Art Gallery

Chapter 23

When the elevator doors opened again, Shen Wang saw a completely different place.

A dim hallway, a red operating room sign, dusty plastic chairs — nothing about it looked like a proper operating room.

Four nurses pushed Shen Wang into the operating room. The Doctor took off his white coat and started changing into surgical scrubs on the spot — so unprofessional it was beyond words.

As he changed, he said, 'You go pick up the other patient and bring them up when it's time.'

So two of the stiff nurses turned and left the operating room.

Shen Wang waited until he'd finished changing, then said, 'Doctor, tell me about the surgery procedure.'

'Procedure?' The Doctor gave him a strange look. 'What procedure? We just remove your ruined eyes, replace them with good ones, and you'll be able to see.'

'Don't worry. Our eyes are the best.'

Shen Wang watched him. 'Can I see the eyes you'll give me?'

'You want to see them? Fine.' The Doctor pulled on his gloves and gestured to the remaining nurses. 'Show him the eyes.'

A nurse came over with a tray. On it was a sheet of white paper, and on the paper was a pair of eyes. Black, looking very fresh. Shen Wang said fresh because they were alive — he saw them moving, round eyeballs streaked with blood, still twitching.

The Doctor walked over with a scalpel. 'Lie down. The surgery is about to start.'

Shen Wang looked at him calmly. 'I don't want the surgery anymore.'

'Oh really?' The Doctor raised the scalpel and stared at Shen Wang, fixating on his eyes with obsession. 'You don't get a choice!'

'These eyes must be replaced!'

The raised scalpel stabbed down hard. Shen Wang dodged the blade and kicked The Doctor sideways.

Getting off the gurney he'd despised, Shen Wang stretched his arms. 'Did you not hear me? I said I don't want the surgery.'

The Doctor scrambled up from the floor, twisting his body. With a squelch, a crack split open on his neck, and a fist-sized eye opened, a blood-red eye staring fixedly at Shen Wang.

He clutched the knife. Cracks were opening on his arms, sprouting eyes one after another.

'Give me your eyes!'

'Grade C.' Shen Wang grabbed the wrist holding the knife. 'Contaminants get their own names starting from D-class. How about we call you Stye? It's a disease that grows around the eyes.'

An eye fell from The Doctor's wrist and hit Shen Wang's arm. With a pop, it burst, sticky blood smearing over Shen Wang's skin.

The Doctor burst out laughing.

He looked at Shen Wang with eyes full of resentment. 'You're contaminated! Soon you'll grow lots of eyes! Soon you'll be just like them!'

'Oh? Is that so?'

Shen Wang grabbed The Doctor by the throat. 'You dare smear such filthy stuff on me? Looking to die?'

The Doctor laughed wildly, but then the laughter died. He realized that Shen Wang hadn't changed at all. He was still himself, even the usual mockery in his black eyes.

'No, why?!' The Doctor's eyes widened. 'Why aren't you contaminated!'

'A Grade C Contaminant shouldn't have lost its brain, right?' Shen Wang's gaze was calm. 'Didn't you notice I was never blind? How could you contaminate me?'

Squelch.

The Doctor felt something pierce through his chest. Dazed, he looked down and saw a blood-red thorn. It had grown inside his heart and now burst out, tearing open his chest in an instant.

When?!

Shen Wang let go. The Doctor fell to the floor, and the thorns rapidly took root, claiming his body in a moment. They grew wantonly, greedily consuming nutrients and blooming with tiny red flowers.

The stiff nurses stood nearby, watching rigidly, not moving at all. More robotic than robots.

They were a level lower — completely puppet-like beings.

Ignoring the two nurses, Shen Wang started rummaging through things in the operating room.

This operating room was too dim, and the space around it was empty. Unlike the bright corridor outside, there were no paintings here. The only thing visible was a tall, shabby shelf.

On the shelf, Shen Wang saw many eyes that had been scooped out and preserved in jars. Each pair was still in its prime, as if they'd just been plucked.

These were probably ordinary people swallowed into the Hall of Art by Hundred Eyes. Each of them had their eyes gouged out here.

Ding-dong. The elevator doors opened again, and this time Zhou Xiangzhe came out.

Only, Zhou Xiangzhe walked in; the nurses were collapsed inside the elevator.

As soon as he stepped out, Zhou Xiangzhe heard the sound of rummaging. He assessed it and figured it wasn't the kind of noise The Doctor would make.

