Paintings of Terror

Chapter 115: An Alternative Partnership Toward Life and Death

The “researchers” tirelessly made them press the power button every five seconds.

Although the electric current only switched on every five seconds, the unbearable pain it brought remained in the body with no reduction, and so they were given no buffer during the short power-off time.

This kind of agonizing pain needed to be endured, hovering at the upper limit of human tolerance.

It was unknown how long this repetition went on, but it was so long that even Mu Yiran’s body became soaked with sweat. Beads of sweat stubbornly rolled down his forehead. Suddenly, a few drops fell onto his eyelashes, hanging before his eyes.

He blinked, but to no avail. The sweat remained, as if deliberately trying to block his vision of the phone screen.

Mu Yiran closed his eyes and looked at the screen with his other eye. Unfortunately, after a while, dripping sweat also smothered this eye.

Everything became blurred, and no matter how he blinked, the sweat clung firmly onto his eyelashes.

If there was even one second of error, he or Ke Xun would surely die.

Ke Xun…was trying very hard to live with him.

Mu Yiran took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, let go.

Pause.

Would it be powered on again? It must. It must come through.

The moment the current ran through his body, he felt relieved for the first time.

Mu Yiran closed his eyes like this, dancing on the tip of a knife, counting silently, dangerously cooperating with Ke Xun to support both their lives.

The sweat on his eyelashes became uncomfortably greasy. Mu Yiran opened his eyes, and unexpectedly, the phone screen in front of him became clear again. But in the next moment, he saw that there was a low battery warning displayed.

There was only 4% left of the battery.

And dawn was still a long, long time away.

Once the phone ran out of battery and shut down, what would happen to Ke Xun?

It was impossible for Ke Xun to think that Mu Yiran had been silently counting down all this time, so he wouldn’t use this method to continue on. Even if Ke Xun had thought about it, he couldn’t be sure that he (Mu Yiran) would. Moreover, Mu Yiran also couldn’t be sure that Ke Xun would switch to silently counting down.

3% battery remaining.

They couldn’t make a sound, and there was no way to pass a secret signal. When the phone screen went off, there could only be one ending.

What to do? Would it really end here?

2% battery remaining.

Through so many paintings, people kept leaving along the way.

Mu Yiran thought that he had long become used to separation. He looked down on death, but at this moment, he realized that he was still unwilling to accept it.

1% battery remaining.

What would Ke Xun do?

He said “goodbye” to him.

This guy…he had expected this long ago.

The phone screen flashed as the phone prepared for shutdown. In three seconds, the entire Laboratory C would fall into a deep darkness.

Mu Yiran no longer silently counted down the time; instead, he firmly grasped the wire end in his hand.

The extreme pain dragged him to the edge of death, and every microsecond felt like hell, splitting his liver and gallbladder and shattering his nerve-endings.

It was very simple to escape. Just let go. Just let go, and he would be free, and he would live.

Sweat drenched his body. Mu Yiran raised his eyes and looked into the dark void. Sweat continued to flow into his eyes, bringing a stinging pain, but that pain was miniscule compared to the agony he was suffering at this moment. Not even comparable.

Time seemed to slow to an extreme crawl. Every second stretched infinitely, slipping slowly and slowly, bit by bit.

More than once, Mu Yiran hoped that Ke Xun would let go first, hoped and even longed for it.

Death was better than this agony.

But Ke Xun, that stubborn, foolish person, just held on like this. Not saying a word and never letting go.

Even if he hadn’t been gagged, that guy would definitely not say a word. He needed a spanking.

Suddenly, being forced to kill each other became an active contest, to see who couldn’t bear to admit defeat first, to see who was the stronger of the two.

Mu Yiran suddenly felt that his kid might have wanted to pull him over a long time ago.

However, as soon as he (Ke Xun) pulled him over, he (Ke Xun) wanted to die by his hand.

Time was still passing slowly, and the agonizing pain continued and continued to accumulate.

In the darkness of the dead silence, two people who couldn’t see or feel each other, relying on the death current that connected their two lives, walked through the sea of fire in an alternative way of joining hands.

After countless rebirths of life and death, amid exhausting overdrafts and weak breathing, the death current finally ceased.

The sounds of footsteps clashed away, and the straps that bounded his body instantly loosened. Suddenly, he could hear his own faint breathing in the silence.

Li Yaqing’s cry abruptly sounded. Howling and hoarse, she shouted incoherently, “I didn’t mean to…I didn’t want to kill…Why, why is this happening to me…”

No one could answer her.

Mu Yiran had never been as weak as he was now. Even the movement of reaching into his pants pocket to get his phone was a difficult struggle. His hand trembled so much that his phone nearly dropped to the ground.

Brushing the screen, Mu Yiran turned on the flashlight toward Ke Xun on the other side of the machine.

That guy was in the middle of a yawn, but he seemed to be too exhausted and too weak, so he just opened his mouth and gave up halfway. With tears from the yawn staining the corners of his eyes, he turned his head with great effort to look at Mu Yiran.

He didn’t even have the strength to laugh. He only bent his eyes into crescents, lifted the corners of his lips, closed his eyes, and completely collapsed on the chair.

Throughout the night, who could imagine what kind of pain they had experienced, and what kind of willpower they must have dredged up to manage to survive.

Mu Yiran put down the phone and closed his eyes.

The darkness was still this darkness, the laboratory was still this laboratory, and the painting was still this kind of painting.

