Escape the Library

【Phantom in the picture-02】

Yue Xingwen pressed the class selection button. After a few minutes of countdown, 13 people were collectively sent to the examination room.

The environment of this examination room was at night, with a bright moon hanging high in the sky. Through the moonlight, we could see that there was a strange building in front, which was a bit like a European castle in a Western fantasy movie.

Zhang Xiaonian looked at the building carefully and said, "This is a typical Gothic style, with a thin shape and a towering tip, which symbolizes that people can get closer to heaven."

As soon as the voice fell, a group of crows flew around suddenly. In the silent night, the piercing rattling of the crows startled everyone. The shadow cast by the branches on the ground swayed like a swaying ghost.

Ke Shaobin hurriedly took a step back, rubbed the goose bumps on his arms, and whispered: "This environment is too gloomy, why do I feel that we seem to have traveled through a vampire movie and came to a vampire castle?"

Jiang Pingce said calmly, "Go in and have a look."

Everyone followed Jiang Pingce and Yue Xingwen to the castle.

There is a garden at the gate of the castle, which is full of roses, but strangely, these roses are all black. Yue Xingwen thought it was because the light was too dark, so he turned to look at Xin Yan: "Xin Yan, borrow a light."

Xin Yan summoned a string of alcohol lamps to surround the surroundings, Yue Xingwen took a closer look and asked, "Is it really a black rose?"

Lan Yarong said: "The roses on the market are usually red, white, pink and yellow. What's the point of black roses?"

Qin Miao said calmly: "The flower language of the black rose is - you are a devil, and you belong to me."

Everyone was silent for a moment, always feeling a chill down their spines.

Most of the roses in the flower beds have already bloomed, and the layers of black petals look extraordinarily strange under the moonlight. Yue Xingwen leaned over to observe for a while, but found nothing special, and the arrangement of the rose flower beds was irregular, he said: " This class may be a survival class or a reasoning class, everyone should be careful after entering, and don't touch the things in the castle."

The students nodded in unison and carefully pushed open the gate of the castle.

The interior of the castle is luxuriously decorated. With Xin Yan's alcohol lamp, you can see that the hall on the first floor is an arched structure with a height of more than 5 meters. It is very imposing. There is a spiral staircase leading to the second floor.

There are European-style sofas and coffee tables in the hall, and a few paintings are hung on the surrounding walls.

Seeing the hanging paintings, Yue Xingwen immediately became alert: "Since this course is called "Phantoms in Paintings", we should pay special attention to the decorative paintings on the walls, which may be important clues."

Lin Manluo said, "Let Feixue go over and take a look."

Xu Feixue nodded and went to the hanging painting with everyone.

The content of the first painting is a blackboard. The blackboard is painted with white lines in 6 rows of extremely messy circles. It looks like dense mosquito coils are connected together.

Yue Xingwen looked confused: "What does this mean?"

Xu Feixue said: "This painting is a representative work of abstraction, called "Blackboard", by the author Sai Tangbury. There is also an allusion to the birth of this painting. It is said that the author sat on his friend's shoulder and let the friend shake his body at will. , he writes casually on the canvas, so the lines he draws are so messy."

Everyone: "..."

The artist is also very individual, and he paints like this!

Liu Zhaoqing couldn't help but complain: "The abstract school is really abstract. I look at this painting, like something that a kindergartener scribbles. I can't understand what he wants to express."

Xu Feixue said with a smile: "It's true of the abstract school. Among the 1,000 people, 990 can't understand it, and the remaining 10 can see different meanings. The abstract style can be popular in the art world, mainly because these paintings are full of imaginative colors. Don't look at this "Blackboard" like a child scribbling chalk, but it costs tens of millions of dollars."

Ke Shaobin opened his mouth wide: "Just scribbling on this blackboard? Can it sell for hundreds of millions of RMB?"

He was obviously refreshed. More refreshed three views are still to come.

Xu Feixue pointed to the second painting and said, "This painting is called "Exchange", and it is also a representative work of abstract surrealism. The price is as high as several hundred million US dollars."

I saw a large number of messy color blocks in the painting, white, orange, blue, green, black, irregular in shape, like a painting cut out of a pile of rags, and I couldn't understand what it meant.

Yue Xingwen helplessly raised his forehead: "No wonder the course information says that abstract paintings are difficult to describe—it's really too abstract, I can't understand it at all."

Xu Feixue walked to the third painting, and everyone saw that on the pure white background, only four black lines were simply drawn. At first glance, it looked a bit like the profile of a person, but at closer inspection, it didn't look like it.

Xu Feixue said: "This painting is called "Dream", a masterpiece of minimalist abstraction."

Ke Shaobin was very curious: "How much can you sell for four lines on white paper?"

Xu Feixue said: "About 1-200 million US dollars?" Ke Shaobin: "..."

The last painting, a solid red canvas with a vertical white line in the middle. If it wasn't for Xu Feixue's introduction, everyone wouldn't even think it was a "painting". It looked like a drawing made with a computer, and it was a very lazy drawing.

Xu Feixue said: "This painting is called "Anna's Light". The straight line in the middle and the red background were all painted by the author himself, without the help of tools such as rulers. This painting is equally valuable and can be sold for hundreds of millions of yuan."