So he asked, 'Shen Wang?'

'I'm here,' Shen Wang answered between tasks.

He glanced at Zhou Xiangzhe, then at the thorns covering the entire corpse. Once sure Zhou Xiangzhe wouldn't touch them when he came over, he said, 'I found a room here. Let's go in together.'

Zhou Xiangzhe headed toward the sound of Shen Wang's voice. 'What about that doctor Contaminant?'

'Dead,' Shen Wang replied. 'Since we were already in the operating room and he was useless, he had to be dealt with.'

Zhou Xiangzhe: ...

He gained a new understanding of Shen Wang's methods.

Zhou Xiangzhe came over just as Shen Wang opened the door. With a creak, the smell of rotting wood rushed into their nostrils. Zhou Xiangzhe covered his nose and frowned slightly.

'The smell of wood.'

'Of course it's wood smell.' Shen Wang looked at Zhou Xiangzhe beside him, puzzled.

'No, besides here, everywhere else smells like paint,' Zhou Xiangzhe corrected. 'Probably because this is a painting — that's a very obvious smell.'

Shen Wang understood. 'Then it seems this is a very important place.'

Pushing open the door, Shen Wang saw an extremely oppressive scene — so oppressive that even he furrowed his brows.

To be honest, Shen Wang had only ever seen one Grade A Contaminant in his life — the Blood Thorns he'd killed while they were already heavily injured. Those half-crippled Blood Thorns left a deep impression. It was the first time he understood that compared to a Grade B Contaminant, an A-rank was on an entirely different level.

Their power was formidable, their minds twisted, and their lairs were places so terrifying that a single glance could drive a human mad with fear.

Shen Wang let out a deep breath.

He and Zhou Xiangzhe walked inside, and he explained what he was seeing to Zhou Xiangzhe.

'There are hundreds of portraits in total,' Shen Wang said.

Dense portraits covered all four walls. Every person in them was drawn with messy black lines, and each one had wide-open eyes, as if staring at Shen Wang and Zhou Xiangzhe standing in the center of the room. The look in every portrait was full of intense agony.

The eye lines were strange, as if the eyes hadn't been drawn at first and were added later.

It reminded Shen Wang of the portrait outside their hospital room.

Could it be... those very portraits?

Shen Wang walked forward a couple of steps and randomly took down a painting. 'There's information on it.'

'What kind of information?' Zhou Xiangzhe asked.

'Zong Yifan, male, 22 years old; eye color: black; eye condition: young but not pretty enough, plain as water; final evaluation: Fair.'

It was an evaluation of a person's eyes.

Zhou Xiangzhe understood what this meant even better than Shen Wang. As a Grade S Mutant, he had been fighting Contaminants for nearly a decade. He was still underage the first time he left the city, and he had seen the most harrowing sights; in his eyes, nothing in this world was crueler than a Contaminant.

They were originally human too, but after being contaminated, they turned into monsters.

Shen Wang hung the painting back up and continued looking. Then, somewhat unexpectedly, he spotted a familiar face.

'The Doctor's portrait is here too, and also that female Contaminant we first saw in the last ward.'

'They're victims too?'

'Maybe?' Shen Wang read the text above it, naturally skipping the eye evaluation part.

'Shi Mingchen, male, 28 years old; Shi Xinlan, female, 25 years old.'

Zhou Xiangzhe was a bit surprised. 'It's them?'

'You know them?'

'Not exactly,' Zhou Xiangzhe replied. 'Every Mutant is equipped with a locator. If a Mutant goes missing, their last location is immediately sent back to the Anti-Contamination Center. Since places that can make Mutants disappear are usually Contaminant lairs, the center compiles these locations into a key suspect handbook.'

'Shi Mingchen and Shi Xinlan are siblings, members of a dispatch team from Chenmo West City. They went missing near the city a year ago.'

'I never thought they'd die here, and even mutate into two Grade C Contaminants.'

Zhou Xiangzhe frowned slightly. 'But this also shows that Hundred Eyes wasn't originally a Contaminant here. It only recently moved in.'

'The Science Academy's researchers wouldn't be stupid enough to wander into an A-rank Contaminant's territory.'

We can only conclude that the researcher had no idea an A-rank Contaminant had appeared here. He just barged in while escaping.

Shen Wang listened to Zhou Xiangzhe's words. He took an extra look at Shi Xinlan's portrait. It was completely out of place among the others because her eye sockets were empty.

