First Film Chapter 8 The Purest Color
Except for the green room where Zhu Haowen and Shi Zhendong were, all other rooms had completed storing three cans of berries before lunch.
"We are still less than one can of work away from completing the task. We should be able to complete the task before 2 p.m.." Shi Zhendong looked at the clock on the wall, which still showed a green pattern.
Xin Beibei looked at her boyfriend, then at Zhu Haowen who was sitting in the distance, with a very complicated expression.
Qin Ci said, "There are only two people in the green team. It's normal that they couldn't complete the task. Let's do this. After lunch, there is free time. If you feel exhausted, you can go back to your rooms to rest. If you are interested , you can gather in this hall for a concentrated discussion."
Shi Zhendong understood that Qin Ci was giving the Green Team time to work, so he smiled and said, "Then we will continue working after lunch. Everyone will gather here at two o'clock."
Everyone nodded. No one ate much for lunch and no one felt like taking a nap, so Shi Zhendong and Zhu Haowen returned to the green room to continue working, while the others sat at the dining table to hold a meeting and discuss.
"Let me first talk about the clues we have so far," Qin Ci spoke again, "First, about the conditions of death. He Yu entered other rooms without washing his hands yesterday, which should be a clear act of color pollution, and he ended his life by being deprived of color.
"The other deceased is Zhang Tianwei. We have not been able to determine whether he contaminated the color, but obviously visiting rooms of other colors is also one of the conditions for death. There are many doubts about Zhang Tianwei's death. We can discuss this issue first." Qin Ci's eyes swept across everyone present.
Mi Wei was the first to speak: "I think the first thing we need to figure out is when did Senior Tianwei die, whether he was dead or alive before he was dragged out of the room, and the scene we saw this morning... Was Senior Tianwei dead at that time?"
Xin Beibei was the first to be shocked by Mi Wei's remarks: "The person was soaked in the bottle, of course he is dead!"
Mi Wei said, "Because the world in the painting is so bizarre, I made a bold assumption - after He Yu died, he lost all his colors. So the senior we saw this morning... was soaked in the bottle in that way. Was he being squeezed out of color? Then how did He Yu lose his colors? Was it also through this method?"
"If that's the case, the whole room will be covered with traces," Xin Beibei said with lingering fear, "The red we saw this morning... has spread out of the room."
"If Senior He was also killed in that way, why didn't the murderer use the same method to kill Senior Zhang last night?" Ye Ningchen raised his doubts.
"The only way to verify your conclusion," Ke Xun looked into Mi Wei's narrow eyes, "is to go to the scene again to see how Zhang Tianwei fared later and whether he ended up with the same consequences as He Yu."
These words made everyone shudder, and some girls even regretted proposing such a discussion just now - verifying the facts is much more cruel than talking about it on paper.
"Xiao Ke is right. In addition to verifying your suspicions, it again." Qin Ci looked at the clock on the wall. It was just one o'clock. "There is still time. Who will go?"
Xin Beibei couldn't help but raise her voice: "Anyway, I'm not going! Even if I close my eyes now, I can still see that big red bottle that keeps bleeding..." Then she pulled Ye Ningchen closer to her, "You'd better not go either, it's too scary."
Mi Wei stood up and said, "I'll go with you. If there are more people, there will be more observation points."
"Dongzi, you are here with a few girls," Ke Xun hadn't finished speaking when he felt his best friend looking at him with gratitude. "Although it is daytime now, it is best not to leave anyone alone, especially in the hall. Don't leave anyone here alone."
Weidong nodded in agreement, looked at Guo Lixia who was dozing off in the chair, and counted this elder sister as one of the people left behind.
So, Ke Xun, Mu Yiran and Qin Ci, together with Mi Wei and Miao Zipei, the five of them went up to the fourth floor again. Because the shape of the castle was very peculiar, the open-air corridor was only on the fourth floor.
It was the first time for Miao Zipei to go upstairs. When he found that the third and fourth floors had the same layout, he couldn't help but feel curious. Moreover, these rooms were the same as the second floor, and the red door in the middle had turned pale and colorless.
There is a wooden door next to the lobby on the fourth floor. When you push it open, you will see an open-air corridor.
"Watch your step!" After Mi Wei's reminder, everyone walked carefully. Sure enough, there were some suspicious red marks on the ground at the end of the corridor.
Everyone walked sideways, trying to avoid the red ones.
The red marks are more obvious on the white floor tiles in the hall.
"The bloodstains... no, the red liquid was disposed of." Qin Ci was puzzled, "but it was not disposed of cleanly."
"It doesn't look like it was cleaned with a broom or mop," Mi Wei bravely squatted down to take a closer look, "Why do these reds appear to have been wiped off in large patches? What on earth was used to clean them?"
No one spoke, but if you use your imagination, you can come up with a horrible metaphor: these traces seemed to have been licked away by a huge tongue.
