Paintings of Terror

Chapter 53: @#$%^%@#

Translated by Eve

Edited by EB

TN for the title of this chapter:? This wasn’t the original title but the original title was honestly gibberish. It makes sense later.

Warning: …Um…mentions of nudity and sexual activities.

The door Xiao Sang was knocking on was a familiar one. The candlelight glow coming out from that room last night was still vivid in Ke Xun’s mind. This was Room 402, where the three girls had stayed.

Right now, there was only Xin Miao left inside.

Xiao Sang knocked on the door for two minutes. When she saw that it wouldn’t open, she left.

The rhythm of her steps was the same. Xiao Sang paused every few steps upon reaching a door, as if trying to figure out who lived inside each unit.

Ke Xun quickly spoke in a hushed voice: “If I’m not wrong, the next door she will knock on is our room, Room 411.”

Xiao Sang paused for a moment in front of each door, probably to determine whether or not the people inside were from the world outside the painting. If the answer was yes, she would knock on the door.

The sound of her footsteps gradually grew closer. Xiao Sang walked down the hallway in a counter-clockwise fashion. 402, 401, 416, 415, 414….

“Don’t look.” Mu Yiran looked away. He pasted his body against the wall. At this angle, people could not see him from outside. “She’ll probably leave if we don’t respond.”

Ke Xun also stuck close to the wall. He listened to the sound of the high heels gradually pulling closer. Waiting like this was unbearable. It was like waiting for the end of days.

Xiao Sang, who had on a pair of high heels, finally reached Room 411. She paused before knocking on their door, as they had expected.

Her knocking was also very rhythmical. She was very polite.

It lasted two minutes. Just as Ke Xun thought it would end, the knocking suddenly picked up speed. It was clear that she was getting impatient.

Neither of them moved. They had nearly held their breaths. They tried their best to reduce their presence.

The fast knocking lasted another two minutes before stopping helplessly. She then took two steps forward in her high heels and abruptly stopped in front of the small window.

The other started to knock on the window, unresigned. Bang, bang bang….

A shadow from outside suddenly enveloped them. The person outside seemed to be trying to peer inside. Suddenly, a delicate voice drifted in: “Open the door~ Open the door for me, it’s Xiao Sang, ah.”

Ke Xun broke out into a nervous cold sweat. He had fought with Heishitian but the weird little lady outside still managed to scare him.

“Open the door~” The voice sounded coquettish.

Both men held their breaths. They did everything they could to prevent the thing outside from sensing them.

The woman outside sighed softly before leaving resentfully. The clicks of the high heels seemed to sound disappointed. They were even slower now.

The next door was 410, so neither of them dared to move. It was too close.

Contrary to expectations, however, the footsteps continued and eventually disappeared.

Mu Yiran shifted his head and peered through the crack between the window and curtain: “She went downstairs.”

Ke Xun sighed in relief. “Why did she let off Room 410?”

Mu Yiran’s voice was heavy. “If my guess is correct, then she must have come out from Room 410.”

The cold sweat continued. Ke Xun carefully gazed out the window and saw that the figure in red had already reached the third floor.

Because the figure had descended from the west staircase by Room 409, its first stop was Room 308. The figure walked in a counter-clockwise direction at the same pace as before. Again, she stopped in front of each door before continuing onwards.

Qin Ci and Old Man Li Taiyong stayed in Room 307. As they predicted, the red figure knocked on their door.

Ke Xun’s nerves were strung. Although he knew that Qin Ci was a reliable person and that Old Man Li Taiyong was even more unlikely to make a mistake, Xiao Sang was difficult to read. What if she flew into a rage when the door didn’t open…?

Xiao Sang eventually gave up on Room 307. Although she had knocked for a relatively long time, she hadn’t knocked on their window. She then headed for Room 306.

“That’s weird. I thought that she would knock longer and longer with each door.” Ke Xun didn’t understand.

“Perhaps she can sense the people inside,”Mu Yiran said.

“Like she can tell how many people are inside?” Ke Xun thought about it. There were the same number of people in his room and Qin Ci’s room. “Can she sense our height and weight as well?” If that was the case, it would make sense as to why she knocked on their door the longest.

“No. I think she can sense the gender and age of the people in the rooms.” There was a nearly undetectable embarrassment in Mu Yiran’s voice.

Ke Xun suddenly realized that he had been too innocent just now. He had forgotten why a pretty ghost would be knocking on doors—especially if said pretty ghost was a female ghost that came out of Room 410. According to what Qiu Lu had said, this woman used to love reading ridiculous novels…. This was also the person who had written those shocking poems in the washrooms….

But was it a ghost? Xiao Sang appeared during the day though.

Their group members lived in two rooms on the thrid floor. Aside from Room 307, in which Qin Ci and Li Taiyong lived, there was also Room 309, which housed Shou Zhu and Zhi Shao.

Xiao Sang walked through most of the third floor’s hallway, slowly making her way to her destination.

Room 309 was almost directly under 411. Because of this, Mu Yiran and Ke Xun could not see what was happening downstairs. They could only listen with their ears.

The knocking started again. After knocking for about two minutes, Xiao Sang once again spoke up with a coy Zhejiang/Jiangsu accent. “Open the door, ah. It’s me, Xiao Sang. Gege, open the door, ah.”

Mu Yiran quietly said, “Don’t you think her voice is different from the Xiao Sang during the day?”

Ke Xun tried to analyze it. He then hesitantly said, “The accent sounds about right.”

“No. The accent sounds deliberate. It sounds like she’s imitating a Wenzhou accent.” Mu Yiran hadn’t finished speaking when they heard the sound of a door opening.

