Chapter 393: The Xia Zhijian (Part 2)

Peng Sanxi did not know who was standing outside the door, but as for those who knew he would be painting here, there were only Teacher Qin and the principal, so he was very clear that the person standing outside the door at this moment must be Teacher Qin.

But when Peng Sanxi tried to call out to the person outside the door, the person outside ran away quickly; when he wanted to open the door again to try and see the person outside clearly, the figure had already vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed, yet the cosmetics and the unvanished face print remaining on the door and window clearly indicated that someone had indeed been there before.

Peng Sanxi felt inexplicably panicked; he returned to the office, wetted paper with water, and pasted it onto the glass, an act of self-deception that barely soothed a trace of the tension in his heart.

He quickened the speed of his brush, exhausting all his strength in order to finish the draft as quickly as possible.

At the same time, it also seemed that his nervous state magnified his impression of everything in his dream, and every detail became even clearer.

The absurdity in the dream and the eeriness of reality made him somewhat unable to distinguish the boundary between reality and illusion; fear and madness slowly crawled onto his trembling brain and wrapped around his entire body, but even though his lower limbs were shaking like a sieve, his brush still landed steadily and precisely.

Yet this did not feel like his instinct; it was as if a pair of invisible hands were controlling him, and even if he had the impulse to give up for a split second, his body was no longer under his own control.

Pale autumn moon, crows crying in sorrow; Peng Sanxi finally finished painting, and after the tip of his brush landed for the final stroke, he finally felt as if his soul had returned, his cold body warming up.

He threw down the brush abruptly and got up to run; he dared not look at what he had painted at all. Every painting he completed was turned face-down the moment it was finished, and unknowingly, the face-down paintings had almost covered all four walls of the narrow office. The wind blowing in from the window was like a cunning devil blowing against the paper of those paintings, and the bits of color and patterns that were lifted up struck his brain, commanding him to recall every detail regarding each of those paintings and combine them into a complete image.

It! It is It! It is walking from the depths of the Xia Zhijian, which is filled with nauseating scenery, bringing even more twisted and chaotic colors and lines; that is a disorder of time and space that the brushstrokes of mortals like him cannot depict. It has noticed this place!

No!

No matter how he thought about it, this could not be his fault; it was Teacher Qin, that woman, that devil. It was she who used that pitiful, begging look to force him to do this, using his peerless... no, using his forbidden, blasphemous talent to break the shackles, letting him draw a single-plank bridge that allowed It to pass into this place.

Now It has noticed this place, this world that has not yet been purified by It.

Mingming the polluted souls in the dream had warned him not to try to do that!

Peng Sanxi used the last of his reason to lock the office before fleeing, then rushed out of the old school building like a madman, running home in a mental breakdown.

That night, Peng Sanxi did not sleep at all, because he did not have the courage to fall asleep.

Because as long as he closed his eyes, he would fall into that colorful labyrinth, and those gorgeous, ever-changing, yet confusingly shaped colors would lean into his ears and whisper endlessly, mocking, insulting, and pitying him, this ignorant and arrogant clown...

The "Zhu Fei" of the turbid world will eventually descend; Its filthy hooves will bring the most turbid colors, and wherever It steps will become murky and unclear; everything will turn into the most primitive colors and forms, that most unstable, most twisted appearance.

After one night, Peng Sanxi fell into a serious illness and could not get up, lying there for over a month. During this time, he also worried countless times about that office; although he had locked the office before leaving and the only key was in his own hands, thick clouds and miserable mist always shrouded his heart, difficult to dissipate, as if he could feel that something that would make him regret for the rest of his life was about to happen outside his Jiu Chi Kun Shi.

A month later, Peng Sanxi was finally able to walk; it was magical to say, but since half a month ago, he no longer easily had those bizarre nightmares even when he fell asleep, and his impression of the dream events was becoming increasingly faint, as if the disaster was moving away from him.

As soon as Peng Sanxi could walk, he couldn't wait to return to the school, rushing toward that locked office he regarded as a forbidden zone.

