Paintings of Terror

Chapter 11: The Three Chinese Scholar Trees

What decided how the five people would die last night ?

“I have a conjecture,” Mu Yiran said in an insipid voice, “But I need to test it once more. Before that, I won’t mention it so as to avoid influencing your thinking…that is, if you’re capable of thinking.”

Ke Xun: “Although you’re mocking me again, I’m still not angry. The ‘testing’ you mentioned, do you mean that you have to see another death?”

“Yes.” Although it’s very cruel, there is no way around it.” There was no expression on Mu Yiran’s face.

“The next one might be me.” Wei Dong lamented.

“Don’t utter such nonsense. You’re being ridiculous.” Ke Xun kicked him and then turned to Mu Yiran. “But I don’t think we should just be waiting like this. I feel like we should be doing something.”

“We should look for the seal!” Wei Dong stirred up his spirits.

“But we can’t just aimlessly go searching for it.” Ke Xun looked at Mu Yiran, “Xiao Mu ge, can you point us to the right direction?”

“Call me Mu Yiran.” Mu Yiran gave him a cold look. “When looking for the seal, you have to take into consideration the contents of the painting.”

Ke Xun: “Yesterday, you said that the painting was about a village funeral. We’ve already examined the mourning hall this morning but we didn’t find anything like a signature or seal.”

Mu Yiran: “This means that the mourning hall isn’t the most prominent part of the painting.”

Ke Xun: “Aside from the mourning hall, the second most suspicious place is the grave-digging area just now.”

Mu Yiran: “I searched it earlier. There wasn’t anything suspicious.”

Ke Xun: “Could it be inside that old man’s house?”

Mu Yiran: “The chances of that are low. After all, if no one died night after night, then everyone would frequently gather inside that house. That would mean that the probability of the seal being found would be extremely high. It’s the equivalent of giving you an answer key with your exam paper.”

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Ke Xun: “Something that good would never happen to me. PASS. If it’s not the mourning hall, the grave area, or the old man’s house, where could it be? It’s just wilderness all around us. There’s nothing that sticks out.”

Mu Yiran: “What appears to be the most eye-catching part of the painting to the viewer may not necessarily be the part that reflects the painting’s meaning.”

Ke Xun pointed in front of them. “Could it be the three Chinese Scholar trees?”

Outside the Li Residence courtyard, due north, were three Chinese Scholar trees.

The light in Mu Yiran’s eyes flickered. “According to some customs, the Chinese Scholar tree is considered a yin tree. They call it ‘Ghost in a tree.’ It was inappropriate to plant them near the residences of living people. But in ancient times, the people loved Chinese Scholar trees. The term ‘huai ding’ refers to the 'Three Dukes’. Furthermore, ‘huai chen’ In some places, the Chinese Scholar tree was seen as an auspicious symbol.”

Ke Xun scratched his head: “So did they plant these three Chinese Scholar trees for good luck? That would explain things.”

Wei Dong: “Let me interrupt you guys for a second. I think that you two are mistaken. Although the world inside this painting is indeed a ‘world,’ it is first and foremost a ‘painting’ and a ‘world’ second. A work of art necessitates artistic techniques to be used. Unless this was a super realistic painting, the painter would have added artistic embellishments for the sake of achieving the artistic effect he wanted.”

When he noticed that Mu Yiran was looking at Wei Dong weirdly, Ke Xun explained, “Dong zi is a graphic designer. He knows some stuff about art.”

“Then, in your opinion, what do you think has been added for the sake of artistic effect?” Mu Yiran asked Wei Dong.

“The trees, ah.” Wei Dong pointed at the three old Chinese Scholar trees. “Like you just said, in some places, they believe that the Chinese Scholar tree is unlucky. However, there are other places that believe it to be a sign of luck. But that’s the case in real life. I don’t think that the painter would have needed to research whether these trees were regarded as auspicious or not in this place. All he would have to do was to make sure that it matched the paintings contents.”

“Look at these three Chinese Scholar trees. Why are they planted specifically by the Li Residence’s mourning hall? If the Chinese Scholar trees were meant to represent success, then wouldn’t it be weird for it to be here?

“Look at these trees. If he intended to make these trees symbols of luck in this painting, he would not make the trees stick out. If he did, it would clash with the subject of the painting, which is ‘funeral.’ Even if he had been forced to paint the tree for the sake of maintaining realism, it would have been enough to simply paint a single tree. Why did he draw three?

.

“It’s obviously because he wanted them to stick out. It was for the sake of embellishing the painting, or perhaps it’s even a metaphor for something.

“Look at the shape of the trees. The branches look like claws. Do normal trees have such grotesque shapes? It’s obvious that normal trees that grow in the wild could never naturally grow out as ugly as this. That brings us to the question—why did the painter draw these trees in this abnormal fashion rather than draw them normally?

“Again, it’s obviously for the sake of embellishing the painting or because it’s a metaphor. Since it’s for the sake of dressing it up, there’s no way it could have an auspicious meaning. Therefore, there is only one meaning it can have.”

“…It’s a yin tree, the ‘ghost in a tree.’” Ke Xun said.

Mu Yiran looked pensive as he gazed up at the three old Chinese Scholar trees.

“Regardless of what it means, we should search them in any case.” Ke Xun was an action-oriented person. As he said this, he walked over to the three trees.

When he got close, he discovered that the trees were even taller and dreadful than they had seemed from afar. The tree bark, which should have been brown, was currently an ashy black, although he didn’t know if it was because it had collected dust over the years or if it was from the smoke of the Li Residence’s kitchen. The dark trees loomed over their heads.

