Paintings of Terror

Shao Ling’s theory gave everyone a new line of thinking, but also made the origin of the “entering the painting” event sound even more confusing.

Gu Qingqing summarized in her notebook:

The first possibility: the ‘Classic of Mountains and Seas’ was a painting and also the origin of the “entering the painting” event. It’s the first painting that people entered. The reason could be that during some shamanic ritual, for some reason, it connected to another world and also brought forth the dark force. From then on, the dark force sought opportunities to break through the barrier to enter the human world by drawing people into the paintings.

The second possibility: the ‘Classic of Mountains and Seas’ were shamanic symbols, or rather shamanic incantations, used along with the nine cauldrons and the Earth Cords to suppress an already existing dark force. The dark force, for some unknown reason, set up a mechanism to attract people into the painting, seeking an opportunity to break through the barrier to enter the human world.

The group couldn’t determine which of these two possibilities was true, so they all fell into deep thought. After a while, Ke Xun said, “Actually, we don’t need to obsess over these two possibilities for now, because no matter which one is true, we still need to find the nine cauldrons. So, we can slightly change the direction of our current investigation: gathering information about the nine cauldrons and investigating whether anything noteworthy happened during the era of Yu the Great.”

Shao Ling looked at him amusingly upon hearing that, “Investigating that era might be extremely difficult because no written records have survived from the Xia Dynasty. Even in the Shang Dynasty that followed closely after, all the unearthed oracle bone inscriptions did not mention the existence of the Xia Dynasty. So, some historians even believe that the Xia Dynasty may never have existed at all.

“Of course, later on, there were some artifacts unearthed in our country that could confirm the existence of the Xia Dynasty, but regarding the entire history of the Xia Dynasty, apart from brief records in historical texts like the Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Zhou, most of it remains blank.

“However, on Xia Dynasty pottery unearthed from the Erlitou site, there are dozens of symbols resembling characters. Some speculate that these are the predecessors of oracle bone script, but some scholars argue that the people of the Xia Dynasty primarily used wood carvings and knotted cords for record-keeping, opposing the idea of treating these symbols as written characters…”

“—Symbols?!” Ke Xun suddenly raised his eyebrows. “Comrades, maybe the coordinates of all the art galleries connected together aren’t a signature but a—symbol?”

“Haowen, is the simulator result out?” Mu Yiran immediately asked Zhu Haowen, almost as soon as Ke Xun finished speaking.

Zhu Haowen reacted quickly, immediately displaying his laptop screen for everyone to see. The fourteen coordinates, plus the coordinate of the next art gallery they were going to, could form thousands of possible shapes. “I’ve excluded results corresponding to English letters and simplified/traditional Chinese characters, and imported oracle bone script, bronze script, and seal script into the database. Any shapes matching the character forms will be filtered out.”

Everyone held their breath, staring at the filtering program running rapidly on the screen and waiting for a potentially crucial deduction that might come true to be confirmed.

The images flashed quickly, showing various comparisons of characters with the coordinate points. Then, three minutes later, the screen abruptly stopped. A bronze script character overlapped with the coordinate points, and the screen showed: 90% match rate.

This character had the highest degree of matching with the coordinate points in the entire database.

It looked more like a pictograph than a character. The center of the character was a cross, with slightly upturned ends on the horizontal stroke, a dot on both sides. The vertical stroke connected to a shape resembling a softened “bow” character at the bottom.

The entire character resembled a person kneeling devoutly, raising both arms and holding up a flame.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

“What exactly is bronze script?” Fang Fei asked Shao Ling.

“During the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, bronze was called ‘gold,’” Shao Ling, trying to keep his own excitement in check, explained steadily. “Ritual vessels were made from bronze, with the cauldron being the most representative. The inscriptions carved on them were called ‘bell and cauldron script,’ also called ‘bronze script.'”

“—Cauldron! Bronze script! Light!” Luo Bu shouted, clenching his fists.

“What’s the difference between bronze script and oracle bone script?” Zhu Haowen asked Shao Ling.

“Bronze script evolved from oracle bone script, supposedly starting at the end of the Shang Dynasty,” Shao Ling said as he pondered. “Although there’s no written record passed down from the Xia Dynasty, the absence of unearthed texts doesn’t necessarily mean there were none.

