Art Gallery

Chapter 20

The girl's sobbing, raw with breakdown and despair, echoed through the ward.

“I want eyes, I want my eyes.”

“I want lots and lots of eyes.”

A squelching, strange sound arose. Zhou Xiangzhe couldn't see, so he could only go by sound to judge what was happening, but this noise was so abnormal he couldn't tell what it was.

Shen Wang, whose sight was intact, saw the whole thing.

The girl kept drawing blindly. Every black line deepened that black eye. Countless eyes crawled out of the painting, round eyeballs piling up with a squelching sound, then spilled from her hands and cascaded to the floor.

The floor was covered in eyes. It really wasn't a comfortable sight.

“What?” Zhou Xiangzhe asked him.

Shen Wang glanced at the floor. “Some... eyes.”

Zhou Xiangzhe immediately recalled the extra eyeballs that had grown on the staff member in the initial gallery.

Now he could imagine what it looked like.

The eyes multiplied, almost overflowing. Shen Wang yanked Zhou Xiangzhe back a step, and with that retreat, the girl on the bed suddenly lifted her head.

The white cloth over her eyes was now red with blood, and at the eye sockets there were round bulges, as if her eyes had already grown back. Cracks split open on her cheeks, and eyes sprouted from the cracks.

“Your eyes are so beautiful.” The girl twisted her neck and instantly crawled to the edge of the bed, reaching out a hand toward Shen Wang.

“Beautiful, such beautiful eyes.”

The girl gouged out two eyes from her arm, then held out the bloody eyes to Shen Wang.

“Can I trade with you? Trade for your eyes.”

“Your eyes are too beautiful.”

“Eyes this beautiful belong in a painting.”

“The most beautiful eyes should be displayed in a picture frame!”

It was the first time in his life Shen Wang had received such a request. He narrowed his eyes slightly, danger lurking in the black depths.

For this Grade C parasitic contaminant who had no idea what she was asking for.

If Zhou Xiangzhe weren't standing right behind him, he'd have already smacked it with a thorn vine and turned this Grade C Contaminant into his meal on the spot.

As expected, moving with Zhou Xiangzhe meant he had to hold back on so many things—it felt restrictive everywhere, so annoying.

Just as Shen Wang was thinking how to get rid of Zhou Xiangzhe, click—the ward door behind them slammed shut. He turned to look and saw a doctor standing there, wearing a white coat and mask, holding a medical record and staring at them like a robot.

“Room inspection.” The doctor looked irritable, even a bit violent. “What are you two doing? No wandering around—go back to your own wards!”

Shen Wang was surprised. “We have our own wards?”

“What else?” The doctor was overflowing with impatience. “You're here for eye treatment, of course you have your own wards. Hurry back and don't interfere with the doctor's work!”

And so Shen Wang and Zhou Xiangzhe were chased out just like that.

Zhou Xiangzhe still couldn't see, but from the conversation he roughly understood the current situation.

“For now, do as he says,” Zhou Xiangzhe said. “In some high-level contaminant lairs, there are Rules, based on the extreme desires the contaminant had when it was human. To see the contaminant's true form, you have to complete a certain sequence.”

Shen Wang raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “A horror game with Rules?”

“...More or less.”

“So blindness is a set Rule of this horror game? Since we're here to treat our eyes after all.” Shen Wang led Zhou Xiangzhe into the corridor, but after just one step he stopped.

Zhou Xiangzhe noticed the abrupt halt.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The paintings in the corridor have changed.” Shen Wang stared at the chaotic line drawings hanging on the walls.

The black lines were multiplying, eventually forming a black silhouette. The silhouette looked a lot like Shen Wang, except that its eye sockets were empty, nothing there at all.

Further ahead, the painting next to it was growing more and more like Zhou Xiangzhe. The eyes between the two paintings seemed to come alive, swiveling right in front of Shen Wang, staring fixedly at them without pause.

These two paintings faced different ward doors.

“Looks like these are our wards.” Shen Wang finally breathed a sigh of relief. He guided Zhou Xiangzhe to the door. “Captain Zhou, since we have to play along for now, I should head back to my ward. This one's yours.”

Zhou Xiangzhe hesitated, pulling his hand back, and finally said, “You, be careful.”

“If anything goes wrong, I'll call you right away,” Shen Wang promised.

Not that I'd disturb you at all! Shen Wang thought.

Zhou Xiangzhe was still a bit worried, but in this situation he couldn't stay by Shen Wang's side all the time. As a dispatch team member, he had to learn to protect himself.

In the end, he lowered his gaze.

“Please don't let anything else happen.”

He murmured, “I've already... forget it.”

Shen Wang watched as Zhou Xiangzhe's words cut off mid-sentence, then he groped his way to open the ward door and went in. Shen Wang tilted his head, a bit puzzled.