Soon, these traces were ignored by everyone, because everything displayed inside the open red door refreshed everyone's understanding again.
It was still the same large glass jar as before, and the red liquid inside was still flowing out slowly, but the flow rate was much smaller than in the morning.
The person in the glass jar could no longer be told whether or not "it" was Zhang Tianwei - just as Mi Wei had observed before, Zhang Tianwei's body had become shorter than before, and was getting shorter and shorter.
"Then... is there a baby specimen in there?" The taciturn Miao Zipei finally uttered a stammering voice.
Immersed in the red liquid is still a human body, but it is as small as a baby corpse, still standing upright, with its tiny limbs suspended in the air.
"It's not a baby, it's just a scaled-down adult." As a doctor, Qin Ci answered Miao Zipei's questions very accurately.
Mu Yiran looked at it for a while and then stopped. He turned around and looked at the still blood-red clock on the wall: "Because of the continuous extraction of color, Zhang Tianwei is almost exhausted."
Miao Zipei couldn't help but dry heave: "Do all of us have so many colors in our bodies?"
This sentence was like a prophecy, and no one wanted to answer it.
Mu Yiran looked at Miao Zipei calmly: "In this world, the artist tried to use colors to express everything, including the lives of the people in the painting."
Miao Zipei tried hard to suppress his vomiting and almost burst into tears. Soon he heard Ke Xun say beside him: "Take this opportunity to observe this hall carefully. Maybe you will gain something else."
Mi Wei looked at the bright red clock on the wall: "Do you think it's possible that the painter's signature is on the clock?"
Qin Ci was the first to deny this idea: "Now it seems that the clue of the clock is too obvious, and there are clocks hanging in every hall in the castle, so it is unlikely that the signature is inside."
In Ke Xun's opinion, the facilities in this room were no different from what he had seen in the morning, except that the bloodstains had been cleaned up.
Miao Zipei's eyes fell on the windows of the hall: "The patterns on the window lattices are different from those in our building. Is this a discovery?"
Ke Xun asked: "Do you mean that in the building we are in, all the window panes are the same?"
No one else seemed to be able to answer this question, but Miao Zipei nodded affirmatively: "Whether it is the workroom, our bedroom, or the hall on the third and fourth floors we just walked through, the window lattice patterns are all Morris patterns. To be more precise, they are many screenshots of the entire golden lily pattern. Because the distribution of the patterns is different, people ignore their integrity."
Ke Xun looked at this shining young man. Whenever someone made very professional remarks and was able to inspire others, Ke Xun felt that this person was shining.
"So, are the window panes in this hall now Morris patterns?" Mu Yiran asked the question at the right time.
Miao Zipei thought without hesitation: "It is also a Morris pattern. If I remember correctly, this picture should come from William Morris's Pomegranate Branches and White Parrots. These window panes also split the pattern - but the Morris pattern itself is a gorgeous repetitive composition that emphasizes the beauty of classicism. Any part of it can be a perfect work."
"Do these golden lilies, pomegranates and white parrots you mentioned have any special meaning?" Qin Ci obviously couldn't understand these things in the field of art.
"It just represents various kinds of beauty, and it doesn't have any special meaning." Miao Zipei could feel the affirmation and encouragement from the people around him, so he continued, "I just find it strange. Fauvism and Morris patterns are two completely different styles. Morris patterns are more inclined to court brushwork. I don't know why the painter would use Morris patterns in this painting."
Mi Wei also felt that it made sense: "Fauvism is a kind of subversion and disruption. They don't pay much attention to proportion and composition. Compared with it, Morris patterns are too conventional. They are simply two conflicting styles."
But no one can explain these contradictions and conflicts, perhaps not even the painter himself.
"This may be related to the painter's unknown mental journey." Mu Yiran said lightly - the old members all understood that many previous paintings contained too many stories of the painter.
Miao Zipei looked at the red clock on the wall again: "I wonder if the red you saw before is different from this one?"
"It's just a very red color, what difference would it make?" Ke Xun asked.
Miao Zipei hesitated for a moment, then raised his head again and squinted his eyes to observe the red color on the clock face: "Red is a color at the end of the long wave in the visible spectrum, with a wavelength of approximately 625 to 740 nanometers. It is one of the three primary colors of light."
Everyone listened quietly to Miao Zipei's words - "Red is just a general concept. Red can be divided into hundreds or thousands of kinds. For example, the red on Zhang Tianwei and He Yu's clothes was different. Zhang Tianwei's was a dark red moon pattern, while He Yu's was a pomegranate red tic-tac-toe pattern.
"But judging from the red color of the clock face in front of us, it is basically close to the purest red. According to the optical color RGB, the index of the purest red is: R equals 255, G equals 0, and B equals 0."
It was the first time that Ke Xun received such a professional color lesson. After digesting it for a while, he couldn't help asking: "So someone wants to extract the purest color from us?"
