Chapter 49 The Bloody Wedding Back then, it was just a hormonal impulse…
The café was beautiful, with lovely landscape paintings hanging everywhere, but I had no heart to appreciate it.
I looked at the castle maid's slightly rounded chin; she seemed to be doing quite well.
"It seems the natural disaster is over, isn't it?" she said as she began. "Otherwise, neither of us would be living an ordinary life."
"You know about natural disasters?" I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “It’s in the painting.”
Seeing my surprised expression, she smiled and said, "Sorry, I didn't tell you about the painting."
What painting?
"Okay, come with me."
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the Yale University Library. A maid from the castle, who worked part-time there, led me inside.
We took the elevator directly to the ground floor.
The elevator doors opened, and a musty smell wafted out. "Follow me, it's easy to get lost here." The castle maid led me through winding corridors, then around in a small circle before stopping in front of an inconspicuous little door.
The castle maid took out the key, opened the door, and a stronger, more stale smell wafted out.
“This contains some strange documents from Yale over the past century,” she said.
“What do you mean by strange?” I asked.
"The information can be described as important or unimportant, and much of it consists of strange and unusual stories written by scholars or unknown authors."
"Yale has something like that?" I laughed out loud.
“Yale has everything,” she said seriously.
"I thought all foreigners were atheists."
“Not necessarily.” She said, pulling me to a corner bookshelf. “Look here.”
She started pushing the bookshelf, "Come help me!"
We pushed together with all our might; the bookshelf was very heavy, and it took us a tremendous amount of effort to turn it around. The moment I saw it clearly, I was so shocked that my eyes widened.
Magical little oil paintings are pasted on the back of the bookshelf, and when viewed in a row, they look like a story comic book.
But unlike the comics I first saw many years ago, the content was unfamiliar.
“I discovered this a few years ago. At that time, I heard that you had suddenly become a vegetable, and I wondered if you had returned to another world. Only a coma could put you in another world, right?” The little maid in the castle said, looking at me.
"yes."
"That's when I became interested in other worlds again. I even worked at the Yale Library to find information. Of course, I was also searching at the National Library of America. After three years, I finally found this."
I stared intently at these small oil paintings; yes, that's the place.
There are five images in total: a field under a sky full of snow, a castle covered in thick snow, a tower wrapped in white snow, a frozen and slippery snow corridor, and a floor-to-ceiling window with frost flowers.
This must have been drawn by someone who had been to another world.
Each painting was accompanied by the English words: "Natural Disaster".
“Sometimes I wonder, how many of us have actually been there? Could we form an alliance?” the castle maid said with a smile. “I inquired about the origins of these paintings. According to records, they were painted many years ago by a depressed and frustrated female painter. Her style was unique, but not very marketable. Once, she finally managed to get an opportunity to exhibit her paintings, but to her dismay, she didn’t sell a single one. She was so upset that she had a stroke and was in a coma for ten days before painting these pictures. After she passed away, her uncle, a high-ranking administrator at Yale University, took a liking to them and added them to the library. But the library staff didn’t think much of them, considering them just trinkets, so they just pasted them on the back of the bookshelves.”
"What a pity," I sighed.
These paintings are truly unique, possessing a distinctive beauty. The dazzling and eerie color scheme, the elegant and delicate lines, and the mysterious and dark emotions are all magically blended together, creating an extremely mysterious and captivating effect—truly works of genius.
"Yes, it's absolutely beautiful!" exclaimed the castle maid.
I couldn't take my eyes off them; I stared intently at the paintings.
For some reason, a strange tingling sensation began to rise from the soles of my feet to the top of my head, making me dizzy...
Suddenly, I found myself standing on a tall white altar, with a large group of people standing below the altar looking at me, or rather, looking at the two people next to me.
I was stunned.
Bernard stood before the altar, radiant in a magnificent white robe, adorned with an emerald necklace, a champagne cat's-eye bracelet, and ruby earrings.
The girl beside him was also dressed in a gorgeous white robe, wearing the same necklace, bracelet and earrings, standing there just as dazzlingly bright.
I recognize this girl; she's the stuttering girl, his ex-fiancée.
I watched in astonishment as they both closed their eyes at the same time, muttering something under their breath.
