"Gulp!"
She swallowed hard, her voice amplified several times in the quiet night.
She held her breath and quickly pulled out the next painting.
The paper is white, with the bottom half blank. On the blank background is a stick figure with a short vertical line head, looking down and crying.
On the upper half of the paper, the outline of the mountain is drawn in black ink with semicircles, and six semicircular hills are filled with black lines.
Down the mountain, there are horizontal branches, and on the branches, hoopoes are half-hidden and half-revealed.
"The bird in my dream!" Chang Le suddenly got goosebumps.
She leaned closer to examine the birds more closely, only to break out in a cold sweat!
You wouldn't believe it until you see it, and what a shock it is! Under the crests of those hoopoes were actually human faces!
When you get close, it's as if those eyes are looking through the paper.
Chang Le shuddered, and mustered his courage to look at the strange mountains again, when he suddenly discovered—
At the foot of the six mountains, there were exactly six birds! And each bird had a human face and a different look in its eyes!
However, because they are just simple lines, it is impossible to distinguish the expressions on different people's faces.
Chang Le realized that these paintings had some hidden meaning, so she took out the third one.
Compared to the first two paintings, which are eerily unsettling at first glance, this one gives off a continuous, sinister feeling.
House-Tree-Person.
The content depicted in the drawing was from a psychological test that Chang Le had heard of.
On this picture—
The upper right corner shows a three-dimensional house, with its front, side and top visible. The house has no windows or chimneys, but it has four doors.
In the lower left corner is a withered tree, with six bare branches extending out.
A man, turned to the side, is chopping down a tree with a knife.
The black dotted line marks the trajectory of the knife. If the knife falls, the withered tree will be reduced to a low stump.
The visuals are simple, but they exude a sinister and eerie atmosphere.
Chang Le looked at the windowless house, withered tree, and tree cutter in the painting and felt a chill run down his spine.
She put the painting down, and the last sheet of paper appeared before her.
It's a completely new style and brushstroke!
An abstract painting.
But this one is much better than the previous three. The paper is covered with different colored crayons to form different color blocks. The color blocks and lines are pieced together, and in the mess, you can vaguely see a crying face and a smiling face. The crying face has no mouth, and the smiling face only has one eye and one ear.
Although I don't understand it, it's similar to the style of abstract paintings I remember.
Nine paintings, four styles, four brushstrokes.
Chang Le was filled with astonishment and doubt: What exactly did these paintings mean?
Her gaze fell on the scraps of paper in the box, and she prepared to put away the paintings that had been spread out in front of her.
She picked up the house-tree-man painting and felt the unusual texture of the pad of her index finger on the back of the painting.
"Hmm? Is there something behind me?"
Chang Le put down the other paintings, turned the paper over, and as his gaze fell upon it, his heart suddenly pounded again!
On the reverse side, the characters, written in bold, sharp strokes like a sword being drawn from its sheath, are painted vertically in bright red ink, forming a single line.
"Lele, pick up the knife!"
Chang Le's breathing stopped abruptly, his ears rang, and he opened his mouth but couldn't utter a single word for a long time.
After a few seconds of stiffness, her breathing suddenly became heavy, and her fingers trembled as she brushed aside the other paintings, not caring that they fell to the ground, and abruptly flipped over the paintings of the human-faced bird and the two paintings full of eyes.
"Lele, pick up the knife!"
"Lele, pick up the knife!"
Exactly the same!
Three eerie paintings and three identical sentences, all from the same hand!
Chang Le suddenly dropped to the ground and picked up the other paintings scattered on the ground, turning them over one by one.
No!
Only those three paintings had those words written on the back!
Chang Le sat exhausted on the cold floor. Three eerie paintings lay quietly beside her, their pages filled with eyes staring at her, birds on withered branches below the mountain spying on her, and bright red writing glaringly visible on the reversed pages.
Who is it?
Who left behind such a painting, which she hid deep within?
Who left those chilling words of murderous intent on the back of the painting?
What does this sentence mean?
"Ugh..." Chang Le covered her forehead, which suddenly throbbed with pain. Then, a series of sharp, stinging pains pierced her temples on one side and emerged from the other. She pressed her head down with both hands.
A few minutes later, the pain subsided, and Chang Le stood up, leaning on the table, and sat down to empty the shredded paper from the box.
Most of them were blank, and Chang Le picked out the ones with writing on them and pieced them together bit by bit.
When I concentrate, my headache actually lessens.
However, when the fragments with writing on them were pieced together and the writing on them came to mind, it felt as if a steel needle had suddenly pierced through her head!
Chang Le stared at the pieced-together content with trembling lips and a stiff body.
On the incomplete scraps of paper, four characters were written crookedly.
—I am a madman
Goosebumps shot from his ankles to the top of his head. Chang Le pressed his aching heart and groaned, but then swallowed the rest of the sound back.
The room was shrouded in the mist of night, and the cold moonlight streamed in through the thin wisps, casting eerily fragmented shadows on the painting on the floor.
Chang Le's panicked gaze fell on the notebook lying in the box at the end. She took a deep breath to calm her flustered chest and steadied her fingers as she tentatively opened the notebook.
She was stunned.
The first page contained only one sentence:
"I am Chang Le."
She subconsciously breathed a sigh of relief.
This is her own handwriting, written in the very center of the paper, exuding a sense of tranquility.
This appears to be an introduction to the notes; it should be a collection of essays or a diary.
My dear reader, there's more to this chapter! Please click the next page to continue reading—even more exciting content awaits!
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