device
After revealing the correct narrative content hidden in the mural, we both couldn't help but remain silent for two seconds when we looked at those bright colors again.
However, this is when I discovered the problem.
The first mural is wrong.
I can still clearly remember how pious and greedy the little man looked as he worshipped the banyan tree.
Zhang Tianyi and I looked at each other and returned to the bottom of the building. I said, "The content and emotion of this painting are wrong. Did the Zhang family who were responsible for restoring the mural misunderstand it?"
I said this and shook my head.
If it was a misunderstanding during the restoration, this would not be the only one with the wrong expression.
Zhang Tianyi is more sensitive to colors than I am. He exclaimed and reached out to touch the mural.
“The paint is wrong too,” he whispered. “Some areas need to have a finer grain and more saturation.”
I became interested and asked him to compare and focus on touching the faces of the people.
As for me, climbing up and down the stairs was too much of a hassle, so I just sat down and took a rare break from being lazy, and verbally expressed encouragement and support to my respected brother.
Zhang Tianyi looked at me with a helpless look, closed his eyes and stroked the mural. After a while, he stepped back a little, stood half-suspended on the edge of the steps, and stared at it for a long time.
“The mural was altered twice.”
He was not omniscient and could not explain it in detail, but he just felt that a small part of the color seemed brighter.
A moment later, two illiterate people who knew nothing about painting gathered around their phones and began to urgently search for a complete list of common pigments.
After a complicated comparison, a certain omnipotent shopping website pointed out the answer for us:
Some colors that shouldn't be there were mixed into the mural, such as cobalt blue.
It is a blue color with very high purity, which is said to have strong covering power and is extremely resistant to high temperature and light, and can withstand more than one thousand degrees Celsius.
Of course, what caught our attention most was that this thing was not cheap.
A kilogram costs more than 300 yuan. If it is used in a mural, even if it is just this fragment, the price is staggering. This is just one of the types that can be identified so far, and the total is even more shocking.
The Zhang family restored the murals to restore details and preserve information as much as possible. The intention of the person who modified the murals for the second time is somewhat intriguing.
Zhang Tianyi and I divided the work. We removed two plastic strips from the smashed mineral water bottle, and then each of us carefully scraped off the newer and brighter paint.
As the confusing revisions are scraped away, the rest of the story slowly emerges.
The first thing that was restored was a blank face.
Yes, in the original drawings, the little people representing the ghost stories had no facial features.
Those parts were not only blank, but also sunken with a large piece missing, as if someone had broken it off temporarily. Especially at the position of the eyes, the mural was sunken very deeply, and the damaged edges were not neat, which made people imagine the panic and avoidance when knocking it off.
Then, the crawling movements of the little men also underwent some detailed changes.
The posture of lying on all fours gave me a familiar feeling of palpitations. It was not a worship at all; it was just a movement of lowering the body and preparing to attack at any time.
There are also those very clear and bright cloud patterns, which, after scraping off and adding colored paint, appear gray and dull as if they were excessively corroded by water vapor.
With just these three changes, the entire scene suddenly changed from a sacred worship to an extremely gloomy one.
The banyan tree in the middle, which is very active at night and sways its branches, expresses an indescribable panic and despair in the composition.
Now, all the mural narratives are unified.
I exhaled slowly, not feeling much satisfaction or joy.
Because when these added pigments were scraped off, we found that some of the remaining pigment powders were clumped. This is very abnormal.
"……have a look?"
I said, I have a very intuitive hunch that there must be an unexpected clue hidden here.
Out of caution, I asked Zhang Tianyi to bring an empty mineral water bottle, pour all the clumped powder into it, and tighten the cap.
There were still some residual water droplets in it. Before I crushed it, the pigment powder was a little wet from the water droplets.
At this moment, I felt that the powder lumps in the mineral water bottle seemed to move.
It's really moving.
My hair stood on end and I almost threw the mineral water bottle away, thinking to myself, damn, there are clearly insect eggs in it.
The only thing to be thankful for was that I didn't rush to crush it with my hands. I saw the vague outline of insect eggs emerging in the wet powder, but it was very blurry.
The eggs are so small that they are hard to see with the naked eye. If you don't pay attention, you might just mistake them for small bubbles mixed in with the paint.
"I'm afraid that when the mural was being modified, the person who modified it didn't know that the mist contained insect eggs and didn't pay much attention to it." Zhang Tian said, shaking the mineral water bottle and examining it. "And judging from the state of the insect eggs, the mural was not tampered with too long ago, maybe in the last few years or even months."
"If this is the case, it proves that the fog had indeed erupted at least once before, and the platform and the town were safely preserved during this process."
Moreover, judging from the situation this time, after the previous fog dissipated, there seemed to be no traces of fog left, and the insect eggs all retreated to the ground and were pressed into snow. Otherwise, during this process, the Zhang family often came to the party, so they would not have failed to notice anything unusual. Then the person who painted the second time was able to accidentally mix insect eggs into the paint. Does it mean that the time of this person's tampering was around the time of the previous fog incident, or even that he personally experienced the previous fog?
When I thought about it, I found so many complicated questions that I suddenly felt a toothache.
"Brother, what do you think...the person who tampered with it wants?"
"The first possibility is that after a misunderstanding, out of some urgent emotional need and sense of identity, they deliberately emphasized the content of the worship." Zhang Tianyi smiled, "It seems like something an idiot like Nian would do to have such a deep affection for the banyan tree and not recognize his ancestors. Maybe people would be moved if they repaired the tree alone."
