Paintings of Terror

Chapter 152: Goodbye

In a voice choked with emotions and while tightly curled up into himself, Wei Dong cried at the door of Tiger Learns a Skill. “Ke’er–Ke’er–come back right now! Come back to me! Ke’er–”

A big cat crashed through the door and slammed into Wei Dong, knocking him to the ground and smacking the back of his head. When he looked up, he saw the big cat leaped over and jumped into Mu Yiran’s embrace.

“Ke’er–” Wei Dong scrambled up, horrified. “Has he completely turned into a cat?! What should we do?! What should we do?! Can he still leave the painting? Big Boss! Big Boss! What should we do?!”

“It’s okay,” Mu Yiran said in a calm voice, hugging the big cat in his arms. “He hasn’t completely changed yet. His pupils are still human. There’s still time–”

It was now exactly 11 o’clock.

The lid on the box in the middle of the room popped open.

A stack of brightly colored cards were arranged at the bottom of the box. Printed on the cards were the posters of the 13 cartoons, lacking their titles. Next to the cards was a pen.

There were no instructions, only these cards and this pen.

“Is it asking us to write the corresponding film title on the card?” Wei Dong wondered. “Doesn’t this seem too simple?”

“It’s not simple at all.” Qin Ci pointed to one of the cards. “We don’t know the name of the cartoon in which Zhao Haicui died.”

Wei Dong was stunned, and it took a long time for him to murmur, “So… we will die in this painting…”

“Xiao Ke also didn’t know the title of this film?” Qin Ci was also a little worried.

Ke Xun only licked his paw, as if he didn’t understand what Qin Ci was saying at all.

“I believe that there aren’t many old cartoons that I haven’t seen, but I’ve never heard of this one before.” Qin Ci frowned, thinking hard.

“So the last problem is this, something unexpected,” Luo Wei, who had been silent all this time, finally said.

“No, this is a logical question,” Mu Yiran said, “If every door of the hidden worlds is symbolic of the beginning and the ending of each stroke in the Mi(米) character signed by Mi Lun, then the title of each cartoon would signify either the starting point or the ending point of a stroke. Now we have to “write” the Mi(米) character and connect the starting point and the ending point in each stroke.”

“But what can we do? None of us have ever seen this cartoon before!” Wei Dong sadly watched as his closest friend, while resting in Mu Yiran’s embrace, scratched his own chin with his hind leg.

“No matter what, let’s write down the other titles first,” Qin Ci said.

Time always flies at the critical balance of life and death. In the end, everyone stared desperately at the last card.

Once it reached 12 o’clock and they still hadn’t come up with the name of the cartoon, would everyone die here together?

“How is it possible for us to guess the title of the film…” Wei Dong murmured. “This is different from guessing right or wrong, guessing the pros and cons, or even guessing from a multiple choice of one to nine. There are so many Chinese characters, how can we make up a cartoon title? Who even knows how many words there are in the title…”

“This is no different from finding a needle in a haystack…” Qin Ci also muttered.

“Perhaps we can still use the classification method, the elimination method, or various methods to narrow down the scope of the guess,” Luo Wei said in a cold voice, his gaze falling on Li Yaqing’s corpses that were scattered around the room.

Everyone knew that Luo Wei had fallen into hatred and grief once more, because even as a top student, he still couldn’t think of a more useful, scientific method.

“Meow–” Ke Xun let out a long cry, then raised his head and looked at Mu Yiran with a cute expression.

His meow didn’t have any meaning; it was just a sound to signify his happiness and sense of intimacy. He was very close to the edge of completely turning into a cat, and so he’d forgotten his human emotions and thoughts.

Mu Yiran looked down at him, saw the pure animal-like expression on his face, and his heart tightened.

Once Ke Xun completely became a cat, he would forget all the emotions he had when he was a human, losing his memories of the happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy of humanity, and even forgetting the carefree childhood memories of watching cartoons.

This can’t happen.

He won’t allow Ke Xun to lose all of those things.

Mu Yiran lifted his gaze and quietly looked at the card in front of him. Then he said, “All cartoons have a blueprint behind them. Some come from fairy tales, some come from myths and legends, and some come from various historical points.”

“The story of the rabbit throwing itself into the fire has such a bizarre setting, a strange plotline, an obscure metaphor, a cruel style, and a mythical ending. So, I don’t think it’s blueprint comes from fairy tales.”

“If it comes from myths, legends, or various other historical records, there should be traces that we can follow.”

“The old man in the story was dressed in rags and his complexion was wan. What if it was us living in such a cave in a snowy, deserted mountain ridge?”

“We may be cold and starving to death,” Qin Ci replied.