Of course there were no eyes. She never had the eye replacement surgery even after becoming a Contaminant, and then she was killed by Shen Wang in the ward.

Shen Wang was pondering a very immoral question.

Had Shi Xinlan mutated into a Contaminant because she was contaminated by this place, or because her own brother was going to perform surgery to gouge out her eyes?

Sigh. No matter how you looked at it, it was a tragedy that would wring out plenty of tears if written down.

But aside from that, Shen Wang noticed something odd. The backgrounds of all the portraits seemed to be the same place, faintly showing a tall building. He boldly deduced it was the hospital. And the bizarre thing: a gigantic eye was embedded in the hospital's upper floor.

This was the eye Shen Wang had seen when he'd opened the window in the ward.

'Let's go back,' Shen Wang said. 'I've seen everything I needed to see.'

Zhou Xiangzhe was silent for a moment, then spoke. 'So this blindness setup was designed from the start to kill anyone who enters.'

Unable to see anything, you can only follow the paintings, until you end up on the operating table, your eyes gouged out, becoming nourishment for the Contaminant.

There's no such thing as passing through in an artistic form at all.

'Contaminants are just like that. The higher the rank, the more vicious. I wonder if there are any with completely human-like thought patterns.' Shen Wang said this, then after speaking, remembered something.

No, there is one.

According to Lan, their father was an SSS-class Contaminant, the uncrowned king of the Zero Contamination Zone. He and their mother were drawn to each other, married, and even gave birth to two little monsters who shouldn't exist — neither human nor Contaminant.

So it seems, the higher the rank of a Contaminant, the more human-like it becomes.

'Let's go, I found a clue.'

Zhou Xiangzhe was pulled along as they exited. When they left the room, Shen Wang saw the thorns he'd left behind. His intense hunger was still affecting them.

They had devoured the dead Doctor Contaminant and then lunged to chew up the stiff nurses. Now they were squirming restlessly, even boldly eyeing Zhou Xiangzhe.

'So hungry, starving!'

'Master hungry! Want food!'

'Too hungry! Smells so good nearby! Master, take a bite!'

'Wah wah! Take a bite!'

But biting was out of the question. Leaving aside that Zhou Xiangzhe was an S-class Mutant, would someone like him let Shen Wang take a bite? He'd probably get kicked away immediately.

Shen Wang casually endured the constant, faint hunger. As he endured, he wondered how much longer he could last.

In the hospital, whenever his episodes hit, Shen Wang would be locked up—in a confinement cell, a control room, even a psychiatric ward’s forced Isolation Barrier chamber.

Because when he had an episode, Shen Wang got very irritable. If he couldn't eat, he couldn't control himself. He'd attack others, steal their food. But that only filled his stomach with a lot of food without easing his hunger. So they just locked him up to force him through it.

Shen Wang thought: Damn it, now there's no one to lock me up, and I have to play detective while starving.

This world is insane.

The elevator opened. Zhou Xiangzhe still couldn't see. He stepped back two paces, then remembered something.

'The nurses seem to be gone.'

Shen Wang glanced at the Blood Thorns, which had eaten the nurses and were still rolling around from hunger. 'Oh, maybe they ran off.'

They sure ate cleanly.

'Anyway, never mind those things,' Shen Wang changed the subject. 'I saw a strange background in the paintings. The background is a hospital with an eye hanging on it. I saw that eye earlier outside the window, but I didn't pay attention then. It only seemed odd when I saw it in the paintings.'

Zhou Xiangzhe pictured what Shen Wang described in his mind.

'If it's a painting, a huge eye embedded in a hospital — that eye really is more conspicuous than you'd think.'

'Yeah, anyway, let's try to deal with that eye first.'

They took the elevator back to the hospital. Shen Wang led Zhou Xiangzhe to his ward, then opened the window as wide as it would go. Even then, it only opened less than 45 degrees. Shen Wang looked down at the huge eye hanging on the wall below.

'Right here.'

Zhou Xiangzhe couldn't see anything. He tentatively reached his hand out the window, and Shen Wang grabbed his hand and pointed his fingertips toward the massive eye below.

'Even if you can't see, you're an S-class Mutant. Can you deal with this big eye?'

Zhou Xiangzhe thought for a moment. He brought his finger to his lips and, under Shen Wang's puzzled gaze, bit his own finger. Blood dripped from his fingertip. Shen Wang gasped — the instant he broke the skin, the sandalwood scent in the whole space grew overwhelmingly strong.

