Paintings of Terror

Chapter 98: The Mirror Room

After Wei Dong barred the door from the inside, he fell into a state of confusion. He looked at the result of his hard work, which was a little over two jars of paint, and lost the desire to continue working.

He went to the window, which was latched from the inside so it should be fairly safe.

A view of the fast-running Ke Xun soon greeted Wei Dong’s eyes, and he stared as Ke Xun ran into the maze.

At this moment, Shi Zhendong’s voice came from outside the door. “Did something happen to Xiao Ke? Why did he run out so suddenly? Xiao Miao? What are you doing? Xiao Miao! Xiao Miao!!!”

Miao Zipei’s voice came, though it was uncertain whether he was excited or in pain. “Don’t stop me! I’ll never force anyone, but don’t block my freedom! I’m willing to sacrifice myself for this painting! I am willing to contribute my color!”

Wei Dong hesitated, but he believed in Ke Xun more, so he didn’t move nor did he make a sound.

Soon, he saw Miao Zipei flashed past through the window, followed by Shi Zhendong, who was trying to catch up but failing.

Wei Dong hesitated again, but he still dared not act rashly.

Finally, Ke Xun and Mu Yiran rushed over from the maze. Wei Dong let out a sigh of relief and moved the table and chairs away from where they were blocking the door, ready to go out.

But then, he heard Qin Ci eagerly shouted, “Everyone, go to the colorless room in the middle! The signature is in that room.”

Wei Dong paused, and for a while, he didn’t know who to believe. Until finally, Mu Yiran entered the purple room and gestured to Wei Dong, before quickly turning around and walking back out.

Soon there came the deafening sound of wooden boards being nailed. When Wei Dong went out to look, he saw that the others were nailing the door of the middle room with wooden boards—this was the door of the red room. However, because Zhang Tianwei and He Yu were gone, the room had turned from red to colorless.

Shi Zhendong’s voice came from inside that room, “What are you doing?! What are you doing?! We need to get Xiao Miao back now! He’ll give his yellow color to the shadow! Xiao Miao has been bewitched. We need to save him!”

Mu Yiran and Qin Ci were responsible for nailing the door. After a while, Zhu Haowen and Ke Xun walked in from the outside with tools such as hammers in their hands. “We’ve also nailed the windows from the outside. He won’t be able to get out.”

“Outrageous! What are you trying to do!” Shi Zhendong finally lost his mind and yelled out from inside the room, “We should stop Xiao Miao now! Let me go!”

Standing outside the room were five old members who had experienced many paintings together. At this time, everyone was silent.

Shi Zhendong yelled, seemingly afraid, “Is there anyone out there? Where are you? Where did you all go?!”

With a complicated expression, Ke Xun looked at the wooden door that had been nailed shut. “Brother Shi, about Xiao Miao, you said as much earlier. Didn’t you tell me, if he really did want to do something like commit suicidal pollution, we wouldn’t be able to stop him?”

“I…” Shi Zhendong started pounding on the door again. “This isn’t the reason why you shut me in! You’re afraid that the history of Xiao Guo hurting Mi Wei will repeat itself! You’re just unwilling to risk him taking us off guard and hurting someone, so none of you don’t want to go after him.”

“The shadow urgently needs yellow. I’m afraid Miao Zipei isn’t in the mood to hurt others,” Ke Xun said.

Next to him, Wei Dong nodded. “I heard Xiao Miao say earlier that he is willing to sacrifice himself for this painting and that he would never force others.”

The room became quiet. Shi Zhendong’s voice slowly calmed. “What is your purpose? Why do you want to curtail my actions?”

Ke Xun looked at the whole hall. At this time, the reflective glass cabinet had already been temporarily blocked with wooden boards. “When someone is alone in the hall, they can become easily bewitched by shadows, even our shadows on the floor. This bewitchment includes all reflective objects, such as mirrors, glass, and eyes that can reflect one’s own figure.”

Shi Zhendong was silent.

Ke Xun continued, “I was almost bewitched this morning. The shadow that tried to bewitch me came from the reflective image on the glass cabinet door. I never understood how the angle I was sitting at was facing the glass cabinet door. It was actually very awkward to have a chair in that position.”

“When you and Miao Zipei came out from the bathroom, I already discovered that Miao Zipei was bewitched. At that time, you pulled the chair out and asked me to sit down so we could talk about it. I found that the position of the chair was exactly the same as it was this morning. My figure would be completely reflected on the glass cabinet door. At the time, I was just suspicious. But when I thought about it carefully, I remembered that it was you who called me to sit down for breakfast, and it was also you who led me to that dangerous seat.”

“Due to my previous experience, I tried my best not to look at the glass cabinet door, but when I looked at you while I was talking, I saw my own figure reflected in your eyes, and I was almost bewitched again.—Three coincidences, could all these really be coincidences?”

“Just now, you have been emphasizing to me that we are all just thinking of ways to protect ourselves, not wanting to block Miao Zipei’s unnecessary sacrifice. In fact, you’re actually buying time for Miao Zipei. It seems that you have foreseen Miao Zipei’s determination to commit suicidal pollution. Maybe, you were the one who bewitched him?”

