Free Web NovelMudan Street Yanzu...
This was the nickname given to Lu Yibei by the neighbors as a joke when she was still in diapers, running around the old streets of Peony Street. At that time, she was indeed adorable, with red lips and white teeth, and chubby cheeks. She was no less charming than infant child models, truly a high-quality male god in the making.
It's just a pity that she later grew up to be... well, less attractive.
Although Lu Yibei isn't ugly now, she's only considered delicate and pretty, just a little above average. No one calls her by that nickname anymore, and even the neighbors who jokingly gave it to her have probably forgotten.
So, when Lu Yibei heard Jiang Li utter that nickname, one she herself had almost forgotten, her sense of crisis suddenly intensified.
Shocking! ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
This woman is too terrifying. She secretly investigated even this kind of background of mine?
If I let her continue investigating like this, something will go wrong sooner or later!
Most likely, after she gets what she wants from the Monster Story Chat Group, she'll come to settle accounts with me.
Lu Yibei thought uneasily, shaking her head. She decided to muddle through the current situation first before anything else. “Mudan Street Yanzu? Never heard of it. But we have many such stage names at our Underground Human Club.”
“Like Changshou Road Xu Kun, Tuanjie Township Chris Evans, Hama Village Oguri Shun, all sorts of them.”
“I wonder if you're interested in meeting them? Mention my name, and drinks are 12% off!”
“...” Jiang Li stared at Lu Yibei in silence for a few seconds, then let out a silent sigh and said, “No need. I've met Underground Human Edison Chen, and I know what kind of people they are. I'm not interested.”
It seems she's deliberately hiding it. Her old family home is on Peony Street, and her family also runs a restaurant... Wait, is it possible that it's really...
No, no. Although Lu Yibei and the uncle look somewhat similar, their personalities are too different.
They say a tiger father has no dog sons. How could such a heroic figure have such a cowardly and talkative son?
Jiang Li muttered to herself, her expression turning serious in an instant. “Since you don't know, let's talk about something else, shall we? For example, how did you know that using a suona to interfere with the sound of a Jews Harp could affect the urban legend's ability?”
“This?” Lu Yibei pouted and said, “This is a long story...”
“Then make it short,” Jiang Li interrupted.
“As the saying goes, ‘Man is iron, food is steel’...” Lu Yibei shrugged, pointing at the empty bowls on the table. “You've already eaten two big bowls, and I'm still hungry! At least let me cook something more, then we can talk while eating, okay?”
“You can, but...”
“But what?”
Jiang Li paused, then said seriously, “But don't you think it's quite lonely to eat alone?”
Lu Yibei, “...”
Got it! You still want to eat, don't you?
If you want to eat, just say you want to eat. Why all the roundabout hints?
She didn't know which nerve this girl had crossed today, making her act as if she was possessed by Gu Qianqian.
——
Half an hour later, dinner concluded.
Lu Yibei sat on the sofa, holding a teacup with both hands, sipping the Tieguanyin “borrowed” from her neighbor, and couldn't help but exclaim.
“Comfortable, so comfortable! Ingredients freeloaded from someone else's house just taste better!” ƒгeewёbnovel.com
Jiang Li stared at her with a look of disgust, sitting opposite her, and said faintly, “So now, can we talk about serious matters?”
“In the past few days, I investigated various archives of Happiness Community and information on unnatural deaths. There was no information involving a Jews Harp. How did you know?”
Lu Yibei took a sip of hot tea and slowly said, “Some things aren't only learned through data and archives. Listening more to the experiences of elders has no harm. Learn from it...”
As Lu Yibei spoke, she saw Jiang Li's face darken, and the words “Smelly Girl” that were on the tip of her tongue ultimately didn't dare to come out. She changed the subject and began to talk about her experience infiltrating Hua City's Elderly Squad these past few days.
“This matter, it has to start three days ago, when I was chatting with an elder while drinking tea at a certain teahouse...”
——
The elder Lu Yibei spoke of was named Tang Yao. He lived in the south of Peony Street. In his youth, he and Liu Banxian, who often set up stalls on the overpass north of Peony Street, were known as Southern Tang and Northern Liu.
