Paintings of Terror

Chapter 176: Frame

This red word ‘rain’ was written with great difficulty, especially the last stroke, where the second point on the right side seemed to be in a state of trailing down.

It was conceivable that this was the state Yu Ji was in when he was writing the word, and by the time he’d barely managed to finish, he was probably already dead.

“Yu Ji’s internal organs had ruptured, but he still insisted on writing the word ‘rain’.” Ke Xun checked around for more words but there were no other marks, only this solitary “rain”. “I don’t think this is his last words. It should be a kind of signal. Yu Ji was in so much pain that he couldn’t wake Qin Ci, and so he could only use his own blood to write this word on the wall?”

“They were in the same room last night. If Yu Ji had wanted to say something, he would have already said it last night.” Mu Yiran looked at the word “rain” from multiple angles, but shook his head slightly. “Yu Ji tried his best to write down what happened at the last moment of his life.”

“You mean, what Yu Ji saw before he died, or maybe he also received a call before he died?” Ke Xun’s train of thought followed closely with Mu Yiran’s.

Mu Yiran walked over and looked at the phone in the room. This phone was much more advanced than the one at the police dormitory, and it would at least allow them to check the caller ID. There was no fingerprint DNA testing in this painting, but Mu Yiran still put on gloves before he pressed the query button. “This phone only received two calls last night, both from our dormitory numbers. You called at 11:00, and the other was called out to Qin Ci at 4:00 am, when we called the hospital for help.”

Indeed, Ke Xun had called Qin Ci last night and told him about looking for the signature. Thinking of this, Ke Xun’s brows gradually stretched, and he ran to Yu Ji’s bed to study the word “rain” once more.

“Hey, look, the way the word ‘rain’ is written is different from how we usually write it. We usually write the four dots in it as short diagonal slashes, but the dots here are all horizontal. I just thought that it was his unique writing style as a painter, but actually…” Ke Xun wrote the word repeatedly on his hand. “Don’t you think the word is a little short as a whole?”

Mu Yiran looked at Ke Xun with appreciative eyes. “It seems that this isn’t a single character but a prefix.”

This word for rain was actually the prefix of the painter’s signature, Yu Beiguo.

Ke Xun didn’t dare imagine that he had actually made an important suggestion…”If this name could be added to the long list of painter’s signatures that Luo Wei had written last night, we might have been able to guess it faster.”

“Actually, Luo Wei had written the names, but I don’t know if it was because the pen was running out of ink or the words were being blocked, I could only vaguely see the strokes and scratches of each word, and there was no color,” Mu Yiran speculated. “This name is very important, and so the people behind the scenes are trying their best to block it.”

“If Yu Ji was able to write this word completely before he died, he might have also been blocked.” Ke Xun still couldn’t understand why Yu Ji would write this name. “I already called Qin Ci to remind him last night, and he said he would notify all members at the hospital. Yu Ji should already know it, so there’s no need to write this name out to remind everyone again.”

“Unless the name Yu Beiguo had other important meanings to Yu Ji,” Mu Yiran added, lost in thought.

“The night when we first entered the painting, both Yu Ji and Su Benxin mentioned the person Yu Beiguo. However, both of them said that they were not familiar with this person. I remember that Yu Ji seemed to have said that he had just returned to China and didn’t know Yu Beiguo at all.” Ke Xun remembered very clearly that when they were talking about this, they had said that Yu Beiguo had committed suicide due to depression.

“Maybe at the time, Heart City had slowly begun to play its role, and so some people were beginning to forget, just like we all ignored Luo Wei’s existence when we first got the temporary residence permit.”

Letting people gradually integrate into the city and slowly recognize it as their own town, this may be the most terrifying part of this painting.

“Maybe Qin Ci could provide us with more answers,” Mu Yiran said.

Qin Ci must have seen this word, and maybe he realized something, causing him to secretly give Mu Yiran the key and tell him and Ke Xun to come to his dorms.

“Who is Qin Ci guarding against?” This was Ke Xun’s first thought.

“We’ll keep it a secret for the time being, and we can talk about it when Qin Ci comes back.”

……….

After a long 4-hour operation, Qin Ci finally emerged from the operating room. Because he looked exhausted, everyone was too embarrassed to ask about the beast right away.

After Qin Ci showered and changed clothes, he met everyone in his office.

“The nurse said that the operation would take a long time, so we simply divided the work and went downstairs to look around,” Wei Dong said.

Qin Ci rubbed his temple. His voice was exhausted as he said, “Did you find anything?”

“We just looked around, but it’s impossible to find the signature on the street.” Wei Dong looked over at Zhao Yanbao. “Xiao Zhao seemed to have seen something unusual.”

