Chapter 541: Chapter 469: Painting
"Painting?"
"Yes, but it’s all random scribblings, you know, they are patients, we can’t use common sense to speculate about their mental world." Doctor Wu’s smile was strained.
Zhang Man quickly spotted the issue and pressed Doctor Wu for Ning Houfu’s paintings. It was clear that Doctor Wu was reluctant to give them, but out of respect for Zhang Man’s status, he had no choice but to lead them out of the room and to another room on the same floor.
This room was at the end of the corridor. Upon opening the door, it was filled with all kinds of clutter. At the wall-side metal cabinet, Doctor Wu pulled open the door and moved out a big, square box. When they opened it, everyone was shocked—it was a box full of paintings.
What was more shocking was the content of the paintings. Picking up the one on top, everyone present involuntarily held their breath. The painting was aggressively smeared with black ink on both sides, creating messy shadows. Between the shadows on the left and right, a gap was intentionally left, within which a crude brush had depicted a female ghost with disheveled hair.
The female ghost stood sideways, missing a right leg, and was posed in an extremely twisted manner in the middle of the picture. Most crucially, she was wearing a blue skirt.
The blue skirt was also the only color in the painting besides black and white, extremely striking, yet it made Yang Xiao and the others shudder.
Blue skirt.
The female ghost truly wore a blue skirt, and under her only remaining left foot, she wore a high-heeled shoe.
Then came the second, the third... Soon, everyone realized that this whole box, with hundreds of paintings, depicted only this one scene. Facing a box full of "female ghosts," everyone fell into an unprecedented panic.
This person had truly seen a ghost; this Ning Houfu had truly survived an attack by a ghost!
But... how did he manage it?
And who exactly was this female ghost?
"Doctor Wu, what do you think of these paintings?" Yang Xiao asked, holding up a painting.
Doctor Wu looked bitter, "We speculate that this is probably a patient’s mental manifestation of fear, a concretization of complex inner fears. In order to understand him better and to help him overcome his fear, we provided him with paper and pen, but... but we soon found out that this approach was not working."
"How so?" Yang Xiao pressed.
Moments later, Doctor Wu pursed his lips tightly, as if making a difficult decision, "His paintings are illogical. Generally, the emotional fluctuations of such patients are unpredictable and far more erratic and unfounded than those of a normal person, but not Ning Houfu. He is very resilient; he always paints only this one picture. We’ve tried changing his living environment, altering his routine, even switching care providers, but none of it changed him, which is why we suspect..."
"Speak plainly." Zhang Man prompted.
"Huh—" Doctor Wu stretched out a hand and rubbed his temple, then gave a wry smile, "Sorry, maybe I’m the one going insane. We actually suspect that the entity on the painting is real, that this scene is something that Ning Houfu truly experienced."
"Because the impact on him was too great, he has been unable to move beyond that scene in the painting. He is trapped, by himself, by his own fear," Doctor Wu confessed frankly.
Yang Xiao and the others couldn’t help but admire Doctor Wu’s speculation. But that was as far as it went, they took a few paintings and said their goodbyes.
Not until they walked out of the hospital entrance did Ju Juan eagerly find Zhang Man, "Quick, tell us, what was introduced in that letter?"
"The letter mentioned that a tragic incident occurred in the villa years ago, the deceased’s name was Shen Shengjie, he was scare to death, and his body was found on the bed, while Ning Houfu was hiding behind the shower curtain in the bathroom and he had been scared stupid by the time he was discovered," Zhang Man explained.
"The same bloody high-heel print was found at the crime scene, which, when compared, matched perfectly with the prints left at the other three crime scenes. Oh, this time there were two prints, one by the bed, facing the dead on it, and the other in front of the toilet in the bathroom," Zhang Man continued.
Hearing this, Yang Xiao furrowed his brow, "That means the Ghost discovered Ning Houfu but didn’t kill him."
At this moment, through Zhang Man’s narration, Yang Xiao also figured out the background in the painting. He lifted the painting he was holding and scrutinized it carefully. The background depicted in the painting was clearly the dark and claustrophobic bathroom, the large shadows on either side representing the two shower curtains that could be pulled and closed, and it was through the gap in the curtain that Ning Hou saw the female ghost.
"But who exactly is this female ghost?" Ju Juan posed the most crucial question, "None of the three women we investigated died wearing a blue skirt."
Excluding Fang Yunqing, who hadn’t died, there were actually only two women left, and neither of them had been killed by being hit by a car.
Anyway, no one matched.
The next second, Zhang Man’s cellphone suddenly vibrated, and, upon answering, they received a shocking piece of news, Wen Chongxian had been found.
"Where is he?" Lian Jinsun asked.
Zhang Man took a deep breath, "It was a man who called, with a very unfamiliar voice, using Fei Rou’s phone, asking us to come back to the hotel right now."
Without hesitation, they quickly hailed two taxis and returned to the hotel. As soon as they arrived outside room 8018, they saw that the door was ajar, with a man standing inside. He was tall and burly, his face full of flesh, and his nose bulbous, appearing to have Mongolian ancestry, he looked intimidating.
Besides the man, Wen Chongxian was also there, but right now he looked utterly miserable, with a bruised nose and a swollen face, and most terrifying of all, his left pinky was wrapped in a bandage, with half of the finger chopped off.
"This is what happens when you break an agreement," the tall man of Mongolian descent threatened in very unnatural Mandarin.
The next second, Zhang Man’s cellphone suddenly vibrated, and, upon answering, they received a shocking piece of news, Wen Chongxian had been found.
"Where is he?" Lian Jinsun asked.
Zhang Man took a deep breath, "It was a man who called, with a very unfamiliar voice, using Fei Rou’s phone, asking us to come back to the hotel right now."
Without hesitation, they quickly hailed two taxis and returned to the hotel. As soon as they arrived outside room 8018, they saw that the door was ajar, with a man standing inside. He was tall and burly, his face full of flesh, and his nose bulbous, appearing to have Mongolian ancestry, he looked intimidating.
Besides the man, Wen Chongxian was also there, but right now he looked utterly miserable, with a bruised nose and a swollen face, and most terrifying of all, his left pinky was wrapped in a bandage, with half of the finger chopped off.
"This is what happens when you break an agreement," the tall man of Mongolian descent threatened in very unnatural Mandarin.
"This is what happens when you break an agreement," the tall man of Mongolian descent threatened in very unnatural Mandarin.