Liu Banxian was famous for his fortune-telling skills, answering every question, while Tang Yao was called Tang Inquire by the neighbors.
As a native street wanderer of Hua City, he had drifted around Hua City for over forty years. Although he never did anything serious, his greatest interest in life was watching excitement.
When he was young, if he heard about something strange happening somewhere, even dozens of miles away, he would ride his bicycle to go and see.
That kind of enthusiasm, if it were now, even thirty lives wouldn't be enough for the urban legend to kill.
Over the years, there was almost no old story that happened in Hua City that he didn't know. In the past, if you wanted to ask him anything, you just needed to treat him to a meal.
But...
The older a person gets, often the stranger their temper becomes. When Lu Yibei found him, he stubbornly refused to speak...
——
“Wait, since he wouldn't speak, how did you find out?” Jiang Li interrupted.
Lu Yibei rolled her eyes at Jiang Li and said, “Wouldn't you know if you just listened?”
“In fact, he's a particularly greedy person for small advantages. I heard he once had an experience where, to get his money's worth at a buffet, he ate so much he had to be sent to the hospital for stomach pumping. And similar things happened more than once.”
“Understood.” Jiang Li nodded slightly. “You treated him to a buffet?”
“What do you understand? If I could have handled him with a buffet, I wouldn't have spent a whole day wasting time with him!” Lu Yibei said.
“I just simply invited him for tea. As long as someone offers him tea, he will definitely drink it.”
“Tea?” Jiang Li tilted her head in confusion.
“Drinking too much tea, don't you have to go to the restroom? I just locked all the restrooms around the teahouse, and then whenever he wanted to go to the restroom, I just happened to appear inside.”
Lu Yibei explained, intentionally emphasizing the word “happened” as she spoke.
“I won't elaborate on the process, but in short, by the time he drank his seventeenth cup of tea, he finally confessed.”
Jiang Li, “...”
The word “confessed”... it's used a bit subtly!
——
Although Tang Inquire had pointed Lu Yibei to a clear path, obtaining complete information about the past of Happiness Community was not that easy.
In the next half-day, he experienced a series of bothersome tasks, like circular quests in a beginner's village: helping Aunt Wang buy vegetables and kill chickens, picking up Grandpa Zhang's grandson, tutoring Sister Zhu's daughter with her homework, and so on.
Those uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters used him, their tool, without adhering to the three principles of a tool person.
When he was almost exhausted like a dead dog, the quest chain finally reached its end, and what awaited him was Hua City's Elderly Squad—the Sunset Red Yangko Dance Troupe.
Before Lu Yibei went to the Central Park and met the elderly members of the Sunset Red Yangko Dance Troupe, he originally thought he would have to spend some effort to get close to them.
After all, three years is a generation gap, five years is a chasm. With a difference of several decades, that generation gap was almost as long as the entire journey to the West.
However, who would have thought that as soon as he approached, he was stopped by an old man.
“Whose kid is this? Yes, I'm talking to you! Come here and give me a hand, help me move the speaker over!”
Lu Yibei, “...”
Your grandpa truly lives up to his name. When he orders people around, it's just like ordering his own grandson, completely without any sense of awkwardness.
After being bossed around for half a day and enduring several awkward blind dates, Lu Yibei finally succeeded in gathering rumors about Happiness Community.
——
Upon hearing this, Jiang Li couldn't help but softly praise, “You really worked hard.”
Before this, Bai Kai had already suggested to the Night Watch to send people to collect various urban legend and legends from Hua City's folk, but the process was not smooth at all.
The Special Operations Team members sent to collect information, under the elders' insatiable unreasonable requests and seemingly endless nagging offensive, no one could last more than two days.
But Lu Yibei...
Jiang Li looked at the chattering girl beside her and suddenly thought of the unlucky Tang Inquire, frowning slightly.
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Hope the elders are okay.
“No big deal!” Lu Yibei waved her hand and said, “I think those materials you investigated probably didn't tell you that the land of Happiness Community was previously a theater, right?”
