Paintings of Terror

Chapter 148: Flag Raised, Set Sail

Wei Miao, who was rushing back in a hurry, collided with Luo Wei, who had just stepped through the door. This gave Qin Ci and Wei Dong the chance to grab hold of Luo Wei and drag him back to the initial room. Much as he tried, Luo Wei could not push away Wei Dong, who had a firm grip on him. From behind his glasses, red eyes stared at Wei Miao. “Did you trigger the hidden world?”

Wei Miao cried and shook her head, “I was too scared… I was afraid that Nezha would kill me, I… I didn’t dare ask him where the sword was…”

“Let go of me!” Luo Wei turned to Wei Dong and shouted, “Let me go, I’ll go to Nezha and ask—“

“The world that Nezha Roils the Sea can trigger is most likely the world of Meijian Chi rather than Legends of the Book of Heaven,” Mu Yiran calmly said to him. In a few words, he summarized their analysis and so far, there was no obvious commonality between Nezha Roils the Sea and Legends of the Book of Heaven.

“Then—what other world is possible?!” Luo Wei asked, his eyes fixed on Mu Yiran, Ke Xun, and Qin Ci’s faces.

“That’s really hard to determine…” Qin Ci’s tone was heavy and awkward, and his eyes displayed the pity of a doctor for patients with no cure.

Luo Wei didn’t wait for him to finish speaking. He rushed to Ke Xun, eagerly stuffing a paper and pen into his hands. “Since your instincts are accurate, please draw another lottery for Yaqing, please!”

Ke Xun meowed a few times. Mu Yiran took the pen and paper and translated his words while writing on the paper. “He can’t write Chinese characters now. I will do it for him, but Ke Xun says that his instincts aren’t infallible, just like with Qi Qiang last night. So I hope you don’t put all your hopes on this, and you can say farewell to her while there is still a little time left.”

These words that came out of Mu Yiran’s indifferent mouth seemed extremely cold, but everyone knew that this was actually the only thing Luo Wei and Li Yaqing could do now.

Li Yaqing cried until she almost fainted, and Luo Wei frowned tightly and hugged her in his arms, his lips shaking uncontrollably.

What these two people said to each other, no one listened carefully, or rather, no one had the heart to listen. Wei Miao also sat down and wept bitterly. Qin Ci walked over and asked her softly if she needed to leave something for her family.

Ke Xun drew a paper lottery for Li Yaqing and saw that Laoshan Taoist was written on it.

Luo Wei’s pale face showed his despair at that moment.

If Ke Xun’s intuition was correct, then it was the world of Laoshan Taoist that could trigger the hidden world of Legends of the Book of Heaven. However, Laoshan Taoist was also a hidden world and hadn’t even been triggered yet.

Not to mention that there wasn’t much time left. Even if there was enough time, they would still need to figure out the world that would trigger the hidden world of Laoshan Taoist…

Luo Wei didn’t want to give up. He stepped forward to hold Li Yaqing’s treasure bowl prop, and wanted to take it with her and search at the last minute. However, the treasure bowl had become extremely heavy, and even with both their strengths, they could no longer move it. Not to mention, Li Yaqing had collapsed on the ground, unable to even stand up.

Luo Wei looked at the others in the room but didn’t ask them for help.

Who would help? Asking someone to help was equivalent to asking them to die for Li Yaqing.

Luo Wei sullenly released the bowl, walked to Li Yaqing’s side, and took her into his arms. His voice was now strangely calm, having returned to the rationality and calmness of a top student. He calmly told Li Yaqing, “Don’t worry. I will take care of Aunt and Uncle, and I will also completely crack the secret behind the world in this painting. I will avenge you. In this life, I will never forget you.”

Li Yaqing gripped the front of his shirt tightly, sobbing.

The box in the center of the room opened its lid with a pop.

Mu Yiran walked over and saw another piece of paper in the box, which read: Write the title of another cartoon you started.

Unsurprisingly, this was asking for the title of the hidden world they had each triggered.

Ke Xun, Mu Yiran, Zhu Haowen, and Wei Dong stepped forward and wrote on the paper in turn. Wei Miao, who had been crying bitterly, suddenly got up, struggled to come over, and also wrote a name: Meijian Chi.

This was indeed a hidden world that her world could trigger, but whether it would be useful now…was unknown.

Ke Xun asked Mu Yiran a few words in a low voice. He said that if he wrote the name for Ge Lei, would he suffer a backlash?

Mu Yiran pondered for a moment, then gently shook his head. “I will wake him up. If he can recover his mind, let him write by himself. After all, he is still alive and I don’t think you should write for him.”

Ke Xun nodded and watched Mu Yiran wake up Ge Lei, who had been unconscious. However, Ge Lei seemed to be really frightened and had completely lost his sanity. Even though he no longer screamed and ran around like last time, at this moment, he could only sit on the ground in a daze, as if he’d lost his soul. No matter who talked to him, it seemed that he couldn’t hear them at all.

“Go and write,” Qin Ci told Luo Wei, who was still holding Li Yaqing and refusing to move, “Don’t let Xiao Li regret it.”

After all, it was only because of Li Yaqing that Luo Wei was involved in this endless world of paintings.

Li Yaqing nodded repeatedly in Luo Wei’s arms, pushing him to write the name on the paper.

Luo Wei calmly got up and helped Li Yaqing stand. They both wrote the name of the cartoons on the paper, and then sat back down against the wall without saying a word.

Ke Xun looked at the silent Huang Pi. “Meow meow?”

Mu Yiran translated, “You really don’t want to live anymore?”

Huang Pi glanced at the two and said in a hoarse voice, “I’m tired of life. It’s not bad to die here.”