Shi Zhendong’s laughter sounded from inside the door. “Xiao Ke, you can really joke. I don’t have such great ability. Don’t think so much. Open the door quickly. We’re running out of time!”

Mu Yiran said, “I have always had doubts about how Guo Lixia got bewitched. Yesterday morning, you were in a bad mood due to the matter regarding Xin Beibei. You went down from the fourth floor to the second floor by yourself. About two minutes later, Guo Lixia was worried about you so she went downstairs to see you. Two to three minutes later, the rest of us came downstairs to the second floor, and I saw Guo Lixia talking to you.”

“According to the timeframe, Guo Lixia had almost no time alone in the hall on the second floor, but you have two minutes alone. During that period of time, you became bewitched and so you went and bewitched Guo Lixia.”

Shi Zhendong chuckled. “I became the big boss behind the scenes, but now you’re talking about how I confused Guo Lixia?”

“Because I didn’t understand this before, I couldn’t make a judgement. After listening to Ke Xun’s words today, I realized that you were using eye pupils at the time,” Mu Yiran said slowly.

“Then why had the clock not changed? Everyone who is bewitched will change the color of the clock dial,” Shi Zhendong protested.

“That’s a misunderstanding,” Mu Yiran said. “Only when people enter other rooms by mistake, or actually pollute the colors, will the clock change. In contrast, you were just following the prompts given to you by the screen behind the scene. You took no actions to pollute the colors so that other people wouldn’t become suspicious of you, nor would you be swallowed by the shadow because you have not violated the death condition.”

“Anyone who became bewitched wouldn’t turn into a stranger. They would retain their original characteristics, but will become more extreme in certain aspects. Similarly, these people would also be limited by their own IQ, resulting in events of various kinds.”

“Mr. Shi, you’re much smarter than those before you. You’re very good at lurking. It’d been more than 24 hours since yesterday morning, but you’ve been patient, looking for the right person and time. In this action, you want to use Ke Xun to cover-up Miao Zipei–Your main goal today is Miao Zipei, because the shadow is in desperate need of yellow.”

Ke Xun didn’t consider this layer. “You mean to say…”

The person who answered him was Zhu Haowen. “Once he succeeds in bewitching you, he will push you into the cusp of the storm and draw everyone’s attention to you, so that he can provide cover for Miao Zipei.”

Shi Zhendong’s laughter suddenly came out from the room. “You young people aren’t easy to fool, but it’s too late! Even I don’t know where Miao Zipei went when went straight into the black building! You can never find him!”

Silence answered Shi Zhendong, as if there was no one outside.

There was indeed no one outside in the hall. Everyone quietly walked out of the door and checked the first three floors of the round tower. They didn’t find Miao Zipei, and so they made a beeline for the building in the center of the castle.

“Is it the window in the middle of the third floor?” Qin Ci raised his head and looked up, visually checking the distance.

The others nodded. While in the maze, Mu Yiran had revealed a mystery that he’d previously observed.

—When standing at the northeast corner of the maze and looking towards the castle, one of the castle’s glass windows reflected bright light. Because this world had no solar light source, this reflected light was very strange and should be indicative of something important.

“Did you check this room when you came here yesterday?” Wei Dong asked.

“The buildings here are all pitch black inside. We could barely walk in any direction. Even with the lighting on our phone, we still couldn’t see anything. We had to grope in the dark through two rooms.” Qin Ci tried to climb the protruding rock on the outer wall of the building and discovered that climbing up to the third floor was not impossible.

Zhu Haowen followed Ke Xun and climbed up. “I hope this window will reveal a bright and shining world.”

The five old members, at times quickly and at times slowly, climbed up to the third floor. Ke Xun was about to smash the glass window with a stone he’d prepared ahead of time, but found that the window wasn’t locked. With a slight push from the outside, the window swung completely open.

In keeping with Zhu Haowen’s auspicious words, this room was really bright.

The moment everyone climbed in, they only felt that it was too brilliant, so bright that they couldn’t open their eyes for a moment.

When everyone adjusted to the brightness and saw the surrounding scene clearly, they were all taken aback.

The ceiling, floor, and walls of this room were completely covered in mirrors. Walking in was like entering the interior of a diamond and seeing their images reflected at every corner.

Ke Xun looked at the “people” all over the room, feeling dizzy.

“Be on guard, everyone. Don’t be fooled by your own reflection,” Zhu Haowen said.

“This…it’s hard not to become fooled!” Wei Dong rubbed his eyes and looked at the people crowding the mirrors. There were so many, he couldn’t even find himself.

Qin Ci cautiously stopped walking. “I don’t think this is right. We aren’t the only people in the mirror.”

Wei Dong let out a low shout and backed up two steps. “That over there, that’s Zhang Tianwei!”

Ke Xun followed the direction of his gaze but saw instead that, in a mirror on the ceiling, Xin Beibei was smiling. This smile was somewhat narcissistic, as if she was taking a selfie with her mobile phone.

“Are we still going in?” Qin Ci hesitated. He saw in the mirror on the floor that He Yu was looking up at them through it. He suddenly moved his entire face closer and dipped his hand in paint to paint a bright red pattern on the mirror.

“Miao Zipei! Are you there?!” Ke Xun shouted suddenly.