musicians of old

Chapter 837 The Fallen Artist
It turned out to be Fanning's phone.

The bright white light we saw earlier was actually emitted by the phone.

Its flash was inexplicably on, and it was buried in the snow, a little shallower than Fanning's position, with the light shining directly on Fanning's face.

Fanning wiped the snow off her face and held up her phone to examine it.

The andante music that "the whole world is resounding" seemed to be something Fan Ning had just been too distracted about; it was clearly coming from his phone's speaker as well—during his previous trip, he had indeed transferred a copy of the "Andante" file, which he had finished writing in the "Sibelius" software on his computer, to his phone.

In such a cold, snowy mountain area, a phone should normally not turn on if it's having a problem, but now it's stuck on the screen, the flash can't be turned off, and music files are playing on a loop.

That's one kind of problem, I guess.

Fanning continued digging into the snow, and soon struggled to sit up, peeking his head out from the ground.

The glacier trails were still endless and undulating, still bitterly cold, but the wind had stopped.

The world possesses an indescribable sense of stillness.

How much time has passed? Is this still near the spot where the group encountered the avalanche? Is it still at the fork in the valley shortly after they changed course towards the secret mountain?

It was both similar and not similar. Fan Ning was just a tourist, not a guide, so he couldn't be sure. He just felt that he wasn't completely exhausted, and he wasn't hungry either. His whole physical and mental state was as indescribably cold and still as the air in the snow mountain.

"Ruoyi! Ruoyi!"

"Joan!—Are you still there?—Can you hear me?—"

Fan Ning cupped his hands together and shouted a few times.

There was no response; the shouts vanished at the edge of the sky, like sand running dry in an hourglass.

The sky presented a strange "twilight," a deep blue and black, with countless stars flowing down like rivers. This was certainly not "daytime," but looking out, the undulating glaciers had quite good visibility, making it seem as if the sun had just set and night was about to fall.

Logically, if it were the latter state, it would be fleeting and then enter a deeper, more empty blackness, but in reality, it did not.

The light and shadow of the entire world seemed to be suspended between the states of "daytime" and "night".

"Ruoyi! Ruoyi!" "Qiong! Qiong!"

Fan Ning shouted as he walked.

Leridge's men were gone, and Fanning's companions were gone too.

Am I the only survivor with such a low probability?
Thinking about everything that has happened and been experienced in the past ten days since that concert, what a strange life this is, what a strange ending this is.

Fan Ning wanted to make a self-deprecating joke, but she still didn't give up the search. Although she had no tools or food left, at least she could still walk for now.

He continued walking uphill along the slope, shouting as he went.

The andante music continues to flow, the orchestra thickens the texture of the development section, but the anticipation is struck by the successive onslaught of loneliness, leading into the undulating triplets of the interlude.
"boom."

As Fanning walked, her toe suddenly kicked something stiff!

someone! ?
Fan Ning's expression changed, and he quickly squatted down to examine it. It was a frozen corpse.

Judging from the black texture of these trousers, they definitely don't belong to Ruoyi or Joan, but they also don't resemble the orange-red mountaineering suits worn by Ririch or his men.

Fan Ning, filled with doubt, quickened his pace in digging through the snow.

After the outline of the corpse was mostly cleared out, Fan Ning's doubts deepened.

This was actually a gentleman in a suit and tie! And, in his right hand, he was holding a gleaming trumpet!

A musician in an orchestra?

What's even stranger is that Fanning felt the gentleman looked somewhat familiar. Despite his European appearance, Fanning subconsciously had a sense of familiarity, as if he had "worked with him before," and even felt as if he were "one of the people standing in a line in a church or similar place."
After a premonition and a sense of déjà vu rose in his mind, Fan Ning deliberately slowed down his pace as he walked up the ridge.

He quickened his search with his eyes and occasionally kicked along the way.

Sure enough, once he kicked one, he kicked another. Not long after, he kicked another large foreign object.

Next to a gray toolbox, Fan Ning followed the clues and found another male corpse. He opened the toolbox left behind by the corpse and found carving tools such as chisels, hammers, and bow handle pliers.

This appears to be an artist who works as a sculptor!
Some of the tools inside came in handy, so he no longer had to dig through things inefficiently by hand. Fan Ning frantically swung the shovel for a while, and after feeling a bit tired, he rested for a bit before walking around some more.

Then, he made an even bigger discovery.

Following a shallowly buried double bass case, he found a dozen or so frozen zombie bodies lying haphazardly in various places!
And scattered all over the ground were various musical instrument cases, paint boxes, picture frames, drawing boards, clothes, shoes, food packaging bags, and even broken glass products, which may have originally been lamps.

Could this be the same group of artists who perished in the previous wave of "commissioned" accidents?

This possibility is certainly the most likely, but some details discovered inadvertently made Fanning even more puzzled, such as the overly old-fashioned clothing, the less-than-advanced tools, or a dark brown nitroglycerin bottle with a production date of January 22, 1890.
"Oh right, the sheet music!!"

Fan Ning pondered for a while, then suddenly remembered what Joan had relayed about her father in the tent a few nights ago.

"The worm is a product destined to proliferate under the law of causality, and it cannot be ended. However, only the worms at the end of things grow fat and strong. Destroying the 'Secret Realm of Apocalypse' will make them wither. Then, when the signposts to the secret peak are destroyed, the 'sanctuary' that helps me resist the erosion of 'flash thoughts' will appear."

There were no more swing signs along the way, and Fanning couldn't be sure if Joan was still alive, or if any "sanctuary" had appeared that could protect her from the corruption of the Flash Curse.

However, Fan Ning still wanted to do her best to fulfill her promise to destroy the score of "The Secret Realm of Apocalypse".

"Strange, there are so many artists' corpses, so many instrument cases, and music stand remains."

Fan Ning searched everywhere for a while, including the space under the body and pockets where he could reach in; he looked everywhere he could.

He always carried a lighter in his pocket, making it easy for him to light papers.

But he couldn't find any sheet music, let alone any sheet music that resembled "The Secret Realm of Apocalypse".

"Hmm? There's a booklet in the lower compartment of this double bass case."

Fanning picked up the old booklet, which had a vintage feel to it. The cover and contents were handwritten in German cursive script.

"The Most Secret Chamber of the Core of the Umitra Cult?"