Paintings of Terror

Translated by Eve

Edited by EB

Ke Xun subconsciously opened his eyes. He peered through the cracks of the woodpile and saw a person.

‘Person’, however, wasn’t exactly the correct term.

This ‘person’ was on the ground, completely naked, and was slowly squirming around on the floor, their body twisted in a weird position.

A second later, Ke Xun realized that it wasn’t that the person’s body was in an odd position—it was ‘his’ body that was weird.

It was as if Nuwa had accidentally made a mistake while creating this person.

‘His’ naked torso was twisted weirdly and ‘his’ grotesque, long spine was protruding out of his back, making it look like it would burst out from ‘his’ skin. Furthermore, ‘his’ limbs and head chaotically sprouted out of ‘his’ bony,? warped torso.

‘He’ looked like an action figure that had been assembled by a kid. Like the kid had recklessly used glue to stick ‘his’ head and limbs onto ‘his’ back, chest, and abdomen. None of ‘his’ organs seemed to be put in their rightful place.

That was why this person couldn’t walk. ‘He’ could only wiggle on the floor to move.

It seemed to take a lot of effort for ‘him’ to squirm along the floor. The deathly pale, emaciated leg on ‘his’ back kicked the air in a helpless, resentful manner. The toes were all curled up and the jet-black toenails were broken, lifting off of the skin. Beneath them you could see rotten red flesh.

‘His’ head wasn’t connected to a neck. Ke Xun couldn’t see where the head was connected to. What was closest to Ke Xun was the “person’s” hand—or to be more precise, five fingers. Ke Xun didn’t see a palm. All he saw were five slender fingers growing out of ‘his’ ribs like they were warts. They kept wriggling and twitching.

Fortunately, Ke Xun had been able to bite down on his tongue in time to avoid making any noises upon seeing this ‘person’ for the first time. He didn’t dare let go afterwards either. He was afraid that if he were to loosen his bite, the contents of his stomach would come rushing out.

Was this the ‘thing’ that had been inside the coffin? Why did the last member of the Li Family look like that?

There was no time to mull over this in his present situation. After the ‘person’ had heard the sound of the firewood falling, its seemingly randomly-pieced body started to wriggle over in search of the source.

What should they do?

Ke Xun believed that this thing was nowhere near as slow and helpless as it currently appeared. What would happen if it were to find himself and Mu Yiran upon coming over would be unimaginable.

A deathly white arm swayed between the cracks of the wood pile as the ‘person’ wiggled along the ground. At such a close distance, Ke Xun could feel the chill that emanated from this dead man’s skin.

The chill felt like it came from the lips of dozens of corpses. Cold and wet, it stuck to Ke Xun’s skin and quickly penetrated through his flesh, drilling into his bones.

Ke Xun’s body began to tremble involuntarily. As seconds passed by, the trembling got worse.

It was all because of that weird thing! Ke Xun wanted to suppress his body’s shivering but it didn’t listen to him.

He bit down on his tongue hard and blood trickled down the corner of his lips. Even so, he could not stop the cold from permeating his body or his body from shivering even more intensely. When his teeth began to clatter, a slightly cool finger pressed softly against his lips.

Soon after, Mu Yiran’s elbow silently pressed against Ke Xun’s ribs. He felt the other apply a bit of pressure and suddenly, the piercing cold vanished without a trace. If it weren’t because the other had a finger against his lips, Ke Xun would have called out in pain. A layer of cold sweat formed on his forehead and palms.

Ke Xun had no time to pay any attention to the pain in his ribs. Through the cracks in the wood pile, he saw that the weirdly-shaped person had already changed directions. Behind one of ‘his’ limbs—Ke Xun couldn’t tell if it was an arm or a leg—dishevelled, curly hair kept sprouting out.

Ke Xun’s gaze followed the hair back to its origin and he ended up seeing a pair of chapped, pitch-black lips.

The hair had come out from this being’s mouth. Because there was so much of it, the mouth was forced wide. Dried, rotten, teeth-less gums were in full view.

Ke Xun’s gaze slowly drifted downwards and saw a flat nose formed in the crease of that limb. Beneath that, two eyes appeared in his line of sight.

The moment Ke Xun met with this “person’s” eyes, everything went dark in front of him.

Mu Yiran placed a hatchet that had been laying by his side in front of Ke Xun, blocking him from the cracks in the wood pile. His movement had been nimble and precise, so he hadn’t made any noises.

Ke Xun held his breath and listened to the sound of movement from the ‘person’ on the other side of the wood pile.

The ‘person’ didn’t leave the wood pile. Ke Xun didn’t know if ‘he’ was still watching or simply waiting. Rusting sounds echoed through the room as the haphazardly-grown limbs on ‘his’ body rubbed together. It sounded like ‘his’ skin was very dry, as if ‘he’ had a skin condition that caused his skin to fall to the ground like fish scales when rubbed.

Ke Xun felt his whole body go limp when he heard this. He also felt itchy himself.

A few minutes later, he realized that it wasn’t just in his head. He really did feel itchy all over.

This wasn’t just a typical itchy sensation. It was a coarse kind of itchiness, as if there were burrs packed beneath his skin.

This kind of prickly, itchy feeling was hard to bear. Ke Xun wanted to tear off his own skin and then ruthlessly scratch his own flesh to pulp with long, sharp nails.

