Ning Ping and Si Lian chased after them but couldn't find any trace of the wooden puppets, nor did they know if they had gone upstairs or downstairs.
"This..." Si Lian asked, "What do we do?"
Ning Ping thought for a moment and said, "How about this, you go down, I'll go up."
Just as Si Lian was about to speak, she saw Jing Minghe and his group coming down from upstairs. She quickly stepped forward and asked, "Um, did you guys see two puppets, floating, floating up?"
"We did," Jing Minghe nodded and said, "When we were coming downstairs, we ran smack into those two puppets floating by."
"And then?" Ning Ping hurriedly pressed.
You Mi added, "Then they went into the lounge of the performance hall. After those two puppets went in, the door to the lounge was locked from the inside, and we couldn't get in."
"Then now..."
Before Ning Ping could finish speaking, Gong Liang was already heading downstairs.
Jing Minghe, anxious to find Chi Hao, also continued downstairs, saying, "Let's go down and wait. Since we can't get in, there's no point staying up here. It's almost time, and new developments should occur then."
"This..."
Seeing that Jing Minghe and the others had all gone downstairs, and even Si Lian had followed them, Ning Ping really didn't want to go find those two flying puppets alone. So, after glancing upstairs, he quickly followed them down.
Everyone arrived on the first floor and happened to see some people from the art troupe coming out of the restaurant. The man in the lead greeted Gong Liang, who was walking at the front, and said to everyone, "We're going to get ready now. Guests, don't forget to come and watch the performance."
Gong Liang smiled and replied, "We'll definitely be there on time."
As he spoke, Gong Liang's gaze swept towards the woman standing behind and to the right of the leading man. That face, like a black hole, finally brought a subtle expression to Gong Liang's usually composed face.
After the art troupe members finished speaking, they left directly. Jing Minghe and the others, however, stood there, stunned for a while.
After all, what Gong Liang could see, others were not blind to.
After estimating that the art troupe members had gone far, You Mi approached Jing Minghe and whispered, "Minghe, did you see that woman's face?"
"Yeah," Jing Minghe replied, "Let's go find Brother Hao first."
"Spirit Puppet Art Troupe Prop Maker · A Mo," Gu Chenhui suddenly said. "One of the women's name tags read that, and the black-hole-faced woman's name tag read, Spirit Puppet Art Troupe Sculptor · Ya Wei."
Hearing this, Jing Minghe turned to look at Gu Chenhui. In that situation, almost everyone's attention was on the woman with the black-hole face. Under such circumstances, Gu Chenhui could still be distracted enough to look at their name tags and even remember them.
"What about that man?" Si Lian casually asked.
Gu Chenhui smiled and added, "Puppet Art Troupe Puppet Stylist · Li Zhong."
"You," Si Lian sighed, "Your memory is really good, and so is your eyesight."
"Thank you for the compliment."
"Wait a minute!" Ning Ping suddenly snapped back to reality and looked at Gu Chenhui. "What did you just say? Spirit Puppet Art Troupe Prop Maker · A Mo? That's impossible, right? She's not..."
He stopped mid-sentence. Actually, it wasn't impossible. This was a game instance, and the corpse they had seen had already disappeared.
Others had also noticed this, but with incomplete clues, phenomena that couldn't be explained at the moment had to be set aside. Sudan Novel Network.
Just as Jing Minghe and the others were about to enter the restaurant, Chi Hao and Fang Chao walked out from inside.
Chi Hao walked directly to Jing Minghe's side. "It's almost time, let's go to the performance hall."
On the way, Jing Minghe quietly told Chi Hao what they had seen on the third floor and shared his speculation. "This instance hasn't told us the clear conditions for passing. Now, the situation with the prop maker A Mo is something we can follow."
"Mm."
Chi Hao nodded. Seeing that they had arrived at the entrance of the performance hall, he said no more.
The group entered the performance hall. As Gu Chenhui had said earlier, the stage for the performance was very large and very high, much higher than the audience seating. No matter where the audience sat, they had to crane their necks to watch the performance.
Jing Minghe saw that four members of the art troupe were busy on stage. He recognized three of them: the troupe leader Quan Zhe, the deputy troupe leader Ding Wang, and the prop maker A Mo. The remaining man was someone Jing Minghe hadn't seen before.
Chi Hao, with a tacit understanding, whispered to Jing Minghe, "That person is the art troupe's logistics staff, named Wei Hao."
Jing Minghe watched Wei Hao, who was being directed by the others and working diligently. From the fleeting expressions he caught, he could judge that Wei Hao harbored dissatisfaction towards these people.
The word "conflict" flashed in Jing Minghe's mind, leading him to further speculate about the conditions for passing this instance.
Quan Zhe, on stage, saw Jing Minghe and his group and enthusiastically walked to the edge of the stage. "Guests, you've arrived right on time! The performance is about to begin. Please, make yourselves comfortable and don't be shy."
Everyone smiled and nodded, finding their own seats, but not sitting too far apart.
Soon, the stage was set. Except for Quan Zhe, the other three had left the stage. Quan Zhe stood in the center of the stage, looked at the audience, raised his hands, and said grandly, "Welcome, everyone, to the performance of our Spirit Puppet Art Troupe. We sincerely hope that our performance will satisfy you all. Next, we invite the soul of our Spirit Puppet Art Troupe, the world's greatest puppeteer, Mr. Luo Yu, to present his most spectacular performance!"
With that, Quan Zhe turned and walked off the stage. The lights in the performance hall instantly went out.
Click.
A spotlight converged on one spot above the stage, and two puppets slowly floated out from behind the stage. By the time the puppets stood in the center of the stage, no one had appeared.
You Mi couldn't help but ask, "Didn't you say there was a puppeteer? Where is he?"
"Could he be under the stage?" Qiao Qiao guessed.
"No," Gu Chenhui denied her guess. "I checked. Under the stage are crisscrossing iron frames. It's impossible for a person to move around underneath, and there are no mechanisms inside."
"That's right," Xia Rong confirmed Gu Chenhui's statement. "An Ruo and Gong Liang and I also checked. It's indeed not possible for a person to be underneath, and there are no mechanisms around."
"Then, where is he?" You Mi looked at the two puppets that had already begun to perform, confused.
Jing Minghe narrowed his eyes and said, "The two puppets on stage are the ones we bumped into floating out of the exhibition room, aren't they? Just as I suspected."
"Suspected what?" An Ruo pressed.
But Jing Minghe didn't answer.
"Is this what you call a spectacular performance?" Fang Chao, having not rested well the previous night, yawned and said, "It's quite boring, isn't it?"
Jing Minghe glanced at Fang Chao. He didn't pay attention to Fang Chao's words but was puzzled by something else. Gong Liang, who had been sitting behind Fang Chao's side, was nowhere to be seen.