The window of the office door was still covered by the white paper he had pasted on it back then, and his heart eased slightly, but when he grasped the doorknob and felt the looseness of it as if it might fall off at any time, his just-relaxed mental defenses tightened once again.

Without even needing to insert the key, Peng Sanxi pushed the door open gently.

A sliver of the opened door leaked out an indescribable stench, an ominous smell that only comes from decaying, stinking rotten meat and vomit that has been dry-steamed and fermented under the scorching sun; it was pervasive, penetrating deep into his mind, like the withered claw of a devil scratching at the door of his gradually closing memory.

Following that, the scene inside the room came into view; in an instant, Peng Sanxi was terrified out of his wits. Even though he had prepared for the worst before opening the door, the horrifying sight that appeared before him still made him feel as if his liver and gallbladder were splitting, his stomach hit by a heavy punch, and he couldn't help but kneel on the ground and vomit uncontrollably, wishing he could vomit out all the food from these past days, as if his very internal organs were about to escape his body along with his soul.

At that moment, Peng Sanxi felt that he had probably gone mad, his brain no longer clear, and his memory of that time was actually somewhat blurry. He only felt that what he vomited out was like the colorful pigments he had splashed on the drawing paper that day, and also like the variegated colors he had seen in the dream; it changed and spread from the doorway until it flowed onto that withered, stinking, twisted corpse.

The local area blocked the news; a female teacher who had been missing for more than half a month was finally discovered, "accidentally" discovered by one of her students who had just recovered from a serious illness, mysteriously dead in that old school office that had never been opened to anyone.

Because the method of death was too bizarre, and the reason and process of the disappearance were too strange, everyone felt it was extremely taboo and no one dared to talk about it openly, only chatting about it in private, which Peng Sanxi would occasionally overhear.

It is said that the female teacher had private dealings with some people of unclean status, and witnesses had once seen them engaging in some extremely bizarre activities in the forest on the outskirts.

Others said that when the school colleagues were sorting through the deceased female teacher's belongings, they accidentally found strange jewelry mixed in that did not fit her status and even violated human ethics, with special markings on them, as if they belonged to some unknown organization.

Still others said that the female teacher was usually unchaste in her behavior and provoked bad people, which was why she was killed.

In short, all related topics were explored in a negative direction regarding the female teacher; those things were a mix of truth and falsehood, and Peng Sanxi, who was in the middle of the event, was both a witness and a bystander. He himself could not distinguish what was true and what was fabricated, but he only acknowledged one point.

That is, Teacher Qin did not die a simple natural or accidental death, but was truly subjected to some terrifying foul play.

Peng Sanxi knew that Teacher Qin was killed by something, and those things were inevitably the disaster he had brought upon her.

He was very certain of this point.

Because his paintings, all those paintings were gone, but the colors of those paintings were all still there; they had gathered on that miserable corpse!

The death of a talented and beautiful female teacher also took away a painting genius at the same time.

From then on, Peng Sanxi never had the ability to pick up a brush to paint again; he knew that as long as he picked up a pen again and got stained with even a little bit of those ink pigments, the nightmares of the past would come back, and this time he would inevitably be smashed to pieces and die a horrible death.

After giving up his dream of painting, Peng Sanxi, who had no achievements in his studies, did not continue his education after finishing high school, but instead cast everything aside and chose to inherit the family business; he began to learn navigation and ship operation from his father.

He felt as if he were dead, but that didn't matter; numbness allowed him to forget the past, to forget the things that had happened to him.

As time went on, until one day, he discovered that he had completely lost his former appearance, turning from a gentle and refined young man into the burly captain with a face full of flesh that he was today; his fingers, which had become rough and even somewhat deformed from constantly grabbing tow ropes and fish catches, were no longer suitable for holding a brush to paint, and only then did he realize that he had completely bid farewell to the past.

And just like the turning point that every story inevitably welcomes, just when he thought he had finally been able to embrace a new life after spending decades getting rid of his state of being a walking corpse with no hope, a single voyage made him never dare to be optimistic easily again.

