Chapter 114: Epic Paintings
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Flames flickered as Lin Yan focused his gaze and watched carefully.
The first painting was a tall building with three lotus platforms on it. Three women with long hair sat upright.
They were all wearing the same kind of dress. The sculptor had even specially carved elegant hems, as if he was showing the three women’s youthful looks.
As their faces were too small, Lin Yan couldn’t tell what they looked like. He only instinctively felt that the two female sculptures might be among the three.
The three women had holy expressions and their eyes were filled with vivid fanaticism as they looked up at the sky.
Below the platform were densely packed bald monks in circles. There were extremely many of them, and at a rough glance, there were hundreds of them.
Those had been carved. There seemed to be countless strokes hidden outside the scene.
…..
The monks were all sitting upright. Some were kneeling, some were chanting sutras, and their expressions were filled with pity.
“Is this some kind of worship ritual?”
Lin Yan frowned and turned to the second painting.
This scene was still the same, but the three women closed their eyes and lay on the lotus platforms. Their heads were facing the middle, forming a symmetrical triangle.
The number of monks beside them decreased drastically. A few people were ringing bells, burning incense, and chanting.
However, the strange thing was that there were many suns and moons carved alternately in the sky, connecting left to right in an arc.
“The moon’s shape is changing… Is this using multiple suns and moons to show the rapid passage of time?”
Lin Yan looked at the other parts outside the platform. They had all blurred into marks, as if they were representing the passage of time and the changes in the world.
Unable to understand, he continued to the third painting. Lin Yan’s gaze immediately froze.
This picture had almost nothing to do with the previous two. It depicted a group of soldiers wearing armor and holding knives, spears, and crossbows, hunting a group of strange enemies.
The group of soldiers was vividly drawn, but their opponents were painted with blurry and messy strokes. It only outlined some vaguely human figures, as if they were a group of evil ghosts from the darkness and chaos.
In the middle of the scene was a soldier. He raised his hands high and excitedly picked up a treasure that looked like a bone and seemed to be glowing.
At his feet, the only enemy who had revealed his true appearance was lying on the ground with his chest cut open.
That enemy was a normal human.
However, the strange thing was that his chest was clearly cut open, but there was an extremely exaggerated smile on his face. His curved mouth was split open to the corners of his eyes.
It made Lin Yan shiver unconsciously.
Lin Yan took a deep breath and turned to the fourth painting.
Suddenly, his hand that was holding the torch paused slightly and swept towards the place where the woman’s statue had been placed. What he saw made his pupils constrict violently, and a chill ran from his spine to his brain.
He clearly remembered that he had deliberately adjusted the position of the woman’s sculpture so that her back was facing him and the rock wall.
But now, the complete female sculpture with its arms crossed in front of its chest had inexplicably turned around and was facing him!
He did not hear any sound at all just now!
Lin Yan held his breath and pointed the torch straight at the woman’s sculpture.
She was still holding her arms. Round and full seductive curves were faintly discernible from the gaps between her arms. As the fire flickered, they seemed to be rising and falling together, emitting a fatal temptation.
No!
Lin Yan’s heart almost stopped for a moment!
Her chest was really heaving!
An ominous shadow suddenly spread out from the white jade statue. In an instant, it dyed her entire chest black, as if something strange was wriggling in it.
An abnormal fluctuation immediately appeared on the statue’s chest, causing the entire statue’s body to twist and expand, becoming extremely terrifying.
Just as the surface of the sculpture was about to shatter, a foot that was like an ax pierced through the air with a bang. With endless strength, it directly kicked the sculpture’s chest!
Bang!
A huge force erupted, like a prehistoric beast charging forward. The surface of the sculpture immediately cracked layer by layer.
Lin Yan seemed to see a sticky and slippery black shadow inside wailing in pain.
However, in an instant, it was hit by a huge force and flew into the air along with the entire statue. It directly smashed through the fragile wall of the palace and flew far out of the palace, falling into the endless abyss.
After Lin Yan kicked it, his figure flashed and he stood by the wall that he had broken through and looked out.
Clouds and smoke swirled around, making it impossible to see the bottom. There were steep stone walls all around, and the woman’s sculpture exploded into countless fragments in the air.
However, among them, there were actually four black shadows the size of babies. They were clearly living creatures. They jumped out of the statue’s body and were covered in disgusting half-transparent mucus. They let out sharp cries like babies and echoed back and forth in the forest.