“If this story wasn’t a fairy tale, then why was there a monkey, a fox, an otter, and a rabbit in the cave next to the human? Did they see the fire in the cave so they came to keep warm?” Mu Yiran calmly analyzed. “There were many animals that can come to keep warm, so why only these four animals? The setting here was too powerful, and so I think the purpose had nothing to do with keeping warm.”

“Among them, the monkey, the fox, and the otter were holding things in their hands.The monkey was holding a fruit, the otter was holding a fish, and the fox was holding a lizard.”

“We all know that monkeys mostly eat fruits, and it’s reasonable for otters to eat fish. If it doesn’t matter whether foxes eat lizards or not, then on the surface, the food all three animals held in their hands were things that they eat on a daily basis.”

“They came to this cave with their own food in hand but didn’t eat it themselves. What was the purpose?”

“The rabbit was obviously the same as them. It came to this cave for a certain purpose, but if the other three animals brought their own food, then why didn’t the rabbit do the same?

“If the rabbit also brought its own food, what would it hold? It could only be grass. The saying that little rabbits eat white radishes is only in children’s fairy tales. Of course, the rabbits fed by humans can eat radishes, while it is more convenient for wild rabbits to eat the grass all over the mountain, it’s? not realistic for it to go to the fields and pull radishes.”

“Then let’s take a look at the nature of the food held in the hands of the three animals–fruit, fish, and lizard. When the rabbit arrived, it could only bring grass, so why didn’t it?

“If we consider that the ragged old man was so cold and hungry that he was about to die, is it possible to speculate this: the food that the monkey, the otter, and the fox were holding was for the old man?”

Qin Ci, Wei Dong, Zhu Haowen, and even Luo Wei, all stared at his face, as if they had been enlightened.

“Although lizards are not common human food, they also have edible meat,” Mu Yiran continued calmly. “Fruit, fish, and meat can all be used as food for the elderly, but grass can’t, so that was why the rabbit had nothing in its hands.”

“Just because of this, the rabbit wanted to commit suicide? If so, this rabbit’s pride was too strong.

“And why were these animals even offering their food to the old man?”

“If we consider what happened when we followed the plot previously, the old man took the rabbit into the sky and placed it in the moon. This shows that the old man isn’t an ordinary person but a god.”

“Do gods need animal foods? Will gods go hungry and hide in caves?

“Obviously, this is common in myths and legends. Gods turn into mortals to test human nature, but there are no mortals in this story, only animals.”

“According to the usual routine, most of the people who could pass the test of the gods and ascend, become immortals, and gain the Dao, or those who achieve their happy endings, most are personally guided by the gods.”

“Then, in this story, it was this rabbit who was personally guided by the god. It was this same rabbit who came with nothing in hand who got to ascend, while the other three animals who brought food did not.”

“The fundamental reason for this, I think, can only be related to the rabbit’s behavior of throwing itself into the fire. And, if the reason why the rabbit threw itself into the fire was because it felt ashamed for not bringing food, then why would the god guide him? Therefore, I think there can be only one reason as to why it was able to pass the trial set by the god and ascend.”

“The rabbit threw itself into the fire, not because it was ashamed, but because it had no food for the old man to eat, so it treated itself as food and threw itself into the fire for the old man to eat.”

“Fuck–” Wei Dong was shocked.”This story is simply–has one–I don’t even know what to say–”

“Cruel kindness, tragic and humble,” Mu Yiran said.

“Yes!” Wei Dong frowned and nodded. “I don’t like this story.”

“This kind of plot can be seen in specific stories,” Mu Yiran said. “This story has a strong sense of enlightenment, comprehension, and martyrdom, so I think the blueprint of this story lies not in fairy tales nor in folklores but in doctrinal fables.”

“Although I haven’t watched cartoons, I do vaguely remember seeing a popular science program on TV. I don’t know the themes of this program, but it talked about doctrinal fables.”

“I have completely forgotten the content of the story, but I remembered the name of the fable that was quoted by the narrator. I thought that the name was strange and interesting, so it left an impression on me.”

“The name of that fable is called Buddhist Birth Tales: Rabbit Birth Tales, and it specifically mentioned that fable, which has been adapted into a handed-down story. The name of the story is…”

Mu Yiran picked up the pen and wrote down a name on the card:

“The Rabbit in the Moon.”

At the moment when the time on their phone showed zero, the box in the center of the room emitted thousands of bright lights, accompanied by a burst of sweet, childlike music. A picture frame faintly emerged within the lights, and in the center of the frame were two words full of fairy tale, just like the two most unfinished and reluctant words shown to children at the end of each old cartoon:

Goodbye.