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Chapter 208: √

It was unclear how much time had passed. The sounds in his ears and the sensation of drowning gradually disappeared, and Ke Xun fell to the ground in exhaustion, panting.

“Someone has fallen into the water. Help! Someone has fallen into the water!”

Suddenly, a loud cry blasted into the icy endless darkness, disturbing the sound of water, of ice crashing, and of people yelling.

“—Help!” The familiar voice in front of him shouted again, and there came the sound of footsteps rushing into the distance.

Ke Xun was startled for a moment, followed by infinite, exponentially expanding and overpouring amount of anger, pain, torture, and sadness—

“The rescuer! The rescuer is sinking! He’s sinking!”

“The rescuer can’t make it! He can’t make it…The rescuer…The rescuer is dead…”

“Xiao Xun… Dad is so uncomfortable… The water is choking up my lungs and it hurts…Do you remember what it was like when you saw me being fished out of the water? There was sludge in my nose, in my mouth, in my ears…How miserable I looked…When I was struggling in the water, I wished someone could have saved me…But no…I was so lonely.”

Ke Xun clutched his head desperately, hoarse cries leaking from his mouth, unable to be suppressed.

He never wanted to think about the last time he’d seen his father. His father was lying on the icy, muddy ground by the river, his expression still locked in pain. His eyes were half-opened, his eyes blank. He would never again see the familiar world, never again see his family, and never again see the silly son lying beside him, crying so hard.

This was a memory that he did not want to recall nor touch, but now, the cruel and vicious illusion kept repeating, repeating, and repeating that memory again and again, intertwined with those from his father. The perspective shifted back and forth, alternating between his and his father’s points of view. Thus, their most painful memories alternatively pressed on Ke Xun’s body, torturing him cruelly and severely.

That memory was of Ke Xun’s most pain day and night, making him suffer from mild depression and had, at one point, even gave him thoughts of suicide.

It had taken a long time and had exhausted all his willpower for him to finally be able to walk out of the darkness and return to the light.

But this illusion was now replaying his most painful moment, trying to drag him back into the abyss of depression, forcing him to collapse once more to the point of no salvation.

Ke Xun fell to the ground, curling up tightly. The sound of his beloved’s death was grounded into his soul, over and over again.

Until Ke Xun produced an unbidden thought in his mourning beast-like cry: Since the rest of his life is so painful, why bother to live alone?

“Xiao Xun…Come with me. You’ll never feel so painful ever agaIn…Son, Dad’s good boy…Come, come. Just stretch out your hand, and you’ll be free…Come…Just move a little…”

Ke Xun wearily loosened his arms around his body, and slowly stretched out his hands into the void.

He was holding the phone in his hand, and his fingertips inadvertently brushed against the slight convex pattern on the back of the phone case. It was a string of English that read:

Corgi and Mooney.

…

The morning light of dawn spilled into the central hall, and Mu Yiran opened his eyes onto the scene of his fallen companions.

Last night’s illusion was based on the theme of “sorrow.” If compared with the previous nights, the psychological and spiritual impact of this night’s illusion on Mu Yiran was probably the smallest. In the second half of the night, he even took a nap—not even the phantom could wake him up.

Before entering the painting, Mu Yiran’s life could be said to be relatively lucky. He had a complete and normal family. His family was open-minded and understanding, and so his life was peaceful and smooth. Even when he entered the art business, his family weren’t upset or dramatic about it.

Therefore, emotions like “sorrow” rarely appeared in his past life, and naturally it did not cause much damage.

.

But apparently his friends were not as lucky as him; they were collapsed on the ground, their faces weighed with exhaustion and depression.

Grief was no greater than death. It could be seen that “grief” was more likely to destroy a person’s spirit than the previous emotions.

Chen Xinai’s “disappearance” confirmed this point.

The other people sat up one after another, and gradually got rid of last night’s emotional impact, with the gratitude of the rest of their lives on their faces. Shao Ling got up and opened the door to let the humid sea breeze in. Meanwhile, Qin Ci messaged his forehead. For him, who had lost his lover, last night was probably not any better.

Zhu Haowen calmly counted the number of people in the room, while Wei Dong and Luo Ge each shrank their heads and wiped away the tears on their faces with their sleeves.

Ke Xun was curled up in the corner, holding his head tightly in his arms, motionless.

Mu Yiran strode over. He crouched beside him, put a hand on his shoulder, and whispered, “Ke Xun?”

Ke Xun quickly raised his head to look at him, a lazy smile on his face. “Good morning.”

His voice was extremely hoarse.

Mu Yiran looked at his bloodshot eyes and the bags under his eyes, then he stretched out his arms and hugged him. Ke Xun silently allowed himself to be held by him.

Until Shao Ling walked over and solemnly said, “Fang Fei…is gone.”

Ke Xun was about to sit upright when he heard this. Mu Yiran stroked the back of his head before letting go to take the scroll of bamboo slips from Shao Ling. He unrolled it and both he and Ke Xun looked at the contents together.

“This is the message that Fang Fei left,” Shao Ling said, his tone a little strange. “It might be beyond your expectations.”

