Paintings of Terror

Chapter 232: Poison Made From Spices

Du Lingyu could not pull herself out of this nightmare-like reality for a long time. Xi Shengnan killed Xiayu? Xiayu was already dead when everyone came to this world? Even putting aside all the emotional factors, this matter could not hold true, because Xi Shengnan had no time to commit the crime.

Du Lingyu rubbed her temples. Whenever she was highly stressed, she was prone to migraines. This time, not only migraines, but also tinnitus in the ears.

Du Lingyu finally managed to calm herself down a little, only to realize that Cao Youning had gotten up and stood beside the bed at some point. He was as bewildered as her, not so much sadness and fear, but more of a feeling of insignificance and confusion.

Mu Yiran seemed to be talking to the Inn Officer. Du Lingyu listened to each word, but realized that her comprehension ability was really poor. Mu Yiran seemed to be talking in a roundabout way on purpose, as if he were intentionally avoiding something but also trying every means to ensure the other party understood his intentions.

Right, it was ‘time’. Mu Yiran couldn’t talk about time directly with the people in the Lantern Inn, so he mostly used words like “lights-on, lights-off” to express it.

Fortunately, the Inn Officer’s comprehension ability was much better than Du Lingyu’s. At this time, he nodded and said: “I understand that although Xi Shengnan is suspected of murder, she is also a victim. Besides, we cannot bring back the dead… I will send someone to bring the magnifying glass in a bit. We must find a way to find out the source of this poison from the medical book.”

Magnifying glass? Mu Yiran actually got a magnifying glass, and it was from the Inn officer. Du Lingyu felt incredible, and gradually understood why these veterans were able to get through so many paintings together. In addition to the team’s cooperation and tacit understanding, having an excellent leader was also a necessary element.

The Inn Officer was about to leave at last. He turned his head and said to everyone: “I will send someone in a bit to put the body into a coffin. It will be frozen first and then put into the frozen ground so that she can rest in peace.”

It seems that this was the ultimate way this world preserved the deceased.

Lu Heng wiped his eyes and said, “Can we send her off then?”

Inn Officer: “Yes.”

The door opened and closed. There were only twelve members left in the room, and Xi Shengnan who was slowly becoming stiff on the bed.

“Why? I really don’t understand.” It was Luo Bu who spoke. He hugged Koharu tightly at this moment: “When we arrived, that Xiayu was already dead, why are Sister Xi’s knives in her body? And those two knives were brought in from the outside world! The timing is not right at all!”

“Hence, the time in this world is completely disordered, and it is precisely because of this disorder that the residents here ignore time.” Shao Ling said.

“If they really ignore time, why do they have such an important ceremony of lighting on and off the lanterns?” Zhu Haowen said, “I think they are more afraid of time, or even in awe, so everything that is time-related is listed as taboo words.”

Mu Yi suddenly walked to the side of the wooden cabinet and looked at the pile of incense ashes in the corner. Half of the incense was slowly burning in the ashes: “The second incense has only burned a small half.”

“What was the length of the second incense?” Qin Ci asked.

Mu Yiran took out a long, unburned incense stick: “I took the incense according to this length, and I marked it with a pen. A section can burn for about four hours. Last night I used an incense stick five times as long. That is to say, it can burn for twenty hours under normal circumstances.”

“Yes, only in this way can we make up the twenty-four hours of day and night.” Qin Ci pondered.

Qin Ci came over and took a closer look at the burning incense. This incense had not been extinguished any time last night: “According to the current length, there are about three-fifths of the total length left, So that means last night’s incense burned for only eight hours.”

Cao Youning rubbed his eyes: “I think I slept for a long time last night, definitely more than eight hours.”

Many people also expressed the same feeling.

Luo Bu looked at Ke Xun who was standing next to him: “Brother, does this count as a day or half a day? There were four hours of daytime yesterday, plus the eight hours after the lights went off, that’s only twelve hours, isn’t it? There are two sets of day and night in a day here?”

Ke Xun seemed to think of something: “I’ll go and check the seven lines carved on the wall outside, maybe something has changed.”

Du Lingyu really didn’t want to stay in a room with a dead person. Although the dead person was very close to her when she was alive, death was death. It was one thing to feel sad, but another thing to stay with the corpse.

Du Lingyu couldn’t restrain the fear in her heart. Seeing Ke Xun going out at this time, she followed him out.

It was bright outside, like yesterday’s daytime. Du Lingyu followed closely behind Ke Xun. A tall man could always give people a sense of security.

Ke Xun came to the wall of the corridor, and there were still seven vertical lines deeply engraved. Nothing changed at all.

Ke Xun touched these seven vertical lines with his index finger, feeling the sharp bumps: “I always feel that these seven lines have a story, and there must be clues hidden in them.”

Brightness made people feel warm and at ease. Du Lingyu felt that her body was gradually warming up. She also carefully observed the seven lines on the wall.

“Do you feel that these seven lines were not drawn by the same person?” Du Lingyu expressed her opinion.

Ke Xun looked carefully and found that the first three lines were drawn straight with a strong force, while the last four lines, some were slightly slanted, some were slightly shorter, and some were slightly shallower. It seemed that they really were not drawn by the same person.

Du Lingyu pursed her slightly dry lips, pointed to the seventh vertical line with slightly trembling fingers and said, “You can see that this line is very shallow, and it slopes sharply to the lower left corner, just like how I write numbers…”

The latter words might make people feel ominous, but Du Lingyu said it anyway: “I don’t know why, but I always feel that I drew the last line.”