Looking at myself and the large group of people below the stage, I suddenly realized that they couldn't see me—I was transparent.
When Bernard and the stuttering girl opened their eyes, an old man in a white robe and white beard came over and handed Bernard a red box. When Bernard took out a diamond ring from the box, I suddenly realized that they were getting married.
Bernard gently slipped the diamond ring onto the stuttering girl's index finger.
Just like our local custom, we wear rings when we get married, which means that we will be bound to each other from now on.
I suppressed the inexplicable surging in my heart, and was thankful that I hadn't been thinking about him completely all these years.
At that time, it was just a hormonal impulse.
Bernard's eyes flickered, and he suddenly looked at me. I was startled.
He moved a little closer to me. I was so scared I didn't dare move.
The old man with the white beard was whispering something to him and the stuttering girl, but he was distracted, staring at me and my surroundings, as if trying to guess where I was. The stuttering girl, on the other hand, kept looking at the old man with the white beard.
My heart was pounding in my chest. No way, is he that amazing?
Suddenly, our eyes met.
His eyes were still deeper than any human's, a blue like ice, but this blue was not solidified; it was fluid.
He suddenly moved closer to me again, and everyone below the altar looked at him in surprise.
“Don’t be scared, you coward,” he said to me in a low voice. “Don’t run away.”
What does that mean? I forced myself to breathe.
At this moment, the old man with the white beard raised his hands, and a beautiful song rang out. At the same time, there was a loud bang, as if a bomb had been detonated somewhere below the stage, and dozens of people were blown into the air.
Bernard suddenly hugged me—though he could only hug an empty space, I saw several streams of blood spurt onto his back, staining his wedding robes crimson with blood.
My God, more conspiracies and slaughter, it seems endless.
For a man who had grown up surrounded by corpses, this was nothing new. He suddenly released me, raised his hand slightly, and snapped his fingers.
A large group of guards burst through the door and rushed towards the panicked surviving guests. Screams, cries, wails, and pleas for mercy echoed through the air...
"In the twenty-fifth year of Anya, the eldest prince, Bernot, officially married his fiancée. His fiancée was the daughter of Duke Abdu, a famous hereditary noble of the Eastern Empire. As a result, the old nobles who supported Duke Abdu came from all over the world to attend this magnificent wedding. On that very day, the monarch of the Eastern Empire went on a killing spree, slaughtering all these old nobles. The capital was awash in blood, and even the families of the old nobles who were temporarily staying at the inn were not spared."
In the archives in the basement, a little maid from the castle was reading aloud from an oil painting, then asked in confusion, "Strange, how come I didn't notice this line of small writing on the back of the painting before? Hey, Lana, are you listening to me?"
I snapped out of my daze and saw her waving her hand in front of my eyes. "What's wrong with you?"
"N-nothing." How did I suddenly end up back here?
“It’s so strange. What kind of force is controlling us?” she said, flipping through the oil paintings. “And why are we all going there one after another? Are we the chosen ones, Lana? And why us?”
"I don't know." I suddenly rushed towards the door. "I'm leaving now, goodbye."
Running on the lawns of Yale, my heart almost jumped out of my chest.
How did I end up back there again, or did I just flash back and forth?
My rebuilt life may be about to be disrupted.
Back at the guesthouse, I collapsed onto the covers, feeling like I could never go back to the way things were before.
My phone beeped, and my hand trembled as I reached into my pocket, finally managing to pull it out with great difficulty.
The castle maid sent me a WeChat message: "What's wrong?"
I replied, "I've realized I can never go back to the way things were before, and I can never live the life of an ordinary person again."
She quickly replied: "We can no longer live the lives of ordinary people."
I tossed my phone aside, sighed deeply, and lay down on the covers, closing my eyes...
Thousands of images floated through my dreams: snow-covered landscapes, desolate fields, snow-covered corridors, and images of an unparalleled handsome man, along with his words that seemed to linger in my ears: "Coward, don't run away."
I woke up to bright daylight. Rubbing my sleepy eyes, I slipped on my slippers and went to the bathroom, where I saw my pale and haggard reflection in the mirror.
I've decided to uncover the secrets of these comics with the castle's little maid. Only by finding the truth can we truly live the life we want.
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