Chapter 42: To know what happens next, please tune in to the next episode!
Mudan Street’s Yan Zu…
This was a nickname given to Luxianbei by the neighbors when she was still running around on the old streets of Mudan Street in her split-crotch pants. At that time, she was indeed cute, with rosy lips and white teeth and a chubby face, comparable to those infant models, truly a quality male god prototype.
Unfortunately, she later became less attractive…
Although Luxianbei isn’t ugly now, she’s merely considered pretty, slightly above average, and no one calls her that nickname anymore. Perhaps even those joking neighbors have forgotten her.
So when Luxianbei heard Jiang Li mention this nickname, one that she herself was almost forgetting, her sense of crisis suddenly intensified.
Shocked!
This woman is too terrifying; she even subtly investigated this background of mine?
If I let her continue her investigation, something bad will happen sooner or later!
Who knows, once she gets what she wants from the Urban Legends Chat Group, she might come to settle scores with me.
Luxianbei thought anxiously, shaking her head and deciding to muddle through the current situation before talking about anything else, “Mudan Street Yan Zu? Never heard of it, but there are many such flower names in our underground human world.”
“What about Changshou Road Xu Kun, Tuanjie Township Chris Evans, and Hamatun Koji Yamamoto? There are all kinds.”
“I don’t know if you’re interested in meeting them? For my name, drinks are 20% off!”
“……” Jiang Li stared at Luxianbei for a few seconds, sighed silently and said, “No need, I’ve met the underground world’s Guanxi and know what kind of goods those are. I’m not interested.”
It seems she intentionally concealed it; her family’s old house is right on Mudan Street, and they also run a restaurant… Wait, could it really be…
No, no. Although Luxianbei looks somewhat similar to Uncle, their personalities are too different.
As the saying goes, a tiger father does not produce a dog son—how could such a heroic figure have such a cowardly and talkative child?
Jiang Li thought, her expression suddenly serious, “Since you don’t know, why don’t we talk about something else? For example, how do you know that using a suona to interfere with the sound of a mouth harpsichord can affect that urban legend’s abilities?”
“Oh, this?” Luxianbei pouted, “That’s a long story…”
“Then make it short.” Jiang Li interrupted.
“As the saying goes, man is iron, rice is steel…” Luxianbei shrugged, pointing at the empty bowl on the table, “You’ve eaten two big bowls already, and I’m still hungry! At least let me cook something else while I eat?”
“Fine, but…”
“But what?”
Jiang Li paused, looking serious, “But don’t you think it’s a bit lonely to eat alone?”
Luxianbei, “……”
Got it! You want to eat, just say you want to eat; why all the indirect hints?
Who knows what nerve this girl is on today, acting like she’s been possessed by Gu Qiqi.
———–
Half an hour later, dinner was finished.
Luxianbei sat on the sofa, holding a teacup with both hands, sipping the Tieguanyin borrowed from a neighbor while involuntarily sighing.
“Comfortable! It’s so good! Food acquired for free from others is the best!”
Jiang Li looked at her with disgust, sitting opposite her and said softly, “Now, can we talk about serious matters?”
“I’ve been investigating various documents related to the Happy Neighborhood and information about abnormal deaths these past few days, but there’s no information involving the mouth harpsichord. How did you find out about it?”
Luxianbei took a sip of hot tea, leisurely said, “Some things can’t only be known through documents and records; listening to the experiences of elders doesn’t hurt, learn a bit…”
Luxianbei said, seeing Jiang Li’s expression darken, the phrase “Stinky Sister” ultimately didn’t come out of her mouth. The topic shifted as she began to talk about her experiences mingling with the Huacheng elderly group these past few days.
“This started three days ago when I was chatting with an elder at a tea house…”
———–
The elder Luxianbei mentioned was named Tang Yao, who lived on the south side of Mudan Street. In his younger days, he often set up a stall alongside Liu Banxian on the overpass at the north side of Mudan Street, forming a famous duo.
