The Final Clue (Long Chapter, Please Vote)

"This is my father, this is Uncle Endier, and this is Uncle Jack."

Standing amid the towering stacks of books, Vili looked at a framed picture tucked between them and explained softly to He Ao, "The one taking notes is Vincent."

Then she turned to him, eyes narrowed with a smile. "Guess who took this picture?"

They had returned to Vili's villa and were now in the library her father had left behind, with its shelves rising like towers of books.

"No photographer," He Ao said after glancing at the frame. "This is a print of a digital painting."

"It's actually... Huh?"

Vili's smug tone faltered. She stared at He Ao in surprise, studying his face before taking another careful look at the figures in the picture. "How did you know?"

"A guess," He Ao replied calmly. "Everyone in this 'photo' looks too lifelike."

His gaze rested on the four people in the picture. Their expressions were so vivid they looked even more real than they would in a photograph.

A style called the Realism School was popular among digital artists in the Federation. Its artists used digital painting techniques to create works that looked almost like photographs, and took pride in making them hard to tell apart.

Most of them, though, were not trying to produce exact copies of photographs. They worked their own interpretations and the emotions they wanted to convey into paintings that appeared realistic.

They sought to reproduce not only an image, but its feeling and meaning as faithfully as possible.

They often used special techniques to refine their subjects' movements and expressions, making the people in their paintings seem more alive and dynamic than those in photographs.

Of course, some mischievous artists deliberately left flaws that could never appear in a real photograph, just to