"The you in the painting?" Chen Ge leaned in for a closer look. He had studied all thirteen paintings in the studio and vaguely remembered the fourth one. "You painted this one?"
Zhou Tu said nothing. His soul seemed to have been sucked into the painting, his eyes locked on the canvas.
The fourth oil painting depicted the very oil painting studio they were standing in.
In the upper half, thirteen painters sat on chairs, brush in hand. The lower half was a swath of blood-red, showing all thirteen painters dead in their seats — each in a different gruesome manner.
What was notable was that in the upper half, the paintings on the painters' easils depicted exactly how they would die.
These painters had already foreseen their fate. But instead of choosing to change it, they faithfully recorded everything in full.
The first time Chen Ge had visited the oil painting studio, he had lingered beside this piece for a long time. He never imagined it had been created by Zhou Tu.
Looking closely, one could see that the painter seated in the fourth position bore a strong resemblance to Zhou Tu.
"Every other painting tries to depict the inverted world, but this one is about the painters themselves." Chen Ge didn't disturb Zhou Tu. His gaze shifted between the painting and the young man. "What did Zhou Tu go through? Why is his painting so different from all the others?"
Of the thirteen painters, Zhou Tu was ranked fourth. He wasn't the most senior, but his perspective was by far the most unique.
Unlike what had happened when the other students' memories awakened, Zhou Tu stood frozen beside the easil. No visible change came over him, yet the atmosphere inside the studio was shifting in a subtle, indescribable way.
It was as if every figure in the paintings had opened their eyes. They were being watched by countless gazes.
"Why do I suddenly feel cold?" Wang Yicheng hunched his shoulders and ducked behind Zhang Ju. He looked around in bewilderment, a hint of fear flickering in his eyes.
"Zhou Tu?" Zhang Ju had also sensed something deeply wrong. He gently tapped Zhou Tu's shoulder.
Zhou Tu's eyelashes flickered. His body seemed to have solidified into stone. The entire studio was reflected in his eyes, and not a trace of color remained in his face.
"Am I already dead?"
A hoarse voice scraped past his lips. The moment he spoke, the fourth painter in the canvas suddenly came to life.
The painter who had been sitting on a chair flung away his brush, seized his own throat with both hands, and kicked wildly with his legs — as though an invisible rope had looped around his neck.
His eyes bulged, nearly bursting from their sockets. He struggled desperately, but his body rose slowly off the seat, inch by inch.
His head flushed with blood, his expression twisted into a grimace, gradually coming to resemble the figure in the painting.
Even more horrifying was that in the lower half of the oil painting, Zhou Tu — the one trapped in the blood-red world — was slowly beginning to smile.
"Zhou Tu! Your neck!" Wang Yicheng pointed at Zhou Tu's neck and shouted.
Standing outside the painting, Zhou Tu's body was gradually transforming into the same image as his counterpart on the canvas. A black-purple mark had appeared around his neck, and with every passing second its color deepened further.
His neck warped into something grotesque. A dripping sound reached his ears.
Following the sound, Chen Ge saw that the Zhou Tu in the lower half of the fourth painting — the one who had died miserably inside the blood-red world — had at some point come back to life.
Drenched in blood, he was lying flat beneath the canvas, his face pressed tight against it, his mouth split open, blood streaming down his face.
Bulging eyes stared straight through the canvas at the Zhou Tu standing outside, as though he were trying to crawl out of the painting to drag the one beyond it inside.