The whole night was like a car driving silently in the dark. No one knew where the end was or what they would encounter on the road.
Ke Xun looked at the colors in the room that were gradually becoming clearer. If this change could have a name, he would call it "dawn."
Ke Xun specifically checked the window that was nailed with wooden boards. The gap left was extremely narrow, and not even a chopstick could pass through.
Where is Guo Lixia? She is nowhere to be found alive, and her body is nowhere to be found dead. This is really strange.
Finally, Ke Xun saw a ball of paper at the base of the wall below the window, just like a ball of waste paper that was casually crumpled into a ball in real life.
Ke Xun really didn't remember anyone using paper in this room, so he picked up the ball of paper with some doubts. The weight was probably about the same as an ordinary A4 paper.
Ke Xun unfolded the paper and found that the shape of the paper was a little strange. It did not seem to be a traditional square shape, and it felt indescribably smooth.
As the paper slowly unfolded, Ke Xun's heart sank bit by bit. When the whole piece of paper was spread out on the table, Ke Xun's heart fell into a deep valley of ice.
"Ke'er! Are you okay? Come out!" Wei Dong's voice came from outside the door.
With mixed feelings, Ke Xun rolled up the paper, held it in his hand, and opened the door.
Everyone looked unhappy. The fear they had earlier was gone, but instead they felt more helpless and resigned to their fate.
"Something happened to Mi Wei?" Ke Xun had already guessed the result.
Miao Zipei's voice was very low: "Mi Wei didn't suffer much, her situation was similar to when Ye Ningchen left."
Shi Zhendong looked into the open blue door and asked, "Guo, how is Xiao Guo?"
Ke Xun walked to the table in the hall with a serious expression and spread the paper in his hand on the table.
Wei Dong was the first to walk over and take a look: "What is this? Is it a little man? This is..."
"This is Sister Guo." Ke Xun no longer looked at the terrifying and somewhat funny little human skin.
Wei Dong shuddered when he heard this, and mustered up the courage to take a closer look at the "little person" on the table. To be exact, it was a piece of human skin with the insides sucked out. It was about 30 centimeters tall and lay softly on the table. Judging from the facial features, it was indeed Guo Lixia.
Although everyone has seen or heard about the tragic scenes of Zhang Tianwei and Xin Beibei in the glass tank before, none of them were more shocking than the "Guo Lixia" this time.
This unspeakable "corpse" is now lying on the table in front of everyone. There is no need to enter the circular building, and there is no special large glass tank. There is only a cold and thin corpse, like a piece of paper that can be ignored at any time, clearly placed in front of everyone.
"Is this thing unfolding like this when you first discovered it?" the questioner was Mu Yiran.
"No, it's like a crumpled ball of waste paper..." said Ke Xun.
Zhu Haowen also took a closer look at the "Guo Lixia" on the table: "So that's how it is. The black shadow probably used the same method as before to drag his prey to the window, but the human body can't pass through the window slit, and the black shadow didn't want to waste such a ready-made color resource, so he could only pick the color on the spot."
"Picking colors on the spot? How?" The person asking the question was Miao Zipei.
Zhu Haowen shook his head: "Probably only Black Shadow himself can explain this matter clearly."
Even if we cannot obtain the specific operation method, we can imagine the situation last night. The color of Guo Lixia's body should have been forcefully squeezed out. The method was probably similar to squeezing the color , but the means were more brutal and cruel, resulting in the whole person being completely drained out, and even the human skin became wrinkled, and finally shrunk into a ball like a waste paper ball.
Just like when we drink certain packaged beverages, when we suck hard, the outer packaging bag will wrinkle.
Ke Xun couldn't help but think of the sound of Guo Lixia gasping in pain last night.
"If this method is also effective, why did the black shadow go to so much trouble to drag the person away?" Shi Zhendong bravely took a closer look at Guo Lixia's body and found that although the body was as flat as paper, it still had a faint color. The facial features and hair were still visible, and the polka dot pattern on the clothes could still be vaguely seen as some light blue.
Qin Ci soon discovered this: "This method cannot completely absorb the opponent's color. Torturing people like this is probably the limit of Black Shadow."
Ke Xun seemed to have thought of something, and rushed downstairs in a hurry: "Hurry up and go to the pool to see if Sister Guo's coins are still there!"
Everyone suddenly thought of something, and their hearts tightened. Then they heard Mu Yiran's arrangement: "Divide into two groups. One group will go to the pool downstairs, and the other group will go to the circular building, and then gather in the lobby on the first floor."
They quickly divided into groups. Miao Zipei was about to follow Weidong and Mu Yiran downstairs, but he heard Mu Yiran say, "Go to the sixth floor. You'll probably need to identify colors there."
Miao Zipei seemed to understand, but he still nodded and followed Qin Ci and others upstairs.
Ke Xun came to the edge of the pool. Although he had prepared himself mentally, when he saw the coins with circular patterns on the bottom of the pool, he still found it hard to accept the fact.
