Paintings of Terror

Chapter 83: Zhang Tianwei

The internal architecture of the castle was very complicated. After the few of them went up to the fourth floor, they passed through a long open-air corridor before they saw Mi Wei who had walked over to greet everyone.

At the other end of the corridor was a cylindrical building. Fortunately, it was very bright during the day, and although no one could tell where the light source was, the view inside the semicircular hall was unobstructed.

On the other side of the semicircle was a room with a closed door, and that door was a striking blood red.

Because of what happened previously, no one dared to carelessly open the door, for fear that there would be consequences for polluting the color.

Xin Beibei suddenly screamed and jumped to hide behind Ke Xun — under the red door, a small amount of red liquid flowed out, like a pool of thick blood.

Everyone was far away from the door, but they all stared at the red liquid overflowing under the door. That liquid seemed to be moving slowly, and it was hard to imagine what was happening inside the room.

“It’s not blood.” Mu Yiran’s voice was still slightly cold.

Ke Xun looked at the other: it wasn’t blood, but rather the color belonging to the room.

“According to what happened before, once someone dies, the color of the door they’re inside will become gray, matching the NPC’s description of a room that has lost color.” Zhu Haowen’s voice suddenly appeared, and his eyes landed on Ke Xun: “We can only guess for now, but Zhang Tianwei may not be dead.”

There were only two people who lived in the red room, Zhang Tianwei and He Yu. Early this morning, the bedroom they resided in had lost its color, including the red workshop on the first floor.

So what did this bloody red door that suddenly appeared mean?

“However, there is no one representing red among us, and no one is qualified to open this door at present.” Qin Ci looked at the red door, which was much taller and wider than any of the previous ones, and seemed to give off a sense of oppression.

Ke Xun took a close look at the door frame: “The doors we’ve seen before didn’t have any internal or external locks. This door should be the same, but because there’s no wind in this world, it will stay closed.”

“But how do we open it?” Wei Dong’s eyes searched around, hoping to find a wooden stick or something else to pry the door open.

Perhaps it was Ke Xun’s words that reminded Mu Yiran, and his eyes lit up slightly: “We can try to create wind.”

Ke Xun understood his meaning, and he had already walked to the junction between the hall and the corridor. There was actually a wooden door here, and probably because it was open all year round, it was typically overlooked.

Mu Yiran also walked over, followed by Zhu Haowen, and the three of them worked together to quickly push the heavy wooden door, trying to send some “wind” into the hall.

“It worked!” At this time, the red door had been slightly opened by the “wind”, and Qin Ci and Wei Dong had also come to help.

MI Wei thought of something and closed the glass windows on both sides of the hall, making it so that air flow would only go through the wooden door,

The five men worked together to quickly open the heavy wooden door. This time, a clear air current was formed, and the red door opened silently.

Although the door had opened, no one dared to walk inside the door, instead standing outside to look inside.

Soon enough, Xin Beibei’s scream resounded through the entire castle.

Inside the empty semicircular room, there was only one extra-large glass jar filled with red liquid. For some reason, the liquid would continuously overflow from the mouth of the jar and had already covered the entire floor. The excess had thus flowed out of the room.

The red liquid wasn’t viscous; it was even translucent inside the glass jar, and everyone could vaguely see a person immersed inside.

The person in the tank was standing upright in the liquid with his limbs suspended. Because of the red liquid, it was impossible to see anything’s original color.

It seemed less like a human being, and more like a biological specimen.

Everyone seemed to recognize the vague facial features of the specimen, but no one made a sound.

In the end it was Qin Ci who said: “It’s Zhang Tianwei.”

With tears in her eyes, Mi Wei tightly covered her mouth with her hand and nodded.

Xin Beibei’s unrestrained crying started again.

“Let’s go back first, the people in the workrooms will be worried.” Zhu Haowen looked at Xin Beibei: “Your screams were too loud.”

Ke Xun dragged Mu Yiran back a couple steps, after noticing that the red liquid was still slowly spreading outward: “Why is the liquid in the jar increasing for no reason?”

It’s almost like there was a faucet attached to the bottom.

Mu Yiran: “The source of the red should be Zhang Tianwei. The liquid may have been produced from him.”

Mu Yiran’s eyes stayed on the hand-made clocks on the wall for a while, and then he walked out of the hall with Ke Xun, his hand warmly ensconced in the other’s. When Mu Yiran finally tried to move his hands, he saw Ke Xun lean in close: “Did you also see that clock? It’s exactly the same as the one in our hall.”

“The only difference is the background color on the dial,” Mu Yiran looked at Ke Xun. The other party had already released his hand, but they were now looking into each other’s eyes, and Mu Yiran’s expression lessened somewhat.

Zhu Haowen’s voice came from behind: “The dial background here a strong red, while the color in the hall today was a greenish color.”

Mi Wei also joined the discussion: “That greenish color is actually cyan, a combination of blue and green.”

“Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple. Cyan is indeed between green and blue.” Qin Ci followed everyone through the open-air corridor, “What could the patterns and colors of these clocks? mean?”

The red dial in the semicircular hall may be related to the red “made” by Zhang Tianwei, so what would the cyan dial in the first floor dining area represent? There was no cyan represented in any of the five rooms.