“As you know, by the Shang Dynasty, oracle bone script had developed into a mature and complete writing system, which proves that oracle bone script must have undergone a process of gradual maturation before the Shang.

“And before the Shang was the Xia. In a certain sense, it’s highly likely that the Xia Dynasty already had the embryonic form of early oracle bone script. Since bronze script evolved from oracle bone script, it’s possible that oracle bone script itself evolved from—let’s call it ‘Xia script’ for now. So, this ‘light’ character might also be a ‘Xia script’ character!”

“Now I understand,” Ke Xun said, “that the hint in ‘Funeral’ might not only be about shamans, but—characters. This oracle bone script character formed by the coordinates of the art galleries is the clue ‘Funeral’ gave us!”

“Oh my god, I’m getting goosebumps!” Wu You exclaimed, rubbing her arms.

“So, is this ‘light’ character here a signature or a symbol?” Qin Ci asked.

“…Feels like either is possible,” Wei Dong said.

“If it’s a signature, it’s truly terrifying to think about,” Zhu Haowen said. “Just like Ke Xun suspected earlier, the reality we live in might actually be a painting, and this ‘light’ character could be the artist’s signature on it.”

“Wen Er Ge—you’re scaring me—” Luo Bu, who was particularly frightened of hearing this idea, grabbed a down jacket someone had left on the sofa, crumbled it into a ball, and hugged it tightly in his arms.

Shao Ling: “……” That’s mine. Let go of it.

“And if it’s a symbol,” Mu Yiran, who hadn’t spoken for a long time, continued Zhu Haowen’s thought, “it could very well be a shamanic symbol, which might confirm another of our guesses: the ‘Classic of Mountains and Seas’ on the nine cauldrons is actually full of images related to shaman craft. There are shamanic dances, costumes, methods of performing rituals, and symbols representing shamanism.”

“Actually…the most incredible thing is the scale of this ‘light’ character,” Gu Qingqing said, with a mixture of awe and bewilderment in her eyes. “If it’s a shamanic symbol, who could have ‘drawn’ this symbol across such a vast expanse of land? For a person in the Xia Dynasty to walk through all these places by foot, it would have taken a lifetime…”

“…So, are we saying this ‘light’ character really is a signature?” Wei Dong swallowed nervously. “Which means this world is still just a painting, and someone outside the ‘painting’ simply signed their name on it, which wouldn’t be difficult at all…”

Luo Bu: “Sob…”

“The program showed a 90% overlap just now, meaning that the coordinates that have appeared so far have formed 90% of the ‘light’ character,” Ke Xun said, stroking his chin as he thought. ” Qin Ge said that ‘Ling Shu’ hinted at the relationship between each art gallery and the entire entering the painting event. I think that’s just part of it. It also hinting at something else—each painting we overcome is like unblocking a meridian point on the Ren and Du Meridians. Now that we’ve unblocked 90% of the meridians, once we unblock them all, it will complete a full signature. Maybe then, just like with each painting we’ve overcome, finding the signature will allow us to leave this painting’s world.”

Luo Bu: “Sob sob… Ge, are you saying that we might leave this world and end up in an outside world we’ve never seen before? But we… We were born in this world. What would we even do out there? There’s no family or friends out there, and who knows what kind of creatures exist in that outside world? If we’re just… paper people, wouldn’t we get blown away without a trace with just a gust of wind?”

Everyone: “…”

Ke Xun: “You’ve got quite the imagination.”

Luo Bu: “Now’s not the time to compliment me ah, Ge.”

“Dumb kid, do you think we have any other choice?” Ke Xun looked at him. “We only have two options: either we all die inside the painting, or we fight with everything we’ve got to make it to the end, even if what awaits us at the end is something unimaginable. Anyway, I’m unwilling to just die halfway through. So, which one do you choose?”

Luo Bu rubbed his eyes. “Of course, I’ll stick with you guys.”

“Then let’s get back to this ‘light’ character,” Ke Xun turned to the group. “If it’s a signature, then we’ll have to keep entering paintings and clearing them, working hard to finish ‘writing’ the character and see what happens next. But if it’s a shamanic symbol, it might hold some kind of shaman power. Based on Yiran’s earlier theory, maybe this ‘light’ character is a symbol used to seal the dark force beneath the earth. What do you think?”

