Paintings of Terror

Chapter 133: Ke Xun said “Meow.”

Ai…” the old man sighed. “This year, there’s a severe drought.? The water in the well has reached the bottom, and the villagers’ fields are so dry they’re about to go up in smoke. I’m afraid there won’t be any grains this year…And not only were taxes not reduced, it was raised…How will we live these days?…Alas.”

Listening to this, it was simply a typical story from ancient times.

Mu Yiran asked quietly, “Which official is in charge of the local area?”

The old man lowered his voice and replied, “The county magistrate.”

The county magistrate wasn’t a name, but no matter how they asked, the old man’s answer was only “county magistrate”.

Ke Xun, Mu Yiran, and Huang Pi walked around in this village, but couldn’t get any more seemingly useful clues, so they inquired where the county government was and rushed there.

The county office was naturally in the county, and the buildings and scenery there were exactly like the village, dark yellow everywhere.

Ke Xun inquired about the exact location of the county magistrate’s office. The three of them hurriedly shuttled between houses until they came to a house in the direction indicated by the last passerby. They were about to walk towards the door when they heard someone speaking from the open window next to them. “My lord, look here.”

Ke Xun was passing by the window, and when he heard these words, he turned his head and looked into the window, only to see a man with the appearance of a scholar with a double-handlebar moustache on his lips, holding a piece of drawing paper for another person to see.

The other person was wearing an official uniform and a black gauze cap on his head. Although the color of this world was dull, Ke Xun could still recognize the red color of his official uniform.

A government official?

Could this be the magistrate whose name no one would say?

Ke Xun looked in through the window.

The scholar raised the painting in his hand and said to the county magistrate, “My lord, you are just like this pine tree that is evergreen and immortal!”

The county magistrate stroked his beard with satisfaction and laughed. “Not deserving, not deserving.”

Ke Xun turned to look at Mu Yiran. “What the hell is this? The county magistrate’s window is opened to the street. Anyone who passes by can look inside. Do you think this is a painting bug or is it a clue left for us?”

Before Mu Yiran could answer, the people inside the room had already heard the movements from outside the window. The person who looked like a scholar pointed at Ke Xun. “Who are you?”

Ke Xun cautiously took half a step back and cupped his hand in greetings. “I was just passing through and happened to hear the magistrate’s voice and see the magistrate’s smile.

The scholar walked to the window and looked out at Ke Xun. Stretching out his fingers, he stroked the two ends of the moustache on his upper lip. With a sneer, he said, “Then be good and go herd your ox!”

After he said this, he stretched out his hand and closed the window with a slam, and then he and the magistrate laughed from within.

Ke Xun turned around and looked at Mu Yiran with a blank expression. “Do I look like a cattle herd?”

Mu Yiran glanced at the two fluffy cat ears on his head, pursed his lips, and carefully looked away at the surrounding area before saying, “Go herd your ox. I think this sentence should be a fixed line from the NPC. Of course, it might also be a clue. We can go find an ox and try it.”

After the two of them said this, they strode away from this strange county office window. However, they didn’t notice that Huang Pi was lagging behind and looking at the closed window blankly.

However, oxes weren’t easy to find. After returning to the village, the three of them went around for a while. They didn’t see any farmers plowing the land with oxen. Most of them were plowing the fields manually. But then again, oxen provided very important labors in ancient times. Their value exceeded that of slaves, and so ordinary poor people wouldn’t be able to afford to raise oxen.

Seeing that the sky was getting darker, the three of them decided to return to the room where they came from, following the signs they had made. On the way, they heard the cry of a young child, “My sheep, my sheep, my sheep, ah…”

They followed the sound and saw a man who looked like a gangster snatching a little lamb from the arms of a commoner child. How could a little child hold up against such a strong opponent? Very quickly, he was kicked to the ground and his sheep carried off.

Ke Xun said, “…There are so many NPC scenes in this painting. Whether we could see it or not, they would act there all by themselves.”

The three of them didn’t stop just because of this. It was getting dark, and saving their own lives was more important.

Following the tracking symbols, they returned to the mud brick house, pushed the closed door, and saw that it could still be opened. Ke Xun thought that, according to the usual routine, the painting wouldn’t allow them to return to the place where they came from. But since they could go back to the room, did that mean that, once dawn arrived tomorrow, the three of them could still choose to go to another world to look for clues?”

After pushing open the door and entering, they saw that Qin Ci, Luo Wei, and Li Yaqing had returned. The rest were still missing. Ke Xun couldn’t help but worry about Wei Dong and Zhu Haowen, so he asked Qin Ci, “Brother Qin, do you know which door Dongzi and his group chose?”

Qin Ci shook his head. “We were the second group to leave. Xiao Wei and the others should have left after us. But don’t worry. Haowen is a dependable person. I think they should be on their way back.”

Ke Xun took out his cell phone and looked at the time. Seeing that it was now past seven in the evening, he decided that if they hadn’t returned by 8 o’clock, they would enter the world they had selected to find them.

“Have you found any clues in your world?” Qin Ci asked Mu Yiran.

“Not for the time being.” Mu Yiran briefly told him about the world they had entered, and then he asked Qin Ci if they discovered anything.

Qin Ci’s expression turned weird. He hummed for a bit and slowly said, “The world we went to…was too bizarre. It subverted any of the previous paintings I’ve been to. In it…everything, whether it was buildings or trees, flowers or plants, even the people, were all…flat.”

