Chapter 8 Welcome Party (Part 8)
A few minutes ago, in the rehearsal area.
The rehearsal area is a very open area. The space is deep and long. About thirty meters forward, there are several steps leading down.
After going down the stairs, there is a large area that can be used for performers to rehearse, but the light inside is too dim and they can't see clearly. The end of their sight is pitch black.
Just as Jing Qiao and Wang Lei stepped into the rehearsal area, a crack suddenly appeared on the left wall below the stairs. It turned out to be a door, and an orange-yellow light appeared from the crack...
They both shuddered and looked at each other.
"Is that a room... ? Did the seniors check it just now?" Jing Qiao asked in a low voice.
"I don't know, maybe." Wang Lei seemed a little uneasy.
The two of them mustered up the courage to move forward. After taking a few steps, Wang Lei noticed a KT board hanging on the wall. There were three new rules on the KT board.
"Precautions for the rehearsal area, 1..." Wang Lei read out the items one by one, swallowed his saliva, and took a step back. "There must be clues in this place! I, let's find other people and check this place together!"
As he said this, he turned around, but the next second his face showed horror.
Jing Qiao felt something was wrong and turned around, only to find that the entrance behind them had disappeared at some point!
All the scenes disappeared, and there was pure darkness, like a strange black wall, a black hole that had been lurking behind them for who knows how long.
“Hey, hey!” Jing Qiao took two steps forward and shouted towards the darkness, “Jiang Shuyue! Su Mingyun! Can you hear us?!”
There was no echo, and no sound from the stage outside, and they just discovered it now!
Wang Lei rushed to the black wall and reached out to touch it. In an instant, it seemed as if countless fine needles pierced his skin. He quickly retracted his hand, his face pale: "No, we can't get out, we are trapped here!"
Jing Qiao said to him, "That room! The clue must be in that room. As long as we find the clue, can we get out?"
Wang Lei said in confusion: "But I think that's a trap. The monster is probably in that room!"
Jing Qiao shrank back, then struggled a bit: "But, but we can't just stay here like idiots, right? We can't hear any sound from outside, and outsiders probably can't hear our voices either. We can't go out, and they can't come in. So, are we just going to wait to die here?"
Who is not afraid of death? Jing Qiao is also afraid of death, but they cannot stop. Once they stop, they may never leave this rehearsal area, and never leave this weird Xinlian Theater...
Wang Lei was so nervous that he was gasping for breath and seemed to be struggling inside.
After a few seconds, he gritted his teeth, clenched his fists and turned around.
The two reached an agreement and strode towards the direction of the room.
If you die, you must die knowingly!
Their courage came swiftly and overwhelmingly, and at that moment, the thought, "the worst that can happen is that we all die together" really existed in their minds.
It wasn't until they walked two or three meters away, deep in the rehearsal area, that singing suddenly began...
…
When Jing Qiao talked about that room, Mu Yu and Lu Chongnian immediately turned their heads and looked at the stairs in the distance.
Below the steps, the left wall is a smooth white wall with no trace of a door frame.
Jiang Shuyue also frowned.
Just now when he went to look for Wang Lei's body, he went around the entire rehearsal area and confirmed that there was no room there. It seems that the clue can only be obtained after entering the graded copy.
And now, hearing this, he asked again: "The singing is coming from the rehearsal area?"
"Yes!" Jing Qiao's eyes were red. "At that time, Wang Lei and I's first reaction was to stop and not move, but the singing seemed to be getting closer and closer!"
"We don't know if we can run. I don't dare to run for fear of being punished with death. Wang Lei thinks it's a monster. The monster singing in a place like this should be different from the performance on the backstage stage. The rule that the audience can't move during the performance may not apply here. If we don't move and hide, we can only wait to be killed by the monster."
"And we couldn't hear the sound from the big stage backstage at the time. He felt that this further confirmed that we didn't need to follow the theater rules at the time, because we were likely separated from the backstage stage area. So we just had to follow the rules of the rehearsal area! And the first rule of precautions in the rehearsal area states - if you encounter a performer rehearsing, don't disturb them!"
"Wang Lei feels that the singing is getting closer. If we collide head-on with each other, will it become a 'disturbance' to each other? And then——"
Jing Qiao said in a hoarse voice: "Then he moved. As soon as he took a step back, the monster appeared."
