mesbooks Chapter 180 The Strange Drama Addict
Chapter 180 The Strange Drama Addict
Chapter 180 The Strange Drama Addict
Luo Shuo had already bent down and walked towards one of the rows of audience seats he had positioned.
He pretended to be an ordinary audience member who had just arrived, bending down as he passed in front of the seated people, actually checking if there was anything suspicious about this row of audience members.
He quickly emerged from the other end of the audience seats, returned to Li Jiuhe's side, and shook his head: "Nothing unusual was found."
Li Jiuhe pointed to the row of seats in front of him: "I'll check this row."
"Then I'll look at the next row."
The area that Luo Shuo just identified is these three rows of audience members.
The two split up and used the same trick again. Soon, Li Jiuhe finished checking the row he had inspected and found nothing unusual.
However, this behavior has already caused dissatisfaction among some ordinary audience members. After all, the play has already started, and everyone's attention is focused on the stage. They do not like latecomers walking around and blocking their view.
Li Jiuhe kept saying "sorry" as he walked out of that row, then looked back down at the row that Luo Shuo was inspecting.
Luo Shuo was seen standing in front of the person in the middle, bent over, seemingly saying something.
Because he was standing there, blocking some people's view, these people started to remind him, their tone dissatisfied, and they all told him to sit down.
As more and more people spoke up to stop them, the voices from that direction grew louder and louder.
However, everyone's discontent quickly subsided when Luo Shuo pulled out the handcuffs.
Luo Shuo only gave a warning and did not use the handcuffs, and the man who was talking to him also stood up and followed him out of the audience.
Li Jiuhe followed behind the two men, and soon they arrived outside the theater with the suspicious man.
Upon closer inspection, Li Jiuhe discovered that the man was indeed as Tong Cheng had described: he had heavy dark circles under his eyes, pale skin, a thin frame, and his mouth was slightly open as he breathed through his mouth, giving the impression that he was quite ill.
"What's your name?"
"Deng Jun. I—I haven't done anything wrong, have I, officer?"
Luo Shuo shook his head, took out a red cloth, no bigger than an ordinary towel, from his pocket, and was about to cover Deng Jun with it.
The moment Deng Jun saw the red curtain being taken out, he shuddered violently and instinctively tried to back away.
"You haven't done anything wrong." Li Jiuhe blocked his escape route and said, "I need your help with something."
Deng Jun had already realized what was happening: "You're not police officers, you're—you're investigators?"
"Since we know there are investigators, then we're all family here," Luo Shuo said. "I have a colleague who needs a bit of your acting skills—"
"But—but I—my abilities are—not much to begin with, I rely on this little bit—to survive—" Deng Jun stammered as he explained.
He tried to back away, but Luo Shuo had already grabbed his arm tightly, and Li Jiuhe was standing behind him.
"Having less of your acting addiction shouldn't affect your lifespan, right?" Li Jiuhe asked.
Deng Jun wanted to argue, but after a moment of silence, he shook his head.
"Thank you for your help." Li Jiuhe said gently, giving Luo Shuo a wink.
Luo Shuo immediately draped the red curtain over Deng Jun's shoulder. Deng Jun's body trembled slightly, his eyes were tightly closed, and he gritted his teeth, showing no further reaction.
A moment later, beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.
Li Jiuhe grabbed his arm and gently squeezed it, as if to encourage him.
According to Tong Cheng, Luo Shuo took down the red curtain in less than a minute.
Deng Jun let out a long sigh of relief, opened his eyes, and felt a sense of relief.
He then looked at the red curtain in horror, because he had just sensed that the owner of the curtain was extremely powerful, far beyond his ability to contend with.
He didn't understand what sequence lines were, nor did he know why Li Jiuhe and the other person were absorbing his energy. But since they were investigators and his own strength was limited, he could only do as they said.
"May I leave now?" Deng Jun asked.
"That's fine, thank you for your support of the Investigation Bureau." Luo Shuo nodded.
Li Jiuhe then took out a stack of money, pulled out ten bills, and handed them to Deng Jun: "Take this and eat something good to nourish your body."
Deng Jun was taken aback, not expecting that there would be compensation for this matter.
He hesitated for a moment before accepting the money and nodded to Li Jiuhe, saying, "Thank you!"
After saying that, he turned and walked towards the exit. Luo Shuo was surprised and called out to him, "Aren't you going to continue watching the show?"
Deng Jun shook his head quickly and then disappeared at the exit.
Almost at the same moment, a hunched-over man walked out of the theater, head down, seemingly heading to the restroom next door.
However, not long after the hunchbacked man left, Mu Nian also arrived at the theater entrance.
