Old-time musicians

“2f, 3f, ”

The elevator was getting closer and closer to the 11th floor where Fan Ning lived.

He was sweating all over his back and pressed the 6th floor button hard, but the elevator had already risen to 6th floor the next moment, so he hurriedly pressed the 7th floor button.

This time the elevator door opened.

The layout in front of him was strange and complicated. The lights on the wall were inexplicably mixed with crimson light, and the whole corridor seemed to be covered with a layer of faint blood mist.

Fan Ning suddenly turned several intersections, and everywhere he went was a stereotyped closed door or water well electric well door. Until he went back to the elevator again, he didn't find the stairwell on this floor.

“Ding ding ding dong dong dong ding ding ding dong——” The WeChat ringtone of the mobile phone rang again.

[1x choir piano accompaniment Xu Xinyi requested a video call]

Fan Ning’s finger clearly moved to the air above the “reject” button, but the video was automatically accepted.

[Connecting...]

Perhaps only one-third of a second, he chose to close his eyes in an instant.

Then, relying on muscle memory, he switched to the background list of applications and swiped up to exit WeChat.

The platform inside the door continued to rise.

The floor signs of the elevator in front of him began to change.

"7f, 8f,"

The phone vibrated a few times, and a text message popped up from above.

"Why are you hiding from me, senior?"

"Did I bother you late at night and ask questions, making you feel a little annoyed?"

"I'm here to apologize to you...I hope you don't mind..."

The floor stopped at 11f.

Fan Ning's heart was pounding, and his eyes quickly swept across the corridor, and after finding nothing, he returned to his phone.

Finally, he landed on the app icon of the music software.

A small figure filled with purple light appeared in his mind.

He suddenly had an idea, clicked on the music software, quickly skipped the opening screen GG, and then entered a line of the most efficient and concise characters in the search bar:

"1031"

Click the soft keyboard to enter to confirm.

"11f, 10f, 9f..." The elevator sign paused at 11f for a while, and then began to drop.

Fortunately, the Internet speed was extremely smooth, and then he quickly clicked on a search result containing the word "sio".

At the same time, his other hand turned up the volume of the external speaker to the maximum.

The soft, pure, and melodious flute sounded, and the piano played the keys in the background with a foil dance step, weaving unknown reverie and thoughts.

It was the second movement of Bach's Sonata for Flute and Harpsichord No. 2, "Sicilian Dance".

The crimson blood mist still shrouded the corridor, and the elevator sign jumped to "7f".

Fan Ning suddenly looked dazed, and saw that there was a narrow door a few meters away, which was clearly half-closed, but he had not noticed it before.

Stairwell!

"Ding Dong——" The prompt sound rang.

At the moment when the elevator door opened, his figure disappeared into the shadows.

"Bang!!!" The narrow door of the stairwell was heavily closed.

Fan Ning had never experienced escaping from an earthquake.

But at this moment, he was extremely sure that if an earthquake really happened and the building would collapse within tens of seconds, he would go downstairs at the speed he was going now.

"Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong!"

After putting the phone in his pocket, he spun around the stairwell like crazy, his whole figure was about to fly up, and he only took three or four steps on each staircase before he crossed it.

There was definitely something chasing him from behind, and the "creaking" sound of the narrow door being closed and opened just now was too obvious.

"Plop... Plop... Whoosh... Whoosh..."

The phone was still playing music, and Fan Ning felt his heart was about to jump out of his throat. The floor light sign in the stairwell gradually turned purple from blood color. When he saw the 1F sign, he decisively knocked the door open and ran away.

Perhaps under the sound of music, the feeling of being chased gradually faded away, but he did not stop, ran all the way out of the community, and finally rushed into a shop with orange lights on the street.

He thought it might be a KFC or McDonald's, or a small bar, or even just a gas station sales hall. In short, from the moment he walked through the door, he felt heavy sleepiness. After passing by a few people, he sat down on a long chair and fell asleep with the help of a small wooden table.