Mu Yiran’s gaze fell on the bamboo slip and written on it was one of the signs that he had gone over with Fang Fei.

Because the meaning of this symbol was too unexpected, in order to prevent others from doubting her accuracy, she deliberately wrote this symbol in the correct standard, ensuring that no other meaning could be construed from it.

This symbol was a standard “√”.

It meant that, after lighting the rhino horn last night, what Fang Fei saw was a real chicken.

“…Why?” said Qin Ci, who also came over to look at the bamboo slips. He couldn’t understand it at all.

Why would a chicken appear on a lone boat in the vast ocean? Even the appearance of a duck would be more reasonable than that of a chicken.

Even in the world of the painting, the plot setting must always conform to common sense and logic, unless the theme of the painting itself was absurd and bizarre.

What’s more, since Burning Rhinoceros at Sea was an ancient painting that could not be more serious, it seemed unlikely that such an unconventional error would occur.

“Could it be that they brought live chickens on board when they went to sea?” Wei Dong guessed.

“It makes sense,” Luo Bu said. “If you take raw or cooked meat on a long sea voyage, they would end up getting spoiled. It’s better to bring live chicken and live ducks, and you can raise them while sailing.”

“But we haven’t seen other live poultry or animals on this ship,” Zhu Haowen said. “This chicken could only be seen after lighting the rhino horn, which proves that it’s definitely not an ordinary chicken.”

“Where did it come from? It flew over from the shore?” Wei Dong thought it was too funny. “What chicken could fly so far? The painter is simply too strange.”

“No matter how bizarre and unbelieve the clues are,” Shao Ling said, “since it’s clear that it’s a ‘chicken’, we can only consider it from this perspective. Should we take a break or focus on talking about clues?”

“Let’s rest first,” Mu Yiran said, one hand on Ke Xun’s back.

“Okay.” Shao Ling nodded. “Last night was too sorrowful.”

Everyone was about to get up and move around separately, when Ke Xun suddenly said, “Where is Fang Fei’s bow and arrow?”

“Damn–What’s wrong with your throat?!” Wei Dong exclaimed, shocked when he heard the sound of Ke Xun’s voice.

“Maybe it’s changing due to puberty,” Ke Xun said.

Wei Dong: “…”

“Brother, I have throat-soothing chewing gum here…” Luo Bu said, searching himself.

Ke Xun momentarily ignored him and went out with Mu Yiran. They saw Fang Fei’s bow on the deck, with several arrows scattered beside it.

“There’s one less arrow,” Ke Xun said hoarsely. “There are only four on the ground. Yesterday, I gave her five.”

“It’s over there.” Mu Yiran pointed to the front of the deck. The fifth arrow was nailed to the side of the ship’s railing, the tip embedding a long feather into the wood.

They quickly walked over, and Ke Xun pulled the arrow from the wood and showed everyone the feather.

“Really, what an amazing girl,” Qin Ci said softly.

It was quite obvious that after seeing the weird chicken last night, Fang Fei not only didn’t flinch from fear, but even dared to attack it with an arrow.

Regrettably, she failed to shoot the chicken’s body and only got one of its feathers.

“This is the chicken’s feather?” Wei Dong compared the length of the feather with his hand. “What chicken feather can grow so long?!”

“A pheasant, or maybe some kind of bird species,” Shao Ling said.

Even if it was a pheasant, it was still unbelievably strange that such a creature would appear at sea. Everyone looked at each other, while Mu Yiran looked thoughtfully at the long feather in Ke Xun’s hand.

Ke Xun didn’t disturb him, and simply turned to look out at the endless sea beside him.

In the early morning, the sea was full of moisture, and a cloud of gray mist was evaporating in the distance, making the world seem illusory.

Ke Xun was in a trance, when he heard Luo Bu’s voice ringing beside him. “What the…How did my throat-soothing gum become like this? What the fuck is this?”

Turning his head to look, he saw that Luo Bu was holding several brown-yellow things that resembled the stems of dried fruit flowers.

“It has degraded.” Wei Dong also glanced over. “If the things outside are brought into the painting, and if the painting has an ancient setting, they will degenerate into something that would fit with the setting. One time, when I entered a painting, I packed chocolate, but the chocolate had degraded into some kind of cheese because it didn’t fit with the time period and the social background…”

“Chewing gum should also be sugar when it degrades.” Luo But looked at the ugly color in his hand. “What the fuck are these things?”

Qin Ci walked over and looked at it a few times. He picked up one of them and brought it closer to his eyes. He smelled it and said, “This is dried lilac. Now wonder. Lilacs were used by the ancients to remove bad breath, so it could be considered as a kind of ancient chewing gum. It’s not surprising that your chewing gun would degrade into this kind of thing.”

“It turns out that this is a degraded version of chewing gum.” Luo Bu squeezed the dried lilac and threw it into his mouth before Qin Ci could stop him. “Pei! So unpalatable! Too spicy and tongue-piercing.” Luo Bu wrinkled his face and spat out the flower. “It’s better to have something that has evolved for thousands of years…”

“Evolution, millennia…” Mu Yiran suddenly said. Raising his gaze, he looked at everyone and said, “I think I know what that chicken is.”