The Woman in the Painting

Translator: CinderTL

Fatty and the man obediently pressed themselves against the wall, straining their ears to listen.

"But you didn't tell the whole truth last time, did you?" Jiang Cheng's tone suddenly changed. He crossed his arms and leaned back on the sofa, his imposing aura causing the woman's expression to shift slightly.

"Officer," Li Zumei hurriedly explained, "I don't understand what you mean. What I said before may sound bizarre, but it's all true! Please, you must believe me."

"Lin Chen's work really has issues!"

Jiang Cheng pretended to take notes in his notebook, then looked up and gave the woman a nod to continue.

"Repeat what you said last time," Hua Luo said calmly, looking directly into the woman's eyes. "We'll compare it with the previous statement."

"Alright, alright." The woman casually pulled out a bottle of mineral water from under the table, unscrewed the cap, and gulped down half of it, seemingly calming her nerves.

"It was around mid-July when I received Lin Chen's submission. They were all Urban Legends stories, and her illustrations were truly remarkable." The woman seemed to get into the flow, emphasizing, "I've been in this industry for ten years, and this is the first time a piece of work has scared me so much that I didn't dare walk home alone at night."

"Do you remember what those Urban Legends were about?"

"Yes," the woman nodded. "The Hunchback, the Wig, the Shadow You Can't Look At Directly, the Crack, and the Nails in the Drawer." She counted them off on her fingers one by one.

"These were all good, but they didn't scare me. What really frightened me was the last one." The woman's throat moved as she spoke.

"What was it?" Hua Luo couldn't help but press.

"It was her own story." At this point, the woman's expression became strange—a mix of fear and confusion. After a long pause, she continued, "I don't know how to describe it to you. You'll just have to see for yourselves."

"Where is it?"

As soon as Hua Luo finished speaking, Jiang Cheng noticed a change in the woman's eyes. "The original draft... wasn't it taken by your people?" the woman asked, puzzled.

"Heh." Jiang Cheng chuckled lightly, drawing the woman's attention back. He stared at her with a peculiar look. "You didn't keep a backup, did you? After all, it was such a fascinating story."

This time, it was the woman's turn to look uncomfortable.

Jiang Cheng leaned forward, getting very close to the woman, his eyes locked on hers. "Keeping those things won't do you any good. We're here for your sake. Otherwise, we wouldn't have come today."

"I'm sorry, I'll get it for you right away." After admitting her mistake, the woman quickly ran to the other side of the room, rummaged through a few bookshelves, and then returned with a black plastic bag.

She opened it in front of Jiang Cheng, revealing a kraft paper envelope. From it, she pulled out a stack of papers.

They were thick in her hand.

"It's all here."

Inside was the same content Liu Guo had shown earlier, but this was clearly a photocopy. After a quick glance, Jiang Cheng picked up the last Urban Legend.

He didn't open it immediately but took a deep breath.

Unlike the other Urban Legends, this one had no title.

The woman explained that it had no name when it arrived, but she had given it one: "Origin."

"Origin?" Wan Yuanning, standing behind Jiang Cheng, looked at the woman with a slight frown. The name gave her a very uneasy feeling.

To be precise, it was a sense of foreboding.

As he flipped through the draft, page by page, Jiang Cheng quickly understood why the woman had called it "Origin."

Because this wasn't a Urban Legend at all. It told the story of a young woman.

The story spanned a long period, with the earliest page dating back two years, when the woman had just arrived in this unfamiliar city.

It was clear that the artist's strokes were still very immature at that time.

Then, the woman met a man who treated her very well. In the artist's depiction, the man was the best person in the world—taking her to amusement parks, preparing candlelit dinners for her birthday, and staying by her side when she was sick. The man in the drawings was attentive, and the couple seemed happy and warm.

During this phase, the woman in the drawings was content.

But soon, the style began to change subtly, and the narrative perspective became strange. The once sunny backgrounds were replaced by nights or rainy days.