Ke Xun did his best to endure it. He squeezed his fists tightly and dug his nails into the skin of his palms. He bit down hard on his lips, feeling like he wanted to bite his own itchy lips off and swallow it into his belly.

Unfortunately, it was all useless. The itchiness only seemed to double in lieu of his resistance. Ke Xun’s eyes felt like they would pop out of his skull from how much force he was using to resist. He wasn’t even in the mind to think about how he was currently facing imminent death.

Ruthless. Truly ruthless.

This deformed ghoul was even more ruthless than a murderer who killed with their own hands.

Ke Xun could feel that he was already at his limit. A voice in his head said, “I can’t take it anymore, I can’t hold on anymore. I want to die. I’m going to die!”

Ke Xun’s consciousness told him that he wanted to die in the next second. He couldn’t do this anymore, he would rather die.

The last nerve that had still been trying to fight with its back against the wall snapped. He finally lost all reasoning. Just as he was about to jump up and slam his head against the wall until he died, he felt Mu Yiran press down hard on the artery in his neck. A second later, Ke Xun lost consciousness.

. 𝒃𝒆𝒅𝒏𝒐𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝙘𝙤𝒎

The next time he opened his eyes, he saw Mu Yiran standing beside him, peering down at him coldly.

He could still feel the after effects of having been kicked in the butt.

It was already faintly light outside. Several rays of fuzzy light filtered through the seams of the wooden windows and illuminated Mu Yiran’s sculpted features.

“Is it morning?” Ke Xun was startled. He jumped up. “Where’s that deformity?”

Mu Yiran didn’t pay him any attention and left.

Ke Xun thought of Wei Dong and also rushed out. In an instant, he had already left Mu Yiran in his dust as he sprinted towards the mourning hall.

The paper doll boy and girl were still pasted by the mourning hall door. They continued to look at the arriving people with smiles on their faces.

Ke Xun kicked the door open. What he saw nearly caused his soul to leave his body—it was two headless corpses. Based on the corpses’ shapes, he could tell that one of them belonged to Wei Dong!

“Dong zi—”

Ke Xun cried out in a pained, nasally voice. He completely broke down. He couldn’t even remember how he had fallen onto Wei Dong. He didn’t believe it. He didn’t believe that the corpse left in such a tragic state belonged to the childhood friend he had grown up with—his friend with whom he had been close as brothers to. He didn’t know how to handle this. It felt like a huge hammer was pounding his chest open—-

“…Fuck…uou’re squishing me to death…get up…” A groan suddenly came out of Wei Dong’s corpse.

Ke Xun’s mind blanked. He then saw Wei Dong’s head slowly popped out of the “corpse’s” collar. The other’s face was pained. “…Get up! Go grieve over there!”

“…Dong zi, are…you a human or a ghost?” Ke Xun stared at him, still in a bit of a daze.

“Piss off. You’re the ghost! Don’t curse me!” Wei Dong rubbed his chest that now ached because of Ke Xun’s actions. He fiercely exhaled in the other’s face. “See? Aren’t I still breathing? I’m alive!”

“….” Ke Xun stared at him for a long time before rubbing his face. He concealed the tremor in his voice and said, “Let me tell you, your breath stinks so badly you could bring a ghost back to life….”

“It’s not like I’m gonna kiss you, so what?” Wei Dong eased up. When he looked up and saw Mu Yiran standing at the door, he jumped up and ran over. “Boss! You’re my saviour, Boss! I hid my head like you told me and I was fine! Really fine! I lived! I’m alive! Hahaha! My saviour!”

“What’s happening?”

Wei Dong told him what Mu Yiran had said to him yesterday. He pointed to the other headless ‘corpse.’ “I also told Liu Yufei the method. When he heard that Boss had been the one to teach me this, he stopped howling like a madman. We did what he said and it turns out that it really works!”

Liu Yufei slowly crawled up to his feet. His gaze was on Mu Yiran. “Does this mean you already figured this out?”

“That depends. We’ll have to wait until we go to the old man’s house to know.” Mu Yiran said this calmly and then left the mourning hall.

Ke Xun caught up with large strides and turned to face him. “Thanks. Thank you for saving Dong zi and for saving me.”

Mu Yiran said in a flat voice, “No need. It was just a hypothesis.”

Ke Xun laughed and didn’t mention anything else after that. He headed to the old man’s house with him.

Mu Yiran, Ke Xun, Wei Dong and Liu Yufei arrived the earliest. Shortly after they walked through the doors, the doctor and jianbing vendor walked in.

The jianbing vendor’s complexion looked even worse than it had yesterday. He looked completely spiritless and his skin had taken on an ash complexion. After entering the house, he slumped down onto a chair and stared off into space.

“What happened last night?” The doctor looked at Wei Dong and Liu Yufei. He was shocked that the two of them were still alive.

Before Wei Dong could answer, the door opened again and in came the two people who had been in charge of grave-digging last night.

Everyone’s gazes suddenly changed.

Eight people.

Last night, there were eight survivors. Another night had passed and unexpectedly, this number had not decreased.

According to the painting’s rule for fixing bugs, the eight people would have to hold a vote.

They had to choose one person to die.

Eve: Brutal. Also, it wasn’t as bad when reading but having to translate the description of that deformed ‘person’ made me lose my appetite.