The concert hall was one level below the exhibition hall—underground level three.
After inviting everyone into the hall, Arlens Wood informed them that he would go make preparations and asked everyone to wait for a while.
The vast concert hall had plenty of seating, so Kisho chose the spot with the fewest people, also the one farthest back.
He quietly took out "The Fantasizing Musician", removed the flute from the box holding the Jade-Dipped flute, pressed it against the book, and the next second, the flute was swallowed into the pages.
He could feel that something new had appeared inside the book, but given the current situation, he couldn't spare the attention to examine it carefully.
Kisho looked toward the door on the left side of the concert hall stage and saw servants standing guard on both sides.
At underground level three, with the depth and an entire corridor of Nen-using guards—even if something felt wrong later, escaping wouldn't be easy at all…
He gently pinched the two badges in his pocket, slowly took a deep breath, and quietly waited for fate to arrive.
At this point, there was nothing more he could do.
Before long, many people filed in through the main door, then one after another walked to the center of the stage and sat down behind the instruments arranged there. These people all wore masks, but Kisho's eyesight allowed him to see clearly that the exposed skin of these people was even more aged than that of the ninety-year-old elders he remembered.
He slightly closed his eyes. Because he was seated in the very last row and there was no one within ten meters around him, he quietly focused Nen into his eyes.
The people on stage were also surrounded by En, but with just one glance, it brought to mind candles about to be extinguished by the wind, or the setting sun about to be dragged into the abyss.
(T/N: En ("Circle") is an advanced application of Ten and Ren. With Ren, aura usually envelops only a small amount of space around the user's body. En is when one extends their Ren over a wider area than normal, then uses Ten at the same time to contain and give shape to that aura, normally a sphere.)
He didn't know why they were still alive, but… clearly, they should have been dead long ago!
But those people seemed to sense something. They slightly turned their heads and looked toward Kisho.
Kisho hurriedly lowered his head.
His hand pressed against Calamity's Mouth in his pocket, trembling slightly from fear.
After everyone on stage was in position, Arlens Wood stepped gracefully onto the stage, sat down beside the grand piano at the center, and said:
"Everyone, welcome to the Demon King's Mansion, the Gate of Hell."
"Please, welcome the divine gift, and be grateful for the 'eternal life' you are about to receive—!"
His words immediately plunged everyone into panic, producing flustered noises, but the next second, as the first note drifted out, it was already too late.
In the empty concert hall, piano music echoed—clear, yet chillingly eerie.
"Ding…"
There was no more clamor in the concert hall.
"Ding…"
The masked figures on stage joined the performance, using different instruments to stretch the echoes of "Sonata of Darkness" into eternity.
"Ding…"
After the prelude came a rapid surge of music. Kisho saw that at some unknown point, everyone who had been seated separately for various reasons all stood up and staggered toward the stage, like puppets being pulled along, utterly unconcerned about tripping over people or chairs around them.
Their pupils had all turned a deep, intense black, their faces filled with intoxication—wanting to hear more, more!
Looking at this crowd, Kisho trembled violently. But in order not to reveal anything unusual, he still had to steel himself and pretend to be similarly controlled, following behind the group as he slowly moved forward.
In all his years, what scenes hadn't he seen—this kind of scene, he truly had never seen before!
This was already completely beyond what he could accept. He felt his sanity meter starting to drop—but the next second, he felt that his sanity might have dropped a little too early.
The people around him, completely devoid of reason, began to age rapidly—aging visible to the naked eye. Wrinkles densely burst forth from their skin, hair turned from the roots upward into withered white, and one could even hear the creaking sound of bones grinding as joints aged.
And the crowd… still burned with fanaticism, unyielding unto death.
The first musical segment was about to end, the final measure echoing throughout the entire concert hall.
Kisho's heart jolted. He raised his hand and took out his "Calamity's Mouth". The black mist that had originally condensed into one horn completely dispersed as if unable to bear the strain, and the skull within… for some reason, even at this moment of life and death, Kisho saw that skull rolling its eyes—like it had eaten something extremely poisonous.