Ke Shaobin gave a thumbs up: "It's awesome, the world of art is really too esoteric to appreciate."

Jiang Pingce said calmly: "These paintings are expensive, firstly because they are old and valuable for collection; secondly, their authors are very famous, and they were all masters of a certain genre at that time, and it is understandable that the leftover works are expensive to sell. ."

Yue Xingwen nodded and said, "Yes, the posthumous works of our Chinese painting masters can also be auctioned for sky-high prices. The key lies in the value of the collection. The abstract paintings we have seen are definitely not genuine."

Xu Feixue turned around in surprise: "Xingwen, can you tell the difference between halal and fake?"

Yue Xingwen smiled and said, "I can't tell. I only know that the owner of this castle can't collect so many valuable paintings at the same time. Not to mention a single painting is worth hundreds of millions, these paintings belong to the collection of cultural relics. You can't buy it with money."

It turned out that he was judging from the price that these were imitations.

Xu Feixue nodded in agreement: "It makes sense. These paintings should be copied works. Hanging here, they are likely to be clues. What do they represent?"

I really don’t understand the content of the abstract paintings. Even Xu Feixue from the Fine Arts Department has a hard time describing what these abstract paintings mean. Even when the author paints by himself, he is wildly imaginative and free to write, so it’s hard to say what they want to express.

Then, the name of the painting becomes the key.

Jiang Pingce said calmly: "First write down the names of the four paintings, there should be some logical relationship among them."

Ke Shaobin read it in a low voice: "The blackboard, the exchange, the dream, and Anna's light, why do I feel like a story line? The blackboard is generally related to the school, right? But here is the old castle again, so strange."

The entire castle was empty. The moonlight poured in through the arched windows, and occasionally crows flew through the windows. The atmosphere was extremely gloomy, and I always felt that some monsters would rush to attack them at any time.

Lin Manluo had a hairy back, and she said, "Do you want to split up and find clues?"

Yue Xingwen nodded: "Well, let's divide into three groups."

Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce took Xu Feixue, Ke Shaobin, and Xin Yan to the bedroom next to the living room. A group of four girls went to the bathroom, and the rest went to the kitchen.

This bedroom on the first floor should be the nanny's residence. The layout is very simple. There is a separate toilet. There is a workshop next to the toilet. There are mops, brooms and other cleaning tools in it, and there is a door leading to the kitchen.

There was nothing special about the nanny room, Yue Xingwen withdrew and asked his teammates, "Have you found anything?"

The girl group quickly reported: "There are no special clues in the bathroom and utility room."

At this moment, Liu Zhaoqing's voice came from the kitchen: "The refrigerator is empty, it looks like it hasn't been used for a long time. There are no traces of cooking on the kitchen stove - this castle is very strange, like No one lives there?"

Ke Shaobin also wondered: "There are no clothes in the wardrobe in the nanny's room. It feels like the family has moved to another place long ago, leaving only an empty shell?"

Jiang Pingce said: "Don't jump to conclusions, we haven't finished searching here."

Yue Xingwen agreed: "Yes, there is nothing in the refrigerator and kitchen, it only means that the family does not eat here. Let's search the entire castle first."

At this moment, Xin Yan suddenly whispered, "Look here."

Everyone followed the sound and saw Xin Yan squatting next to the carpet in the living room, holding an alcohol lamp to illuminate the area around the edge of the carpet. Following his gaze, there seemed to be a pool of dark red liquid on the carpet. Liu Zhaoqing walked over quickly, squatted down and observed it carefully for a moment, and said, "It should be blood."

Xin Yan said, "Has there been a murder in this castle?"

Yue Xingwen was silent for a moment and said, "It seems that we were teleported to the scene of the murder. The murderer must have escaped long ago. Where is the body? Was it taken away by him, or hidden in this castle?"

Liu Zhaoqing asked, "Did you smell the rancid smell of the corpse after you came in?"

Everyone shook their heads: "No!"

There is no blood or rancid smell in the castle, but because the garden outside is full of roses, the windows are open, and the fragrance of roses can always be smelled in the nose.

Liu Zhaoqing analyzed: "The temperature here is not low. If the body is left at the crime scene for more than a day, it will rot and stink. There are three ways to prevent the body from smelling. One is to freeze it in the refrigerator, but the refrigerator is empty; The second is to seal it into a cement wall. This method has appeared once on the construction site of the School of Architecture, so it shouldn't happen again, right?"

He paused and said, "The third is to bury it in the ground."

Hearing this sentence, Yue Xingwen immediately turned to look out the window.

Under the cold moonlight, in the large rose garden, black roses bloomed each other, as if they had absorbed sufficient nutrients. He narrowed his eyes and said in a low voice, "Rose Garden."

Jiang Pingce immediately said, "Go and dig it out and see."

Several people jumped out of the window, Zhang Xiaonian summoned the excavator and carefully began to turn the ground. After a while, the excavator seemed to touch something hard. Zhang Xiaonian immediately slowed down and said, "There is something underground."

Yue Xingwen reminded: "Be careful, don't cut it off."

Zhang Xiaonian changed direction and started digging around, and soon a big hole was dug out.

I saw that three complete human bones appeared in the pit.

The white bones glowed with a cold light under the moonlight, and the three skulls were facing the direction everyone was standing.