Paintings of Terror

Chapter 85: The Purest Color

T/N: So uh, for some reason the original has disappeared off jjwxc QAQ. I have another site where I’m getting the raw chapters, but it doesn’t show the original chapter titles so uh :))) welcome to the naming game!! I’ll do my best to guess what the author would name each chapter T-T

Update: Thank you @tsundoku and Emilia Rose for finding a site with the correct chapter names <3?

Except for the green room where Zhu Haowen and Shi Zhendong were located, the other three rooms completed their three jars of berries before lunch.

“We’re still missing a little less than a jar, so we should be able to complete the task before 2 o’clock in the afternoon.” Shi Zhendong looked over at the clock on the wall that still had cyan patterns on it.

Xin Beibei gazed at her boyfriend and then at Zhu Haowen who was sitting in the distance, with a very complicated expression crossing her face.

Qin Ci opened his mouth and said: “Since there are only two people in the green group, it’s normal for them to be slower at completing the task. How about this, there’s some free time after lunch: if you feel tired you can go back to your room to rest, or if you’re interested, we can gather in the hall to discuss.”

Shi Zhendong understood that Qin Ci was giving the green team some more time to work, so he smiled and said, “Then we’ll continue working after lunch. After that, we can all gather here at 2 o’clock.”

Everyone nodded, many of them didn’t eat much for lunch, and they weren’t in the mood to eat anyway, so Shi Zhendong and Zhu Haowen returned to the green room to work, while the others continued to sit at the table and discuss.

“Let’s talk about the clues we currently have.” Qin Ci spoke up again. “The first thing is the death condition. He Yu entered another room without washing his hands yesterday, which was a clear act of polluting colors. So, he ended up dying in a way where he was deprived of color;

“The other deceased person was Zhang Tianwei. We still haven’t been able to determine whether or not he contaminated colors, but obviously going into a different room with other colors is also a violation. There are many strange aspects around Zhang Tianwei’s death, and everyone can discuss this issue first.” Qin Ci’s eyes swept through all of those present.

Mi Wei was the first to speak: “I think the first thing we need to find out is, around what time did Senior Tianwei die, was he dead or alive before he was dragged out of the room, and also what we saw this morning…. Was Senior Tianwei dead by the time we saw him?”

Xin Beibei was frightened by Mi Wei’s speech: “His body was already submerged in the bottle, of course he’s dead!”

Mi Wei continued: “Since the world inside the painting is really strange, I just made a bold assumption. After He Yu died, he lost all his color. So when we saw Senior this morning… when he was soaking in the bottle, was his color being squeezed out? If so, then how did He Yu lose his color? Was it also through this method?”

“If that’s the case, then there would be marks throughout the entire bedroom,” Xin Beibei still felt a bit traumatized. “The red pool that we saw this morning… already flowed out of the room.”

“If Senior He was also killed in that way, then why didn’t the murderer just kill Senior Zhang at the same time last night?” Yening Chenyi raised a question.

“The only way to verify your guess,” Ke Xun looked at Mi Wei’s slender eyes, “Is to go back to the scene again to see what happened to Zhang Tianwei after we left, and whether or not he ended up in the same circumstances as He Yu.”

These words made everyone shudder, and the girls even regretted bringing up the previous discussion: verifying facts was much crueler than simply talking about the situation.

“Xiao Ke is right. In addition to verifying your hypothesis, it’s also important to check Zhang Tianwei’s body.” Qin Ci looked at the clock on the wall, and saw that it was only one o’clock. “There’s still some time, who will go?”

Xin Beibei couldn’t help raising her voice: “I won’t be going anyway! I can still see the bleeding red bottle every time I close my eyes…” She grabbed onto Yening Chenyi who was next to her, “It’s best if you don’t go too, it’s too scary.”

Mi Wei stood up: “I’ll go with you, if there are more people, there will be more eyes to observe for clues.”

“Dongzi, you stay here with the girls,” Ke Xun hadn’t even finished speaking when he felt his bro cast over a grateful look. “Although it’s still daytime, it’s better not to leave anyone behind. No one should be left alone, especially in the lobby.”

Wei Dong nodded in agreement, and looked over at Guo Lixia, who had been leaning against her chair and napping, and counted this sister among the people left behind.

Therefore, Ke Xun, Mu Yiran, and Qin Ci, along with Mi Wei and Miao Zipei, went up to the fourth floor again. Because the castle architecture was built in a strange shape, that open-air corridor only appeared on the fourth floor.

It was Miao Zipei’s first time going upstairs. When he found that the third and fourth floors were built similarly to the first two, he felt a little curious. Moreover, these rooms resembled the ones on the lower floors, and the red door in the middle had already become pale.

There was a wooden door next to the hall on the fourth floor, and after pushing it open, it led to an open-air corridor.

“Pay attention to your feet!” After Mi Wei’s reminder, everyone walked cautiously. As expected, there were some suspicious red marks on the ground at the end of the corridor.

Everyone walked sideways, trying to get around the red colors.

On the white floor tiles in the hall, those red marks were even more obvious.

“Those blood stains… no, that red liquid has been disposed of.” Qin Ci was a little puzzled, “but they weren’t very careful with the cleaning.”

“It doesn’t seem like they used a broom or a mop,” Mi Wei boldly squatted down to take a closer look, “Why does the red liquid show signs of being wiped off in large swaths? What was used to clean it up?”