He felt a warm flow run down from his nose. He raised his hand to wipe it, and his palm was full of blood.
Kisho: "…"
His gaze fell upon Arlens Wood at the center of the stage, who was also playing with mad devotion.
His fingers flew across the piano, his eyes containing nothing but the black and white keys.
Kisho used Gyo—at a moment like this, if he didn't use it now, there would be no chance later.
He saw countless Nen threads being drawn from the rapidly aging people around him, all leading to Arlens Wood at the center. The aura around his body grew increasingly solid, more and more solid, then expanded to a terrifying degree.
Kisho: "…"
The next second, Kisho felt every hair on his body stand on end.
Because the Gyo he used was sensed, everyone on stage except the piano-playing Arlens Wood noticed him, looked toward him, then removed their masks and staggered toward him.
The faces of these people were almost completely rotted. Some had eyes hanging outside their sockets, some even bore corpse spots that only the dead should have, some had noses rotted away, blackened teeth, and when they opened their mouths, the stench of decaying organs poured out…
And Arlens Wood also raised his head at this moment to look at him. His hands never stopped playing. After a sudden halt, the music rushed urgently from the second movement into the third.
"Ugh—!"
When Kisho heard the final phrase of the second movement—something he had never heard before—he felt as if his heart was seized and violently crushed. The blood in his body reversed instantly, his soul was stuffed into an extremely narrow space, and the notes directly bombarded his soul—pain beyond endurance, yet impossible to stop.
Inside his pocket, another horn of Calamity's Mouth shattered.
Kisho regained clarity. His entire body was trembling. He clenched his teeth, his gaze locked firmly onto the person performing.
"Absolutely—absolutely cannot let him keep playing!"
Kisho jumped up to evade the slow attacks of the undead on stage, then lunged toward someone beside him, leaping over and delivering a vicious hand chop to the back of that person's neck.
That person's Nen had been absorbed by Arlens Wood, so their "Ten" had nearly disappeared. They collapsed after taking Kisho's blow.
But to Kisho's surprise, this person did not continue aging—although even if the aging stopped, they would have less than a year left at most.
"…Save whoever can be saved."
Kisho fastened the "Song of the Four Seasons" to himself. With a tap of his foot, he dashed toward the stage, knocking down musicians who had been stripped of reason by the music whenever he could reach them.
"Bang, bang"—two more fell.
The Nen threads connecting these two to Arlens Wood snapped. Arlens Wood's figure stiffened slightly, and his face instantly twisted with ferocity.
Kisho watched in horror as this person's originally jet-black hair turned half withered white from the roots upward in an instant—exactly like the people around him who had listened to the music.
On stage, Arlens Wood sensed that two souls sacrificed to him were gone. His eyes filled with hysterical madness and rage. The third movement slowly transitioned toward the fourth, pressing forward step by step, like gradually devouring every place the prey could hide before the coming slaughter.
Looking at him, Kisho understood everything at this moment.
"The power of 'Sonata of Darkness (Piano)' is to absorb the life force of the listeners and pour it into the performer—but once the infusion is interrupted, the performer will suffer backlash."
He arrived at an extremely terrifying hypothesis.
"Infusing life force… This person is not Arlens Wood! He is, he is…"
...
"What's your name, kid?"—"He" didn't recognize me.
"But that's exactly it, Arlens Wood looked exactly the same as Mr. Helt Wood when he was young…"—He is identical to his "great-grandfather".
The previous conversations flashed through his mind, and endless terror surged into Kisho's eyes.
"This person… he is actually Helt Wood!"
With a deafening "Boom—", the wall at the back of the concert hall was smashed apart and collapsed.
Hundreds of undead, aged to the same terrifying degree, rushed in from behind the wall. Under the command of Arlens Wood—no, it should be said, Helt Wood—they lunged toward Kisho.