Matcha Honey Fruit: The Golden Rope? The rope used to bind Sun Wukong in the episode with the Golden Horn and Silver Horn Kings. Besides that, I seem to remember a Binding Immortal Rope, but I can't recall its origin.
Ke Xun noted down the Golden Rope and the Binding Immortal Rope, and continued scrolling through the comments. After finishing the first wave, new comments appeared. He clicked again and found another one.
Spring and Autumn Great Law is Good: The Demon-Binding Rope, a magical artifact passed down from Nuwa to humankind, used to subdue all demons. The Binding Immortal Rope: A magical artifact of Ju Liusun, one of the Twelve Golden Immortals of Kunlun, passed down to his disciple Tu Xingsun. It bound Nezha, Huang Tianhua, and Erlang Shen. The Rainbow Rope: A magical artifact of Puxian Zhenren in *Investiture of the Gods*, capable of binding people and summoning Yellow Turban Warriors. The Dragon-Binding Rope: A magical artifact of Princess Longji in *Investiture of the Gods*.
Ke Xun noted these down one by one, then searched online while continuously reviewing the comments under this Weibo post.
It was nearly midnight when Ke Xun put down his phone and told everyone to go to sleep. Rome wasn't built in a day, and clues couldn't all be found overnight.
Since the last time everyone came to Ke Xun's house to make dumplings, Ke Xun had bought several latex mattresses and put them in the closet in the guest room as spares. Wei Dong, who didn't live too far away, didn't go home and stayed with everyone.
Shao Ling and Qin Ci slept in the guest room, Wei Dong and Luo Yi slept in the living room,
and Zhu Haowen slept in the study. Ke Xun lay down on the bed, turned around, and hugged Mu Yiran like an octopus. One hand mischievously slipped under the hem of Mu Yiran's pajamas and scratched his waist a couple of times. Then, he pressed his warm palm against Mu Yiran's skin and closed his eyes in relaxation.
Mu Yiran gently rubbed his head, ran his long fingers through his hair, and combed his scalp from front to back. Ke Xun quickly fell asleep under this comfortable and reassuring caress.
The next morning, when Fang Fei, Wu You, and Gu Qingqing brought over the breakfast they had bought for everyone, Ke Xun was still fast asleep in bed. Wei Dong poked his head in to wake him: "If you don't get up, I'll eat yours!"
Ke Xun groggily opened his eyes: "I'm Yi Ran..."
"The boss asked me to wake you; he's on the phone right now." Wei Dong glanced at him. "Why are you so sleepy? What did you do last night?"
"Not only am I sleepy, but I'm also eating a lot now," Ke Xun sat up and scratched his head. "I feel like something's not right."
"What's not right?" Wei Dong was startled.
Ke Xun frowned slightly, looking at his stomach: "I might... be pregnant."
Wei Dong: "...You son of a bitch! You're so weird!" He turned and left.
When Ke Xun lazily came out of the bedroom, he saw everyone sitting around the dining table, eating and chatting. The main topic of their conversation was the men's speculations about the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" from the previous night.
After finishing their meal and cleaning up, everyone prepared to get back to work. Those using computers went to the study, those using laptops occupied the dining table, and those using their phones either nestled on the sofa or sat on the carpet. Mu Yiran, Shao Ling, Qin Ci, and Gu Qingqing went to the city library.
Ke Xun opened his Weibo and found that his post from yesterday already had hundreds of comments. After thinking for a moment, he forwarded the post. "
Corgi Has a Human: Let's have a giveaway! Forward this post, tag three friends, and give a satisfactory answer to this question. I'll give away a XX mobile phone. Winner announced in three days."
Ke Xun then opened the comments again and began reading them one by one.
Perhaps it was because of his good looks, but within a morning, the post had already garnered tens of thousands of forwards and nearly ten thousand comments.
Along with the takeout Ke Xun had ordered for everyone, Mu Yiran and the others came in, each carrying a stack of books, intending to spend the afternoon reading them.
After lunch, everyone sat around in the living room to rest, chatting about the progress of the clues. Gu Qingqing kept taking notes, her pen never leaving her side. After a while, she suddenly raised her hand, looked at the others who had stopped talking and were looking at her seriously, and said, "I've made a discovery... or maybe it's just a wild guess..."
