Around 11 a.m., all thirteen people who had entered the painting had gathered.
On a rainy autumn weekend, those who would still come to the art museum, besides true art enthusiasts, were probably only couples seeking romance and style.
Among the eight newcomers were two couples, a middle-aged man seeking shelter from the rain, a wealthy but idle young man, a young female painter, and the man named Shao Ling.
At this moment, all eight newcomers had learned the ins and outs of the terrifying world within the painting from Qin Ci. To the slight surprise of the veteran members, the newcomers were surprisingly receptive to this bizarre event. No one lost their temper or made a scene; no one took their anger out on others. They remained silent and composed, cautiously observing the veteran members and their surroundings.
"Please introduce yourselves," Qin Ci said, introducing the veteran members.
The middle-aged man, carrying a bundle—which had been his briefcase before entering the painting studio—adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses. "My name is Li Yi. My electric scooter broke down on my way to work. I went to the art museum to take shelter from the rain and this happened… Please take care of me."
"My name is Yu Long, and this is my girlfriend, Fang Fei." A young man in his early twenties, with textured, dark ash-brown perm, pointed to a girl with similar long, permed hair standing beside him. The girl remained silent, observing the group without uttering a word.
Another couple introduced themselves, both around thirty years old. The man, Liu Yanlei, had sharp features and seemed decisive. His girlfriend, Chen Xin'ai, had a bob haircut and appeared quite calculating.
The young female painter was slender, with an unhealthy pallor. Perhaps due to her artistic pursuits, she possessed a somewhat aloof and distant air, her gaze occasionally appearing dreamy and vacant. She gave a curt name: "Xue Ge,"
presumably an alias or stage name.
The last to speak was the rich second-generation guy with platinum blonde hair. The only obvious sign of his wealth was his youth, and the large diamond stud earring he wore—the same style as Beckham's—was incredibly eye-catching.
He rolled up his sleeves to show the older members a bracelet on his wrist that appeared to be made of bronze, then asked, "Hey guys, can I ask you something? After I leave the painting, will my watch change back?"
Everyone: "..." It turned out the bracelet was a manifestation of the watch's degradation...
Wei Dong looked at him speechlessly: "Dude, shouldn't you be more concerned about whether you can leave the painting?"
"Damn, this watch is a Patek Philippe, worth more than my life!" the rich second-generation guy said.
Wei Dong: "...Patek Philippe?"
Rich kid: "Patek Philippe!"
Wei Dong: "How much?"
Rich kid: "About two million nine hundred thousand."
Wei Dong: "...Patek Philippe?"
Rich kid: "If this watch breaks, Uncle Zhang will lose his job."
Wei Dong: "What does Uncle Zhang do?" Rich kid:
"He's my watch maker."
Wei Dong: "...Poverty limits my imagination..."
Rich kid: "By the way, my name is Luo Bu (罗勏), Bu (勏) as in '勏劶'. You can call me Radish (萝卜) or Luo Luo Bu (罗罗布)." Wei Dong
: "What does Bu (勏) mean?"
Rich kid: "It means 'exertion'."
Wei Dong: "...This name...is a bit lewd..."
Rich kid: "Maybe my dad named me hoping I'd develop in a lewd way and not be reckless."
Wei Dong: "..." You're already pretty reckless, okay?
Ke Xun was too lazy to listen to these two idiots continue their conversation, so he told everyone again about the cause and effect of "Burning Rhinoceros" that Mu Yiran had just explained.
"Since it's related to 'Burning Rhinoceros,'" Qin Ci said, "then let's search the ship for rhinoceros horns."
No one objected, and the group moved from the deck to the lower cabins. Without any instructions, the thirteen people naturally split into two groups: the newcomers formed one group, while Luo Jin mingled with the older members in the other.
The two groups searched the cabins separately, one group searching from bow to stern, and the other from stern to bow.
"Let me ask you something," Luo Jing held up his phone to light the way for everyone, "were the first few paintings you went into also only depicting thirteen people? No one else in the paintings? I mean, the people inside the paintings."
"Yes," Wei Dong replied, "depending on the content, some paintings only show the thirteen of us outside the painting, while others have many people inside."
"Then why isn't this painting filled with people?" Luo Jing asked. "Is this a large ship? Is it on the vast ocean? If there are no people inside the painting, how did this ship get here?"
"That makes sense…" Wei Dong looked at his companions, "Where's the captain? Where are the crew? Could it be that one of us is the captain? Does anyone know how to sail?"
"Even paintings should have logic and be reasonable," Qin Ci nodded, "unless it's a bizarre painting like *Pure Land*, which is based on exaggerated animation. Given the size of this ship, to make it sail long distances, it would need both wind power and manpower, and the manpower wouldn't be too small, otherwise, it would be impossible to control such a large vessel."
"I've observed the rooms in the upper deck," Mu Yiran said. "Many of the beds and toiletries in these rooms have been used, which means there were probably quite a few 'people' on board before. The point in time when we entered the painting coincides with a certain stage in the events depicted in the artwork. Therefore, we might conclude that there was once a captain and many crew members on this ship, but due to the unfolding events, only thirteen 'crew members' remained, and we are playing the role of these thirteen people."
"In that case, the disappearance of the captain and other crew members might be directly related to 'Burning Rhinoceros,'" Zhu Haowen said.
"Then why would they burn Rhinoceros if they had nothing better to do?" Luo Yu asked.