"It was a flash. The monster suddenly appeared in front of us! It asked Wang Lei if he liked its song. Wang Lei was probably too scared at the time, so he shouted loudly that he thought its performance was great. Then, his neck was bitten -"
Su Mingyun opened her eyes wide: "So we still can't break the theater rules? He was attacked because he spoke loudly?"
Jiang Shuyue felt something was wrong: "But the monster couldn't be singing while questioning him, so wouldn't the performance have stopped?"
Jing Qiao choked up and said, "Because there is a second monster! That monster came around from behind me and was dancing. It was a dancer. When the first monster was questioning Wang Lei, the second monster was dancing the whole time!"
Jiang Shuyue: "Why do I always feel that it's a bit confusing? If you violate the rules against loud noises and walking around, shouldn't you have your legs and head broken? Also, maybe I'm being too literal, but isn't the word used in the new rules 'rehearsal'?"
"The behavior of the monsters singing and dancing in the rehearsal area is defined as 'rehearsal'. 'Rehearsal' and 'performance' are not the same thing, right? The second rule of the theater says that you cannot walk around or make loud noises after the 'performance' begins. So how can it be considered a violation of the rules if the player walks around or talks loudly when the monsters are 'rehearsing'? The rules so far have been very strict. Will the concepts be blurred in this regard?"
"It requires careful attention to detail, so you see--" Mu Yu walked inside halfway through listening. Not only did he recheck the wall on the left under the stairs, but he also found something when he came back.
The location is right next to the wall on the left side of the stairs. There is a row of plastic chairs here, probably for people who are rehearsing to rest.
The seats were movable. Mu Yu found an A4 paper stuck on the wall behind the back of one of the chairs, tore it off, and walked back to show it to them.
There is a slogan printed on this piece of paper:
"Treat every rehearsal as if it were a performance! Come on!"
This piece of paper did not disappear with the graded copy. It was obviously always there, but it was blocked by the row of chairs, intentionally or unintentionally.
Jiang Shuyue froze.
——There was actually such a piece of paper in that corner? He didn't even notice it just now... How careless!
This slogan is obviously an important clue that cannot be ignored after the advent of graded copies.
There is an equation between "rehearsal" and "formal performance", so when players encounter the monster "rehearsal", they naturally have to continue to follow the rules of the theater!
Lu Zhongnian took the paper from Mu Yu, looked down at it, and said, "From the perspective of the dungeon map, whether it is the rehearsal area or other areas, they are always included in the New Lotus Theater. The inner and outer areas cannot be separated. The 'New Lotus Theater Usage Rules' are the general rules of the entire dungeon map."
This is just for the second rule in this set of rules. Different situations may arise depending on the settings in the graded copy.
For example, if you can't hear the sound coming from the stage, then no matter what's going on outside, it doesn't matter if the players are moving around here.
But if the leveled copy has defined the rehearsal behavior of monsters, then when encountering this situation, players will need to abide by the rules again.
Mu Yu frowned and said, "It's absolutely right to be punctilious about the rules. In this case, if we don't, we will die if we are not careful. But there are obviously many other text messages hidden in this place. We must be more careful and look at all the clues together, otherwise we will die."
"But the punishment mechanism in the rehearsal area is a little different. After Wang Lei spoke loudly, his neck was bitten off by the monster. It didn't fall off on its own. And the first time he moved around...did he attract the monster by moving around?!"
Mu Yu and Lu Zhongnian looked at each other and figured it out: "The punishment for him violating the rules of movement is that the monsters have located you!"
Jing Qiao was stunned: "But the monster has been approaching us!"
Mu Yu immediately asked her: "You only heard the sound getting closer, did you see its figure getting closer?"
Jing Qiao was stunned again: "...No."
...Because the monster flashes...
Jing Qiao seemed to understand something and said in shock, "You mean, at first its voice sounded closer and closer but it was just a trick, and it didn't know where we were until we moved?!"
"But it sounded closer and closer. The rules here state that we cannot disturb it. We, we don't know what exactly is considered 'disturbance'. I think Wang Lei's concerns are not wrong. If we run into it face to face, would it be considered a violation of the rules? If we think in this way, it was difficult for us not to move—"
As she spoke, she realized something.
The monster used a sleight of hand, and the first rule of "Precautions in the Rehearsal Area" was also problematic.
It is deliberately inducing them to make mistakes!
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