Liu Banxian gained fame thanks to his fortune-telling skills, while Tang Yao was known as “Tang Dati” among the neighbors.
As a native slack of Huacheng, he had loitered around for over forty years. Although he hadn’t done anything serious in his life, his greatest interest was watching the hustle and bustle.
In his youth, whenever he heard of some strange incident happening, even if it was dozens of miles away, he would ride his bike to check it out.
If that enthusiasm were applied today, thirty lives wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the appetite of urban legends.
Over the years, there were almost no old stories of Huacheng that he didn’t know, and generally, to ask him something, all it took was to treat him to a meal.
However…
As people grow older, their temper often becomes more eccentric, and when Luxianbei found him, he would not speak no matter what…
———–
“Wait, since he wouldn’t speak, how did you find out?” Jiang Li interrupted.
Luxianbei rolled her eyes at Jiang Li, “You’ll know if you just keep listening.”
“In fact, he’s particularly petty; I heard that he once ate so much at a buffet to get his money’s worth that he had to be sent to the hospital for a stomach pump, and this isn’t a one-time experience.”
“Got it.” Jiang Li nodded slightly, “Did you invite him to a buffet?”
“What do you know! If a buffet could solve him, I wouldn’t have to spend an entire day wasting time with him!” Luxianbei said.
“I just simply invited him for tea; as long as someone invites him, he’ll definitely drink.”
“Drink tea?” Jiang Li tilted her head in confusion.
“Drinking too much tea means frequent bathroom breaks, right? I just locked all the bathrooms around the tea house and waited until he wanted to go and happened to show up inside.”
Luxianbei explained, deliberately emphasizing “happened” with a stronger tone.
“I won’t go into the details of the process. In short, when he had his seventeenth cup of tea, he finally relented.”
Jiang Li, “……”
The word “relented”… is used rather subtly!
———–
Although Tang Dati had pointed Luxianbei in the right direction, obtaining complete information about the history of the Happy Neighborhood wasn’t easy either.
In the following half a day, she experienced a series of annoying tasks, like helping Aunt Wang buy groceries and k*ll chickens, picking up Grandpa Zhang’s grandson, and tutoring Sister Zhu’s daughter.
Those uncles and aunties, big brothers and sisters didn’t abide by the three principles for using human tools.
When Luxianbei was about to be worn out, the task chain finally arrived at the end, waiting for her was the Huacheng elderly group—the Sunset Red Yangge Team.
Before Luxianbei arrived at the Central Park and interacted with the grandpas and grandmas of the Sunset Red Yangge Team, she thought it would take some effort to get close to them.
After all, a generation gap of three years, a chasm of five years—decades apart made the generation gap almost comparable to a pilgrimage to the West.
However, who would have thought that just as she approached, she was stopped by a grandpa.
“Whose child is this? Yes, I’m talking about you! Come here and help me move the speaker!”
Luxianbei, “……”
Your grandpa really lives up to being your grandpa; giving orders feels just like commanding his own grandson, completely without any sense of shame.
After being ordered around for a while and awkwardly setting up a match, Luxianbei finally managed to gather rumors about the Happy Neighborhood.
———–
Hearing this, Jiang Li couldn’t help but softly praise, “You’ve really worked hard.”
Before this, Bai Kai had suggested to the Siye Society to send someone to collect various urban legend stories from the people, but that process was anything but smooth.
The members of the Special Action Team sent to collect information couldn’t endure more than two days under the unreasonable requests of those grandpas and grandmas combined with what seemed like endless nagging.
But Luxianbei…
Jiang Li looked at the chattering girl beside her and suddenly thought of unfortunate Tang Dati, furrowing her brows slightly.
I hope the old folks are okay.
“Easy peasy!” Luxianbei waved her hand, “I think those documents you investigated probably didn’t tell you that the land of the Happy Neighborhood used to be a theater, right?”
“Theater?” Jiang Li was taken aback, “When?”