The overall tone of the illustrations took on a gloomy hue.

The man started becoming increasingly impatient, treating the woman with indifference. He came home later and later, sometimes not returning at all.

The woman spent most of her time alone.

Against the backdrop of a lonely city, the artist skillfully used changes in color intensity to portray the woman as isolated, shrinking into a corner of the city.

Later, scenes of the man drinking heavily and abusing the woman began to appear. It was clear that the woman had tried to leave many times, but the man always found ways to keep her.

The man in the drawings understood the woman well—he knew she had a soft heart and that deep down, she still loved him.

So he became even more reckless. The illustrations began to show increasingly disturbing scenes, and the woman seemed to have given up.

The young woman in the drawings poured all her energy into her work. There was a large easel in her room, and she could sit in front of it, painting all day, from dawn to dusk, from sunset to sunrise.

Her skills improved, but what was unsettling was that her strokes became sharper, and her compositions bolder.

The sharp brushstrokes were like a knife, cutting the woman's life into fragments.

Even through the drawings, one could feel the despair weighing on her heart.

Then, another man appeared.

At first, the depiction of this man was careless, and the composition was simple, as if he had appeared out of nowhere.

This man was different from the first. He rarely spoke, and his actions were minimal. Most of the time, he simply stayed by the woman's side in silence.

The woman, too, was neither warm nor cold toward him.

But as time passed, their relationship grew closer. The man would crouch down like a gentleman to adjust her skirt, or silently sit by her bedside when she was sick or unhappy, tenderly feeding her water or peeling fruit for her.

The first man no longer appeared in the drawings, and the scenes became almost entirely about the woman and this new man.

By now, Jiang Cheng and the others had noticed something strange. The woman in the drawings was undoubtedly Lin Chen herself, and the first man was likely Li Maoshen.

Now, their focus was on the second man.

He was probably the man Weng Qing had mentioned, the one who appeared in Room 808.

But what was odd was that the backgrounds in the drawings were all in Lin Chen's room. How had they managed to spend so much time together without Li Maoshen ever noticing?

Moreover, Jiang Cheng frowned. As he looked at the drawings, he felt that the figures were gradually shrinking, though it wasn't obvious.

Soon, he reached the last few pages.

Here, a frame appeared at the edge of the drawing, meticulously added by Lin Chen, clearly intentional.

The man was gone, leaving only the woman alone.

The next page, the final drawing, showed the woman sitting quietly in front of the easel. The man still hadn't reappeared.

But what puzzled Jiang Cheng even more was that the style of this drawing had also changed. It seemed that Lin Chen had been in a state of extreme fear when she painted it.

Li Zumei, sitting across from them, had turned pale. She pointed a trembling finger at the last drawing. "Look... look there."

Her finger was pointing at the easel in the drawing. The woman in the drawing was also painting, but when Jiang Cheng saw what she was painting, his pupils constricted sharply.

The painting within the painting was identical to the previous framed drawing.

No.

It was exactly the same!

Only the perspective had been pulled back.

The previous drawing wasn't just Lin Chen's work—it was also the painting of the woman in Lin Chen's drawing.

Jiang Cheng immediately understood. The man who had appeared was merely a figment of the woman's imagination, a psychological dependency born from her despair.

She had conjured up an almost perfect man to replace the one in her reality.

All the drawings of this man were the creations of the woman in Lin Chen's drawings—or, more accurately, Lin Chen's metaphorical self. In reality, this man didn't exist at all!

The final drawing, however, was realistic. This was Lin Chen's true state, as she had recorded it.

In the room, she was alone. The man only existed in her drawings.

A finger pointed to the corner of the last drawing. There seemed to be a mirror, and Lin Chen's realistic style had captured the reflection.

In the mirror, behind Lin Chen at the easel, stood a man in a dark trench coat, gripping her wrist as she painted.

But in the drawing, only Lin Chen was visible, holding a brush.

"That man... came out of the painting," Li Zumei said, trembling.

(End of the Chapter)

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