Paintings of Terror

Chapter 17: Ke Xun’s Analysis

Translated by Eve

Edited by EB

Everyone was shocked by Mu Yiran’s words. It took a long time before they managed to come back to their senses.

Since they were young, they’ve heard everyone praise these so-called ‘beautiful characters.’ As a result, they had never expected that they would actually have such terrifying origins.

“No wonder you told me to hide my head in my shirt last night…” Wei Dong murmured.

“It’s like how crows can’t differentiate between scarecrows and real humans. I had thought that perhaps that ‘thing’ wouldn’t be able to differentiate between whether you had no head or you were simply hiding your head,” Mu Yiran said in a flat voice.

“So when that ‘thing’ saw a headless ‘corpse’ lying on the ground, it had thought that Ialready died. As such, it didn’t try to behead me, so I managed to survive.” Wei Dong now understood what had happened. A question then popped into his mind. “How did you know that the ‘thing’ wouldn’t be able to differentiate between a real headless corpse and someone pretending to be one?”

Mu Yiran continued in his flat tone, “I didn’t. I just told you so you could give it a try. If it didn’t work, then you’d have no choice but to die.”

Wei Dong: “….”

Ke Xun asked, “Didn’t you say that the ‘gu’ character’s original meaning meant waist chopping or beheading?? You only had Dong zi conceal his head. What if the thing had wanted to chop him at the waist?”

Mu Yiran replied in a flat voice for a third time: “Then that just means that he was unlucky. And he would have died.”

Ke Xun & Wei Dong: “….” So this big shot hadn’t actually been sure of anything last night.

The doctor said, “I think, when that thing sees a headless corpse, it will think that the person’s already dead. Therefore, it wouldn’t decide to chop the person at the waist. Even if it had originally intended to do that, if the person’s already dead, there would be no point.”

Wei Dong spoke up. “Why does it feel like this ‘thing’ is…a bit dumb?”

The doctor smiled. “This sounds a bit superstitious but, the supernatural world and the human world are different. They each operate by their own rules and thus have different restrictions.”

“You’re a doctor but you believe in the supernatural?” Wei Dong asked.

“I’m in this kind of situation, aren’t I? I have no choice but to believe in it.” The doctor’s lips curled into a self-deprecating smile. “But if you want a scientific explanation, there is one. It’s like comparing different planes. Beings in the three dimensional world cannot see the beings in the two dimensional world. Meanwhile, beings in the two dimensional world can only sense the projection of the three dimensional world.”

“Are we really going to discuss science while inside this supernatural painting world?” Wei Dong scratched his head.

An idea popped up in Ke Xun’s mind. He asked Mu Yiran, “What was the original meaning of our ‘yang’ character?”

Mu Yiran: “Execution by hanging.”

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Ke Xun rubbed his neck. He then pointed to Ma Zhenhua and Zhang Maolin. “What about their ‘dai’ character?”

Mu Yiran’s voice turned eerie. “Death by a thousand cuts.”

Ma Zhenhua and Zhang Maolin started to tremble in fear. Their legs nearly gave up again.

“How did you two survive last night?” Ke Xun asked.

The two of them only shook their heads. They didn’t reply.

“Death is random,” Mu Yiran said. “Not everyone will be in danger at the same time. Otherwise, there would be no reason to give us a time limit of seven days. We’d all be eliminated on the first night.”

Ke Xun didn’t ask anything else. He suddenly heard Wei Dong rejoice, “Since we’ve figured out the rules governing death, we don’t have to fear that thing anymore!”

Mu Yiran looked at him coldly. “Then we’ll have to vote for someone to die every morning.”

Wei Dong was rendered speechless at once.

“We have to do our best to find the signature if we want to avoid having to vote again.” Ke Xun wrapped an arm around Mu Yiran’s shoulder. “Boss, do you have any clues where the signature might be?”

Mu Yiran slapped his arm off his shoulder. “I still think that we need to begin with the painting’s contents.”

The doctor said, “We haven’t finished investigating those three Chinese Scholar trees. We should hurry and finish with that.”