This caught them off guard. The door to 309 opened? Who was it? Who opened the door for her?

——It was probably Shou Zhu.

The door opened and then closed.

No one spoke during the entire interaction.

Shortly after, they could hear someone staggering down the hall. A figure appeared in the hallway, appearing panicked. In the end, it approached Qin Ci’s room. The figure knocked on the door and the door opened shortly after. The person then walked in. They could not tell who it was in the darkness.

The entire building fell silent once more.

Ke Xun’s heart sunk. He waited for screams of alarm or shouts for aid.

But a long time passed and nothing could be heard. It was silent, as had been last night’s fire.

The door to 307 had opened. Did that count as allowing someone to visit? Did that count as breaking the rules?

Meanwhile, 309 had let an outsider in. What did this mean?

Suddenly, the sound of breathing floated into his ear. The breathing sounded really loud, as if someone was right next to his ear. No…it was like he was in a room with surround sound.

Mu Yiran and Ke Xun exchanged glances, confirming that it wasn’t a hallucination. The sound once again echoed in the room. This time, it was an explicit moan and gasp….

What the fuck. Where was this loud, horrifying and obscene sound coming from?

Ke Xun thought that the ground was shaking. Suddenly, he thought he saw a white light flicker through the window. He hastily turned to peer out the window once more.

What he saw, he would never forget in his lifetime. He felt like he had been blinded.

One giant body was lying on top of another giant body in the middle of the tube-shaped apartment’s atrium. The giant, pale shining white person was doing something indescribable….

The entire scene was like a holographic image, but it also looked so real. Their breaths seemed to cause the glass windows to fog up.

Ke Xun finally understood what ‘it burns my eyes’ meant. Right now, his eyes were glued to the scene outside the window but they felt like they were going to explode. He couldn’t even blink.

@#$%^%@#…. Ke Xun couldn’t even swear. Compared to what he was watching, all curse words sounded innocent in contrast, almost like songs of praise.

Was watching this scene mandatory? Ke Xun tried his best to look away but his eyeballs wouldn’t budge an inch. All he could do was stare at the giant ‘live porno’ playing out before him….

The two giant bodies emitted light, as if trying to attract attention. Ke Xun was finally able to see who they were. The giant, thin man was Shou Zhu. However, the snow-white, abnormal woman wasn’t Xiao Sang.

Perhaps it was because the ‘exercise’ was too intense, but the woman’s black, Ω-shaped wig had fallen off, revealing long, pure-white hair. When the two people changed positions in the middle of their passion, the woman’s face was completely revealed to Ke Xun….

A pure-white face, pure-white eyebrows and pure-white eyelashes. Only her irises were a different colour—pink. It looked like she was wearing coloured contacts.

The woman was shedding tears of passion and she was shouting unspeakable words. It sounded like those shocking poems.

Ke Xun used all of his strength to finally shut his eyes. Gradually, he regained control of his body. He hastily turned around and panted against the wall. He didn’t know why he was tired from ‘watching’ but he was emotionally and physically exhausted.

Mu Yiran was already leaning against the wall. Their gazes met and they both had a “:)” expression on their faces.

Silently crying without tears.

The sounds outside continued and even became more and more intense. It was like huge surround sound systems had been installed all around the floor so that everyone in the entire world could hear what they were doing.

Ke Xun stumbled back onto the bed and laid back down. “My fucking god, I thought I was gonna die just now. I’m wrecked.”

Mu Yiran was still standing by the window, motionless. He didn’t look outside though. The cold stiffness inside the room was a stark contrast to the fervent passion outside.

The loud noises continued for more than two hours before they gradually quieted down….

Ke Xun also gradually snapped out of the immense disgust and alarm. “Is it over?”

Mu Yiran still didn’t look outside. He pushed the curtains open, catching Ke Xun off-guard, forcing him to see the still-ongoing scene outside. He had no idea whose genitals he was getting a close up on. All he knew was that he could see every little detail. He had no words.

Ke Xun felt his body go numb. In the end, he started to dry heave.

“An albino.” Mu Yiran’s voice sounded even colder in contrast to the sounds from outside the window.

“Who?” Ke Xun used the nasal inhaler. It wasn’t enough. He still wanted to take a few pills as well.

“The woman outside who had pretended to be Xiao Sang. She’s probably the snow-white woman Sha Liu saw last night. Judging by the colour of her skin and irises, she’s likely an albino.”

“Why did she pretend to be Xiao Sang?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because Xiao Sang is the type to be popular with men.” There was no expression on Mu Yiran’s face as he said this.

That’s true. Xiao Sang had succeeded in attracting Shou Zhu during the day. Perhaps Shou Zhu had ignored the rules because he had thought that it was Xiao Sang knocking on the door.

He became fearless of death in the face of lust.

By the time the sounds completely stopped, the sky had already brightened.

Ke Xun laid on the bed and rested for a while before going to pull the curtain open. It was finally back to normal outside.

It was as if the enormous copulating couple outside last night was nothing but an illusion, or an asphyxiating, bizarre dream.

“What happened last night was more like Luo Bing’s style—magical realism.” Mu Yiran summed up the absurd matter in terms of art.

“Is that so.” Ke Xun didn’t know what to say.

When they walked out, dawn’s light had already emerged. Several people came out of the other rooms, including Sha Liu and Qiu Lu next door. They both looked petrified. It was obvious that they had become numb from last night’s torment.

When they peered down from the railings, they saw that several people surrounded a naked male corpse.

Eve: Firstly, ew. Secondly, well, I guess you could say he died doing what he loved. Probably.