They bared their fangs and brandished their claws, desperately trying to grab something. In the blink of an eye, they fell into the abyss.
“It looks like a kind of… worm…”
A trace of coldness flashed across Lin Yan’s eyes. He raised his foot, and his shoes were actually stained with a layer of wet mucus. As he raised his foot, he pulled out half-transparent threads.
“What the hell is this…”
Lin Yan flashed back and observed the other woman’s sculpture from head to toe. He directly erupted with strength and slashed his palm like a knife at the sculpture’s abdomen.
BANG!
The woman’s sculpture was instantly cut into two by him. The incision was completely white jade. There were no black spots or anything else.
Lin Yan was still worried. He slashed repeatedly and cut the woman’s sculpture into seven to eight pieces. After confirming that there was nothing abnormal, he placed it aside.
He looked at the surrounding ruins again. In the mural just now, there were three women lying on the high platform, but here, there were only two sculptures.
His eyes flickered for a moment, but he gave up on searching in the ruins. The most important thing now was to quickly finish looking at these murals.
He had a feeling that the howls of those monsters might attract something bad.
He immediately walked quickly to the side of the carving.
He had unleashed his strength just now and directly crushed the ground. Fortunately, he had only destroyed the third carving that he had already finished reading. He hurriedly leaned the torch against the fourth painting.
The painting returned to the high platform. The three women were still lying on the lotus platform with their eyes closed.
Beside them, a huge camp was set up. Dozens of monks were busy inside. In the middle of the camp, a huge pot was boiling. Two muscular monks were carrying a basket and adding things to the pot.
Lin Yan took a closer look and froze. The basket was filled with the bone-like treasure he had seen in the previous painting.
Beside the three women, there was a monk holding a bowl of soup and feeding them.
“So, in the third painting, they hunted that kind of evil spirit and obtained this bone to boil it into soup and feed it to these three women?”
Lin Yan’s heart trembled. These pictures looked very familiar, making him subconsciously think of the unconscious Xiaozhi and the spirit marrow dug out of Li Qu’s chest…
In the sky, the sun and the moon were still alternating. It was as if time was passing quickly.
The fifth painting was also a high platform, but when Lin Yan saw it this time, he subconsciously held his breath.
It was the same high lotus platform, but there was a strange change in the three women.
The sculptor used a cold and straight line to carve the lower half of the three women’s bodies extremely stiffly, making it obvious that there were strange changes to their bodies.
If Lin Yan hadn’t seen the two female sculptures just now, he might not have guessed what this change meant.
However, at this moment, he was almost instantly certain that the lower half of the three women’s bodies… had turned into jade!
He subconsciously glanced at the woman’s sculpture that he had divided into eight pieces.
Therefore, it was very likely that this woman’s sculpture was not a sculpture at all, but a real person. It had undergone a strange change and turned into a jade sculpture?!
No wonder they were naked. It was not that their clothes were not sculpted, but that their bodies had been petrified!
On the picture, one of the three women’s calves were only partially stiff, but one started from their waists and abdomens, indicating that the speed at which the three of them were petrified was different.
Lin Yan quickly walked to the side and looked at the sixth painting.
In this painting, there were two women who had been completely petrified. One of them had her hands clasped together, and the other had her arms crossed. They were exactly the same as the two sculptures he had discovered!
It matched!
Looking at the third woman, Lin Yan’s gaze froze again.
The third woman’s appearance could not be seen at all. She was drawn in a blurry humanoid style and was enveloped in a layer of blurry shadows. She was exactly the same as… the group of evil ghosts that the soldiers had hunted in the third picture!
“Among the three of them, one mutated into that kind of evil spirit? No wonder I couldn’t find the third sculpture…”
Beside the third woman, there were seven or eight soldiers who looked the same as those in the third painting. They held sabers and approached her.
…..
The surrounding monks sat upright again, their faces filled with pity and pain, as if they were chanting scriptures.
Lin Yan took a deep breath and looked at the last half.
The half of the painting was still dominated by the high platform, but the three women on the high platform had disappeared, leaving only three empty lotus platforms.
Below the high platform, there were densely packed men and women with holy expressions. They filled the spiraling mountain path and walked towards the high platform step by step.
The rest of it was hidden in the mud and dust, unable to be seen clearly.
“Are these three women… just the beginning?!”
Lin Yan couldn’t help but look shocked..