Apparently, Zhao Yanbao hadn’t had time to tell everyone about her experience, and so she picked up the conversation, “I went a little further out and entered the university on the other side of the city, thinking that since this is a relatively closed city without internet connection, perhaps more information could be found in universities.”

The others couldn’t help but admire this psychologist.

“I happened to arrive in the middle of a gathering at the entrance of the university. It may be that the students’ movements were restricted, and so they could only limit their activities to the entrance of the school.”

“What activity is it?” Qin Ci was curious.

“Protesting against the sale of beasts and the killing of souls,” Zhao Yanbao said this slogan word by word. “These students believed that beasts are part of human souls, and if they are stripped away, the souls of the dead would no longer be complete.”

“Then what do they want done with the beasts? Some beasts…came out of their own,” Su Benxin said.

“Perform a ceremony to help the beast gain peace and put it back into the body of the deceased to make the body intact once more.”

Su Benin shook her head slowly. “These college students are simply too superstitious.”

Zhao Yanbao ignored Su Benxin’s words and continued, “Actually, it’s insightful. The medical books and government newspapers that we had seen before were publications of a relatively one-sided argument. At present, a considerable number of people in this city are advocating that ‘the beast be returned to its original body to leave the soul intact.’ Some philanthropists even collect beasts, and they would ask some masters to find the burial place of the hosts of these beasts and burn the beasts in front of their tomb, thus returning them to their origins.”

After hearing these words, everyone had different expressions.

Ke Xun felt that, since last night’s ‘breakthrough,’ the city’s true colors were slowly being revealed, as if everything was awakening.

Su Benxin sighed softly. “The world presents us with problems. Should we look for the beasts or the signature first? Those college students can’t be trusted, and sometimes behaviors that are new and unusual doesn’t necessarily mean progress. It’s best if we temporarily store the beasts of our group members and then deal with them when we find the real answer.”

She seemed to have thought of something again and said, “So last night’s proposal of ‘exchanging beasts for beasts’ can end now. Once the beasts of our friends are traded out, we can never get them back.”

Zhu Haowen seemed impatient and he asked Qin Ci directly, “What’s wrong with Yu Ji? What about Lion? What we need to do now is avoid death and look for the signature.”

Qin Ci put down the glass of water he’d just finished drinking, his expression somewhat heavy. “Because Yu Ji’s beast is still being repaired, I can’t show it to everyone for the time being. The condition of this beast is unprecedented, and its shape has completely detached from the creature itself.”

Everyone’s attention was focused on Qin Ci’s face. They all wanted to know about the detachment and what kind of state the beast was in.

“It was a huge picture frame, a large square frame made up of four hard horizontal sides. It rushed straight through his body, the four corners puncturing his internal organs, resulting in his death.”

This incident had refreshed everyone’s word view once more, so that they didn’t know what to say even if they wanted to express their thoughts.

After a while, Ke Xun said, “Perhaps this has something to do with Yu Ji’s career. He was a painter himself, so maybe he had some attachment to painting in his heart.”

“This is too terrifying!” Wei Dong’s face seemed to have the word “fuck” written on it. “There’s actually such a big frame in his body…Will I also have a big monitor, displaying the graphic design software I often use…?”

Zhu Haowen asked, “So is there any content in the large picture frame? Or is it empty?”

Qin Ci’s expression was a little complicated. “It’s just a big picture frame with nothing in the middle and no picture.”

“This is terrible. This is too scary.” Su Benxin felt as if her own internal organs were also being stabbed by some sharp weapon. “This picture frame must have come into being suddenly, or maybe it suddenly enlarged. Just like Lion’s…pufferfish beast, it appeared all of a sudden and took it’s owner’s life.”

Qin Ci continued. “The sum of Yu Ji’s beast and Lion’s beast were exactly 2000 grams, no more and no less.”

This figure reminded everyone once again that all the beasts inside each person’s body would equate to 13 kilograms.

Zhu Haowen looked at Luo Wei, who was sitting next to him, and said to everyone, “We need to look for the signature. Don’t forget that our purpose is to find the signature. This time, the task is different from the task of making paints in Shadow. At that time, the requirement was that we must complete the task quantitatively each day. But this time, we are being given 6 and a half days. As long as we leave the painting before the cut-off date, we don’t need to struggle to find 13 kilograms of beasts.”

.

Everyone nodded, and the weight on their heart seemed to have lightened slightly.

“By the way, how is Xiao Qinxian doing?” Luo Wei asked Qin Ci.

“She…is too frightened and needs to rest,” Qin Ci replied.

Luo Wei looked thoughtful, but didn’t insist on continuing the topic. “Then let’s group up as soon as possible. Time is waiting for no one; we have to hurry up and find the signature.”