Paintings of Terror

Chapter 195: A Summary of Shao Ling’s Illusion

The moment dawn came, the thick and heavy darkness was sucked out of thin air like smoke, quickly dissipating.

Ke Xun looked ahead and saw that a dozen steps away on his right was the vast ocean. Even if he could swim, he believed that once he fell off, he would have no chance of returning to the ship.

Turning his head, he saw Mu Yiran standing behind him, only half a step away.

If he hadn’t been able to withstand the terrifying pressure brought about by the terrifying thing on his back last night, it was likely the arrow in his hand would have pierced the body of his beloved, killed by his own hands.

Ke Xun threw away the crossbow and arrow in his hand, turned around, and hugged his lover tightly. His lover also opened his arms to catch him, wrapping one arm around his waist, and putting one hand on the back of his head, which was slightly moist from the sea-water.

“Brother, Brother-in-Law…If you kiss…let me know in advance…I’ll look away…” Luo Bu’s trembling voice came from down at his feet.

Ke Xun tilted his head and saw? Luo Bu lying on the deck with a pale face, cheeks still wet with tears. He seemed to have even lost the strength to raise his hand to wipe his tears away, as if his entire person had become a soft, wilted radish.

“Are you okay?” Ke Xun asked him.

“Would being so scared I peed my pants be considered as okay?…” Luo Bu asked, sniffing.

“….” Ke Xun ignored him and turned his head to kiss Mu Yiran on the lips. Then he loosened his arms and raised a finger upstairs. “I’ll go up and check on Dongzi and the others.”

“I’ll go to Shao Ling and check on them.” Mu Yiran nodded. They didn’t say much else, because they had already taken care of one another.

To save the effort of running around up the stairs, Ke Xun directly climbed up the rope to the second floor. He saw that Wei Dong, Qin Ci, Zhu Haowen, and Xue Ge were still there, their expressions a little strange.

“Are you all okay?” Ke Xun still asked.

Several people responded with an “mmn.”

“What happened to you last night?” Ke Xun asked.

“It’s hard to say…” Wei Dong’s face was full of fear, a cold sweat still visible on his forehead.

“Where is Xiao Mu?” Qin Ci asked.

“He went to check on Shao Ling’s group,” Ke Xun said, “Let’s go down first and see how that group is doing.”

Everyone went down the stairs and saw a group of people gathered on the side of the ship, looking down at the sea below.

“What’s the matter?” The group rushed over.

“Li Yi fell into the sea,” Shao Ling answered. “I can only guess that he met with bad luck.”

“Did he accidentally fall in, or…is it related to last night?” Qin Ci asked.

“I think it should be related to last night.” Shao Ling leaned to the side, revealing a piece of white robe that had accidentally gotten hooked on the side of the ship. “We all have the clothes on our body, so it’s very likely that Li Yi’s illusion caused him to fall into the sea last night.”

“So, all of us had hallucinations last night?” Yu Long’s voice was trembling, obviously quite scared.

“There’s no point in going after the deceased. Let’s hurry up and collect clues.” Shao Ling was as calm as ever. “Please tell me in detail about your own experience last night. If you can, please try to be as detailed as possible. Even a small detail could provide us with clues about the seal.”

“Let’s go to the middle dining hall and talk…” Chen Xinai was so frightened that he could hardly stand and had to be reluctantly supported by Liu Yanlei.

While everyone walked to the central hall, Ke Xun went to the stern to look for Luo Bu. He saw that he was hiding among the cargo in the deck, and his wet pants had begun to smell.

“Come out.” Ke Xun nudged him with his shoe. “Go to the kitchen to get some water to wipe off. Throw away your pants; I’ll find a new one for you in the lower cabin.”

“I really can’t get up…” Luo Bu began to wiggle his limp body toward the kitchen like a bug.

Ke Xun: “….”

When Luo Bu returned to the central hall, everyone was sitting on the floor, silent.

Ke Xun threw Luo Bu away and sat cross-legged next to Mu Yiran. He asked him, “What did you guys say just now?”

“After darkness fell last night, Li Yi lit his rhino horn,” Mu Yiran said.

“So, whoever lights the rhino horn will die?” Liu Yanlei’s eyes were complicated.

“Is that so?” Xue Ge, who had always been indifferent, raised her eyes and glanced at him. “Was the hallucinations of last night not enough of a death threat to you?”

Liu Yanlei choked and stopped speaking.

“The question of whether the person who lit the rhino horn will die or not can be analyzed later.” Shao Ling looked at everyone. “Right now, we need to focus more on each of our experiences last night. Then, we can find common grounds and suspicious points. If you don’t mind, I’ll go first?”

The newcomers seemed very convinced of Shao Ling, so no one had any objections, and the veteran members weren’t troublesome, so they all looked at him together.

Shao Ling even prepared blank bamboo slips and writing brushes for note-taking.