“A theater?” Jiang Li was stunned for a moment. “When?”
“Over a hundred years ago, probably!” Lu Yibei pouted and said, “That was a time of war, and such small theaters probably wouldn't have left any records. The old lady who told me is over ninety, and she heard it from her elders.”
“The theater mentioned by the old woman performed Sichuan opera, but their opera was different from others. Because it was close to ethnic minority areas, many ethnic minority instruments were added to the accompaniment.”
“Among them was the Jews Harp. Combining that with the content of the bounty description, I concluded that the urban legend in Happiness Community were probably related to that theater.”
Jiang Li stared at Lu Yibei thoughtfully for a few seconds and asked, “What happened to that theater later?”
“I remember that before Happiness Community was built, this area was always a cluster of dilapidated civilian houses. Even earlier, it was directly a wasteland.”
“At that time, I never heard of any urban legend incidents happening here.”
“It was burned down later,” Lu Yibei said.
“The old woman said that the people in the opera troupe, in order to protect the children who couldn’t evacuate in time, dug a tunnel under the theater. When the enemy troops came and couldn’t find anyone, they burned down the theater in a fit of rage.”
“Were they... all burned to death in the tunnel?” Jiang Li asked tentatively.
“Happiness Community was only built three years ago. Before that, the night had already begun to lengthen.”
“Logically, if dozens of burned corpses were buried underground, plus the dirty and chaotic environment at that time, urban legend should have started long ago.”
“They did,” Lu Yibei said, rubbing her nose. “The old woman said that when her elders were young, this area did indeed experience urban legend, and her elders were personally involved.”
— — — —
After the theater was burned down, no one lived in the area where Happiness Community is now located.
A year or two later, only dilapidated houses and overgrown weeds and trees remained in the vicinity.
Li A'niu, the elder in the old woman's family, first came to Hua City as a refugee to seek refuge with relatives.
However, at that time, there was war and chaos. People who were fine one day might not be alive the next, plus communication methods were backward.
When Li A'niu arrived in Hua City, he searched for a day but couldn't contact his relatives. As night fell, he was forced to go to these abandoned houses, preparing to make do for a night.
The abandoned houses were especially terrifying late at night. There was no one around. Li A'niu thought of some ghost stories he had heard as a child, and he felt a little scared.
“Don’t be afraid, staying at an inn for one night costs a lot of money,” he gently patted his face, wrapped his coat tightly, and ran towards the dilapidated houses.
Because no one took care of them, many trees around grew crookedly, looking like twisted human figures from a distance.
As soon as he walked near the square, broken houses, he saw a flickering fire in the woods ahead.
He slowly crept to the edge of the woods, and the sound of a hoe digging into the earth reached his ears.
Getting closer, he finally saw clearly that it was a skinny old man of sixty or seventy, with a kerosene lamp hanging from a branch beside him.
He swung the hoe, digging one pit after another in the ground, and for each pit he dug, he picked up a wooden board from the ground and set it upright.
Seeing the scene before him, Li A'niu instantly broke out in a cold sweat.
Those wooden boards, about half a meter wide and tapered to a triangle at one end, were the common simple tombstones in the surrounding areas.
In those days, when people died, few families had money to hold a funeral. They would wrap the body in a mat, bury it in the ground, and then insert such a wooden board, which was considered a proper burial.
In more tragic cases, leaving corpses exposed in the wilderness was also common.
The old man's behavior was very strange; he only dug pits and erected tombstones, but he didn't bury any corpses. He might not be human at all!
Li A'niu dared not stay long and quietly retreated from the woods.
As it was late and he was short on money, he steeled himself and returned to the abandoned houses, found a relatively intact one, hid inside, and propped the rickety door shut with a wooden stick.
He lay down on the moldy, stinky bed inside the house. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier, gradually closing. Just as he was about to fall asleep...
Suddenly, the window of the house opened, and a pale face appeared at the window. It was the old man who was digging pits and erecting tombstones in the woods.
He had followed him!