Mu Yiran glanced at Ke Xun. “We don’t know for sure whether they’re on those trees. We shouldn’t all focus on that. I propose that we split into three teams. One team will continue to examine the ghost faces while the other two teams will search for clues elsewhere in the village.”

Ke Xun: “I agree. I will examine the Chinese Scholar trees with the boss. Everyone else can search the village.”

Mu Yiran: “Ke Xun and Wei Dong will investigate the trees. Everyone else will scour the village.”

Ke Xun: “Whatever you say.”

Wei Dong: “….”

No one dared to waste any time. They all immediately went to work.

Wei Dong and Ke Xun walked over to the three Chinese Scholar trees. They craned their heads up to look at the ghost faces on the trees’ bark. Under the gloomy, grey sky, the countless ghost faces looked even more sinister and intimidating. Protruding out of the trees’ cracked bark, they looked like they were trying to escape from the trees’ trunks.

Wei Dong shivered. “Why do I feel like they’re protruding further out from the tree compared to yesterday?”

Ke Xun frowned. “No, you’re right. Their expressions look more realistic too. I think that these faces will become more and more prominent and realistic with each passing day until….”

Wei Dong: “Fuck, shut up! Hurry up and start searching! I’ll keep watch for you.”

Ke Xun: “Watch out for what? Let’s search together and make the most out of the time we have.”

Wei Dong had no choice. He could only start to carefully pick up a twig and shove it into the mouths of these faces like yesterday.

“Right, I want to ask you something.” Wei Dong tried to find something to talk about to help boost his courage. “Why did you choose to abstain from voting? I had thought that Liu Yufei’s words had doomed us. Abstaining is the same as pushing the responsibility of having to kill someone onto others. I kind of agree. This time, we had Liu Yufei take the fall for us. But if no one dies tonight, everyone else might vent their anger onto us if they recall this matter during tomorrow’s voting.”

Ke Xun was climbing up the tree. He glanced down. “Because everyone knows that we’re a team and that we’ve also sided with Mu Yiran. Mu Yiran is capable, no matter how you look at him. Nine out of ten people would follow his command. Other people would thus think that all three of us would vote for the same person. Don’t you think so?”

Wei Dong looked up. “So?”

Ke Xun’s eyes were bright. “Therefore, our little team of three is a huge threat to them. Whoever we choose will end up with three votes in an instant. It’s not obvious right now with eight survivors. But as the group gets smaller and smaller, the weight of three votes will get correspondingly heavier.”

Wei Dong’s expression became one of caution. “So what you’re saying is that….”

“As our numbers shrink, eventually, our three votes will become the majority. Whoever we vote will die. Everyone knows how capable Mu Yiran is. The worst case scenario for them is that our little team of three survives under Mu Yiran’s leadership. Meanwhile, the people outside our team continue to die off. In the end, when it comes time to vote, only the people outside our team will die. Wouldn’t you be afraid of a team like this?”

Wei Dong shuddered. “Yes. Extremely afraid.”

“In this kind of situation, it is very likely that the ‘others’ will start to see us as the enemy.” Ke Xun twirled the twig in his hand. “Thinking in the long term, they would decide that they absolutely cannot allow all three of us to survive until the end. Otherwise, they will become nothing but lambs to the slaughter. With this line of thought, they would likely rather take advantage of this time, when their numbers are still large and the proportion of our votes is still small, to kill one of us. With just two people left, the level of threat the team would then possess is much smaller.”

Wei Dong: “Fuck!”

Ke Xun tapped the tree trunk with the twig. “Back then, Liu Yufei and the jianbing vendor had already voted for Mu Yiran. It was the optimal time to break up our team.

“If even one of the remaining three people had voted for Mu Yiran, even if the three of us chose someone else, that would just make them tie with Mu Yiran. It would still be possible for Mu Yiran to be the one to die.

“And if two out of the three remaining people had chosen Mu Yiran, he would have died for sure. Looking at it like this, Mu Yiran’s probability of dying had been relatively high. In contrast, the chances of someone else dying had been much lower.

“This was because of the existence of our team. It puts great pressure on everyone else. If left unattended, it would have forced everyone else to team up against us.