“After the darkness fell last night, I seemed to be separated from other people by an invisible barrier,” Shao Ling said clearly and slowly. “I even suspect that I had entered another parallel space at that time, because when it happened, I was at the door of the central hall and when I tried to touch the door or the wall, I couldn’t feel them at all. It was like I was in a cosmic black hole, surrounded by an endless darkness. Did this happen to all of you too?”

Everyone nodded or expressed affirmation.

Shao Ling wrote on the bamboo slips “1. Isolated in a parallel space.”

This move made him seem calmer and more reliable. The newcomer’s attention became more concentrated than before, and they looked at him seriously and intently, waiting for his next words.

“But in the subsequent development, I think that each of us will have different experiences,” Shao Ling continued. “Because, soon after, I had the hallucination, and it was the voice of someone I personally know. Therefore, I speculate that perhaps the people in your hallucinations are all those you’re familiar with?”

Everyone continued to nod or answer.

So Shao Ling wrote on the bamboo slips the entry “2nd, hallucinations about acquaintances.”

“The person who appeared in my hallucinations is my friend,” Shao Ling continued, “Although I couldn’t see him in the dark, his voice was very distinctive, so even if someone imitated him, I would have realized it was fake. But the voice in the hallucination last night was exactly the same as his.”

“Of course, due to the circumstances surrounding last night, I dare not believe that this was actually him. He was in S City and could not have appeared in this painting.”

“But my steadfastness did not last long. ‘He’ was very frightened and panicked, and he kept asking me where this was and what was going on. He said he should be asleep in his own bed in S City so why did he appear here? Why was such an incredible and terrifying thing happening?”

“The weird things he was saying, if it were in the past, I wouldn’t have believed it. But the fact that I entered the world in the painting has completely collapsed my materialism, and I began to doubt whether the same thing was happening to him. I also accidentally entered the world of the painting, because of this, I was completely shaken as to whether this ‘him’ was really my friend or not.”

“You may understand that the reason why the scammer’s deception can deceive so many sane, sober, and even highly-educated people wasn’t because the liar has a higher IQ, but because the scammer was skilled enough to capture people’s firm beliefs. This scammer will find a tiny crack in a solid wall and penetrate it, digging into it and attacking the heart until the entire wall collapses from the inside out.”

“So last night, when I was being scammed by this deception, I went from believing only a little to completely believing it.”

“My friend, to me, is more intimate than my own hands and feet. We have a fateful friendship, and some people may say that almost all friendships can share adversity but not prosperity. But he is different.”

“He can control my property at all. I trust him, just as he trusts me. We have never concealed anything from the other, and we have never avoided anything. Our relationship is as close as one person, and we would go through fire and water for one another.”

“So the fear and helplessness he showed last night would inevitably shake me. I was afraid that it might be true, that he really was trapped in the painting, and that I mustn’t leave him alone.”

“For the sake of caution, I asked a lot of things that only the two of us knew, even some very small details, and he was able to answer it all. I almost completely believed that he was my friend, until I asked the last question, and he ended up revealing his feet.”

“The last question I asked him was: If, in this terrible world, only one of us can survive, would you want to live by yourself, or would you want me to live, or would you want to die with me here?”

“His answer was to die with me here. As I have said earlier, we have a fateful friendship, one that can go through fire and water. We can even sacrifice our lives for each other, and so his answer wasn’t wrong.”

“But the problem was that, if the other person was the real him, then when I asked this question, he wouldn’t have answered and would have, in fact, scolded me. There are some things between friends that, once the words are spoken, no matter how heavy it is, will become as light as a feather.”

“Of course, each pair of friends will have different ways of getting along. My friend and I belong to the so-called mode of tacit understanding.”

“So this was when I suddenly realized that the fear and panic ‘he’ was displaying was just an illusion that used my care for my friend to trick me. ‘His’ ultimate goal was to make me walk into the sea a few meters away. Once I walked over, the end result would probably be you guys looking for both mine and Li Yi’s bodies.”

When Shao Ling said this, he glanced at everyone’s expressions, and then he nodded slightly. “It seems that hallucination that everyone experienced last night was similar, with the intention of deceiving us into the sea. If anyone has a different experience, please also tell us.”

Everyone shook their heads, and so Shao Ling wrote the third point on the bamboo slips: 3. Use acquaintances to trick people into the sea.

He immediately raised his head and looked at everyone, “Then I would like to ask again. Is the acquaintance in your illusion, like the situation I encountered, quite clear about the details and bits of your relationship?”

Everyone nodded together this time.

Shao Ling made another note: Have the ability to read memory.

“It now appears that Li Yi is the only one who failed to see through this trick,” Shao Ling said. “But perhaps, his death was related to the lighting of the rhino horn. In order to verify which of the two possibilities resulted in his death, we need to continue analyzing your experience last night…”

“Sorry, let me say something.” Ke Xun raised his hand and met Shao Ling’s gaze. “Did Li Yi ignite the rhino horn because you discussed it or was it of his own volition? Also, where is the horn that he lit?”