He remembered very clearly that the fishing ground he was heading to that time was some distance from the pier, but it was somewhat close to a small island belonging to Liuhua Port.

Every time he set sail, he would predict the weather for a few days for safety reasons, and it had always been accurate in coordination with the weather forecast, but this time the voyage went wrong; after sailing for less than half a day, the sky gradually lost its warm colors and was covered by dark clouds.

The strange thing was that it didn't rain at first, it was just foggy, and nothing could be seen clearly; they seemed to have sailed into a strange sea area, and even the positioning navigation lost its effectiveness.

For the sake of safety, Peng Sanxi and the crew decided not to sail anymore, just letting the ship drift on the sea, paying attention to the surrounding environment at all times, waiting for the fog to disperse and visibility to become clear before starting to sail again, to avoid hitting something while moving and causing the hull to be damaged.

It was also at that time that Peng Sanxi noticed that there was unexpectedly a beautiful man among his crew, estimated to be not very old, in his early twenties, with a feminine appearance; he looked like a girl when he smiled, but everyone knew that he was that boy, even if he was incredibly likable.

That crew member didn't talk much, only chiming in when others spoke to him; most of the time he was working diligently, and even when he was free, he wouldn't stay away from the crowd, but would definitely be in an inconspicuous corner, taking out a notepad from his pocket to record something.

Peng Sanxi knew that it was mostly likely drawing.

He was very surprised that someone with such an outstanding appearance but such a faint temperament would be his crew member; he didn't even have an impression of when he had recruited the other party. After hearing the other party report his name as Huaiyu, he seemed to have some impression again, but the impression of him in his memory did not seem to be like his current appearance.

Peng Sanxi tried to communicate with him, but the attitude toward him as the captain was no different from that toward others on the ship; he was always so gentle and patient, yet answered everyone in such a perfunctory and indifferent way.

This feeling was very familiar; he seemed to have seen it somewhere, just like the other party's appearance, making him feel both intimate and sending chills down his spine.

He should have tried to recall, but a voice in his mind was crazily warning him: do not recall, do not reminisce, do not open that door!

However, this dust-sealed door of memory was opened after the fog dispersed, and it was so crazy.

After the fog dispersed, what greeted them was not a clear sky, but a storm and raging waves.

The wind and waves were huge, like the end of the world; Peng Sanxi could even see the appearance of a massive sea storm sweeping the seawater to connect the sky and the earth, with incredible whirlpools and tides distributed all around the ship. The ship Peng Sanxi and his crew were operating was as small as a floating board in the middle of it, and could easily be torn to pieces by everything in this strange sea area.

Facing this sudden sea storm, Peng Sanxi and his crew couldn't spare the thought to think, and could only bite the bullet and fight for survival; this struggle lasted from the day until the night.

On this day, they hadn't seen the sun at all; the sky during the day was covered by dark clouds, and at night the sun had already set, but the bright moon was laughing evilly in the sky, as if mocking Peng Sanxi and his group of exhausted, half-dead humans.

Peng Sanxi steered the helm for a day and had completely run out of strength, falling to the ground and falling asleep, until he was woken up by a crew member the next day.

After waking up, Peng Sanxi summoned the crew on the ship; it turned out that there were now three people missing from the twelve crew members, and upon asking, he learned that after the storm, they had only just discovered that these three people were gone.

The crowd remained silent, knowing full well and guessing that those three unlucky souls had likely been swept into the sea by the waves at the time, and were probably already fed to the fish and shrimp, their life or death unknown.

The nine remaining crew members on the ship were not unscathed either, as each had sustained injuries, and the aloof, handsome Huaiyu had even been carried over by others.

Huaiyu's breathing was as thin as a gossamer thread and his face was deathly pale; it looked as if he were beyond saving, and no matter how Peng Sanxi called out to him, he remained unconscious and unable to utter a single word.

The ship's doctor was also at a loss regarding Huaiyu's condition; the crowd remained silent, and prayer and heartfelt concern were the last things they could do.