“That’s why I had chosen to abstain from voting. I had also known that you would follow suit. With two out of three members of the team out of the way, the pressure on everyone else would decrease tremendously. This way, they won’t consider us a problem that must be dealt with right away.

“Furthermore, with Mu Yiran’s capabilities, they would hope that he would be able to lead them out of this painting. Before the safety of their lives is guaranteed, they will not recklessly vote him out.

“Therefore, I chose to retreat as a means of defense by abstaining to ensure that no member of our team dies. A good choice, right?”

Wei Dong was stupefied. He spent a long time digesting this information. In the end, he looked up and said, “…You spouted so much bull, but in the end, you had just done that to save Mu Yiran’s life!”

Ke Xun raised a brow. “Saving his life is the same as saving our lives, no?”

Wei Dong scratched his head. “…Fine. I’ll pretend that you’re right. But speaking of which, Mu Yiran’s told everyone all the clues he has. If we can’t find the signature today, will he be voted out tomorrow? After all, he’s not useful anymore….”

Ke Xun shook his head. “Do you think he’s stupid? Why do you think he left us here while he took everyone else into the village?”

Wei Dong: “Why?”

“Obviously it’s because he wants to show everyone why he’s worth keeping alive.” Ke Xun gazed at the village enshrouded in the grey fog.

Ke Xun spent the entire morning up in the trees but came up with nothing. He jumped down to rest for a while, sitting under the trees with Wei Dong to brainstorm.

“I don’t think the signature is on these faces.” Ke Xun mulled over this while speaking, “These faces are too obvious. Typically speaking, everyone would suspect that the signature would be hidden in a weird place like this. If it really were here, then the faces would practically be like a flashing sign telling you where to go.”

“You’re right.” Wei Dong felt dispirited. “Wei Dong, “Where do you think the signature is then?”

Ke Xun glanced at him. “Aren’t you a graphic designer? This is your area of expertise. Can’t you be useful for once?”

Wei Dong: “Let me tell you, I studied design, not traditional Chinese painting or oil painting!” He then sighed. “Everything I learned is useless. When I think about how much I suffered in school and how I had finally made it through it all after so much difficulty only to now have to die a baffling death in a damned painting, I can’t help but feel that all the effort I put in had been all for naught. I feel like my whole life was one big tragic joke.”

Ke Xun didn’t respond.

Wei Dong wasn’t like him. Ke Xun was alone in this world. Even though he was afraid of death, even if he died, he didn’t have anything to worry about.

In contrast, Wei Dong still had his parents and relatives. Even if his parents didn’t need him, their only son, to take care of them when they were old, they would still suffer the grief of having lost their son for the rest of their lives.

Having no one attend your funeral and having your parents attend your funeral both sounded pretty sad.

“The doctor said that everyone in this village had the last name ‘Li’ right?” Ke Xun suddenly asked.

“Yeah. They probably all share the same ancestor. Everyone here had probably, at the very least, shared a great-great grandfather.” Wei Dong said.

“Then…wouldn’t they have all married their close relatives?” Ke Xun said.

Wei Dong: “Why’s a gay guy like you worrying over this?”

Ke Xun looked at him. “Children that are products of consanguineous marriages are at higher risk of being born with deformities.”

Wei Dong: “Thanks for the reminder. I don’t have female cousins.”

Ke Xun: “The thing that crawled out of the coffin last night was a deformed person.”

Wei Dong was shocked. “Are you saying…that it was a result of a consanguineous marriage in that family?”

Ke Xun: “Although that kind of deformity is a bit exaggerated with regards to real life, we’re in the world inside a painting. Therefore, it’s not too far out there. Moreover, art is exaggerated, isn’t it?”

Wei Dong nodded. “Yeah. Artists tend to exaggerate features to embellish the painting or make the subject more prominent.”

Ke Xun rubbed his chin as he thought this over. “The protagonist of this funeral is a deformed person. What does this painting want to express through this? The painter’s thinking is really strange.”

Wei Dong asked, “Who’s the painter?”

Ke Xun thought about it. “Mu Yiran said that his name was…fuck!”

Wei Dong: “Huh?”

Ke Xun turned to look at him. “The painter’s last name is also Li.”