly, I'm doing it on purpose."

Mr. Fan Ning explains the issues concisely and profoundly every time, just like when he conducts rehearsals. After looking at Fan Ning's face for a long time, Roy let out a sigh of relief.

No matter what, the trouble is solved. This investigator disappears from the world in this way. Although it will cause some investigations of his colleagues by the Special Patrol Office, it is better than all other consequences.

"What is that!?" Joan suddenly said.

The four of them followed her gaze and saw that there was only a rope hanging alone from the ceiling, and on the ground were the ashes of a fluffy and charred puppy doll that had cracked after falling.

And in the middle of the ashes, there was a black top hat.

"Vasius's hat?" Fan Ning quickly walked over and squatted down, "That's not right. Just now, this guy even had his clothes on and all his personal belongings disappeared."

This is really hard to understand. The pocket watch and ritual utensils have all disappeared. If the hat does have some kind of indelible characteristic, then why is it not kept directly, but disappears and then falls out of the doll?

He stretched out his left hand to push away the ashes and picked up the top hat. After a brief inspection, his spiritual sense told him that the hat did have some kind of "evolution" fluctuations, and it seemed to be different from when Vasius wore it before. However, no abnormality can be seen by observing its surface with the eyes.

Mainly because I don't have time to think about this issue carefully right now.

"Caron, what about that...'Lightless Door'?" Sheeran turned his head slightly and glanced at the 'door', which was changing the path of fascinating light, and then quickly looked away.

"Don't worry about it, we have bigger troubles." Fan Ning stood up, holding a top hat, and looked out the window on the other wall with a stern expression.

The "three minutes left" that Wasius said before is probably only one minute now.

What can you do in one minute?

This investigator also said before that without the resonance and protection of the ritual vessel, it would be basically impossible to find the resonance point of inspiration with real time and space by relying solely on oneself.

And now the time is too short to even continue exploring or thinking.

Could it be that I spent all my inspiration and thought to keep Vasius here, but I only followed in his footsteps a few minutes later?

Fan Ning took a few steps forward with a worried look on his face, stood in front of the window, and looked at the high scenery before dawn.

The black mist that was originally so thick that it could not be dissolved has shown signs of decline. In the flat oval area close to the skyline, the front edge of the night has gradually given way to a rusty red ocher, and further down is an abrupt and slender streak of white. Like the violent light before something new and unknown is about to pierce the skin.

His eyes fell on something a little closer than the skyline, but a little farther than the town and the wilderness.

What you can see is a zigzag-shaped railway track with no visible beginning and end, just like the dark brown texture of the earth. A black steam train with a faint light shining through the windows is lying quietly on it. It is the one who is riding on it. The train bound for Fort Santaram.

Fan Ning couldn't help but follow the direction of the locomotive and look at the steps of the No. 1 carriage where he got off before.

Where I'm standing now is...

A wave of enlightenment passed through his brain like an electric current, and along with it came some fragments of his own experiences.

...The pen tip was lifted from the ink and landed on the music paper next to the bass clef, and the three flats were drawn one by one.

…"I chose C minor to pay tribute to Beethoven's "Symphony of Destiny."" I once shouted in my heart.

...The speeding pen, the galloping inspiration, and the torn waste manuscripts are floating like snowflakes.

…The flickering gas lights and swaying shadows of objects in that room.

…"It was born out of the impulse and imagination of a journey to trace its origins. It sprouted at this time and was born in this place. This is history."

He finally knew where the other inexplicable feeling of familiarity came from when he just entered this room filled with dolls.

This is... the room where he once lived in "Gogol's Great Hotel"!

Although he has not yet completely figured out why this underground building is connected to the secret door of the Turner Museum of Art, why only the color is different and the other elements are correspondingly accurate as mirror images, but he has confirmed one thing -

The wrong time and space "Vaznai Town" caused by the "Hidden Light" corresponds to the small town of Gogol that I visited in reality that day with Shiran and Joan!

The three of them spent a whole weekend and two and a half days without finding it. Unexpectedly, it was actually the first stop of their visit!

Is it extremely difficult to find the resonance point of inspiration that corresponds to real time and space? But this corresponding place is where my own work came out.