Yet, a strange thing happened: in the middle of the night, Peng Sanxi suddenly heard the sound of some heavy object falling into the water, which startled him—already tossing and turning—into waking up; he grabbed a lamp and hurried onto the deck to look, only then discovering an arm exposed on the surface of the sea.

Someone had fallen into the water!

Peng Sanxi shouted loudly, calling for the crew to come and help, but tonight everyone seemed to be sleeping as if dead; no one answered, and this eerie situation made his hair stand on end.

But the person who had fallen into the water was in a critical situation, leaving no room for further thought; he immediately wrapped a rope around his waist and jumped into the water to retrieve the person.

Whether it was due to being overworked these past few days and feeling listless, at the moment he jumped into the sea, he felt as if he saw, in a daze, several short, pitch-black tentacles extending from the water surface beside the arm that was about to submerge.

After jumping into the water, Peng Sanxi used the faint light of the lamp to find the person who had jumped, and it was only then that he discovered this person who had fallen into the water was actually the handsome crew member who had been on the verge of death earlier; the other party's hands and feet were cold, eyes tightly shut, and the way he looked soaking in the water was devoid of life—he was clearly already dead.

Just looking at this beautiful corpse made Peng Sanxi feel uneasy and fearful, but holding to the thought that one should be buried to find peace, he still decided to bring the body back to the ship.

Fortunately, after he surfaced with the body, the crew members also heard the commotion of him jumping into the water and woke up; discovering his situation, they lost no time in pulling them both back onto the ship.

Huaiyu was dead; as the crowd looked at Huaiyu and someone asked Peng Sanxi, only then did Peng Sanxi explain the cause and sequence of events.

The ship's doctor stepped forward to examine the corpse, but reached a conclusion that made Peng Sanxi's blood run cold.

Huaiyu had already died four hours ago.

This conclusion caused everyone to look at Peng Sanxi with astonished gazes, their eyes filled with hard-to-conceal terror and confusion.

Peng Sanxi knew what they were thinking, but he could not defend himself, and even felt as if his throat were being throttled by a fear that no one else could feel.

Until a crew member muttered in a low voice, questioning why he would push a dead crew member into the sea, believing that his own accidental fall into the water was a case of getting what he deserved.

Peng Sanxi refuted them excitedly; he had not done that, it was because he had heard someone fall into the water that he had gone down to save them.

But was this possible? Peng Sanxi also felt it was absurd and ridiculous.

How could a dead person jump into the sea by themselves?

Hearing Peng Sanxi's loud defense, the crew members all stopped speaking, yet they could no longer believe a single word he said.

Because they had been resting in one cabin, yet they had not heard the sound of a "corpse" falling into the sea; they had only heard one splash, which was the sound of Peng Sanxi jumping into the sea.

Peng Sanxi hoped his crew would believe him, yet no one responded to him anymore; everyone just silently packed up Huaiyu's remains, organized his personal belongings to hand them over to Peng Sanxi, the captain, and finally sent the body into the ship's cold storage; after finishing all this, they returned to their quarters to rest, as they truly needed sleep.

Peng Sanxi could not sleep; he looked at the belongings the others had organized for Huaiyu as if looking at something terrifying and heaven-shaking, wishing he could stay far away, yet instinctively wanting to examine them, because he guessed that perhaps among them lay the answer to all these eerie events.

He hesitated for a moment, then finally picked up the notebook that Huaiyu had always been unwilling to show others; he believed this was the most suspicious item among all the other party's possessions.

The notebook opened, and the portraits that met his eyes made Peng Sanxi's mind tremble.

Because they were actually a series of self-portraits, and the one drawn was Huaiyu himself.

Every self-portrait was from the same angle, with the same expression, completely identical, even the brushwork of every line was not off by a hair's breadth.

This was almost impossible, because even in tracing, one could not have a hundred percent certainty of being consistent with every stroke.

But, why draw these things?

Yet before Peng Sanxi could think further, he heard a heart-wrenching sound again.

It was the sound of something falling into the water, and this time it was in waves...

I've been tied up with work for over half a month and haven't had much time to write, nor have I finished it; fearing you all couldn't wait, I'll post ten thousand words first.