After seeing Li Jiuhe and the other person outside, she stopped moving, pointed at the hunchbacked man, and then turned and went inside.
Li Jiuhe and Luo Shuo understood and immediately went to greet him: "Wait, sir."
The hunchbacked man was immediately alarmed. He looked up and revealed a pale face with deep-set eyes and high cheekbones, looking frail and weak.
Li Jiuhe's first impression of this person was that he was also a passionate actor.
Moreover, it seems that he has noticed the scene of them arresting Deng Jun earlier and is on alert, so he is probably preparing to escape under the pretext of going to the toilet.
However, as Tong Cheng said, these people who are addicted to acting are at the very end of the sequence line, and their strength is generally very poor.
Without much talk, Li Jiuhe and Luo Shuo quickly intercepted the hunchbacked man and covered him with the red curtain.
Although the other party was very unwilling, they had no choice but to comply, and soon broke out in a cold sweat.
This time, Li Jiuhe took out ten bills and gave them to the hunchbacked man. The man was also very surprised, but he did not thank him. Instead, he took the money and turned to walk towards the exit.
Luo Shuo asked in surprise, "You don't watch plays anymore? Aren't you going to continue cultivating your passion for acting?"
The hunchbacked man waved his hand fearfully and quickly left.
"This theater is huge. I wonder if there are any theater enthusiasts inside?" Luo Shuo said to Li Jiuhe.
The two quickly returned to the theater and saw Mu Nian standing at the entrance.
Turning her head and seeing them return, Mu Nian pointed to one of the seats in the first row: "The very front, the thirteenth seat from the right. That person was about to leave, but then sat down again."
"Anything else suspicious?" Li Jiuhe asked.
Mu Nian shook her head: "I haven't seen it yet."
Luo Shuo also said, "This should be the last one left in this theater."
Before long, Li Jiuhe and his companion also pulled out the actor in the first row. However, to their surprise, the guy looked no different from a normal person.
But after being dragged outside the theater and examined more closely, it was discovered that he was wearing very thick clothes. When they were taken off, it was found that he was so thin that he was just skin and bones. His body and facial features were seriously mismatched, and he looked quite strange.
This must be what Tong Cheng was talking about, caused by various strange mutations.
They quickly covered the other person with the red curtain.
After the red curtain was covered this time, it trembled slightly, clearly absorbing much more of the energy of theatrical passion, perhaps even more than the combined energy of the two people from before.
Therefore, this third guy's abilities are clearly stronger than the previous two.
During the interrogation, Li Jiuhe also noticed that the other party kept talking to himself, and seemed to be mentally unstable.
Moreover, his thin body was concave and convex, as if he had a very serious illness.
As he absorbed the acting experience through the red curtain, his body rose and fell with it, making him look far more bizarre than the two men from before.
However, they still strictly followed Tongcheng's requirements and did not spend any more time, taking down the red curtain after one minute.
This time, Li Jiuhe took out money and gave the other party fifteen bills as compensation.
Watching the obviously deformed man timidly leave, Luo Shuo whispered to Li Jiuhe, "It feels like we could have sucked on him for another minute. It's a bit of a pity."
Li Jiuhe also felt this way: "It's okay, keep looking in other theaters, there might still be people who love to act here."
"9
Even he hadn't expected that at the end of the Tongcheng sequence line, there would be a sequence member with such a passion for drama.
These guys are well hidden; if you don't know their characteristics beforehand, you won't notice anything unusual even if you bump into them face to face.
Li Jiuhe felt that the people addicted to acting were like those at the very bottom of the Sequencer world, who, after being forced to awaken, began to eke out a living by satisfying their acting addiction.
However, it seems that the more operas they listen to, the stronger they become, but the side effect is that they become deformed and their minds become disordered.
Luo Shuo held the red curtain in his hand, which had already absorbed the passion of three actors. He felt that the curtain had become somewhat silky at this moment, and it was much smoother to the touch than before.
Back in the theater, the two approached Mu Nian.
Luo Shuo then used the red curtain to conduct another large-scale search and found that there were indeed no more suspicious people in the theater.
Instead, they located someone with an extremely strong passion for acting in the theater building next door.
Because the aura on the red curtain has now connected with the people here, Luo Shuo's tracking and positioning capabilities have become more accurate.
However, Luo Shuo also realized that within the entire Northwest Cinema area, it seemed that only the one he had noticed was still the last remaining theater addict.
This was a pretty good success; we found four people who are passionate about acting.
If he absorbs it all, the theatrical energy contained within this red curtain should allow Tong Cheng to achieve his desired goal.
"Investigator Mu, have you found any other anomalies?" Li Jiuhe suddenly asked.