The low and powerful "questioning motive" sounded in his mind.

The last thirty seconds before dawn.

In the pale room, the window frames, sculptures, wall textures, and everything in the air around Fan Ning's body, as long as they were on the layer not far from his body, began to ripple like ripples.

He was still standing in front of the window and looking out, and the mist of the previous events became clearly visible. ,

Unexpectedly, the "sense of gaze" that was frightened twice turned out to be self-glaring in two different places in time and space.

That night in the hotel room, the eyes on the railroad tracks that I saw because of my over-inspiration were my own eyes!

——It was the way I stood at the door of Car No. 1 of the broken-down train, looking at the lights of the small town in the distance, and the way I looked at where I was standing at this moment.

What I saw that night was the gaze of my future self? You can't say that either. They do not have an empirically consistent overlapping time period, but only have entanglements and correspondences in mystical categories.

In the last ten seconds before dawn, he had a deeper understanding of the "Law of Entanglement in the Secret History".

"Carone..." "Mr. Fanning..." Several people saw the swirling silhouettes of things around Fan Ning, and when they recalled the disappearance of Vasius before, they all turned pale with fright, but Xi was the first to react. Lan, she didn't hesitate and stood directly next to Fan Ning.

Maybe after being made secret, it goes to another unknown world of nothingness? After gaining a firm footing, she felt at ease.

Joan and Roy soon thought of this. If they were made secret and fell into another unspeakable place, it would be better to evaporate at the same time than to stay alone in this wrong time and space. In this way, there would still be mutuality. Possibility of care.

"Woo!——" The whistle of the steam train suddenly sounded.

train? The sound of the train again…

Fanning looked at the railroad tracks and saw another train with a black body and dazzling lights rushing from a distance, as if it would collide with the original train in a breath.

Ghost train... The ghost train incident in Gogol Town... The person who jumped off the train to investigate and disappeared with it... The non-existent youngest son of the Smiths who was considered hysterical...

The dream in the hotel that night... The morning after waking up...

Ghost train? So that's it, it's just a medium connecting the real world and the wrong time and space under the effect of "Hidden Light".

Fanning held the baton "Old Days". Its first discovered function was to strengthen the inspiration connection between himself and his companions, such as when the orchestra was playing. At this time, as Fanning directed the invisible power of the "key", the water-like waves began to move around the environment, and the figures of several people floated up inexplicably, just like... the experience in a clear dream.

At that moment, several unrelated time scenes seemed to overlap incorrectly.

There was the inspiration that burst out from the top of the current art gallery, and the inspiration that burst out from the guest room in the small town of Gogol that night; there was the gaze towards the lights of the small town of Vatnay from the door of carriage No. 1 a few hours ago, and the sunlight that he woke up to see after dreaming of a ghost train flying out of the window of the guest room that morning.

He controlled his body and lightly crashed into the window, with the tip of the baton facing outward, piercing the ripples in the air and smashing the turbid yellow glass into pieces.

He jumped down from the high building of the art gallery!

Boom! ! ——

Several invisible forces in different time and space acted on this wrong and tangled connection point of inspiration at the same time, tearing the folded and curled secret curtain into pieces!

Fanning opened his eyes, the sun was setting, the train had not started yet, and the fields and mountains were visible from the window.

It seemed like a bad sleep.

The time felt very long, but the recovery of energy was better than nothing.

It even had the opposite effect, and I felt tired and sore from my body to my brain.

The luxuriously decorated No. 1 carriage was still brightly lit, with snacks and drinks on the table.

Joan, who was sitting on the sofa opposite, leaned her entire body weight on Hiran inside, and the two were taking a nap.

Lu, who was beside him, was sleeping at the desk, with a book spread out next to his arm. It was the "Gentleman's Newspaper Ghost Story Collection" with a gray design.

Fanning sat there, a little dazed for a while. After staring at the two girls opposite for a while, he suddenly realized that his left hand was holding something under the table.

So he lowered his head.

On his knees, there was a black top hat.

－－－－－－－Off topic－－－－－－

Thanks to the monthly ticket of Heiye Sanqian on September 6~