Paintings of Terror

Except for the green room where Zhu Haowen and Shi Zhendong are located, the other rooms have finished storing three cans of berries before lunch.

"We are still less than one can of workload short, and we should be able to complete the task before 2 o'clock in the afternoon." Shi Zhendong looked at the clock on the wall, which still showed blue patterns.

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

Qin Ci said: "There are only two people in their green group, and it's normal for them to fail to complete the task. How about this? After lunch is free time. If you feel exhausted, you can go back to your respective room to rest. If you are interested, you can gather in this hall Focus on discussion."

Shi Zhendong understood that Qin Ci was freeing up work time for the green team, so he said with a smile: "Then we will continue to work after lunch, and everyone will gather here at two o'clock."

Everyone nodded, they didn't eat much for lunch, and they didn't have the intention of taking a lunch break, so Shi Zhendong and Zhu Haowen went back to the green room to continue working, while the others sat at the dining table to discuss.

"Let's talk about the clues we have so far." It was still Qin Ci who spoke, "First of all, it is about the conditions of death. He Yu entered another room without washing his hands yesterday. This should be a clear act of polluting the color. Ended life by being stripped of color;

"The other person who died was Zhang Tianwei. So far we have not been able to determine whether he polluted the color, but obviously visiting rooms of other colors is also one of the conditions for death. There are many doubts about Zhang Tianwei's death. You can discuss this issue first." Qin Ci's gaze scanned everyone present.

Mi Wei was the first to speak: "I think the first thing to figure out is when Senior Tian Wei died, whether he was dead or alive before he was dragged out of the room, and what we saw this morning. One scene...was senior Tianwei dead at the time?"

Xin Beibei was the first to be frightened by Mi Wei's speech: "People are soaked in bottles, of course they are dead!"

However, Mi Wei said: "Because the world in the painting is so unimaginable, I made a bold assumption—after He Yu died, he lost all his colors, so the senior we saw this morning... was drawn in that way... Soaking in the bottle, is the color being extracted? So how did He Yu lose his color? Is it also through this method?"

"If that's the case, there will be traces in the whole room," Xin Beibei was terrified, "The red we saw this morning...has spread out of the room."

"If Senior He was also killed by that method, why didn't the murderer kill Senior Zhang together in the same way last night?" Ye Ningchen raised his own doubts.

"The only way to verify your thesis," Ke Xun looked into Mi Wei's slender eyes, "is to go to the scene again to see what Zhang Tianwei's situation was like and whether he ended up with the same consequences as He Yu."

These words made everyone shiver, and a few girls even regretted the discussion they just brought up—verifying the facts is much more cruel than talking about it on paper.

"Xiao Ke is right. In addition to verifying your doubts just now, it is indeed more appropriate to check Zhang Tianwei's body." Qin Ci looked at the clock on the wall. It was just one o'clock, "There is still time , who will go?"

Xin Beibei couldn't help raising her voice: "Anyway, I'm not going! I can still see that big red bottle that's bleeding when I close my eyes..." Then she tightened Ye Ningchenyi beside her, "You'd better Don't go there either, it's terrible."

Mi Wei stood up: "Let me go with you, if there are more people, there will be more observation points."

"Dongzi, how many girls are you here with?" Before Ke Xun finished speaking, he felt a very grateful look from his iron son, "Although it is daytime, it is best not to leave anyone behind." Alone, especially in the hall, don't leave people here alone."

Wei Dong nodded in agreement, looked at Guo Lixia who was dozing on the chair, and counted this eldest sister among the left-behind personnel.

So, Ke Xun, Mu Yiran, Qin Ci, Mi Wei and Miao Zipei, five people went up to the fourth floor again, because the shape of the castle is very peculiar, and the open-air corridor is only on the fourth floor.

It was the first time for Miao Zipei to go upstairs. When he found that the third and fourth floors had the same layout, he felt a little curious. Moreover, these rooms were the same as the second floor, and the red door in the middle had turned pale and colorless. .

There is a wooden door next to the hall on the fourth floor, and when it is pushed open, it leads to an open-air corridor.

"Pay attention to your steps!" After Mi Wei's reminder, everyone walked cautiously, and sure enough, there were some suspicious red marks on the ground at the end of the corridor.

Everyone walked sideways, trying to avoid the red ones.

On the white floor tiles of the hall, those red traces are more obvious.

"Those bloodstains... No, those red liquids were disposed of." Qin Ci was a little puzzled, "But the disposal was not clean."

"It doesn't look like it was treated with a broom or mop," Mi Wei boldly squatted down to examine carefully, "Why do these reds show large areas of traces of being wiped off? What kind of things were used to deal with it?"

No one spoke, and if you start to imagine, you will have a horrible metaphor: these traces seem to be licked off by a huge tongue.

Soon, these traces were ignored by everyone, because everything displayed in the open red door once again refreshed everyone's understanding.

