Chapter 991: Harvest Season, the Rice Field of Corpses Sways in the Autumn Wind
Indeed, the artist didn't do anything except painting.
2
Initially, Lin Sanjiu thought that he had also found many Special Items, but her wishful thinking was shattered when she saw the empty wooden platform. Besides the easel at the end of the platform, there was nothing else.
She reluctantly propped herself up and walked towards the artist's back. Hope and fear surged in her heart, causing her to take a long breath involuntarily.
Because of exhaustion and distance, she had looked several times before but failed to understand what the artist wanted her to see. It seemed that the dumbfounded artist was frustrated and gestured back and forth in the air. Seeing that she remained clueless, the artist stomped his foot and picked up the brush bucket from the ground, then walked towards the easel. Helplessly, Lin Sanjiu had no choice but to follow suit, dragging her feet.
On the easel, there was an unfinished oil painting.
When the artist finished a piece, he would put away his brush. Only then would the objects that weren't painted rush into the painting, filling the empty spaces. On this painting, the wooden platform, the trees, and the sky were already painted. Several strokes of light green paint had been applied in the center, clearly intended to become a green lake.
The artist seemed quite proud and lifted his hand as if introducing something before the canvas. Lin Sanjiu was caught off guard, but then she saw him pick up the brush, dip it in a prepared color, and start painting.
What does this mean?
She swept her gaze over the canvas and suddenly caught sight of something gray and white. She hurriedly took a few steps closer and squinted her eyes, gasping for breath as she understood everything.
This painting was started before the lake water rose!
Looking carefully, she could still faintly see the shadows of the support pillars beneath the wooden platform. In the lakebed near the platform, there were scattered swollen corpses like beached whales, and they were all included in the painting. She even saw herself in it—her silhouette was bending over, searching through the mud between the corpses.
However, in the distance of the lakebed—the area she hadn't had time to search—it was apparent that the artist hadn't painted anything. Now that the lake water had risen again, he simply smeared a few strokes of paint in the blank space. But beneath the layer of green paint, it was empty!
Lin Sanjiu tightly clenched her fists to prevent her fingers from trembling due to excitement. She straightened herself up, and her gaze met the artist's eyes. When he saw that she understood, he seemed relieved and applied more paint to the blank area.
"Is it... Is it really possible?" Lin Sanjiu could hardly believe it. After the excitement, doubts resurfaced. "If you had painted the lake water from the beginning, wouldn't it be the same as applying green paint on a blank canvas... Oh, I understand."
Oil paintings indeed emphasize layers. If the lake water had been painted on the blank canvas initially, then the green paint for the lake water would be the first layer. However, the artist had started by painting the sunken objects at the lakebed, which meant that the lakebed was the first layer, and the later addition of the lake water became the second layer.
In that case, wouldn't the first layer, the lakebed, be missing something?
The artist's movements were incredibly fast. With a few quick strokes, he added a layer of green paint to the bodies at the lakebed. Almost instantly, a vivid and complete picture of a green lake emerged. Just as he was about to put away the brush, Lin Sanjiu grabbed his wrist urgently, "Wait!"
"Let me take the canvas down first." Her heart pounded in her chest, and she quickly ran through what she had to do in her mind. "When I tell you to put away your brush, then you can."
The artist nodded obediently.
With one hand holding the top of the oil painting and the other holding the bottom, she turned it away from herself. The nervousness made the entire canvas tremble and rustle.
"Put away your brush!"
In that instant, the sky darkened.
In this pocket dimension, whose existence was unknown, countless people had died, and countless objects had been lost. At the moment the brush returned to its case, all the objects and lives abandoned here rushed out of the water's surface, covering the sky like a dark cloud or swarm of insects, obscuring the daylight. The water curtain they raised rushed into the air, soaking everything like a torrential storm.
Their target was only one—the painting in Lin Sanjiu's hands.
Lin Sanjiu held the painting with both hands, her vision obscured by darkness. She couldn't see anything clearly. In the violent airflow and sound of rushing water, she couldn't help but shout at the artist, "Step back!" Her gaze caught sight of a massive shadow crossing the sky. The shadow was so large and familiar that her mind immediately sounded the alarm. The next second, she swiftly folded the canvas and hastily retreated.
She would never forget the sight of hundreds and thousands of corpses falling from the sky like hail.
Once the canvas was rolled up, the gravitational force disappeared instantly. Countless corpses that had been drawn by gravity and landed in front of the wooden platform crashed down heavily, causing dull impacts that echoed incessantly. The wooden planks also jumped and trembled as if about to break free from their supports and leap into the air.
It was only when the shadow of the massive object fell heavily into the lake water, creating a high water wall and completely drenching everything on the shore, that this corpse storm finally came to an end.
The artist, who knows when, had already been shaken down and was now sitting among the piles of corpses. His face was pale as if he couldn't believe the silence around him. After a few seconds, as if he suddenly remembered something, he looked around. Suddenly, a corpse moved, and a hand grabbed him, startling the artist to the point where he opened his mouth, as if letting out a silent scream.
"It's me," Lin Sanjiu, pressed under layers of giant corpses, felt that death might have been a better fate than her current state. "...Pull... pull me up, I want to get out."
Fortunately, the height from which the corpses fell wasn't too high. Otherwise, after struggling through nearly ten years of the apocalypse, she would have ended up crushed to death by corpses. It would have been enough to make Puppeteer laugh for a lifetime.
Emerging from the pile of corpses, reeking of filth, Lin Sanjiu let out a sigh of relief and then looked out from the wooden platform.
This analogy isn't quite appropriate, but she did feel like a farmer filled with the joy of a bountiful harvest.
Due to the limited length of the wooden platform, most of the attracted corpses ended up falling back into the lake water. But just on this wooden platform, how many corpses had accumulated? It was hard to say precisely because they were all bloated beyond recognition, but dozens of bodies were the minimum, she hesitantly thought.
Not only were there corpses, but also scattered supplies and Special Items from the lakebed, scattered everywhere like seashells on a beach. The massive object that caused the "tsunami" was the container she had initially thrown at the starting point. Fortunately, she reacted quickly and folded the canvas before the container reached the wooden platform. Otherwise, if it had smashed into the platform, she would have had nothing left.
"Here," Lin Sanjiu returned the tightly rolled-up painting to the artist. "Don't open it, can you destroy it?"
The artist looked offended and inserted the rolled-up painting into a small tube.
"In the pocket dimension, how many minutes do I have left before I have to return the boat?" she shouted toward the cabin at the disembarkation point.
"You have forty minutes left."
That's enough!
Lin Sanjiu let out a long sigh of relief. Instead of immediately searching the corpses, she squatted down on the open ground with a thud. After enduring the exhaustion of an ordinary person's body for eighty minutes, she was more depleted than she had been in the past few years combined. She rested in place for a full five minutes before summoning her willpower and forcing herself to enter the pile of corpses.
It's time for the farmer to start harvesting.