Ke Xun couldn’t help turning his face to look at Du Lingyu. He didn’t know why this girl made such a sudden remark.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s a girl’s intuition.” Du Lingyu forced a smile. This topic was a bit scary, and she didn’t have solid evidence, “Anyway, when I was young, I learned to write numbers in grid notebooks. My mom forced me to write along the diagonal lines so all the numbers I write are very slanted…Besides, although this wall is made of wood, it is still very strong wood. I think it’s impossible for me to carve as deep as the first few lines…”

Du Lingyu gradually stopped talking, feeling that the hairs on her face were about to stand up. She suddenly felt nervous and uncomfortable for no reason.

Ke Xun stretched out his hand and paused in mid-air for a bit before patting Du Lingyu’s shoulder lightly: “In the world of the painting, crying and being nervous are useless, we have to go all out to find clues if we want to save our lives. However, I think the analysis you just made is very useful.”

Du Lingyu tried hard not to tremble: “Thank you.”

“In fact, everyone has their own specialties and potential. If everyone can bring out these, then we will not be far from leaving the painting.” Ke Xun’s eyes were still looking at the seven lines on the wall. After Du Lingyu’s remarks just now, Ke Xun always felt that these seven lines were also staring back at him.

Du Lingyu nodded and wrapped the old cotton robe tightly around her body, which made herself feel warmer: “Also, when I woke up in the morning, I smelled some strange fragrant scent where Sister Xi was.”

“Fragrant scent?”

“Yes, that scent is very special, completely different from the smell of the incense we lit at night, and that scent is very light. It may be difficult for ordinary people to smell it.” Du Lingyu subconsciously smelled her sleeves, “My clothes still have a little smell, probably because I was closest to Sister Xi last night.”

Ke Xun gazed at Du Lingyu: “Have you always been so sensitive to scent?”

Du Lingyu nodded: “I’m quite interested in perfumes. I’ve been taking fragrance classes in my spare time for the past two years, so I may be more perceptive on detecting scents.”

When Ke Xun and Du Lingyu returned to the room, Qin Ci was flipping through the medical book. Because the words on it were very small, Qin Ci squinted his eyes and looked at it with difficulty: “I didn’t read this book carefully yesterday. I just discovered that the first half of this book is about medicine, and the second half is about poison.”

Ke Xun gently interrupted Qin Ci: “Xiao Du has some experience with fragrance, and she smelled a strange fragrance from Xi Shengnan’s body.”

After Qin Ci heard this, he hurriedly turned back a few pages: “There is a part here that specifically records the use of spices as poisons. Could it be…”

All eyes were on Qin Ci, and the whole room could only hear the sounds of book turning, page by page, like the hands of a clock ticking slowly.

As the sounds came to an abrupt end, Qin Ci’s hand stopped on a certain page: “Strange, a page was torn off.”

Everyone gathered to take a look and saw that a certain page of the medical book had been neatly torn off. Because it was torn very close to the inside, it would be impossible to discover it without turning to this page.

Qin Ci looked at the previous page and the next page: “These records are all about the method of using spices to make poison, and the page that was torn out should be the same.”

Everyone was silent for a long time, and Wei Dong was the one who finally spoke out: “So that means, the murderer secretly tore out this page, then used spices to make the poison according to the recipe on it, and poisoned Xi Shengnan to death last night?

“However, how did the murderer do it? There are so many people in our room, if they used incense to poison us, they would poison us all. It would be impossible to poison only Xi Shengnan.”

What Wei Dong said was very reasonable. This matter was indeed difficult to explain.

Qin Ci walked to the side of Xi Shengnan’s body and lifted the cloth towel to take a closer look: “According to the condition of her poisoning, I think she should have taken a lot of poison. Only when the poison enters the body can it cause such serious consequences.”

“Doctor Qin, do you mean that Shengnan ate the poison?” Lu Heng said, “We were all together when we ate. She didn’t eat anything else by herself.”

Shao Ling: “Let’s think back carefully, and don’t miss any details. The two missing knives in that set were caused by our negligence. Everyone, think about it, yesterday when we were eating or drinking water, was Xi Shengnan with everyone all the time?”

Just as everyone was frowning and thinking hard, Mai Peng suddenly said, “I know now, maybe it’s the jar of chili sauce. She seemed to be the only one who ate the chili sauce yesterday.”

Hearing this, Qin Ci took out the jar of chili sauce from the cabinet with a cloth towel, and opened the lid that was fastened on it.

A spicy smell permeated the room. Du Lingyu stepped forward. She frowned and sniffed it carefully: “Because of spicy smell covering it up, the fragrance has faded a lot, but there is still a little bit. It is the same smell on Sister Xi. ”

Mai Peng sighed: “Among us, only Sister Xi and I are the only ones who eat spicy food. I didn’t dare to touch chili yesterday because of the bad cold, so only she ate it.”

It was not that the veteran members did not eat spicy things at all, but this jar of chili sauce had a label that said: extra hot chili sauce, and made people flinch at the sight of it.

Qin Ci took out a set of needles from his bag: “There are special needles here to test for poison, which looks to be a specialty of this world.”

Mai Peng was a little puzzled: “Isn’t it only possible to test for arsenic with silver needles? Sister Xi should not be poisoned with arsenic.”

Qin Ci: “These are not silver needles. The color and texture of these needles are very unusual. They should be special poison test needles. Let me have a try.”

In the end, the entirety of the needle stuck in the chili sauce turned jet black.

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