“Then, what about our nine cauldrons and Earth Cords gu-xiang?” Wei Dong asked.

“Maybe they serve as ‘reinforcements’,” Wu You said. “My great-grandmother used to write protective charms with cinnabar on yellow paper every New Year’s Eve to give to friends and family who ask for them. After writing them, she wouldn’t just hand over the paper. Instead, she’d sew it into little red pouches or fold it into triangles with red paper. I think those red pouches or paper wrappings reinforced the power of the yellow paper charm inside. Maybe the nine cauldrons and Earth Cords also have this functionality.”

“That makes sense.” The group nodded in agreement with this theory.

“So, to sum it up,” Zhu Haowen said, “this giant shamanic symbol, ‘light’, formed by coordinates as nodes, originates from the Xia Dynasty. If it was used to suppress the dark force beneath the earth, it means that force existed back in the Xia Dynasty and had already caused some negative effects—otherwise, there’d be no need to seal it. The question is: what major event happened during the Xia Dynasty?”

“But Prez Shao said that records of the Xia Dynasty’s history are practically blank. Where are we supposed to start looking?” Wei Dong worried.

“If something this extraordinary and strange happened, I don’t believe there wouldn’t be any relevant record of it,” Ke Xun said. “Even if there were very few or even no written records, couldn’t they at least have drawn it? If they could draw the ‘Classic of Mountains and Seas’, why wouldn’t they be able to draw a major event related to shaman craft? Prez Shao, think again—are there any unearthed Xia Dynasty artifacts with drawings on them?”

Shao Ling shook his head helplessly. “Let me tell you this—there are no written records from periods before the Xia Dynasty, only oral legends, which is why that era is referred to as the Legendary or Mythical Period. The period when written records or artifacts documenting societal conditions begin is called the Historical Period. It started from the end of the Shang Dynasty.

“The period between the Mythical and Historical Periods is known as the Semi-Historical Period. This ‘semi-historical’ doesn’t mean ‘half-believable’; rather, some historical events during this period have been confirmed through archaeological discoveries, while others—like the half-human, half-god heroes and strange spirits and mythical beasts—continue to appear in oral legends. So, the Semi-Historical Period is a period when real, verified historical events coexist with myths and oral history.

“The Semi-Historical Period serves as a transition between the Mythical and Historical Period. It’s a very long transition, spanning over 1,500 years, and it has one striking feature, the presence of ‘blank periods.’

“Think of the Semi-Historical Period as a long white strip of paper. The historical events that have been verified are like scattered ink marks on this strip of white paper, appearing every few dozen or hundred meters. Most of this strip is completely blank.

“These kinds of blank periods have occurred frequently—sometimes lasting hundreds of years without any historical record or even mythological stories. It’s like a vacuum with everything sucked out, eerily quiet, and future generations have no idea what happened during these long stretches of time.

“The entire Xia Dynasty and the early Shang Dynasty fell into this Semi-Historical Period. There are far too many long gaps in history. It’s not that it’s difficult to research—there’s simply no information to research…”

“…This Semi-Historical Period is so mysterious…” Wu You marveled. “Those completely blank periods feel a kind of… unnerving and deliberate silence. It’s like, a few sentences in a long paragraph of words have been deliberately wiped away by someone with an eraser.”

“—Wait a minute,” Ke Xun’s eyes widened as he looked at Mu Yiran and Shao Ling. “Wu You’s words make sense—those blank periods, what if they were ‘erased’ from history by some kind of force?”

This statement sent a shudder through the group, and Shao Ling’s breath quickened slightly as he frowned. “It’s not impossible… but we also need to consider whether writing even existed at that time. If there was no writing, then of course no history could be recorded… wait, that’s not right… Some historical events have been confirmed through excavated artifacts in the middle. It doesn’t make sense for hundreds of years to suddenly go by without any trace of history. Those blank periods for hundreds of years… really aren’t normal…”

Mu Yiran was calmer than Shao Ling. He thought carefully before speaking. “Perhaps… this is the real reason why Yu the Great cast the nine cauldrons?”

Translators’ note

This arc is wrapping up!

The next painting will be the second to last · ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