Although he didn't ask anything else, Mu Nian seemed to know what he was asking, and shook her head: "I've been paying attention, but I haven't found anything."
The three of them quickly left the building and went to the theater building next door.
There are theaters and screening rooms on the second to fifth floors, and the screening rooms are showing movies.
Only the fifth-floor screening room was showing the Huangmei Opera "The Female Horse". The other screening rooms had a large audience, but the fifth-floor screening room had very few viewers.
However, Luo Shuo had located the screening room on the fifth floor, and the sign outside read "Revisiting Old Plays".
After the three of them entered the screening room without making a sound, and their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they found that the large hall, which could hold about three hundred people, was only occupied by a handful of people.
These people are scattered, which makes it easier for them to investigate.
At a glance, the audience was mostly older.
"Do you know who it is?" Li Jiuhe asked.
Luo Shuo did not answer, but instead turned his gaze to the middle of the last row.
Li Jiuhe and Mu Nian followed his gaze and saw a man with an extremely bulky figure, wearing a thick coat, sitting there.
Now they have experience, and they can tell at a glance that a person is abnormal.
The three of them stopped talking and moved closer to this row.
Just then, Luo Shuo exclaimed in surprise, only to find that the first seat on the far right of the last row was occupied by the hunchbacked man from before, who was also the second actor they had recruited.
The hunchbacked man looked frightened, glanced up at them, and then quickly turned to look at the bloated man sitting in the middle.
"Why are you here?" Luo Shuo asked.
Before the hunchbacked man could answer, the overweight man not far away spoke up: "He's one of my men, why can't he be here?"
This guy's voice sounds strange, as if there's too much flesh in his throat, and every word is squeezed out through the labored movements of those muscles.
Before Li Jiuhe and the others could answer, the bloated man asked, "Why are you draining our acting addiction? Don't you know my people are very easy to kill? Now that they've lost their acting addiction, how many shows will they have to watch, and how long will it take to satisfy me?"
"To satisfy you?" Luo Shuo asked in surprise.
Li Jiuhe didn't waste any words and said directly, "The Investigation Bureau is now requisitioning your acting skills. Please cooperate."
He estimated that this guy was the leader of all the theater addicts in the entire Northwest Cinema, and that the less skilled theater addicts should regularly hand over a portion of their theater addict energy to him.
The obese man slammed his right hand on the armrest of the chair, and a loud bang rang out. The large screen that was playing the video instantly went dark, and the entire hall was dimly lit except for the emergency exit light in the corner.
"You think you can just requisition our land like that?" the man grinned.
The seemingly normal head suddenly split open, and the skin on the face and scalp quickly peeled off, revealing a tender head covered in blood tumors.
Meanwhile, beneath his bulky clothes, it seemed as if countless crawling insects were wriggling, causing the clothes to arch and deflate repeatedly.
"You're asking for it!" Mu Nian's expression hardened.
With a flick of his finger, a white object the size of a fingertip flew rapidly toward the bloated man. The moment it touched him, the white object unfolded, forming a densely woven spider web that completely enveloped him.
The bloated man immediately roared, his whole body swelled up, and his clothes fell off in pieces, revealing his naked body.
Compared to other actors, this guy's abnormal condition is more severe.
His lower body was extremely thick, like a strongman. Some of his leg muscles were so swollen that they couldn't even be covered by his skin and burst open, revealing red muscles and white tendons, which looked extremely creepy.
However, his upper body was very obese, and the fat was distributed very unevenly. There was no fat on his stomach, but a huge fleshy lump bulged out on both sides, with fat hanging down and covering his waistband.
The back is either a fleshy growth, or loose skin and fat, and you can even see a flow-like state under the skin, like water flowing through it.
It's clear that this bloated man is far more powerful than the three actors from before.
Or to be more precise, he has the greatest passion for acting and the most experience watching plays.
The bloated man originally wanted to show off his strength in order to intimidate Li Jiuhe and the other two. He did not expect to encounter Mu Nian, a top-notch special investigator, and he was defeated in just one round.
However, this guy's emotions became increasingly out of control. Suddenly, he roared and his entire body exploded, with a large amount of fine flesh and blood flying everywhere. This area instantly turned into a terrifying scene of hell.
Because the self-destruction was so sudden, and because the spider web covering him had gaps everywhere, no one, including Mu Nian, could escape the rain of blood and flesh.
Mu Nian was also stunned.
She only wanted to trap this guy, but she never expected that the bloated man's emotions would be so extreme. He would start fighting at the slightest disagreement, and if he couldn't beat him, he would immediately self-destruct.