'Aim at its spot,' Zhou Xiangzhe said. 'My blood contains the contamination of Deer God. This thing can't withstand it.'

So wasteful!

Shen Wang frowned at Zhou Xiangzhe. In the end, he could only grip Zhou Xiangzhe's wrist and guide his hand directly above that eye.

Drip. A drop of bright red blood fell onto the eyeball and instantly melted into its surface.

The eyeball swiveled, suddenly aligning toward Shen Wang and Zhou Xiangzhe. The next drop of blood fell, and though it was only a drop, to the eyeball it seemed like a weight of ten thousand tons. Shen Wang watched as countless red veins burst across the eyeball at visible speed. It had no mouth or eyelids, but Shen Wang could still tell it was screaming in terror.

A third drop fell. The eyeball tried to dodge, but it was embedded in the wall and couldn't escape.

But just as the blood was about to land, the thorns lying in ambush nearby suddenly shot out, cheerfully snatching that drop of blood away.

'Food! Food!'

'Master hungry! Master, eat it quickly!'

'Wah, food food!'

Shen Wang: ...

Zhou Xiangzhe still couldn't see, but he felt a sudden breeze rush past him. He pulled his hand back; the wound on his fingertip had already healed.

'How is it?' Zhou Xiangzhe asked Shen Wang.

What could Shen Wang say? He could only say, of course, no problem.

He released Zhou Xiangzhe's hand and took deep breaths of the fresh air outside. He felt he was now on the verge of losing control.

He shouldn't stay with Zhou Xiangzhe anymore, and he definitely shouldn't remain here. His episodes were more troublesome than one might imagine. The cabinets he'd reduced to scrap in The Doctor's office were proof of that.

Just then, a boom. Zhou Xiangzhe, unsteady and still blind, nearly fell to the ground.

'Earthquake?'

'No, the painting is collapsing.' Shen Wang grabbed the window handle to steady himself and looked outside. Sure enough, the huge eye was trembling constantly, and as it shook, it was dissolving. Countless eyes fell out of the melting half — bloody eyeballs tumbling to the ground.

Another violent tremor shook them. The entire building seemed to be collapsing. A portrait hanging on the wall fell and hit Zhou Xiangzhe's arm.

'We need to get out of here.'

'Too late,' Shen Wang said. 'The eyeball has melted.'

The eyeball completely melted, as if Zhou Xiangzhe's blood was a potent poison, just two drops enough to turn it into a pool of bloody water.

With the embedded eye melted, the whole structure was collapsing. At the last moment, Shen Wang felt Zhou Xiangzhe shield him, and then the weightless sensation of falling.

But soon they hit the ground. The cold floor was covered in dust, which instantly stained their black coats with obvious grime.

Zhou Xiangzhe blinked, then sat up and rubbed his eyes. Those eyes that had been completely devoid of light finally seemed to let light in.

He could see.

'Where is this?'

Zhou Xiangzhe got up from the ground. His sight gradually returned. Before him was a long corridor, but it wasn't the hospital — it was a dilapidated exhibition gallery, full of dust and broken frames. Zhou Xiangzhe had a good memory, even though he'd been blind until now.

'This is where we first entered,' Zhou Xiangzhe said. 'Right?'

Shen Wang didn't get up. He sat quietly on the ground, silently clutching his stomach.

Zhou Xiangzhe didn't notice his unease. On the shabby gallery wall hung the only complete painting — a transparent glass frame so new it stood out starkly.

Messy lines disrupted and formed the image of a hospital. The red hospital sign flickered like a fuzzy TV screen. The black sky was extremely oppressive. Embedded in the hospital wall was a gigantic eyeball, overlooking the people coming and going at the entrance. Not a single person paid attention to this strange sight, as if the eyeball were naturally meant to be there.

If you looked closely, you'd see that every person in the scene had more than one pair of eyes on their face, and those eyes were dotted all over their exposed skin. Yet everyone was smiling quite happily.

Grotesque art.

'I guess we've made it out of the first painting, because we found that eye. Normally, it couldn't have been discovered, but you happened not to be blind,' Zhou Xiangzhe said, studying the painting thoughtfully. 'My sight has returned too. I don't know if there will be more paintings we'll need to enter.'

Listening to Zhou Xiangzhe, Shen Wang braced himself against the wall to stand up. He let out a heavy breath.