“These trees are ridiculously tall. They look like they’re over twenty metres tall.” Wei Dong craned his neck up. “How are we going to search around them?”

Mu Yiran also looked up, gaze sweeping over them. He was thinking of a plan when he saw Ke Xun roll up his sleeves without speaking. The other walked over to one of the trees and jumped up, wrapping his arms around the trunk. He then shimmied up the tree like a monkey. In the blink of an eye, he was already halfway up the tree.

“He was great at climbing trees even in his program.” Wei Dong said, showing off his childhood friend to Mu Yiran. He thought that he should let this big shot believe that he didn’t accept these followers in vain.

Mu Yiran gave him an insipid glance and then walked over to the same tree. He suddenly reached out and also climbed up in a graceful and nimble manner. In a flash, he had also managed to reach halfway up.

“….” Wei Dong was dumbstruck. He looked up at Ke Xun, who was already near the top: Brother, I can only help you this much.

Ke Xun wasn’t surprised that Mu Yiran could also climb. Based on what he knew from being pressed down by the other last night, he knew that the other man must have been trained in martial arts.

“Looks like you’re not the type to live comfortably.” Ke Xun squatted on a tree branch, waiting for Mu Yiran to come up. “Why are you doing this yourself when you have followers to order around?”

Mu Yiran stood up with the help of the tree trunk. He gazed down at Ke Xun and asked, “Who would put their lives in the hands of a follower?”

“…Okay, okay, you’re handsome, you’re right.” Ke Xun also stood up. “Then I’ll work hard to work my way up from a follower to a trusted aid.”

Mu Yiran couldn’t be bothered to pay him any attention. He began to climb through the branches and search for clues.

Ke Xun lowered his head to shout: “Dong zi, look for clues on the ground. Don’t forget to search the cracks in the bark or the roots.”

“Don’t worry.” Wei Dong’s voice echoed from below. “Us graphic designers are the best at looking for details. We wouldn’t even miss a single pixel.”

Even if they were to low ball it, a Chinese Scholar tree tree had at least a hundred thousand branches. Ke Xun and Mu Yiran examined the branches for several hours. Eventually, the light outside dimmed.

“This is insane.” Ke Xun leaned against the trunk, breathing slightly heavy. “What if the signature or seal is the size of the head of a pin? How many lifetimes would it take to find it?”

“That kind of situation would never occur.” Mu Yiran also stopped to rest. “I told you before, the painting’s world will not give us an impossible-to-complete mission. Otherwise, there would be no point. It could just kill us directly.”

“Then how should we go about looking for it now? There has to be a key point.” Ke Xun looked around them. “This tree is really ugly. The knot in the tree’s bark looks like….”

“A face of a ghost?” Mu Yiran offered.

Ke Xun rubbed his arms. His hairs had all stood up.

Mu Yiran continued, “In olden times, it was said that the Chinese Scholar tree had heavy yin energy. As time passed, faces of ghosts would appear as knots that would grow out of the tree’s body. Furthermore, as the tree aged, more and more faces would appear. Conversely, the more faces there were, the greater the yin energy the tree would have.”

When Ke Xun heard this, he looked all around them again. Suddenly, goosebumps broke out on his skin. The trunk of these three trees were indeed packed with “ghost faces!”

When he examined the faces closely, he realized that they really looked like actual human faces. They all had eyes, noses and lips. Their expressions were very realistic as well. There were adults, children, elderly people; some had confused expressions, some were howling, some looked afraid, some had faces warped in pain and some had on evil smiles….

The lines in the tree’s bark made the “ghost faces” look all the more sinister and odd. Suddenly, a frigid wind blew through the branches. It made it sound like there were sounds that were somewhere between laughter and cries coming out from the varying-sized holes in the tree that made the mouths of the countless ghost faces. The pitch seemed to oscillate up and down. Some seemed to be coming from far away while others seemed to be close by.

When Ke Xun heard these sounds, he felt his scalp go numb. He hesitantly asked Mu Yiran, “Say…do you think that seal or signature…would be in the mouths of these faces?”

“It’s not impossible.” Mu Yiran said expressionlessly.

“What if…I stuck my hand in and something bit it off?” Ke Xun asked.

“I know a doctor at a reputable hospital. I can introduce him to you.” Mu Yiran replied indifferently.

“….” Ke Xun exhaled. “Even if there was nothing wrong with these ghost faces, there are at least several hundreds of faces on these three trees. If we were to examine them one-by-one, how long would it take us?”

Mu Yiran looked down. “Let’s call everyone else and search together.”

“Can we?” Ke Xun asked, “What if someone finds it and leaves secretly without telling us?”

“If someone were to find the seal somewhere else on their own, then it’s possible for them to leave by themself,” Mu Yiran said, “But if they were to suddenly disappear here under everyone’s eyes, then everyone else will naturally figure out where the seal is.”

“All right. Let’s go call the others then.” Ke Xun shook out his arms that were tired from climbing around. He looked up heedlessly. “Have you noticed that the sky seems to have darkened? It’s only noon but the sky makes it look like it’s already evening.”

“It’s going to rain.” Mu Yiran also looked at the sky that was already densely packed with dark clouds. Suddenly, his voice grew tense. “The coffin made of pure cedar!”

Ke Xun was taken aback but reacted quickly. “Pure cedar wood will cause lightning to strike down!”

When he saw Mu Yiran’s expression sink, Ke Xun probed, “What will happen if lightning hits the coffin?”

Mu Yiran glanced at him with a dark expression in his eyes. “The corpse will rise.”