Everyone said nothing. If they tried to imagine it, a horrible idea would emerge: these traces seemed like they were licked off by a huge tongue.

Soon, these traces were ignored by everyone, because what was displayed beyond the open red door refreshed everyone’s understanding again.

The big glass jar from before was still there, and the red liquid inside was still flowing out slowly, but the rate was much slower than this morning.

The person submerged in the glass jar could no longer be identified as “Zhang Tianwei” — just like Mi Wei’s previous observation, Zhang Tianwei’s body had become shorter than before, and it was continuing to get even smaller.

“That… is there a baby specimen in there?” The normally silent Miao Zipei stammered out.

The human body was still immersed in the red liquid, but it was as small as a baby corpse, still standing upright with its small limbs suspended.

“It’s not a baby, it’s just a scaled down adult.” As a doctor, Qin Ci was able to accurately answer Miao Zipei’s question.

After watching for a while, Mu Yiran stopped looking, instead turning around to look at the blood red clock on the wall: “Because of the constant flow of red, it seems like Zhang Tianwei is almost out of color.”

Miao Zipei couldn’t help retching: “Do all of our bodies have this much color?”

This question seemed like an omen, and no one wanted to answer.

Mu Yiran calmly looked at Miao Zipei: “In this world, the artist wants to use color to express everything, including the lives of the people inside the paintings.”

Miao Zipei tried very hard to suppress his vomiting, and he was almost overflowing with tears. He soon heard Ke Xun say next to him: “We should take the opportunity to observe this hall, maybe there’ll be other clues.”

Mi Wei’s eyes looked at the bright red clock on the wall: “Do you think it’s possible for the artist’s signature to be on the clock?”

Qin Ci was the first to deny this idea: “Looking at it now, the clock seems a bit too obvious. There are clocks in every hall in the castle, so the signature is unlikely to be inside.”

In Ke Xun’s view, the things inside the room hadn’t changed from this morning, aside from the blood stains being cleaned up.

Miao Zipei’s gaze fell on the window in the hall: “The pattern on the window lattice is different from the one in our building, would this count as a discovery?”

Ke Xun asked: “Do you mean that in the building where we live, all the lattice designs were the same?”

No one else was able to answer this question, but Miao Zipei nodded affirmatively: “Whether it’s the working rooms or our bedrooms, including the halls on the third and fourth floors that I walked through just now, those windows had Morris patterns. To be more exact, they were golden lily patterns, and because the distribution of the patterns is different, everyone ignored them.”

Ke Xun looked at this shining young man; whenever someone made a speech and was able to enlighten others, Ke Xun felt like they were glowing from the inside.

“So, do the window panes in this hall have Morris patterns?” Mu Yiran asked promptly.

Miao Zipei didn’t hesitate to answer: “It’s also a Morris pattern. If I remember correctly, this print should come from William Morris’s pomegranate branch and white parrot design. Although these pattern panels are also split up — the point of the Morris pattern is that it’s gorgeous and repetitive composition emphasizes the beauty of classicism. Any single part can be a whole perfect work in itself.

“Do you think these golden lilies, pomegranates, and white parrots you mentioned have any special meaning?” Qin Ci obviously didn’t understand these things related to art.

“It just represents all kinds of beauty and doesn’t have any special meaning.” Miao Zipei could feel the encouragement from the surrounding eyes, so he continued, “I just find it strange because Fauvism and Morris are completely different. In terms of style, Morris’s patterns emphasize more fine and courtly brushwork. I don’t why this artist would use Morris patterns in the painting.”

Mi Wei also felt this was reasonable: “Fauvism relies on a kind of subversion and breaking of expectations. They don’t usually pay attention to proportions and composition. Morris’s pattern, in comparison, is too conservative, and they’re just simply two conflicting styles.”

But these contradictions couldn’t be understood by anyone in the painting, and perhaps even the painter himself couldn’t explain it.

“This may have something to do with the artist’s unknown mentality.” Mi Yiran said this last sentence lightly — the older members knew that the previous paintings contained many different stories.

Miao Zipei looked at the red clock on the wall again: “Was the red you saw before the same shade as this one?”

“It was a very reddish red, would there be a difference?” Ke Xun asked.

Miao Zipei hesitated for a moment, and looked up again before squinting to observe the red on the surface of the clock: “Red is the color with the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum. The wavelength ranges from around 625 to 720 nanometers and is considered one of the three primary colors of light.”

Everyone quietly listened to Miao Zipei’s words: “In fact, red is just a general concept, and can be divided into hundreds of shades and tones. For example, the red on Zhang Tianwei and He Yu’s clothes are different. Zhang Tianwei’s clothes were dark red, while He Yu had a garnet red tic-tac-toe pattern on his.”

“But judging from the red shade on the clock face, it seems to be the purest red. If divided according to the optical color RGB index, the coordinates of the purest red would be: R is equal to 255, G is equal to 0, and B is equal to 0.”

This was the first time that Ke Xun received such a professional lecture on color. After digesting it for a while, he couldn’t help but ask: “So is it possible that something wants to extract the purest color from us?”

—

A: Me and Hime as STEM kids going through this entire arc like “Do I understand? Not really” LOL but I’m definitely learning a lot XD

H: *strokes non-existent mustache* Ah yes, art, I am familiar……

Thank you Cat for the edit!