Chapter 105: Star Chasing Journey (25)
So, the dozen or so of them truly stood by, becoming the rare, perhaps even only, audience for the instrument band formed by the elders of Cosmic Village.
When the strange, piercing music began, like a knife stabbing into their eardrums, Liu Sheng finally noticed something they had all overlooked.
“Is that what the suona looked like when you last saw it?” Liu Sheng asked Chen Shanyuan coldly.
Only then did everyone focus their gaze, and they were instantly startled, a chill rising from their tailbones to the tops of their heads, making them involuntarily take a few steps back.
The suona they were playing was entirely white, as if made from some kind of bone, which was why the sound produced wasn’t as clear as a normal suona.
And the two-headed aunt, concentrating on playing her erhu, had a shriveled human head at the lower end, and the neck of the instrument she held looked like a spine.
No one wanted to examine closely how the bow was made.
The leather drum the senile old man was beating had a small, faint crease and indentation on its surface.
Could it be… a belly button?
And the other instruments were also made of bone and flesh, making everyone feel a chill down their spines.
Perhaps due to the influence of Guai Qi, they hadn’t noticed such a counter-intuitive thing at first.
It seemed these elders had not only composed new songs and found a new location but had also specially prepared new instruments.
However, they completely ignored the change in expression of their “audience,” fully engrossed in their musical performance, their eyes filled with fanaticism, as if they were pouring all their life force into it, making heaven and earth tremble.
Indeed, heaven and earth suddenly began to tremble.
As the music grew more intense and soaring, the mist began to churn more violently, as if everything before them was distorting in this eerie music.
The stars in the sky also seemed to resonate with this absurd performance, beginning to flicker erratically.
And those elders, standing or sitting, seemed to be the center of this illusion; various blurred figures appeared around them, seemingly audiences from some unknown time, cheering, dancing, and praying.
Liu Sheng could feel an invisible portal connecting to other spaces slowly appearing in the starry sky.
It was like a hole in an apple bitten open by a worm, and something was seeping into this realm.
This scene inexplicably appeared in Liu Sheng’s mind.
Everyone, except the villagers who were focused on playing, was looking up at the starry sky, waiting.
What would come over?
Liu Sheng was also waiting for these so-called “aliens.”
“Look at them!” Yu Jinling pointed ahead, unable to help but exclaim softly.
Everyone withdrew their gaze from the sky, only to see that these elders, due to the strenuous performance, were rapidly losing their life force, their already aged and haggard appearances becoming increasingly terrifying.
As the suona sounded, the old men playing the suona gradually had their eyes bulge out, even falling out, their cheeks wrinkled into a ball, and their mouths deeply sunken into the suona’s opening.
The aunt playing the erhu pulled so hard that even the instrument body cracked.
Her two heads shouted, “It’s happening, it’s happening!”
So, she actually cut off one of her heads with a knife, pressed it onto the position of the instrument body, and her veins wriggled and connected, forming a new erhu, like a gourd made of two heads. This shouldn’t be the true meaning of “erhu,” should it?
Then, the aunt, now with only one head, continued to play, ignoring the blood flowing freely.
Liu Sheng dared not look closer. She felt that even her mind was starting to be filled with various dark thoughts, shadows overlapping before her eyes, countless dark figures rising and falling instantly, making it impossible to distinguish between reality and illusion.
Even Little Tentacle began to tremble, expressing its fear.
The seven ordinary people behind them were already so terrified their legs were weak, barely able to stand.
Liu Sheng and Wen Weilan suddenly sensed something, their expressions changed, and they said in unison, “Everyone, step back!”
Little Tentacle also quickly wove itself into a net, blocking in front of everyone.
Among the stars, Liu Sheng felt something squeeze out from where the portal opened, and then a chilling white light suddenly fell from the sky, hitting the ground with a loud “thud.”
The white light landed among the elders.
Everyone was terrified, but thankfully, these elders weren’t smashed, although they already looked far from normal.
They gathered around the white light, jumping despite their old bones and legs, holding their eerie instruments, and shouting loudly, “We succeeded, the aliens have arrived!”
Under everyone’s expectant gaze, the white light dissipated, and the “alien” revealed its true form.
A square black box stood quietly on the ground.
It had a few buttons, and in the upper right corner, there was a slender silver metal rod pointing diagonally into the air.
“This is the alien?” The leading old man was very puzzled; although he had no eyeballs, he could still “see.”
Looking left and right, it was nothing but an inanimate object.
Liu Sheng looked at it and recalled something she had seen in Professor Tang’s book.
Is this… a radio?
It didn’t seem dangerous. The Yugui, who had been on high alert, should have felt a little relieved, but for some reason, their hearts were pounding.
“This is a weird object.”
Just as Liu Sheng figured it out, the radio-like weird object suddenly played a poor tune. Perhaps because the speaker was old, the tune was erratic, sometimes sharp like fingernails scraping a board, and sometimes deep like countless hoarse ghosts chanting.
Listening to it, the tune felt somewhat familiar.
Wasn’t this what the elders had just played?
The elders, who had been a little disappointed, were overjoyed when the music started, discussing animatedly.
“It’s an alien!”
“The alien likes our music!”
“Hehehe, likes… likes…”
“Since it likes it, we need more instruments…”
“What about the Materials?”
“Hehe, aren’t there fifteen portions of Materials over there?”
...
After containing the blood-stained radio weird object, Chen Shanyuan sighed.
“Don’t think too much, weird objects are irreversible. This is also a kind of release,” Kuang Bowen patted his shoulder.
Everyone looked at the pile of corpses, feeling unwell.
The elders of Cosmic Village, who had just been enthusiastically greeting everyone, were instantly infected by the weird object radio. Their bodies twisted into grotesque weird objects, snarling and pouncing on the crowd.
And it wasn’t just these elders; the two new team members they were protecting also degenerated into weird objects due to the discordant music emitted by the radio.
Although they responded in time and slaughtered these newly formed weird objects, it was ultimately a loss.
“We’ve collected two weird objects this time, they should sell for a lot of money, right?” Song Ru said heartlessly, “What’s wrong? Aren’t you also here for the money? Don’t pretend.”
“Hmm, you’re right, let’s go,” Chen Shanyuan did not deny it.
To survive in this Guai Qi, they indeed needed some motivation.
Who knows how many people in this vast Guai Qi are still summoning “aliens.”
If they continued, and if things went smoothly, they could indeed get more weird objects.
But Liu Sheng could tell from Wen Weilan’s tense expression that things would not be that smooth.
Second update!