“About a hundred years ago!” Luxianbei pouted, “That was during a time of war; such small theaters probably don’t have much record, the old lady who told me is over ninety, and she heard it from her elders.”
“The theater according to the old lady performed Sichuan opera, and their plays were different from others, as they included many ethnic minority instruments due to being close to ethnic minority areas.”
“Among them was the mouth harpsichord, combining that with the contents described in the bounty, I deduced that the urban legends in the Happy Neighborhood are probably related to that theater.”
Jiang Li stared thoughtfully at Luxianbei for a few seconds before asking, “What happened to that theater afterward?”
“I remember before the Happy Neighborhood was built, this area was just dilapidated residential houses, and even earlier, it was just wasteland.”
“At that time, I hadn’t heard of any urban legend incidents happening here.”
“Later, it was burned down.” Luxianbei said.
“The old lady said that the people from the theater dug tunnels under the theater to protect the children who couldn’t evacuate in time, and when the enemy army came, they couldn’t find anyone and out of anger burned the theater.”
“All… burned to d*ath in the tunnels?” Jiang Li cautiously asked.
“The Happy Neighborhood was built just three years ago, and before that, the nights had already begun to grow long.”
“Normally, if dozens of burned bodies were buried underground, combined with the filthy and messy environment, urban legends would have been rampant long ago.”
“Indeed, there was an incident.” Luxianbei rubbed her nose, “The old lady said that when her elder was young, there were indeed urban legends in this area, and her elder was a firsthand witness.”
———–
After the theater was burned down, no one lived in the area where the Happy Neighborhood now stands for quite some time.
One or two years later, all that remained around were dilapidated houses and overgrown grass and trees.
The elder in the old lady’s family, named Li Ainong, first came to Huacheng seeking refuge with relatives.
However, during those chaotic times, a person who was fine one day might not be around the next due to the instability of communication.
When Li Ainong arrived in Huacheng, he searched all day and couldn’t contact his relatives, and as night fell, he had no choice but to go to these abandoned houses, preparing to make do for a night.
The abandoned houses at night were particularly eerie, with no one around. Li Ainong remembered some ghost stories he heard as a child, feeling a bit scared.
“Don’t be afraid, staying in an inn costs a lot of money.” He gently slapped his face, tightened his coat, and rushed toward those dilapidated houses.
Due to lack of maintenance, many trees nearby grew crooked; from a distance, they looked like twisted human figures.
As he approached the nearby square-shaped dilapidated houses, he saw flickering lights in the woods ahead.
He stealthily moved to the edge of the woods, hearing the sound of a hoe digging in the earth.
Getting closer, he finally made out a frail old man in his sixties or seventies, with an oil lamp hanging from a branch nearby.
He swung the hoe, digging one pit after another; for every pit dug, he picked up a triangular piece of wood to stand up.
Looking at the scene before him, Li Ainong was instantly drenched in cold sweat.
Those half-meter-wide pieces of wood, with one end cut into a triangle, were the kind of simple tombstones common in the surrounding area.
In those years, not many families had money to hold funerals after someone died; they would wrap the body in a mat, bury it, and stick in one of those pieces of wood—a proper burial.
In even sadder cases, leaving the corpse exposed was also common.
The old man’s actions were very strange; he was just digging holes and standing up the tombstones, but there was no sign of him burying any bodies. It might even not be a person at all!
Li Ainong didn’t dare to linger, quietly tiptoeing out of the woods.
As it was getting late and he was low on funds, he forced himself to return to those houses, finding a relatively well-maintained one to hide in. He used a wooden stick to brace the rickety door.
He lay down on the dank and smelly bed in the room, feeling his eyelids grow heavier and gradually closing, just about to fall asleep…
Suddenly, a face appeared at the window, a pale face belonging to the old man digging pits and setting tombstones in the woods.
He followed me!
The old man climbed through the window, walked straight to the bed, and stopped at Li Ainong’s head, leaning down to stare at his face. He immediately closed his eyes, his heart racing.