Luo Shuo wiped the blood from his face, his expression one of disbelief: "He—he self-destructed! His passion for acting—"
Clearly, this guy has the most acting energy, and once the red curtain absorbs it, it should be enough for Tong Cheng to use.
But now there's nothing left.
Mu Nian felt nauseous, so she took off her coat and quickly wiped it on her face.
"What should we do? I never expected this guy to be so extreme—"
Li Jiuhe spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, spitting several times before finally speaking: "It's alright, it's alright, don't blame yourself, there's still a way..."
"You have a way?" Mu Nian asked in surprise.
The scene shifts, and Li Jiuhe has already initiated the mission reset.
The three returned to the lobby where they had first arrived.
Li Jiuhe now knows that the bloated man, as the leader of the opera addicts here, is the strongest among them, and has a strange and irritable temper, so he cannot be attacked directly.
Otherwise, this guy will self-destruct at the drop of a hat, and the mission will fail immediately.
The hunchbacked man had clearly informed the other party, which made the bulky man wary.
To overcome this challenge, relying solely on Mu Nian's powerful attacks won't suffice; we might need to employ some strategic maneuvering methods.
So this time, after recruiting three more theater enthusiasts, they didn't let any of them go, but forced them to return to the theater to watch the play.
A moment later they arrived at the fifth floor next door and stood at the entrance of the screening room where the Huangmei Opera "The Female Horse" was being shown.
Li Jiuhe set up a reset anchor point here, and then suggested that Mu Nian wait for them at the entrance of the screening room, while he and Luo Shuo dealt with the bloated man.
The two approached the last row and quickly sat down on either side of the overweight man.
The overweight man turned and glanced at the two of them. Li Jiuhe spoke first: "Sir, don't be nervous. We are investigators and need your help."
As he spoke, he took out his identification.
This time, the overweight man remained calm as expected. He took Li Jiuhe's investigator's badge, looked at it, and handed it back to him: "Is there anything I can help you with?"
Li Jiuhe briefly explained his purpose.
The bloated man turned his head to look at the red curtain in Luo Shuo's hand, clearly feeling the pressure from Tongcheng, a place of much higher rank than himself, through the curtain.
"My passion for acting is my life! I won't give you my acting energy, so please leave." The bloated man said in a menacing tone, "But if you insist on attacking me, believe me, no one will get your acting energy!"
Luo Shuo was taken aback.
Li Jiuhe immediately nodded: "I believe in your abilities. Let's talk this out. If you don't give it to us, we won't make things difficult for you."
The bloated man looked at Li Jiuhe, and it was clear that he was quite satisfied with Li Jiuhe's answer.
He extended his right hand, which was covered in pustules and noticeably much larger: "Let me introduce myself. My name is Chang Qinghuan. An ordinary line sequence user, and a high-level drama addict."
Without hesitation, Li Jiuhe grasped the hand: "Hello, my name is Li Jiuhe, an investigator from the Special Incident Investigation Bureau."
Chang Qinghuan grinned and said, "To be honest, I have already achieved the top rank among ordinary lineage practitioners. When it comes to singing opera, no one knows it as well as I do. When it comes to fighting, the two of you combined might not be my match."
"Yes, that's definitely the truth."
Li Jiuhe already knew that this guy's mental state was not quite normal, so the current way of communicating was to go along with what the other person said.
However, if Chang Qinghuan were a high-level sequence user in the ordinary line, it would indeed be quite difficult for him and Luo Shuo to take him down, unless they kept resetting the mission, finding the opponent's weakness and then killing him with one blow.
Chang Qinghuan nodded: "You're smart to know what's good for you. Here's the deal: if you can answer my questions, I'll agree to cooperate with your investigation. If you can't, then get out of my way and don't get in the way of my opera. If you force me to comply, I'll expose myself."
"—You bastard—"
Before Luo Shuo could finish speaking, Li Jiuhe interrupted him: "Okay, it's a deal."
The thing he was least worried about in his life was answering questions. Last time, when he faced Pengpeng, the little boy playing hide-and-seek in the Lin family's blood curse, he had already mastered the tricks of answering questions.
Listen carefully.
Chang Qinghuan's expression changed instantly, as if her face had been instantly made up. She stood up abruptly, her hands forming delicate pinky fingers, her voice hoarse as if tearing silk, her tone and posture completely different from before.
At the same time, the entire screening room was plunged into darkness, except for a beam of light shining down from above his head.
With a theatrical accent, he slowly asked, "In *The Peony Pavilion*, Du Liniang experiences a dream in the garden, dies for love, and is resurrected because of love. Tell me, when her soul returns, she sings 'These flowers and grasses are loved by men,' is it infatuation or delusion? What is the reason?"