But something, or some person, seemed to have changed.

Mu Yiran was awakened by a pounding on the door. Wei Dong yelled out in a mix of panic, anxiety, and sorrow. “Ke’er! Ke’er! Don’t scare me! Come open the door, Ke’er! You’re okay! I know you’re okay. Open the door, Ke’er!

Mu Yiran flashed the phone again and shone it to the side, only to see Ke Xun still asleep, softened into a puddle of mud on the chair, like a husky flopped in slumber.

Mu Yi stood up with great effort. The pain from last night was substantial, and the lingering aftereffects remained on his body for a long time.

He hobbled slowly to the door and took great effort to open the door.

Wei Dong, Qin Ci, and Zhu Haowen stood outside the door. When they saw Mu Yiran, their expressions relaxed at first, but they were immediately startled by his appearance. Qin Ci hurriedly asked, “What’s going on? What about the others?”

Wei Dong had already rushed into the room regardless. The moment he saw Ke Xun on the chair, Wei Dong roared and rushed over, knelt down beside him, and wailed, “Ke’er, Ke’er, you wake up-don’t scare me-I know you are not dead, you will not die-Ke’er-Ke’er, tell me you just fell asleep-you must have fallen asleep-wake up, wake up Ke’er—“

“I fucking… just fell asleep…Get away from me, you’re crushing me to death…,” Ke Xun’s weak voice rang out from the top of Wei Dong’s head.

“…” Wei Dong raised his face to look at him in shock, and then grabbed his face and turned it toward him. “You’re not dead?! You’re not dead?! Fuck your uncle!—That’s great —That’s great.—Wuwuwu, fuck your uncle—”

Soon after, Qin Ci and Zhu Haowen entered: “…”

“Don’t…cry…Your snot is getting on me….” Ke Xun struggled to sit up straight, pushing Wei Dong back with shaking hands.

“You’re so fucking stinky, but you’re hating on my snot…” Wei Dong wiped his face and stood up. After taking a picture of Ke Xun with his flashlight on, he said, “Why are you so wet? So scared you peed yourself?”

“…Can you urinate so evenly all over your body?” Ke Xun leaned back on the chair, not wanting to get up. Resting his forehead on one hand, he raised his head slightly to look at Mu Yiran, who was leaning against the door frame.

He couldn’t help but laugh. If they were going to be weak, then they will be weak together. Very good.

To live, of course, they must also live together.

Li Yaqing had cried and fainted. Next to her was the dead Cai Xiaoyan. After experiencing such pain, fear, and moral shock for two consecutive nights, Li Yaqing may have completely collapsed.

“Where is Zhang Hanrui?” Ke Xun asked Qin Ci, since they were both together in Laboratory D last night.

Qin Ci was silent for a moment before speaking, “Let’s get out of here and go above ground first. You’ll find out when you get there.”

Seeing Ke Xun trembling and trying to stand up from the chair, Zhu Haowen stepped over to support him before Wei Dong could. Qin Ci helped Mu Yiran, while Wei Dong placed the unconscious Li Yaqing on his back. They all left the underground area, exited the gated door, and went to the canteen on the first floor.

They saw Qi Qiang, Huang Pi, and Xu Zhen, all of whom were in Laboratory A last night. Qi Qiang’s head was bloodied, and he was washing the wound with water. Xu Zhen’s elbows, knees, and legs were covered with bruises.

“What happened?” Wei Dong was surprised. “Were you beaten last night? Wasn’t it just noise in Laboratory A?”

Xu Zhen’s expression was very ugly. “It’s only noise, but the noise was so terrible…” She glanced at Qi Qiang. “The injury on his head came from hitting it against the wall because he couldn’t stand the noise.”

She didn’t say how her injury came about, but it was clearly the same as Qi Qiang.

“It seems that Haowen’er and I were lucky,” Wei Dong said. “Fortunately, Ke’er had a good idea. Since we were knocked out, we didn’t feel anything. What about you, Ke’er? How did you get through last night?”

Ke Xun had no energy to answer. He lay down on the table and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. He could hear Mu Yiran, who was sitting next to him, speak briefly about what happened last night, shocking everyone into silence.

“Where is the girl in the room with you?” Xu Zhen asked Qin Ci.

Qin Ci’s voice was low, and he only answered with one sentence, “She was subjected to frontal lobotomy.”

Everyone fell into a deeper silence.

It seemed that Zhang Hanrui wasn’t lucky. She woke up halfway through the night.

“Is she still alive?” Ke Xun suddenly raised his head and asked.

“Alive.” Qin Ci paused, then added, “But…she lost language functions, most of her bodily functions, and the ability to think.”

It was no different from a vegetative state.

“Dongzi, go down and carry her back,” Ke Xun said to Wei Dong. “She’s still alive.”

Qin Ci said, “I’ll go. I just temporarily put her on the bed in the laboratory. She…has incontinence.”

When Qin Ci came back up with Zhang Hanrui on his back, the clothes on her were dirtied. However, among the remaining people, only Xu Zhen and Li Yaqing were women. Li Yaqing was still unconscious, and it was difficult for the men to help clean Zhang Hanrui up…They looked at Xu Zhen.

“I’m almost dead myself, so why should I care about a half-dead person?!” Xu Zhen refused expressionlessly.

“Let’s decide on the order of taking numbers right now,” a hoarse voice suddenly sounded. It was Huang Pi, the man who rarely spoke.