Paintings of Terror

Chapter 56: About Magic Realism

Translated by Eve

Edited by EB

“A rhinoceros and elephant? Do you think it has something to do with the Rhino and Elephant Art Gallery?” Sha Liu thought this was unbelievable.

Many other people had thought about this too. The similarities between the painting and reality were hair-raising.

Old Man Li Taiyong remained calm. “The Rhino and Elephant Art Gallery was built on this land. A few years ago, the road in front of the gallery used to be named Spring Bamboo Street. The street’s name was changed some time later and a subway track was built underground. From then on, Spring Bamboo Street disappeared completely.”

“Could it be that the Rhino and Elephant Art Gallery and its famous restaurant are…” Xin Miao felt like the things in the outside world were like a dream right now while they were stuck in the world inside the painting.

“That’s right. They were built by the Hong Kong developer.” Old Man Li Taiyong confirmed this.

This was critical information concerning the Spring Bamboo Apartments, but no one knew how they could use this information in their search for the signature. After all, their scope was limited to the tube-shaped apartment. They couldn’t go outside to examine the statues.

The main gate was closed, after all. They could not leave at will.

The oppressive emotions and the blistering heat diminished everyone’s appetites. After eating, drowsiness befell everyone, which was no surprise, considering how no one had been able to sleep well last night.

Therefore, everyone returned to their rooms for a short rest.

Ke Xun entered Room 411. He walked in and looked at the pair of red slippers at the foot of the bed. They had not moved. “Did you hear anything in the room last night?”

Mu Yiran: “No.”

That’s right. Compared to the loud noises from the other side of the window, everything else sounded quiet in comparison.

They had electricity in the rooms during the day so they could turn on the electric fan. Under these poor circumstances, the fan was a luxury.

Ke Xun fell asleep very quickly. He also had a very vivid dream. In his dream, he was a small child. He held a small box cutter and carved crude bamboo drawings into the wall.

As he carved, the sky gradually darkened. Ke Xun thus woke up with a nervous heart.

An afternoon nap in sizzling hot weather wasn’t a comfortable experience. Ke Xun was sweaty all over. After waking up, he realized that one of his legs was thrown over Mu Yiran’s leg. He subconsciously pulled away. As he did this, he realized that the other was awake.

“Sorry for pressing down on you in my sleep.” Ke Xun rubbed the marks on his face left from the summer sleeping mat on the bed. He was completely awake now.

He didn’t know how long Mu Yiran had been awake for or for how long he had been pressing down on the other.

Mu Yiran stayed laying down. “I didn’t want to wake you from your dream, that’s all.”

“Huh?” Why was the boss worried about his dream?

“You were speaking in your sleep.”

“That…is rare. I don’t usually do that.” Ke Xun wanted to make that clear.

“You said: The bamboo picture will soon be done. Very quickly, it’ll break through the ground.”

“I said that?!”

“Yes, you said that.”

Ke Xun carefully recalled his dream. “I dreamt that I was a small child….” As he said this, he suddenly realized something. “That’s right! A child! Have you noticed—the carvings of the bamboo are not very high up on the walls. I had to bend over to see them every time!”

Mu Yiran was pensive. He subconsciously came up to a cross-legged sitting position. “The painter, Luo Bing, is very young. He was born in 1985. If the current year in the painting is 1996, he would have only been eleven years old. He would still be relatively short.”

“Are you saying that the child who carved those bamboo pictures is very likely the painter of this painting?” Ke Xun thought that this was a very brazen idea. However, it wasn’t as if it was completely groundless.

If that was the case, where should they go to find clues pertaining to the signature? Was the signature also carved somewhere?

Mu Yiran said, “The situation in Room 616 is different from the other rooms. 616 was very likely an empty room in the past. The bed, desk, chairs, etc., were all brought in later on. It’s like the apartment decorated it so that it would be easier to find someone to rent it to. It looks closer to a hotel room.”

“Are you saying that the original tenant’s belongings were moved out of Room 616?” Ke Xun hadn’t finished saying what he wanted to say when they suddenly heard the sound of knocking.

Although it was still daytime, the knocking was striking nonetheless.

Wei Dong’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Ke er, open the door!”

Ke Xun opened the door and saw that Sha Liu had also come over from next door at some point in time. The girl looked worried. “What’s wrong? What happened,” she asked.

Wei Dong told them right at the door: “Haowen er discovered it. Outside our window…the ground outside…has gotten taller.”

“What do you mean the ground’s gotten taller?” Sha Liu asked anxiously.

“Isn’t there a concrete wall outside? It originally only reached the fourth floor. But when we looked out the window just now, we discovered that the ground and roads are now level with the fifth floor!” Wei Dong didn’t know how to describe it.

“Let’s go take a look.” Mu Yiran had already gone through the door. Sha Liu followed after him. Ke Xun ignored the nausea and dizziness he suffered in the past and braced himself as he also headed upstairs.

As soon as they reached the fifth floor, Ke Xun started to find it hard to breathe, as if they were at a very high altitude. “Why do I feel like this floor has also changed?”

Ke Xun took a few more Compound Danshen Dripping pills. The pressure was so strong it felt like his chest was going to explode. Gritting his teeth, he continued upwards.

Room 616 was just as Mu Yiran had described. Its furnishing and decorations made it look like an old hotel. There was uneven, old-fashioned wallpaper on the wall. The window, door and heater all had wooden frames. Even the beds were classic single beds. There was also a colour TV on the television stand.

Zhu Haowen was sitting on the bed, playing games on his phone. When he saw that everyone had arrived, he moved away from the window.

Mu Yiran opened the window and discovered that the ground outside was indeed level with the fifth floor. From the outside, people might think that this was a two-floored building.