"To expose ghosts?" Ke Xun pondered. "And then, like Wen Qiao in the story of burning the rhinoceros horn at Niuzhu, they all died within ten days?"
Luo Jin shone the phone's light on him: "Then why are we still looking for rhinoceros horns? To find them, continue exposing ghosts, and then die?"
Ke Xun squinted: "Your light is almost blinding me, cousin. Finding rhinoceros horns doesn't necessarily mean we're going to burn them. This thing is clearly an important prop in this painting, maybe related to the seal, so we have to find it."
"Cousin" Luo Jin said "Oh," moved the phone's light away, and shone it on Mu Yiran again: "Brother, I feel like I've seen you somewhere before."
"Stop talking, be more sleazy, keep looking, okay?" Ke Xun glanced at him.
"Fine, fine, you're handsome, so you get to decide." Luo Yiran didn't have the arrogance of a rich second-generation at all. Just as he moved the light from his phone away, he suddenly seemed to remember something and exclaimed "Holy crap!" pointing at Mu Yiran, "I remember now! You're my dad's idol! He even has a picture of you in his desk drawer!"
Mu Yiran: "..."
Ke Xun: "..."
Everyone: "..."
Ke Xun put his hands on his hips: "What's going on?"
Luo Yi looked intently at Mu Yiran's face: "My dad envies you for earning the wealth he worked so hard for half his life at such a young age. There's a saying in the industry—the poor play with cars, the rich play with watches, and the real tycoons play with art museums. Tycoon, I'm here to greet you!"
As he spoke, he clasped his hands together and bowed to Mu Yiran.
"..." Wei Dong whispered to Ke Xun, "This kid is even more clueless than you."
"Do you remember when we first came to the studio, he was just like this too?" Ke Xun hadn't missed that Luo Jin's hand had been trembling as he held his phone since earlier, so he didn't intend to laugh at Luo Jin. "He talks a lot and asks a lot of questions. When he sees someone as calm and reliable as Yi Ran, he wants to cling to him desperately, like a drowning person seeing the last piece of driftwood. It's just his personality. At first, he pretended not to care, but only we ourselves know what kind of feelings and state of mind we were in at the time."
Wei Dong sighed, "Yeah, all the effort to show an unserious facade was just to force ourselves not to completely collapse, just like pretending not to care makes you really not care, pretending to laugh and rave makes you not afraid."
"Newcomers like us are just using self-deception to protect and sustain ourselves," Ke Xun glanced at Luo Yiran, who was still circling around Mu Yiran. "Let him be, let's hurry."
The two groups thoroughly searched the lower deck rooms twice, but still found no rhinoceros horns.
"Could it be that the missing captain and crew burned all the rhinoceros horns on the ship?" Wei Dong wondered after the two groups reunited.
"What a waste! Rhinoceros horns have always been very expensive, haven't they?" Luo Yiran said.
"Yes." Perhaps because he saw a trace of Ke Xun's past in Luo Yiran, the usually aloof Mu Yiran was surprisingly amiable towards him. "Rhinoceros horn is an expensive item, it might not be stored in the storeroom. Let's check the captain's cabin."
The group went up to the deck and easily found the captain's cabin, as it was probably the most well-equipped of all the rooms. The wooden bed was more finely crafted, and the bedding was of very high quality. Besides the bed, there were several storage boxes filled with clothes and personal belongings. Qin
Ci and the others had already searched the room before and found nothing suspicious.
This time, they conducted a more thorough search. Ke Xun even squatted down and tapped on each wooden plank of the floor.
It turned out that Ke Xun's suspicions were correct; at the head of the bed, there was a hollow section of the wooden plank.
Ke Xun lifted the plank, revealing a hole about half a person's depth inside, containing two or three wooden boxes, their lids locked.
"So the question is, where do we find the key?" Luo Jin asked.
They had already searched every corner of the room but hadn't found a key.
"Why look for the key?" Ke Xun said, reaching for the lock on the box lid and pulling hard. With a snap, the lock broke.
"Awesome, bro!" Luo Jin exclaimed in surprise. "Are you Astro Boy reincarnated?"
Ke Xun: "...Astro Boy my foot. Stop talking nonsense, come here, lift the boxes up."
Ke Xun opened all the locks on the boxes, and then he and Luo Jin lifted them to the ground. They opened the boxes and found some containing bamboo slips, some containing valuable jewelry, and some containing rhinoceros horns.
"The bamboo slips in the boxes might contain some very important information," Shao Ling said, looking around at everyone. "Does anyone recognize seal script?"
Everyone shook their heads. Seeing the older members' gazes unconsciously turn towards Mu Yiran, Shao Ling raised an eyebrow and also looked at Mu Yiran with a slightly scrutinizing expression.
"My ability to recognize small seal script characters is very limited," Mu Yiran's gaze swept over the opened bamboo scroll. "I'm afraid I can't decipher the contents here."
"Now that we've found the rhinoceros horn, what's our next step?" Liu Yanlei, with his shrewd eyes, shifted his gaze, seemingly deep in thought.
"Two choices: burn it, or don't burn it." Shao Ling looked at everyone.
Burning it might attract an irresistible force or creature that could lead to their deaths.
Not burning it might prevent them from advancing the plot within the painting, thus failing to obtain clues to leave.
The thirteen people who had entered the painting were now caught in a dilemma.