It was still the same big glass jar as before, and the red liquid inside was still flowing out slowly, but the flow was much smaller than in the morning.

The people in the glass jar can no longer tell whether "it" is Zhang Tianwei or not—as Mi Wei observed before, Zhang Tianwei's body has become shorter than before, and it is getting shorter and shorter.

"Then... is there a stuffed baby in there?" Miao Zipei, who didn't like to talk, finally let out a murmur.

The human body is still immersed in the red liquid, but it is as small as a baby corpse, still standing upright, and the small limbs are suspended.

"It's not a baby, it's just a scaled down adult." As a doctor, Qin Ci answered Miao Zipei's words very accurately.

After looking at it for a while, Mu Yiran stopped looking at it, turned around, and looked at the still blood-red clock on the wall: "Because the color is constantly being squeezed out, Zhang Tianwei is almost exhausted."

Miao Zipei couldn't help retching: "Do all of us have so many colors in our bodies?"

This sentence is like a prophecy, and no one wants to answer it.

Mu Yiran looked at Miao Zipei calmly: "In this world, the author tries to use color to express everything, including the life of the people in the painting."

Miao Zipei tried his best to suppress vomiting, almost bursting into tears, and soon heard Ke Xun beside him saying: "Take this opportunity to observe this hall carefully, maybe you will gain something else."

Mi Wei looked at the bright red clock on the wall: "Do you think it is possible for the artist's signature to be on the clock?"

Qin Ci took the lead in denying this idea: "Now it seems that the clues of the clock are too obvious, and there are clocks hanging in every hall in the castle, so it is unlikely that the signature is inside."

From Ke Xun's point of view, the facilities in this room are no different from what they saw in the morning, except that the blood stains have been cleaned up.

Miao Zipei's eyes fell on the windows in the hall: "The patterns on the window panes are different from those in our building. Is this a discovery?"

Ke Xun asked: "You mean, in the building we are in, all the panes are the same?"

No one else seemed able to answer this question, but Miao Zipei nodded affirmatively: "Whether it is the workshop, or our bedroom, including the halls on the third and fourth floors that we just walked through, those window lattice patterns belong to the Morris pattern, to be exact There are many screenshots of a whole golden lily pattern, because the patterns are distributed differently, so people ignore their integrity."

Ke Xun looked at this shining young man. Whenever someone made a very professional statement and could inspire others, Ke Xun felt that this person was shining.

"So, do the panes in this hall now belong to the Morris pattern?" Mu Yiran asked the question at the right time.

Miao Zipei without hesitation: "It also belongs to the Morris pattern. If I remember correctly, this picture should come from William Morris's pomegranate branch and white parrot. These panes also split the pattern-but the Morris pattern itself It is a gorgeous and repetitive composition, emphasizing the beauty of classicism, and any part can be a perfect work.”

"Do these golden lilies, pomegranates and white parrots you mentioned have any special significance?" Qin Ci obviously couldn't understand these artistic categories.

"It just represents all kinds of beauty, and there is no special meaning." Miao Zipei could feel the affirmation and encouragement from the surrounding eyes, so he continued, "I just find it strange that Fauvism and Morris patterns are completely different. Style, the Morris pattern is more focused on court brushwork, I don’t know why the painter used the Morris pattern in this painting.”

Mi Wei also felt that it was reasonable: "Fauvism is a kind of subversion and breakthrough. They don't pay much attention to proportion and composition. Compared with Morris pattern, it is too conformist. It is simply two conflicting styles."

But these contradictions and conflicts cannot be explained by anyone, perhaps even the painter himself.

"This may have something to do with the painter's unknown mental journey." Mu Yiran said lightly - the old members know that many of the previous paintings contain too many stories about the painter.

Miao Zipei looked at the red clock on the wall again: "I don't know if the red you saw before is different from this one?"

"It's just red, what's the difference?" Ke Xun asked.

Miao Zipei hesitated for a moment, then raised his head and squinted his eyes to observe the red color on the surface of the clock: "Red belongs to the color at the end of the long wave in the visible spectrum. The wavelength is about 625 to 740 nanometers, and it is one of the three primary colors of light."

Everyone quietly listened to Miao Zipei's words—"Red is just a general concept. Red can be divided into hundreds and thousands of types. For example, the red on Zhang Tianwei's and He Yu's clothes was different before. Zhang Tianwei's body is dark red. The moon pattern on He Yu's body is a garnet red grid pattern.

"But judging from the red of the clock face in front of me, it is basically close to the purest red. If it is divided according to the optical color RGB, the index of the purest red is: R is equal to 255, G is equal to 0, and B is equal to 0."

It was the first time for Ke Xun to receive such a professional color lecture, and after digesting it for a while, he couldn't help asking: "So someone wants to extract the purest color from us?"