End of the World in the Painting

Yu Xing's figure was swallowed by the river again, and the chef stood on the bank, retracting his leg.

However, his joy didn't last long. After all, at his level, even the most confident person would realize something was amiss in an instant. For example, the deducer who fell into the river had just said that he had obtained the heart, and as long as he got ashore, the attack on the painting would end, and the spot would be confirmed.

But he's standing on the shore now, and he's got the heart, so why isn't the attack on the oil painting over yet?

All of this happened in the blink of an eye. The chef's expression changed drastically as he looked at what he was holding, and then his pupils contracted.

The so-called heart is nothing more than a piece of hard silt at the bottom of a river!

How could this be? The chef instantly realized he had been tricked, or rather, swindled. Everything he had done was exactly what the people in the river wanted to see, but why?

Falling into the river is a certainty; could the method to successfully block the ghost's attack be found in the river?

He angrily threw the silt into the water, but the small amount of mud left no trace on the turbulent surface. The chef immediately retreated, intending to get away from the riverbank to avoid being hit.

Then he discovered that he couldn't move.

The cook looked down in horror and saw a long strand of hair wrapped around his ankle. It wasn't wrapped tightly, so he didn't react immediately. But just as he looked over, the hair suddenly tightened, and a tremendous force pulled him into the river.

"Depend on!"

He knew it must be the diviner in the river who was behind this. His earlier words might have been a test, or a trap, a way for the diviner to lure him to the riverbank. In any case, he had been fooled.

He tried to adjust his position in mid-air, but failed. To his companions' astonishment, the chef suddenly sank into the water, the river flowing directly over his head, causing him to suffocate.

When the water reached his ears, all the sounds he could hear suddenly ceased, leaving only the gurgling of the river; he could no longer hear any sounds from the bank.

It's crucial to stay calm in the water, especially during moments of crisis. In a panicked state, the time you can hold your breath becomes extremely short.

The chef knew this all too well. Regardless of the predictor's purpose, he only needed to react to each move as it came. He knew there were Water Ghost in the water, and he refused to believe that both of them were within the Water Ghost's attack range. He, who entered the water later, would be in a worse state than the one who entered first.

Even if that person had already dealt with the Water Ghost, that would be even better. The physical strength and ability consumed in dealing with a Water Ghost would not be replenished in time. But he was different. He even had a sacrifice in his possession—after he entered the painting, the Quill Pen was in his school uniform pocket.

No matter how you look at it, he has the greater advantage. So what if he was tricked into the river by that strategist? Before that, no one knew what was going on in the river, so it was impossible to set up an ambush in advance...

The chef's thoughts raced and became chaotic.

He felt a chaotic scene around him, with countless hairs coming from all directions, trying to entangle his limbs and neck, keeping him forever hidden in this river. The churning water was stickier than normal, just like the air on the shore after dark.

At that moment, the chef was incredibly grateful that he could swim, and was a pretty good swimmer at that. He barely managed to open his eyes in the filth and water, frowning and squinting as he tried to see ahead through the gaps in his swirling hair.

He indeed saw the woman possessed by the psychic.

The woman showed none of the dishevelment she had displayed when clinging to the shore. Instead, she floated quietly in the middle of the water. Although he couldn't see her expression clearly from his perspective, and even her figure was a blurry mess, he had a feeling, perhaps, that she was calm and composed, looking at him as if he were a dead corpse.

However, the long hair did not actually come from the diviner, otherwise the chef would have suspected that the diviner was dead and had become a scapegoat for the Water Ghost. Beside the diviner, there was a dark female figure curled up. It was already dark after dark, and even more so underwater. The chef had done his best to make out these two blurry Black Shadow.

And that endless black hair, originating from the curled-up figure, seemed to continuously fill his vision.

Strangely, neither of the two figures moved, and the curled-up figure that resembled the Water Ghost itself did not pounce on him. They floated quietly in the water, like two statues that had been silent in the deep sea for years.

The chef didn't dare to delay. After struggling to free himself from the tangled hair, he turned and swam upwards.

But as it turned out, his idea was too naive. How could the people in the water simply let him go after pulling him down?

The water rippled, and the chef felt a hand grip his ankle. The icy touch was distinct from the river water. He shivered from the cold and was helplessly pulled down by the hand. He turned around and found that it wasn't the Water Ghost that had pulled him, but the predictor.

"I'm not lying to you, the condition for passing the level really is the heart of Water Ghost," he heard the strategist say to him with a laugh.

The chef's eyes widened in shock, for the voice he heard was male, the same voice he had heard in the art museum belonging to the diviner himself. And the diviner's blurry figure in the water became strangely clear; he could clearly see that it was not a possessed woman in the water, but the diviner himself!

Or rather, in the mere few seconds it took him to look over, that person accomplished the remarkable feat of transforming from the woman in the painting who was possessed into her real-life form.

How did he revert to his original form? No, what's more concerning is how he can speak in the water?

The chef's face contorted in a grimace as he reached into his pocket and grasped Quill Pen.

The man grabbing his leg was pale, his body contorted by the ripples in the water. A smile played on his lips, and the slightly upturned corners of his eyes held a chilling danger. He tried to kick the man with his leg, but the man dodged his futile struggle with the agility of a fish. Then, the man easily swam upwards and floated above him, shifting his grip from his ankle to the top of his head. Then, as if he had thought about it and was not satisfied, he moved his grip to his throat.

The chef felt the icy hand brush against his throat, then suddenly tighten, squeezing the already limited air in his lungs even smaller. Without hesitation, he took out his Quill Pen and activated his sacrificial ability!