Ke Xun and Sha Liu gazed at the moving traffic outside. The mundane world outside seemed unreal.

“Where’s the fourth floor located then?” Sha Liu seemed to have thought of something. She shivered.

“Likely underground,” Mu Yiran said.

Ke Xun still didn’t understand. “What did you guys see outside before?” He then looked at Mu Yiran: “What did you see outside when you came to check the room this morning?”

“It was all white fog,” Mu Yiran answered.

Wei Dong nodded. “Yeah. Although we got light from the window, we couldn’t see outside. It was as if there was a lot of fog outside so that sunlight could only filter in faintly.”

“Why are we able to see all of a sudden?” Ke Xun thought that this was extremely odd. It was even rather comical.

“It’s not ‘all of a sudden’.” Zhu Haowen spoke up abruptly. “We were able to see a bit this morning.”

Sha Liu continued to gaze outside. An impulse suddenly rose inside her. Zhu Haowen put a stop to it in time: “We can’t leave through this. The window can’t be open.”

Mu Yiran seemed to have thought of something. “Let’s investigate the fifth floor.”

Zhu Haowen looked up to gaze at Mu Yiran. He then followed the rest of the group as they made their way to the fifth floor.

Because none of them lived on the fifth floor, they could only go look at the window in the communal washrooms. They discovered that the outside of the window was filled with hazy, dense fog. However, they could make out a bit of the city’s outline.

“That’s weird. What does this mean?” Sha Liu didn’t care that she was inside the male washroom right now.

“This has to be related to the changes in the rooms.” Ke Xun felt a lot better after arriving on the fifth floor.

“Why are the rooms changing? Just where are we?!” Sha Liu felt like she was going to lose control of herself. “From what we saw on the sixth floor, the tube-shaped apartment is clearly buried in the ground! We’ve been underground all this time!!”

“That’s why this series is called ‘Breaking Through the Ground.’” Mu Yiran looked outside the window. Ke Xun could not make out his expression clearly.

Ke Xun felt like electricity was running through his body as goosebumps broke out on his skin. It wasn’t out of fear, but because he seemed to be on the edge of a realization. “So this is what a magic realism piece is like.”

Wei Dong was frightened by Ke Xun’s words. “Ke er, are you okay? Why are you suddenly an expert in this?”

Despite Wei Dong’s joke, Ke Xun had on a grave expression. “Breaking through the Ground…the tube-shaped apartment—the entirety of the Spring Bamboo Apartments—is breaking through the ground. The bamboo pictures represent our building. We are currently buried in the ground and are gradually rising from the earth.”

Mu Yiran couldn’t help but turn around. “Keep going.”

Because the male washroom was spacious and empty, Ke Xun’s voice echoed through the room. It was like he was about to give a profound lecture.

“The reason for the changes inside the rooms was because the top of the tube-shaped apartment needed to gather inwards. Why does it need to gather inwards? Because the top of the building had to become pointy, like the tip of a stalk of bamboo and pierce through the earth!”

Ke Xun painted a vivid picture with his words. It was so unreal, but it made sense in this world. It seemed to complete the story.

Sha Liu’s voice trembled. “If we manage to completely rise out of the ground, what will happen?”

No one answered her because no one had the answer.

In the end, Mu Yiran said, “Before we completely break out of the ground, the top floor will be crushed together. We—the people inside—will be completely trapped and separated from the outside. The building breaking through the earth is not for our sake. We are simply funerary objects meant to accompany it.”

“No, no,” Sha Liu took two steps back. “What about now? What should we do now? It’s almost night time. The ghost from 307 is about to come out!”

Mu Yiran looked at his watch. “It’s currently four o’clock. We still have some time. We should try our best to look for graffiti. It doesn’t matter where it’s engraved. We have to search everything! We might be able to find the signature like this!”

“Okay!” Sha Liu was the first to leave. Findng the signature before nightfall was their only hope.

Everyone went their separate ways as they went to search for graffiti. Some decided to team up with another member in their search.

But when dinner arrived at six o’clock, they all turned up with nothing.

Unexpectedly, the gatekeeper uncle suddenly appeared at the restaurant and gave them a hint. “You should all stay in your own rooms tonight. Don’t go outside.”

The NPC had suddenly changed the rules. More specifically, he had abruptly decreased everyone’s scope of motion. Now, they weren’t allowed to leave their rooms, let alone visit other units or other floors.

Xin Miao was the first to raise a question: “What if we need to use the washroom at night?”

“I’ve already placed a bucket in each of your rooms. After dinner, take the buckets into your bedrooms. You can relieve yourselves with the buckets at night.” The gatekeeper uncle said this expressionlessly.

Because night was about to fall, most of the party members were distracted.

Since two of her companions had died, Qiu Lu became more afraid. “If we can’t go outside, we have nowhere to escape to! If a monster breaks through our door, we’ll be dead for sure!”

Sha Liu said, “If nothing else, we can try to escape through the window.”

Ke Xun frowned. “You’d probably end up even worse off.”

Sha Liu glared at him with red eyes: “It’s better than being turned into stuffing!”

This reminded everyone of the hunchback of Room 307. That person had a porcelain pot in his hand and was constantly mixing the stuffing inside.

Eve: Announcement. I’m very saddened and torn but after thinking about this for many months, I’ve decided to quit translating. My mental health has been terrible for a long time now and it’s hit rock bottom. I have translated to the end of this arc so releases will continue regularly until Feb 1, 2021. This novel is now looking for a translator so if you would like to take over, please feel free to apply through the site. Thank you everyone for your love and support. I’m so sorry I won’t be the one to see it through. But I need to take care of myself. Thank you for your understanding.