At that moment, he suddenly heard the old man curse in a dialect, “You little b*stard, turns out you’re a living person? Scared the hell out of me!”
Li Ainong froze, scrambling up, “Grandpa, are you a person?”
The old man stepped back in fright, clutching the hoe tightly to his chest, looking at him warily as he cursed, “You little b*stard, if I’m not a person, what am I?”
“I thought…”
“It’s a ghost?” the old man interrupted.
Li Ainong didn’t dare to reply, simply watching the grandpa in front of him nervously.
The two of them were stuck in a standoff for a while until the old man sternly said, “Alright, you’ve come this far; it’s too late to leave now. Just stay here for a while!”
“But don’t blame me for not warning you; if you stay here, just behave and don’t go out, no matter what you hear. If you don’t go out, you won’t meet… you know.”
After finishing, the old man turned to leave, and Li Ainong couldn’t help but ask, “Grandpa, how come this area became abandoned? The houses seem to be built well!”
The old man ignored him, spat out a “You little b*stard!” and kicked away the propped stick, then left.
———–
Hearing this, Jiang Li interjected, “It seems that elder from the old lady must have left the house.”
“How do you know?”
“Of course! We Siye…”
“Si?” Luxianbei raised an eyebrow provocatively, as if saying, “You can’t round this back; you’ve lost!” She looked irritatingly smug, making one want to punch her twice.
Jiang Li maintained a calm expression, changed her wording, “Our master said that among the various urban legend incidents he has encountered, a large portion of the victims were attacked due to their curiosity.”
In fact, people without spirit energy potential, as long as their curiosity isn’t too strong and they aren’t unusually unlucky, are highly likely to go through life without being attacked by urban legends.
“Impressive.” Luxianbei nodded in agreement, not knowing whether she was praising Jiang Li for being skillful in conversation or for her theory.
“In any case, that elder from the old lady left the room in the end. When he slept until the early morning, he heard sounds of drums and gongs from outside, string and wind instruments were playing, someone was singing, and children were laughing.”
“At that time, even performances of talents selling ‘power pills’ could be watched for a long time. Who could resist the temptation of a theatrical performance?”
“He followed the source of the sound and found a theater in the woods where the old man was setting up tombstones. Then suddenly, the children’s laughter and the music all disappeared.”
“Only a dark stage remained, on which stood a performer in theatrical costume, facing away from the stage, singing with rhythm. When he turned to run, the performer floated towards him with their back turned, and when he stopped, the performer stopped as well…”
“Alright, I know that place has seen urban legend incidents.” Jiang Li interrupted, “So, why after so many years did no urban legend incidents occur again?”
“That’s another story.” Luxianbei said, grabbing the remote on the table and, as if awakening wood, slapped it, “To know what happens next, please tune in to the next episode!”
Jiang Li, “……”
“Alright, it’s getting late. Let’s go to sleep?”
Jiang Li, “……”
She sat still on the sofa, arms crossed, staring at Luxianbei intently, like a child who hadn’t finished a story and was sulking.
“This…” Luxianbei scratched her head, “Okay! To put it simply, later someone sealed the urban legends around here for many years.”
“But when the Happy Neighborhood was built, they accidentally dug up the seal. There’s another story I got from the uncle who was operating the excavator, do you want to hear it?”
Seeing the faint light in Luxianbei’s eyes, looking bursting with the urge to share, Jiang Li stood up, coldly said a “Not interested,” and turned to walk toward the bedroom.
However, when it came to finding these anecdotes, she indeed has her skills. At that moment when she turned around, Jiang Li thought to herself.
“Hey! Don’t go! Let me finish talking!”
Even if it wasn’t trash talk, not finishing it was still dissatisfying!
Luxianbei chased Jiang Li to the bedroom door, only to see her sitting on the bed, revealing a sweet smile, patting the bed, saying, “What? Want to sleep together?”
Luxianbei, “……”
