Chapter 94: Art
“I won’t have the chance to kill you?”
Gao Ming felt that Xia Yang was not stable. He looked sunny on the surface, but there was a part of his heart that even the sun couldn’t reach. No one could guess his thoughts.
“The concept of fate is ridiculous to me. I am never hung up about the past, and I don’t trust in the future. I only care about the present.” Red paint dripped down from Xia Yang along with his skin. He was like a piece of melting ice. “Much evidence proves that you can see the future. You could have easily killed me on a different timeline. There’s no chance of me winning.” “So, what is your plan?” Gao Ming was highly alerted. If one knew that one was about to be killed, one would try to escape or resist, but Xia Yang did neither.
“I want to create a future you haven’t seen. You can’t kill me, and you can’t escape from me. I will make you the new me.” Xia Yang’s sunny smile was chilling. Half of his skin was gone.
“A psychiatrist’s worst patient is one without self-awareness. They do not want to admit that they’re sick and try to convince the people around them that they are the ones who are sick.” Gao Ming had seen patients like him before.
“Crazy people talk nonsense, but I don’t.” Xia Yang melted faster. Even his bones turned into red paint. It joined him with the whole red room. “I will turn my dream into reality. You can’t kill me, but I’ll always look at you, slowly changing you until I can be reborn in your body.”
Xia Yang fully dissolved. His body melted into the red of the room. In the red room, the self-portrait turned colourful. Xia Yang, in the painting, looked so alive.
“I really hate using my brain.” Gao Ming’s hands dropped down. He was ready for a fight, but Xia Yang knew he couldn’t win Gao Ming in a head-on fight.
Gao Ming stood before the self-portrait. He was attracted by Xia Yang’s face. Xia Yang’s lips appeared to move. Gao Ming wanted to listen closer, but he was pulled into the painting. The painting in real life featured the living room and the second floor. The self-portrait of Xia Yang had the background of the bedroom. Gao Ming was inside the painting inside the painting inside the painting.
There was a coffin in the middle of the bedroom. Xia Yang’s corpse was in it. Underneath the body was flowers and shadow. His fingers were crossed. In the middle of them was a black-and-white death portrait.
“Was Xia Yang already dead when I arrived?” Gao Ming examined the body but couldn’t find the cause of death. The person’s body basically shut down. Compared to a physical death, it was more like a brain death. Gao Ming picked up the portrait and saw an absurd scene. In the death portrait, Xia Yang’s corpse held the paintbrush and palette to draw an alive version of himself. There were many interpretations of this picture. The dead body drew its soul; Death gave life a new meaning; painting despair, and so on.
Gao Ming couldn’t understand the death portrait, but he discovered something unique about it. In the portrait, the corpse had colours, and the living Xia Yang painted by the corpse was gaining colours as Xia Yang lost his life.
Gao Ming had not seen something like this before. Under some influence, this black-and-white picture would eventually turn fully colourful.
“Is Xia Yang sacrificing himself to fill up the death portrait?”
He turned the picture around. The words on the back were crossed off with blood. Gao Ming tried to wipe the stain away. The room in the painting started to crack. All the blood rushed towards the portrait Gao Ming was holding. The painted room melted back into liquid. When the last drop of blood returned to the painting, Gaoi Ming returned to real life. He stood in the middle of the ruined canvases. The living room wall turned back to normal. The blood grafitti was gone. The bungalow felt normal again.
“Teacher Xia has gone beyond the scope of art. What is his goal?” Gao Ming looked at the strange death portrait, “Is he dead or alive?” Thinking about what Xia Yang said, Gao Ming was conflicted, “If I ruin this picture, Xia Yang will be dead forever. However, this portrait that helped Xia Yang become the top player would have a terrifying power.”
If he ruined the death portrait, It would be like throwing away rare equipment. If he kept the portrait, it meant that he kept a part of Xia Yang with him. Everything corresponded to Xia Yang’s words: Gao Ming couldn’t kill him, and he would keep on looking at Gao Ming.
“Death is inevitable. Living is a demand. Death is a blessing?”
Gao Ming felt tired. The antagonists he met were all different from the ones in the movies. They were so complicated and extremely unstable.
“Xia Yang might have overestimated me. He really thought I could see all the future. That’s why he used this method to overrule all the endings. However, I only have visions of my own death memories.”
Gao Ming suddenly felt like he didn’t know this man whom he had worked with for years. He started to look through the bungalow.
The first floor was the living room. There was a special painting room on the second floor. There was a storage with many valuable paintings. One of them could last Gao Ming for years.
He looked through everything. He found a lot of pills in the bedroom drawer. He recognised most of them. Most of the drugs were used to treat mental illness. Some were used to treat a kind of fatal illness.
Gao Ming entered the storage and found many medical reports underneath the abandoned canvases. Xia Yang was diagnosed with a fatal illness by many doctors. If he didn’t cooperate, he’d soon die.
“I wouldn’t be able to tell from how he normally lives.”
Gao Ming noticed the paintings on the wall had something hidden behind them. He removed the paintings.
Many hidden doors appeared before him. The doors were pasted with pictures of abandoned children and misshapen kids.
Gao Ming pushed the doors and saw the real Xia Yang.
The hidden rooms were also filled with pictures. There were many certificates on the ground to prove that Xia Yang had donated anonymously to save 121 children. He donated monthly to orphanages and helped many kids with natural disabilities. He saved them.
At the same time, the man was a true hunter. The walls not only had the innocence of children but also many gory scenes.
Xia Yang had no moral shackles. Humans were like flowers in his garden. He was willing to shelter some and would cruelly snip others for admiration.
“How did he live with such conditions?”
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