Paintings of Terror

Chapter 201: Be Your Own Hero

Chapter 201: Be Your Own Hero

After being tortured for an entire night, no one had the stomach to eat breakfast.

Because, that morning, they all talked about the worst thing they each had experienced.

For example, scorpions with countless legs, large and plump soft-footed worms, nightmare pipa toad, and so on.

Afterward, they decided not to go into the details and instead focused on the process. It turned out that the process was that, after being attacked by their most disgusting fear in the dark, they heard the screams of everyone, followed by footsteps rushing out of the room.

“Then I want to ask,” Shao Ling looked at everyone, “who actually screamed out loud last night?”

Wei Dong and Luo Bu slowly raised their hands with frustrated faces.

Shao Ling looked at the three girls, a little surprised. Chen Xinai was still in a daze and did not hear Shao Ling’s question. Fang Fei said, “Don’t be surprised. I practice diving all year round, and I learned not to open my mouth when I’m panicking, or I’ll choke on water.”

Yu Long nodded in agreement.

Xue Ge, who had imagined a big-bellied moth, said, “The reason why I’m sick of moths is because I watched a catastrophe horror movie when I was a child. The moths in it flew into human mouths and made cocoons to lay their eggs, which left an indelible psychological shadow in me, so once I met a moth in reality, my first reaction was to keep my mouth firmly shut.”

“So, what did you two scream?” Shao Ling’s gaze fell back to Wei Dong and Luo Bu.

Wei Dong thought for a moment and hesitantly said, “Just…’ahhhhh, fuck, ahhhhhh’, like that.”

Everyone: “…”

Luo Yu also thought for a moment. “I can’t remember exactly. I was so scared, I peed myself. But under normal circumstances, I would shout something like, ‘No, no, ahhh, I’m going to die, I’m going to die, ahhhh,’ like these.”

Everyone: “…”

Wei Dong said, “Look for the source, look for the seed.”

“In the illusion last night, I heard nearly everyone screaming, and I believe you all heard the same,” Shao Ling said. “So, did anyone actually try to run out of the room?”

They all looked at each other, and finally Luo Bu said, “I was so scared that my legs were soft. I had the heart, but not the strength, so I just lay slumped on the floor.”

Wei Dong said, “Although I would like to follow when I heard everyone running out, I thought about it and realized that, if Ke’er and the others really did run out, they would never leave me. Ke’er would definitely call out to me, telling me to run. But I didn’t hear him, so I felt that, regardless of whether other people ran out or not, Ke’er was definitely still in the room. So I just stayed where I was.”

Zhu Haowen said, “I didn’t run.”

Qin Ci said, “I didn’t run.”

Xue Ge said, “I was more afraid of the sensation of stepping on moths more so than I was of moths falling on my body, so I didn’t dare to run and stayed in place.”

Yu Long said, “I heard that toads can see moving things, so I didn’t dare move. I was afraid it would come at my feet…”

Fang Fei said, “I was also afraid of stepping on a big, meaty worm, so I dare not run.”

Chen Xinai ignored everyone, still completely out of it.

Ke Xun said, “No matter how disgusting it was, it was just an illusion, so I definitely wouldn’t run.”

Mu Yiran said, “So we can be certain that, regardless of whether it was the sounds of us screaming and yelling or the sounds of us running desperately out of the room, they were all illusions. They were used to mislead us into making the wrong choice. After darkness fell, we should have been separated by the illusion and placed into some kind of parallel space.”

Shao Ling wrote on the bamboo slips: “Fourth, illusions can simulate realistic scenes of touch and human voices, and can use psychological cues and mental effects to lure people into the sea.”

The first three were:

Be isolated and placed in a parallel space.