Mu Yiran and Wei Dong didn't say anything. It was hard to imagine that Guo Lixia was still alive.
"Give Sister Guo a quick death." Ke Xun's voice was so low that it was almost inaudible.
Now "Guo Lixia" is being held in Mu Yiran's hand. Mu Yiran walked to the pool in silence and completely immersed the small human skin in the water. A few minutes later, the texture of the polka-dot coins in the pool gradually disappeared.
The human skin completely floated on the water, floating like garbage.
Ke Xun dug a half-wall-deep hole by the side of the pool with his hands and buried "Guo Lixia" in it, muttering in a voice that no one else could hear: "I'm sorry, Sister Guo. When your son comes back from abroad, have him kowtow to you and burn incense to you."
Wei Dong stood aside, feeling very uncomfortable. He still remembered that when he first entered the painting two days ago, Guo Lixia was dragged into it as an extremely innocent person. She just wanted to find a place to get some water.
However, among these people who enter the painting, these people who come and go, which one of them is not innocent?
Mu Yiran's gaze remained on the maze, as if he had thought of something. He walked to the edge of the maze, stood in the northeast corner, and looked into the distance.
"Yiran, what did you find?" Ke Xun asked, turning around.
Mu Yiran squinted his eyes, as if trying to see something clearly in the distance. When he heard Ke Xun's question, he replied, "Nothing special. I just heard some movement in the maze, so I came over to listen."
Ke Xun frowned: "Who is the Minotaur you mentioned yesterday?"
Wei Dong looked at his best friend: It's rare that you can remember such a long name.
"The Minotaur had a bull's head and a human body, and lived in a labyrinth. Legend has it that young boys and girls were offered as sacrifices to him," Mu left the labyrinth with joy and walked towards the castle with the two men. "Later, when archaeologists were conducting archaeological excavations on Crete, they really discovered the remains of this labyrinth. There were a lot of linear texts on the clay tablets inside, including records like this: Athens offered seven women, one boy and one little girl as tribute, etc. These records just fit the claim of offering sacrifices to the Minotaur."
Ke Xun looked at the members passing by in the open-air corridor above the castle, and his eyes lingered on several floors of the circular building for a moment: "Do you think that the black shadow's exploitation of people's colors is also like a kind of sacrifice?"
Wei Dong looked at the pool that could record life and death: "And the setting of the pool seems to be quite ceremonial."
"If it is really a color sacrifice, then who is it for?" Mu Yiran tried to analyze. "These colors add up to black. Does Black Shadow want to use black to make himself more powerful, or is there another purpose?"
"I always feel that there can only be shadows if there are entities. These two things are interdependent and indispensable." Ke Xun looked down at his own shadow. "The law of this world is the same. Dead people will lose their color and their shadows at the same time. I think this law also applies to the shadow itself."
"That black shadow is powerful enough in itself, how big must its entity be!" Wei Dong couldn't even imagine it.
"Fauvism sometimes magnifies something it wants to express, such as the shadow in this painting," Mu Yiran continued as they returned to the hall. "Although the shadow is large enough to cover everything, its entity may not be that large."
It happened that another team member had just come downstairs to the hall. Zhu Haowen heard what Mu Yiran said and thought: "If the shadow has a physical body, then the actions of the physical body should be consistent with his shadow. According to our previous analysis, the big shadow can control our shadows and thus control our bodies. So what was the big shadow's physical body doing at that time?"
Mu Yiran's eyes suddenly lit up, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he looked at Miao Zipei: "What new discoveries have you made?"
Miao Zipei said: "The fourth and fifth floors are still red and blue, but the door representing the colors is tightly closed. The sixth floor is pure purple. Whether it is the clock on the wall or the purple liquid in the glass jar, they are all the purest purple, with equal amounts of red and blue."
Qin Ci asked Mu Yiran and Ke Xun: " Is this the purple color you saw yesterday?"
Ke Xun scratched his head, feeling that it was difficult for him to give everyone clear information on color recognition.
Mu Yiran: "The purple we saw yesterday was slightly reddish."
Miao Zipei suddenly realized: "So that's it! It seems that someone added a small amount of blue to the purple liquid today, which made the red and blue colors equal, and thus extracted the most accurate and pure purple!"
As for where the small amount of blue came from, everyone knew it, and the image of Guo Lixia's pitiful thin corpse appeared in everyone's mind.
The NPC's voice sounded again, announcing that today's task was still to store three large jars of berries, and then invited everyone to have breakfast.
Now that there are only seven people left, the work task seems particularly heavy, especially in the blue room, where there is only Ke Xun. Even if he works non-stop, it will take at least half a to complete it.
"Have you ever thought about why NPCs have never shown up? We have never encountered such a situation in previous paintings." The speaker was Zhu Haowen.
Suddenly, there was another sneer in the hall, clearly coming from the NPC.
"Maybe it's too ugly to be seen by others." Ke Xun raised his middle finger into the air.
"..." Zhu Haowen looked at Ke Xun, "Or maybe this person can't show up, so he can only broadcast his voice to us."