The old man climbed in through the window, walked straight to the bed, stopped above Li A'niu's head, and leaned down to stare at his face. He immediately closed his eyes, his heart pounding in his throat.
Just then, he suddenly heard the old man curse in a dialect, “You son of a bitch, after all that, you’re a living person? You scared the hell out of me!”
Li A'niu was stunned, then scrambled up and said, “Grandpa, you’re human?”
The old man was startled by him and took a few steps back, clutching his hoe tightly to his chest, watching him warily and cursing, “You son of a bitch, what am I if not human?”
“I thought...”
“A ghost?” the old man interrupted.
Li A'niu dared not respond, only watched the old man in front of him with trepidation.
The two of them remained in a stalemate for a while before the old man said to him sternly, “Alright, since you’re here, and it’s too late to leave, just stay for now!”
“However, don’t say I didn’t warn you: if you stay here, just stay in the house honestly. No matter what you hear, don’t go out. If you don’t go out, you won’t encounter... you know.”
After speaking, the old man turned to leave, but Li A'niu asked an extra question, “Grandpa, why is this area abandoned? I think the houses are built quite well!”
The old man ignored him, cursed “You son of a bitch!”, kicked away the wooden stick propping the door, and left.
— — — —
Hearing this, Jiang Li interjected, “It seems that the old woman’s elder definitely left the house.”
“How do you know?”
“Of course! Our Si...”
“Si?” Lu Yibei’s eyebrows wriggled provocatively, as if saying to her, “If you can’t round it out, you lose!” She looked so mischievous that it made one want to punch her twice.
Jiang Li’s face darkened, and she corrected herself, “Our master said that among the various urban legend incidents he has encountered, a large number of victims were attacked due to curiosity.”
In fact, people without spiritual potential, as long as their curiosity isn't too strong and they aren't particularly unlucky, are highly unlikely to be attacked by urban legend in their lifetime.
“Impressive.” Lu Yibei nodded in agreement, though it was unclear whether she was praising Jiang Li’s cleverness in rounding out her words or the theory itself.
“In short, that old woman’s elder did eventually leave the house. When he slept until the middle of the night, he heard gongs and drums resounding outside, zithers and harps harmonizing, someone singing opera, and children laughing.”
“Back then, even street performers selling cure-alls could captivate people for a long time. Who could resist the temptation of opera singing?!”
“He followed the source of the sound and found an opera stage in the woods where the old man had erected tombstones. Then, the children’s laughter and the instrument accompaniment all vanished at once.”
“Only a performer in costume remained on the pitch-black stage, with his back to the audience below, singing a cappella with rising and falling inflections. When he turned to run, the performer floated towards him with his back still turned. When he stopped, the performer also stopped...”
“Alright, I know there was a urban legend incident there,” Jiang Li interrupted. “Then what? Why were there no urban legend incidents for so many years in between?”
“That’s another story,” Lu Yibei said, grabbing the remote control from the table and tapping it like a clapper. “To know what happens next, please listen to the next installment!”
Jiang Li, “...”
“Alright, it’s getting late. Time to go to bed?”
Jiang Li, “...”
She sat motionless on the sofa, her arms crossed, staring intently at Lu Yibei, like a child who hadn’t finished a story and was pouting.
“This...” Lu Yibei scratched the back of her head. “Alright! To put it simply, someone later sealed the urban legend in this area, and it remained sealed for many years.”
“However, when Happiness Community was being built, they accidentally dug up the seal. There’s another story about that, which I heard from the uncle who operated the excavator back then. Do you want to hear it?”
Seeing the glimmer in Lu Yibei’s eyes, her expression bursting with the desire to tell, Jiang Li stood up, said coldly, “No,” and turned to walk towards the bedroom.
However, she really did have a knack for finding out these anecdotes. Jiang Li muttered to herself as she turned away.
“Hey! Don’t go! Let me finish telling you!”
Although it wasn’t trash talk, not finishing was still upsetting!
Lu Yibei chased Jiang Li to the bedroom door, only to see her sitting on the bed, revealing a kind smile, and patting the bed, saying, “What? Want to sleep together?”
Lu Yibei, “...”