First, he dreamed that he was walking through the mountains and forests, and his destination seemed to be a church, but the unknown existence following him made him think that this might expose his target, so he changed his route several times to get rid of it...

Then he dreamed that he and a figure in a purple dress squatted on the ground, looking for something in a pile of messy music scores and picture album pages...

"Why is it gone?"

"Is it in your flashlight?"

When he woke up from his sleep, he heard a familiar girl's voice at last, and she seemed to raise her head.

Fan Ning suddenly opened his eyes, and the street shop had disappeared.

Looking around, there is a strange space that stretches to the horizon, with a contradictory sense of openness and closure. It has the same vaults and corridors as a church, but the ground is a tile grid of varying heights like a swimming pool, and the red liquid covers the entire space.

There is a strange low wind in the air.

There is a warm and uneasy immersion feeling below the knees, and the red liquid seems to continue to rise slowly.

What is missing?

Flashlight? In the flashlight?

In the dream within the dream, the sentence that seems to be a reminder from Joan made Fanning take out his mobile phone from his pocket again when facing the strange situation in front of him.

What is in the phone?

The images experienced in the secret realm of Yiyong jumped out frame by frame, the strange triangular huge building, the transmutation pipeline that proliferated like the cochlea...

Sketch the painting by yourself, throw yourself into the attic, then the amorphous green, the fragmented consciousness, and the stubborn confrontation, traction and pulling operation in the deep spirituality...

Things... are in the phone?

As if inspired by something, Fan Ning quickly clicked into the mobile phone album.

Hundreds of various casual photos, screenshots, music scores, landscapes, and food, all of which are modern things, but the one at the bottom is...

The garden-style grass and background is as neat and solid as a photo frame, with a handful of strange-colored springs in the middle. The containers that make up it are coiled and stacked like arteries, and twisted into the shape of atria and ventricles above. As the fingers magnify the part of the photo, the magnificent colors and mechanisms are endlessly fractalized, bringing a strong sense of visual dizziness.

"Could this be..." Fan Ning's eyes gradually enlarged.

"The image of the wreckage of the 'Fountain in the Painting'? Why did she end up in my mobile phone album? I didn't take a photo..."

In just a few minutes, the red liquid in this space spread to his waist, and the warm feeling of uneasiness was about to swallow him up. The most important question at the moment was obviously not "why" but "what to do".

What can a "photo of the wreckage of the Fountain in the Painting" do?

The liquid spread from the abdomen to the chest inch by inch. The dream was still hazy, but the danger was real and terrible. Fan Ning tried his best to calm himself down, and raised his arms holding the phone from the liquid surface, with a light flashing in his eyes.

At present, the people and things he can contact with, the ones who are most closely related to the "Fountain in the Painting", except for "Miss Fei Hong'er" and "Miss Zidougao", are...

When the warm feeling spread to his neck, he felt an electric current in his heart and reopened WeChat.

There were dense vibrations and notification sounds. Including Chen Na and Xu Xinyi, there were more than ten friends with notes similar to "Chorus Steel Accompaniment", and 99+ new message reminders occupied the entire homepage.

Fan Ning scrolled down and found Fan Chenxun's chat bar.

Quickly entered, clicked the + sign, sent a photo, and selected "Fountain in the Painting"!

In less than a breath, something changed suddenly.

"Boom! ——" Something exploded in my mind. Below the shoulders, I still felt the warm liquid soaking, but my face began to feel burning, and the surrounding scenery began to peel off inch by inch, and finally turned into a dazzling white.

Salty smell, the sound of waves.

White sand beach, black volcanic rocks, hoarse water birds calling.

My posture was lying down, the scorching sun shone directly on my face, and my sight, hearing and smell were all intermittent and hazy.

Just as Fan Ning came back to his senses, a huge and long gray bird beak clamped his head with not too heavy force.