Ke Xun thought for a moment, then he suddenly took out his mobile phone, and turned on the music stored in the device. He flicked through the screen for a long time until he finally found the right tune. He clicked play, turned down the volume, and then handed the phone to Huang Pi.

Huang Pi took it, put it to his ear, and heard a distant but very familiar melody:

Sound the horn, choo choo. We spread out little wings and raise our white sail, swish swish, to greet the colorful sunshine.

La…La…Fly bravely, sing happily, raise the flag and set sail.

The seagulls ahead, choo choo, showing us the way. The waves rushed under our feet, swish swish, singing to us.

La…La…Fly bravely, sing happily, raise the flag and set sail.

Huang Pi listened and let out a low laugh, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth that had long been eroded by tobacco and alcohol.

“Flagship Cruiser,” he said hoarsely. With a smile, he suddenly closed his eyes. He leaned his head on the wall behind him and hummed to the music on the phone, even though his voice sounded awful and out of tune.

The stars and moon patterns on the walls and roof became hazy and dreamy, swaying, gleaming, twisting, slowly turning into adult faces.

In the box in the middle of the room came a playful and childlike music, like the opening song of a cartoon.

Wei Miao let out a heartrending scream.

She crawled on the ground, her whole body twitching, and the skin on her back wrinkled, as if she was a waistband and the elastic was being pulled out.

There seemed to be an invisible hand pulling her tendons out of her skin and flesh.

Wei Miao’s screams were so distorted that they didn’t seem human at all, and they went on unstopping. Ge Lei, who’d lost his sanity, also began to scream.

Even if you have gone crazy, you would still recognize pain. He rolled all over the floor, all the while his body was disappearing piece by piece, revealing his internal organs and bones, as if something invisible was gnawing at him bit by bit.

Wei Dong was so terrified that his body grew soft and he fell against the foot of the wall. He dared not look at this terrible, wretched sight. But his entire body was already petrified with terror and so he could only sit unmoving, unable to remove his gaze from this blood-filled scene.

Zhu Haowen turned his head away and focused his gaze on a certain door next to him. Even if he was now color-blind and couldn’t see the blood, he didn’t want to look at the deformed and mutilated bodies of these two men being tortured.

The third person to yell was Li Yaqing. Her yelling was not a scream, nor was it a cry of pain. Instead, it was one of terror.

An irresistible force was emerging from the treasure bowl, dragging her into the basin.

Luo Wei desperately hugged her, but he was nothing in the face of that power. Ke Xun ran over to help, even though he knew it was impossible to resist.

In the end, Luo Wei could only watch as Li Yaqing was dragged into the basin. It was unclear what space the dark hole-like mouth of the basin led to, but it swallowed her completely, yet rejected him and excluded him no matter how he tried to jump in after her.

Ke Xun pulled Luo Wei away and held his shoulders to give him useless comfort. Luo Wei was panting hard, trying to make himself accept this reality as soon as possible.

The mood had just calmed down a bit when they suddenly heard noises from the treasure bowl. They both stared at it, only to see a person suddenly and vigorously being spit out. That person flew in the air and landed heavily on the ground.

Looking closely, it was the dead Li Yaqing.

Luo Wei was about to go and pick her up, when he suddenly heard another sound from the treasure bowl. He watched as another person was violently spat out and fell heavily to the ground, as if it was a torn sack of garbage being thrown.

His gaze fell to the body, and unexpectedly, it was another Li Yaqing.

A dead Li Yaqing.

Luo Wei stood frozen on the spot.

Inside the treasure bowl, there were repeated noises, and Li Yaqing’s corpses spewed out from the mouth of the basin again, again, and again, one, two, three, a dozen.

“Stop — You bastard— stop —“ Luo Wei collapsed suddenly, tugging at his hair with both hands, and screaming at the treasure bowl as if his heart was breaking.

Ke Xun stepped forward to hold him, wrapping his head in his arms, preventing him from watching this extremely cruel and vicious scene.

Seeing the corpse of a lover had already brought unbearable pain, but the cruel and vicious power had to make a dozen of them and throw them out like garbage before his eyes.

Ke Xun was so angry that the blood vessels on his forehead protruded.

But he couldn’t do anything, so he could only hold the crazed Luo Wei in his arms.

Mu Yiran stepped forward, bent over to hold one of the legs of the bowl, and lifted it upward. The big copper basin abruptly slammed down, but Mu Yiran lifted it again and managed to turn the basin over and upside down.

The mouth of the basin was blocked by the ground and finally stopped spraying out corpses.

Ke Xun turned his face to look at the entire room. Wei Miao was also dead, the flesh on his back bunched up. Ge Lei’s upper body had already been “eaten” and his lower body was still being consumed by that invisible mouth.

But at this moment, Huang Pi, who was still alive, was being embedded into the wall.

The protagonist of Laoshan Taoist had learned the technique of walking through walls in a dream.

Only half of Huang Pi’s face and one hand were still exposed outside the wall. This hand still held Ke Xun’s phone unwillingly.

“…Raise…flag…set…sail…” Huang Pi continued to hum with difficulty, until at last, his entire face was embedded into the wall. The only things left out was the Confucian scarf and the one hand that was once stained with the sins of the world but now held tightly onto Ke Xun’s phone, clinging to the song he’d sang as a child in Kindergarten.

Xida: I feel sad for Huang Pi. Maybe I am romanticizing, but I imagine him as an innocent, hopeful boy once. Because he loved cartoons, he wanted to be a cartoonist when he grew up. But the harshness of his life twisted him unwillingly into what he is today. The author did a great job using the reticent Huang Pi and the unapologetically abusive Qi Qiang as foils to one another.

Also, I wonder if the author forgot that Ke Xun couldn’t write Chinese legibly, or maybe the painting could understand squiggles?