"These past few days, I've heard you all recount in detail the experiences of all fourteen paintings we've visited, and I've written down the details of each one," Gu Qingqing said shyly, lowering her head as she stared at the softcover notebook in her hand, feeling a little awkward being watched by so many people. "I'm probably… used to summarizing and listing the key points, and after I listed them, I had some guesses without much evidence… I don't know if this counts as overthinking or having some unreliable ideas, but Brother Mu said we shouldn't let any doubt go unaddressed, so… so I'll take up a little of your time to show you what I've summarized."
Ke Xun patted her shoulder: "Qingqing, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. We've been through thick and thin together, we're closer than family. Why be so polite with family? Just say what you think. My intuition is always right, and I think your discovery this time will be very useful. Trust yourself, come on!"
"Come on, come on, in front of us academic underachievers, you have to show off your academic prowess, girl!" Wei Dong added.
"Don't include me, I'm not a bad student," Wu You said.
"Oh? Then what are you?" Wei Dong asked with admiration.
"I'm a mediocre student, even more so than a mediocre student," Wu You replied.
Gu Qingqing couldn't help but smile, knowing everyone was intentionally teasing her to help her relax, so she perked up and unfolded her notebook to show everyone.
"It's actually like when we were learning Chinese in school, we were required to summarize the central idea of each text," Gu Qingqing began in a teacher's tone, yet still retaining a student's air. "The method for summarizing the central idea is 'This text describes what event, expresses what kind of thoughts and feelings, or reveals what kind of problem, and has what kind of significance.'
"I've used this method to summarize a central idea for every text you've experienced. The part about 'describing what event' is self-explanatory; everyone understands that. The key is what kind of problem this event reveals."
"In terms of paintings, it's about understanding the deeper meaning the painting is trying to express. This is actually the question we need to decipher in our search for the signature."
"I've summarized each painting one by one, and then 'forced' some suspected commonalities between them—I say 'forced' because I'm not sure if these commonalities are just coincidences, or if I'm just being overly suspicious. Anyway… I'll just mention them and ask for your feedback."
Hearing this, everyone became even more focused, waiting for her to get to the point.
"Then I'll start from the back and pick out a few paintings I suspect." Gu Qingqing turned to a page in her notebook with even greater concentration. "The fourteenth painting, 'Reboot,' has the theme of environmental protection, and its deeper meaning is: if humanity doesn't pay attention to environmental protection, then the Earth will face the end of the world or species renewal; in other words, a new world will replace the old one."
"The thirteenth painting is *Schrödinger's Cat*, its theme being how education can inspire human imagination to understand and perceive the world. It raises questions about the dualism of consciousness and matter, and the multiverse.
The twelfth painting is *The Journey*, its theme being time, life, and choices, and it constructs a parallel world on a different timeline.
The tenth painting is *The Scarlet Beast*, its theme being inner conflicts, or rather, a kind of obsession. In the painting, there is a clear distinction between those inside and outside the city, like two different worlds.
The ninth painting is *Pure Land*, its theme being childhood, and this painting also contains several different small worlds."
"The sixth painting is 'Animal World,' its theme is animal protection. In the painting, the human world and the animal world are interchanged.
These paintings, beneath their deeper meanings, all seem to secretly hide a common point..." At
this point, Gu Qingqing pursed her lips, dry from nervousness.
"—The world!" Several companions exclaimed in surprise and astonishment.
"Yes, it's 'the world.'" Gu Qingqing nodded. "The world updates or alternations in 'Reboot,' the multiple universes in 'Schrödinger's Cat,' the reverse world in 'The Journey,' the 'inner world' and 'outer world' in 'The Scarlet Beast,' the multiple worlds in 'Pure Land,' the interchangeable world in 'Animal World'—if these fourteen paintings were all carefully selected by 'Painting Recommendation,' then are these paintings involving the 'world' concept merely due to its 'personal' preferences?"
"I don't think this reason is reliable. These fourteen paintings that everyone has visited aren't displayed in a separate room in the museum's exhibition hall. There are other paintings in the same hall, so why was this particular painting chosen?