When the group returned to the first floor, the four people from the workrooms were already waiting at a table. Guo Lixia asked first: “What was that wailing sound just now?”

Xin Beibei still hadn’t come out of her frightened state, and she threw herself into Shi Zhendong’s arms: “Scared to death, I was really scared to death. Zhang Tianwei’s body was soaked in a colored bottle, and a lot of blood was coming out….”

Qin Ci briefly described the scene just now. After hearing that, the four people’s expressions were very complicated, and no one had the courage to go take another look at the scene.

Shi Zhendong comforted his girlfriend while discussing with everyone: “Why did Zhang Tianwei and He Yu die differently?” He Yu died immediately, and the entire room lost its color, but Zhang Tianwei… why was he treated like that?”

“Moreover, how was Senior Zhang’s body taken away? Why didn’t we hear anything?” Yening Chenyi’s lips were a little pale. Although she previously believed that Zhang Tianwei might not have died, she didn’t expect the other party to have such a terrible end.

“Did you all notice a problem just now?” The calm Mi Wei spoke, “Senior Tianwei’ is very tall, and I would estimately him to be at least 1.85 meters, but that bottle… If I had to take a guess,” Mi Wei’s eyes looked between Ke Xun and Mu Yiran, before finally settling on Ke Xun, “The paint bottle was around the same height as Ke-ge.”

Ke Xun directly reported his height: “I am 1.88 meters.” He glanced at Mu Yiran next to him and whispered: “This year I accidentally grew a centimeter, when I was still in college I was still 1.87 meters.”

Mu Yiran glanced at Ke Xun, as if to say: I am still taller than you.”

Mi Wei cleared her throat and continued: “Even if the bottle was 1.9 meters high, Senior Tianwei inside the fluid looks much shorter compared to his actual height. His entire body is suspended, and there’s an abundant amount of liquid both above his head and below his feet, if I had to guess, the excess would add up to 50 centimeters in height.”

Qin Ci nodded as well: “I’ve also noticed this problem. At the time, I thought it was an illusion caused by the refraction of light on the glass, but now that I think about it, inside a glass cylinder, the objects inside should look much larger than they actually are.”

Mu Yiran: “So the reason why this red liquid continued to produce is probably because the source of it is Zhang Tianwei’s body — this could be considered a way to consume the corpse.”

Although the analyses all sounded very logical, for empathetic humans beings, it was a form of cruel torture.

“Truly too unlucky and miserable!” Guo Lixia wasn’t even in the mood to eat fruit.

“I’m still wondering, how was Senior Zhang’s body transported out of the room last night?” Yening Chenyi refused to let go of this question, “If someone opened the door and went out, there should be some movement.”

“I believe he was transported out the window,” Zhu Haowen remained expressionless. “Only the window in the red bedroom was open. This shouldn’t be a coincidence.”

When Xin Beibei heard Zhu Haowen’s words, she suddenly became energetic: “The windows can only be opened from the inside. Previously, I paid attention to our rooms’ windows and they had latches on them. If outsiders came into the room, they would still have to pass through the door.”

“Why must it be an outsider who opened the window?” Zhu Haowen looked at Xin Beibei with cold eyes.

“Are you suggesting that Zhang Tianwei and He Yu opened their own window to seek death?” Xin Beibei was a little annoyed.

Zhu Haowen didn’t bother to look at her again: “People have a million reasons to open windows, it doesn’t necessarily have to be seeking death.”

Shi Zhendong was in the middle of trying to mediate between them, when familiar music came on, and the NPC’s sweet voice spoke: “Everyone has worked hard, now it’s time to eat fruit. Please stop working and come to the lobby to enjoy fresh and delicious fruits!”

No one was in the mood to eat fruit. Mi Wei looked at the clock hanging on the wall: “I only paid attention to this clock during breakfast this morning. I felt like the color of the pattern on the clock face had changed a bit, but I couldn’t remember what it looked like before.”

Everyone looked up at the classical handmade clock on the wall. The large round surface had a light blue pattern on it, and Yening Chenyi expressed some surprise: “When did this clock become cyan? Yesterday at dinner, it was still bright orange!”

Everyone was stunned, and they didn’t know what the color change could mean.

Miao Zipei, who had always spoken very little, suddenly said: “This watch didn’t have any patterns at first, and only had a white clock face and black hands. When I noticed the color change, it was already yesterday evening. An orange pattern suddenly appeared on the clock, and at the time when I told He Yu and Zhang Tianwei about the change, we were confused as well.”

The crowd listened quietly to Miao Zipei’s words, and Wei Dong couldn’t help asking: “Then when did it become cyan?”

“When I came down to the first floor this morning and looked at the clock, the pattern had already turned cyan.” As an art student, Miao Zipei was indeed very capable of observation. “Moreover, it’s not just this hall, but the clock in the lobby of the second floor also went through the same changes.”

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A: Idk if the author forgot that Mi Wei, KX and MYR already had that conversation about the cyan clock? I can’t tell if the three of them never knew that the clock used to be a different color and that’s why they’re confused too? Sometimes the author tends to reiterate things that have already been discussed and I never know if it’s intentional or not QAQ it’s the same with talking about Senior Zhang and the color coming out of his body

H: Life is also hard for an author too I guess… it helps my fellow fish-memory folk though xD

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Thank you sleepy avis for the correction!