I was stunned, then laughed in anger, and said, "The second possibility is that someone did it on purpose, trying to mislead the newcomers. Isn't Nian Ziqing a deputy? The travel company has been able to run the station without any leaks for many years, and there may be other people behind the scenes."
These two possibilities may even coexist. Nian Ziqing may just be a puppet immersed in fantasy and lies.
I shook my head, feeling only mocking. Compared with the arrogance of the Nian family in the past, it felt like "when there are no heroes, the villains become kings."
As for the powder in our hands, we decided to keep it properly after discussion. We plan to ask professionals to help identify it if there is a chance, to see if we can see the degree of oxidation and accurately determine the exact time when the mural was tampered with.
With the clues from the last fog incident, even if we can't copy the solution, we can still solve a large part of the mystery.
Having said that, I dare not delay and ask Zhang Tianyi if the communication can be restored. Some information still needs to be checked by the guys outside. In addition, those who may be infected, as invisible carriers of the fog, should also be notified as soon as possible to speed up and rush over.
Zhang Tianyi laughed when he heard this: "How can I restore the signal tower and base station after I smashed them?"
I didn't believe a word of it. I thought, forget it. How did you contact the broker? How did the broker call my new phone?
Moreover, would the people in our household registration book be willing to destroy such expensive infrastructure? Most of them just built a shielding device and destroyed some innocuous corners, bullying these tough guys who are mostly uneducated.
Sure enough, he walked to the suspicious little stool in the corner, reached down, and took out something that looked like a remote control.
"Each small area has a jammer." Zhang Tian said with a strange smile, "It's high-tech. Didn't Xu You also use it to deceive you? As the eldest brother, it's okay for me to give you something in return, right?"
I lowered my head and laughed secretly, thinking who could have thought that even Yan Er had turned over a new leaf, while only the old fox Xu You's status was getting worse day by day, and he was being oppressed everywhere.
Yes, how is Xu You now?
I'm not worried about the brokers when it comes to wheelchair racing in the tunnel, but Xu You's condition isn't very good right now, and I'm afraid he's a little embarrassed.
Anyway, it was time to leave the building, so I asked Zhang Tianyi for his cell phone, sent a message to the broker asking if we could talk, and planned to explain the known clues.
The signal on the other end seemed to be very poor, and he slowly replied that he couldn't get through. Then he replied with a few messages intermittently, and then there was a video with a severely shaky camera.
I don't know how long the long, multi-headed creature under my feet has been dormant. In order to prevent it from waking up and blocking the door outside again, I held my phone and quietly unlocked the door with Zhang Tianyi, then pushed the door open and walked out.
As soon as I went out, the first thing I felt was the unspeakable feeling of stuffiness in the air.
The grass on the platform was in a mess, almost completely destroyed, with all the plants uprooted after being ravaged by the storm.
The cracked concrete slabs on the platform that were pushed open by the weeds were also lifted up in large pieces, revealing the soil underneath that had been blown several inches lower by the strong wind.
Fortunately, on this night, the surroundings were still as bright as day, so we all walked lightly and tiptoed out to the platform.
I had only taken a few steps when my phone suddenly vibrated twice, indicating another new message.
I originally wanted to wait until I got out to check, but as if he had guessed what I was thinking, his phone vibrated again and a call came in, which I hung up immediately.
That's not right.
I was startled. The brokers tried to call them but couldn't get through, so they switched to text messages. From a safety perspective, when traveling in the tunnel, you don't know what kind of accidents you might encounter, so you will try to avoid making any noise.
So why this call?
The only literal answer I can think of is that this call was specifically made for us so that we must answer it, or in other words, there is an action that requires us to look at the phone.
This is a warning.
Feeling inexplicably nervous, I gently unlocked my phone and a message immediately popped up:
"Kids, are you walking? Are you heading towards the bar?"
At the same time, Zhang Tianyi suddenly said something wrong, held me down, looked to the side, and grabbed my collar.
My back tightened, and I felt something was wrong. Before I could protest, I was thrown sideways by the huge force and shock. Then, Zhang Tianyi leaped onto a street lamp on the platform, and grabbed me again after he arrived.
I was hung in the air on the street lamp, dumbfounded. I wondered what was going on, the feudal dregs had been going on for so long, and now they were executing a fake remnant like me?
Because the price was high, the phone I was holding tightly in my hand kept popping up messages:
“Stop moving!”
"Kid, stop moving and get off the ground first!"
"We're still underground, and there appears to be a giant PA setup underneath us."
Another message:
"We're at the edge of town now, but we can clearly hear your footsteps moving. Also, something seems to have moved behind you, and it seems to be approaching you quickly based on the sound."
As the news continued to pop up, I felt a steady grip on my arm at my back, silently lifting me up.
"There seems to be something down there, very close." Zhang Tianyi said softly.
"...The tall man under the banyan tree woke up?" I asked him in a cold sweat.
"Now that the grass that could have been used to mark the route is gone and there are no shelters anywhere, we are likely to be discovered immediately. Moreover, I'm afraid that this cognitive bias will be difficult to correct quickly.
The biggest possibility is that after encountering them again, we will take the initiative to walk into their midst in confusion.
If it is impossible, you should let me go and leave immediately."
Zhang Tianyi seemed to shake his head.
“I can’t run away.”
"I felt very subtle vibrations under my feet, and in more than one direction."
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