No, the most important thing now wasn't whether they'd enter a new painting, but a difficult problem.

His episode was still ongoing. He was about to lose control.

Shen Wang's pupils were tinged red. He gritted his teeth and watched Zhou Xiangzhe, who was examining the frame. His gaze at Zhou Xiangzhe carried intense aggression.

For some reason, Zhou Xiangzhe was unguarded around him. Such blatantly aggressive eyes, and he didn't even notice.

'Zhou Xiangzhe.' Finally, Shen Wang called out to him.

Zhou Xiangzhe turned to look at him.

Shen Wang met his gaze. Zhou Xiangzhe saw his slightly reddened eyes, the look in them not quite normal, even somewhat unsettling.

Because of the episode, Shen Wang looked very weak, as if carrying a patient's special melancholy. The corners of his eyes were stained red, making his peach-blossom eyes look even more pitiful. In this world, no one could appear more innocent and harmless than he did right now.

He wasn't smiling, yet the more innocent he looked, the more eerie it became.

Right now, though he had a human form, he carried an oddness even stronger than the Blood Thorns' form.

'Shen...'

Shen Wang didn't let him finish and moved again. He walked toward Zhou Xiangzhe, once more cutting off his words.

Zhou Xiangzhe felt Shen Wang stumble into his arms, unsteady on his feet. Warm breath hit the side of his neck, as if the episode had drained his strength. But he had single-handedly killed a Grade C Contaminant in the operating room. If they left and he was reassessed, he'd probably already reached Grade B.

And that was when he suddenly thought: although Shen Wang was a year younger than Xiao Yi, after all these years he'd grown to be just as tall as him.

He was no longer The Child who would smile and sing to him back then; he was a tall, handsome young man, a powerful Mutant, an excellent member of the dispatch team. He didn't need Xiao Yi's protection, and might even be annoyed by it.

Zhou Xiangzhe's mind was wandering, but a stinging pain on the side of his neck interrupted him. He instantly frowned, his hand instinctively wanting to push away whoever was hurting him. But once his arm was there, it didn't move.

Because Shen Wang had bitten him.

The smell of blood seeped from the bitten wound. It was the first time in Zhou Xiangzhe's life that he'd been bitten.

He was a bit stunned, not knowing why he'd been bitten. He thought of many explanations but couldn't figure out the reason.

He hadn't revealed his identity, nor that he knew Shen Wang was Little Fifteen. Inside the painting, they'd also cooperated quite well.

So why?

'Shen Wang?'

'What are you doing?'

What was he doing? Eating...

Shen Wang still hadn't held back. At the last moment, he bit Zhou Xiangzhe. It was also the first time Shen Wang had ever bitten someone.

But it didn't matter. He was a lunatic anyway. Just a bite. He bit someone, so what? Sick people are unreasonable.

His mouth was filled with the thick taste of blood, mixed with a flavor that greatly increased his appetite. Shen Wang knew this was the S-class Contaminant Deer God mixed in, and he also knew he should stop immediately and gloss over the matter with a couple of jokes.

But he was too hungry. The intense hunger made his stomach cramp with pain.

'Shen Wang? Shen Wang.' Zhou Xiangzhe was still calling his name.

A sharp, stinging pain spread slowly from the bitten spot. It was a very dangerous feeling. People are extremely sensitive about their vulnerable points, and Zhou Xiangzhe never let anyone expose those spots.

But Shen Wang was different. Shen Wang was his Little Fifteen, the only friend left from the orphanage.

After swallowing a mouthful of blood, Shen Wang slowly released his teeth.

Even though he'd just bitten someone, Shen Wang's voice carried a hint of grievance as he muttered softly, 'So hungry.'

'...Want to eat.'

Zhou Xiangzhe looked at him. After a moment, he reached into his pocket, took out a brightly wrapped candy, and gently placed it in Shen Wang's palm.

'Eat this first.'

Shen Wang froze. He hadn't expected Zhou Xiangzhe to not ask a single question about what just happened, and even take a piece of candy from his pocket for him.

Why would Zhou Xiangzhe bring candy when he goes out?

'Hurry, eat.'

It was as if Zhou Xiangzhe knew he would get hungry, but also knew he couldn't hold down normal food when hungry. So instead of something filling, a slowly dissolving candy would be better — that way, there'd be flavor in his mouth without having to swallow too much.

It was as if they were truly very familiar friends, and Zhou Xiangzhe already understood him to such a profound degree.