"It's also not true that the art critic selected them in advance. Since everyone speculates that the origin of the event dates back to at least the Song Dynasty, then the modern paintings among these couldn't have been selected from the beginning.
"So I think these paintings could only have been selected by the art critic later, doing its best to pick the paintings that were closest to its purpose from the dozens or hundreds of paintings displayed in the entire museum.
"Then, I think the 'world theory' involved in these paintings might be hiding some purpose of the art critic?
"If we look at the world concept involved in these paintings from this perspective, it seems that the art critic has been hinting at... the idea of more than one world?
"Uh, um... that's the question I wanted to ask..."
Gu Qingqing finished speaking, looking around at everyone's unresponsive faces with a lack of confidence.
"...Girl, you're something else." Finally, Wei Dong gave her a thumbs up.
Gu Qingqing's heart eased a little, and she was about to secretly observe the others again when Wu You put his arm around her shoulder: "You're amazing, Qingqing! I think that's exactly it! -- Oh my, this is terrifying to think about!"
Shao Ling also turned his head from his thoughts and looked at Mu Yiran: "What do you think?"
Mu Yiran looked up at the crowd who were waiting for his answer and said: "Remember what we speculated before? It seems that there are two forces at play regarding the matter of entering the painting. Perhaps the force that wants to provide us with a way out has been giving us hints through these paintings. I think Gu Qingqing's guess is correct, and I also believe that in addition to these paintings providing hints, the other paintings also provide hints, but they may be hinting at other clues. I think we can now analyze the remaining paintings according to this line of thought and find out the hints they provide."
"Okay!" Everyone was excited. Gu Qingqing's discovery had broadened and illuminated their path to survival, and everyone was full of energy. Shao Ling even took out his notebook to make a note. "
Continuing from the back to the front, apart from the paintings Gu Qingqing has already mentioned, the next one is the eleventh painting, 'The Burning Rhinoceros at Sea,'" he typed as he spoke. "Its theme is the seven emotions and six desires, which fits a common trope in classical works: using illusions to enlighten people and achieve a state of enlightenment and understanding. Actually, this painting is somewhat related to 'the world.' There is a world within the illusion, and another world outside the illusion."
"The eighth painting is 'Anthropology,' and its theme is about the science of humankind itself," Zhu Haowen continued. "But this painting doesn't seem to have any connection to 'the world.' Perhaps it hints at other clues."
Wei Dong scratched his head: "I really can't think of what it could hint at. From beginning to end, we were locked in those terrible laboratories, and the experiments were all very perverse... Could the clue it hints at be 'perversion'?" Connecting this to the clue of 'the world,' it means... there are perverts in that world?"
Zhu Haowen: "..."
"Could your thought process be any more twisted?" Ke Xun said, he had the deepest memory of the painting "Anthropology," because that painting was probably the closest he had ever come to death, and also because the painter, Kang Lai, was a homosexual like himself. "I think the hint given by this painting is very obvious, it's about experiments. Do you remember what Kang Lai went through? He was experiment number 282. There were many experiment subjects before him, but they either died or probably went insane. Only he survived. Don't you guys find this situation somewhat familiar?"
Gu Qingqing's eyes widened: "Just like our experience, if we compare the world in the painting to a series of laboratories, then we and everyone else who has entered the painting before us are the experimental subjects. Those who fail... die, while those who temporarily succeed will enter the next laboratory to continue the experiment, until finally thirteen experimental subjects who have all succeeded are 'obtained'..." "
Obviously, that's how it is," Shao Ling nodded, looked at everyone, and seeing that no one had any objections, typed this in his notebook, "This confirms Mu's previous speculation that the painting is screening us who enter it."
Author's Note:
Little Radish Pulling White Rabbit: Brother, I'm scared, I want to sleep with you.
Corgi: How can you be so insensitive! Brother and your brother-in-law's nighttime world is not to be disturbed. Be good, learn from Dongzi, go to sleep.
Little Radish Pulling White Rabbit: Brother Dong is eavesdropping at your bedroom door.
Corgi: ...