“Zhou Xiangzhe also moonlights as a riddler?”

/

Shen Wang's ward was exactly the same as the one next door—no difference at all: white walls and a small white bed. The window was sealed with steel bars, only a small crack open. Shen Wang opened the window and looked down, and there he saw a giant eyeball embedded in the wall.

Compared to the artistic-looking eyes outside the ward, this eyeball looked more like a real human eye magnified many times over, even with red veins on the white.

As if sensing Shen Wang staring at it, the eyeball swiveled to meet his gaze, then curved slightly as if in a smirk.

Shen Wang: ...

Honestly, an eyeball several meters in diameter is a huge sanity drain.

He closed the window. Shen Wang was about to check out other things when—bang!—a loud noise came from the wall connected to the next room.

Shen Wang walked over to the wall and saw a painting just like the ones in the corridor hanging there. He took it down, and the next moment he saw there was a fist-sized hole behind it. On the other side of the hole, the girl with the white gauze was staring at him dead on.

Don't ask how someone with no eyes and white gauze over them can stare intently—it's a feeling.

“I want to trade eyes with you.” The girl hadn't forgotten her mission, reaching her hand through the hole, two bloody eyes resting in her palm.

She shouted, “Trade me your eyes!”

Shen Wang sneered. “I won't trade. Your eyes are too ugly—I don't want eyes that ugly.”

The girl froze. As a parasitic contaminant of Hundred Eyes, she couldn't accept someone calling her eyes ugly.

“Your eyes are mine!” The girl pressed her twisted face against the hole. “If you won't give them to me, I'll take them myself!”

“I'll take them right now!”

In the next instant, cracks split across the girl's outstretched arm, and eyes sprouted on it, like fruit on a tree. Each eye swiveled around, then all of them fixed their gaze on Shen Wang in unison.

The girl's whole body was melting, squeezing through the tiny hole, like a puddle of formless liquid.

“You really think you can take them.”

Shen Wang watched her squirming through the hole with an unreadable expression.

His pupils slowly tinged red. Thorny vines crept along the base of the wall, taking root beneath it, and the moment the girl emerged, they rushed up and bound her in a flash.

“Ah!” The girl let out a piercing shriek.

The vines hoisted her into the air, their thorns piercing into the eyes that had grown on her body, blood dyeing the thorns a brilliant red—a gorgeous sight.

“My eyes, my eyes!”

The girl cried again, “Those are my eyes!”

Shen Wang looked up at the girl, listening to her wails. His eyes narrowed, the blood-red irises full of danger.

“So noisy.” He said softly, “Would you please shut up?”

Thwack—a vine pierced through the girl's throat. Instantly she lost her voice. Her eyes went wide, and the shattered eyes all over her body started dropping off with plopping sounds. Blood foam bubbled from her throat. She opened her mouth to struggle further, and another vine pierced her throat again.

Knock knock—a knock came at the ward door.

“Shen Wang?” Zhou Xiangzhe stood outside. “What's that sound over there?”

Zhou Xiangzhe was blind, so his hearing had become very sharp. Just now he thought he'd heard the girl screaming—very close by. After judging it, he realized it might be coming from next door.

And next door was Shen Wang's ward.

Shen Wang calmly had another vine pierce the still-struggling contaminant before opening his mouth.

“Nothing, Captain Zhou, did you hear something?”

“Open the door,” Zhou Xiangzhe said, uneasy.

Shen Wang's lips curved slightly. He walked to the door, unlocked it and opened it, still not reverting his appearance.

Yep, he was taking advantage of Zhou Xiangzhe's blindness.

Zhou Xiangzhe stood at the door. He felt a breeze, the ward door opened, and someone stood before him—it was Shen Wang.

Shen Wang's voice held a smile, as if amused by his concern.

He couldn't see, so he had no idea that the Shen Wang before him had blood-red pupils, eyes full of careless amusement, thorny vines wrapped around his arms and head, his hair turned snow-white—completely the inhuman appearance of a contaminant.

He also didn't know that beyond the wide-open door, countless vines filled the entire ward, surrounding and suspending a Grade C Contaminant covered in eyes, its blood flowing down the vines to the floor.

“See?” Shen Wang said with a smile. “Nothing happened.”

Zhou Xiangzhe slowly exhaled. “Be careful. Something's off here—we can't accurately assess the situation yet.”

“I'll be careful,” Shen Wang answered lightly. “Want to come in and sit for a bit?”

Behind him, the suspended contaminant made a last struggle. Something seemed to be growing out of its bloody pupils. Shen Wang glanced back. Thwack—a vine pierced through its skull, bursting out from the eye socket, blood splattering near Shen Wang's feet.

Shen Wang nonchalantly glanced at the bloodstain and went on, “Want to come in and sit?”

“The ward is quite spacious, actually.”

Doing bad things right in front of a law enforcer—so thrilling.