The cat’s ears on Ke Xun’s head jerked upright. “Flat? Describe it in more detail.”

“Two-dimensional,” Luo Wei said calmly. “We likely entered a two-dimensional world, but this world wasn’t two-dimensional in the truest sense. A true two-dimensionality has no thickness. However, the scenery and people still have a certain thickness that’s about…the thickness of a piece of paper.”

“As an analogy,” Qin Ci continued, “it’s a bit like paper-cuts. All the people there were like paper people. The houses, the scenery, and even the water were all cut out of paper.”

Ke Xun was dumbfounded, and the tips of his cat ears trembled. “That is indeed quite bizarre, even stranger than the world we went to…Does the scenery and people have colors?”

“Yes, not only that, but the colors were also very bright,” Qin Ci said.. “The people inside were dressed in ancient clothes, a bit like the clothing style of the late Qing Dynasty.”

Ke Xun scratched his head and looked at Mu Yiran. “The painting seems a bit messy. The two worlds that our two groups entered are not only different in style, but also in different historical periods. The one we entered should have been before the Qing Dynasty.”

Mu Yiran nodded in agreement, and Qin Ci continued to say, “After we entered, we found ourselves in a fishing village surrounded by fishermen. We went around the entire village twice but found no clues, so we ended up searching house to house. We were only able to check seven to eight houses before we ran out of time, and most of the houses were left unchecked. We plan to continue searching tomorrow.”

As he was talking, they saw Wei Dong, Zhu Haowen, the curly-haired Zhao Haicui, and Zhang Lifeng, who had chosen the two longan kernels as his props, pushed the door open.

“How did it go?” Ke Xun was the first to ask.

Zhu Haowen and Wei Dong both stared at him.

“…What are you doing?” Ke Xun didn’t understand. “Why are you looking at me? Did the word ‘handsome’ just grow on my face?”

Zhu Haowen: “…”

Wei Dong: “…I swear I heard you ‘meow’ just now!”

Ke Xun’s face had the look of black question mark. “…Are you crazy? I only said four words, how, did, it, go, these four words.”

“Big brother,” Wei Dong turned his head to look at Mu Yiran, “you’re fair. Did Ke’er just meow first and then asked his question?”

Mu Yiran frowned slightly, confirming that Wei Dong’s words were true. Ke Xun was even more confused. Wouldn’t he himself know what words came out of his own mouth? He didn’t think he meowed. What the hell was going on?

Scratching his head, Ke Xun put this weird question aside and asked Wei Dong and Zhu Haowen. “Let’s not talk about other matters for now. Tell me if you’ve found any clues.”

Everyone: “…”

Seeing Ke Xun’s uncaring expression, no one insisted on continuing the topic. Zhu Haowen replied, “The world we entered was very weird. All animals were like people.”

Ke Xun was taken aback. “Don’t tell me you went back to the painting Animal World again?!”

Zhu Haowen said, “That shouldn’t be the case. All animals were normal size. There were no animals as big as the giant cows in that painting. And…all animals spoke human words and wore the same clothes as humans. That’s why I said they were like people.”

“That’s really strange…meow,” Ke Xun said.

Everyone: “…” Aren’t you the strangest one?”

“We searched for a while in this world, and found that there were no human beings and that these animals lived within a normal social order,” Zhu Haowen continued. “But we weren’t able to find any relevant clues…”

Before he could finish speaking, Wei Dong took over and said, “We were almost caught by a group of cats and taken to a detention center.”

“Then what happened, meow?” Ke Xun asked hurriedly.

Wei Dong glanced at Zhao Haicui, the ugly-faced woman with the curly hair who was standing next to him, and snorted. “It was because this sister saw the talking animals and started screaming, severely disrupting public order. Several cats wearing police uniforms rushed out from the side and wanted to catch us, causing me to drag her to pretend to be a hillbilly who had just entered the city for the first time, and finally they let us go.”

.

Qin Ci frowned. “Three doors, three completely different worlds. What theme does this painting want to express? Will the worlds in the remaining three doors be completely different from these three worlds?”

“What’s the name of this painting?” Wei Dong asked.

They all looked at one another. They had been watching Luo Wei right before they entered the painting, and so they failed to pay attention to the painting itself.

Only Mu Yiran said, “This work is called Pure Land, and the painter’s name is Mi Lun.”

“Pure Land? Is this painting related to religion?” Wei Dong shuddered. The psychological shadow left by the painting Faith still hadn’t abated even now.

“The painting style of these three worlds are also very different, and there’s no sense of religion at all,” Qin Ci said.

“Yiran, do you know much about Mi Lun?” Ke Xun asked.

“…Are you sure you didn’t just deliberately called someone “meow”? Wei Dong asked.

Ke Xun shot him a glance. “I’m talking about a person.”

“It’s over…” Taking advantage of the fact that Ke Xun and Mu Yiran were engaged in a conversation, Wei Dong whispered to Zhu Haowen, “Ke’er is confused. It must be that weird world they had entered. What should we do? He doesn’t even realize it himself! Do you think he’ll deteriorate to only talking cat words in the end? Fuck, this is awful!”

“We’ll think of a way.” Zhu Haowen’s expression was cold and solemn. No longer caring about Wei Dong, he fell into deep thoughts.