An eerie aura emanated from the Quill Pen, accompanied by bursts of strange blood mist that emitted an indescribable, intense fragrance.

This stuff can starve a person to death—unless they eat the cook's food or use other offerings for dispelling or protecting them.

"What's this? I'm getting a little hungry." But instead of the strategist who was choking him letting go and clutching his stomach, the chef heard him say, "What a coincidence! When I get hungry, I think of the past, and when I think of the past, I feel that this situation is perfect for a reenactment."

Yu Xing was truly hungry. Long ago, when he ate the Water Ghost Shi Wei, he also felt hungry when his mind was close to becoming a monster. Now, although he was conscious, he was coincidentally awakened to hunger again, and this happened to be the Water Ghost's river... It seemed that some strange thread of fate was manipulating everything, making him see his disgusting and pathetic self from the past, and gently tempting him to fall back into depravity.

He was looking at the chef with not only a hostile feeling of retaliating because the other party had struck first, but also a manic state of mind and the joy of seeing food.

He successfully saw the horror and fear in the chef's eyes, as if he were looking not at a living person, but at an unfathomable monster.

Yu Xing didn't like that look. He ground his teeth, seemingly pondering where to begin eating.

He could breathe freely in the water and speak. He even fought with the Water Ghost after being pulled down. When the Water Ghost's hair entangled his body, he automatically received a hint from the hair's tip to end the painting: dig out the Water Ghost's heart, take it to the shore, and fulfill the Water Ghost's wish to leave the river.

Once Water Ghost falls into the water, it can never leave unless it finds a substitute. Removing its heart is merely the Water Ghost 'Water Ghost last, unspoken request to the drowning person, a request it doesn't know. Therefore, it will do everything in its power to prevent Yu Xing from removing its heart.

Yu Xing succeeded. In the water, Yu Xing was as if he were on his home turf. The Water Ghost had only been dead for a short time and had not yet reached the point where he could control the river as if it were his own arm. With his brute strength and agility in the water, Yu Xing quickly dug out the heart and discovered that with this heart, he could control some of the Water Ghost's abilities to a certain extent. Thus, he put on a show pretending that he could not climb ashore and hoped that someone would help him.

This was his way of showing goodwill to the other experience testers besides Yu Fengchen's team. As long as they didn't provoke him, he promised not to do anything to them. He used river mud to disguise a heart to deceive this experience tester whose title he didn't know. It was also because this person had meddlesomely triggered the oil painting and wasted some of his time, so he had to give him a small punishment.

Of course, if the other party is courting death...

He was never a kind person.

Moreover, once Yu Xing has controlled the Water Ghost, she can return to her original form. This is because the Water Ghost, which has command over the painting, cannot maintain its own consciousness, and the world within the painting is in grave danger. It can only end this once her heart reaches the shore.

What pleased him even more was that the woman's body in the painting was not his own, so the side effect of the A-level pollutant —pain amplification—did not appear in this body. He only felt normal pain. He had been entangled with the Water Ghost for a long time, and his body was scratched and bled by the hair and the Water Ghost's sharp nails, but this pain was nothing to him.

Yu Xing stared intently at the face of the experience officer, who still looked like a high school girl, and grinned.

The chef was on the verge of oxygen deprivation. He was no match for Yu Xing in the water. Yu Xing was incredibly strong, like a real Water Ghost. He felt like he was being strangled to death.

His offering had worked—he saw it in the other's eyes, in their hunger, but the problem was, that hunger seemed to be staring straight at him.

The chef had no doubt that after so many years of being a butcher, he would one day be treated like fish on the chopping block.

Damn, this predictor is not only incredibly strong in the water, but also a monster, a freak, a man-eater!

The chef fell into despair because he had found the first sacrifice before everyone else, and it was a crucial sacrifice for him, one that could directly kill others. This boosted his confidence to unprecedented levels. He felt that if a problem could be solved by all the experience trainers at this stage, then he himself would definitely have no problem, because his abilities were above average.

As he navigated through numerous horror Yugi, death was like a shadow, always lurking nearby. But he never imagined he would die here... either at the hands of an unknown strategist, or when he himself was being tested, he chose death.

Just let me die, strangle me, okay? Don't eat me...

His already dilated pupils met Yu Xing's suppressed hunger gaze, and an intense fear rose within him uncontrollably. Why was this person, after being attacked by his sacrifice, only retaining a state of hunger, without experiencing stomach atrophy?

He couldn't understand why, in the last moment before losing consciousness, the chef withdrew the power the Quill Pen had placed on Yu Xing —he really didn't want to be eaten alive; such pain was completely unnecessary.

Yu Xing suddenly felt the hunger subside, and in fact, his stomach, which had been convulsing and aching from hunger, also eased. He smiled mockingly and decisively crushed the man's throat.

What a joke! The period when he devoured Shi Wei was one of the darkest periods of his long life. He killed many people in the village. Although most of them deserved to die, some were indeed innocent. This was a mistake he could not deny and did not want to deny.

He was once lost and in pain because of this mistake, but it was also because of this mistake that he finally regained a bit of himself from the mad monster's will. This led him to slowly accumulate and reshape himself, eventually becoming the Yu Xing is today.

This is a mistake he will never repeat in his life.

So when he realized that this situation inexplicably matched what had happened before, as if a dark hand was manipulating everything from behind, he was in a fully conscious state. His hunger was overwhelming, and he could clearly feel his stomach contracting. He could predict that if he didn't eat something, he would die of internal organ failure in less than two minutes.

This state had to be interrupted. He didn't dare gamble that the state would stop after he killed the experience user, so he had to use his terrifying gaze, which showed his desire to devour the experience user, to force the experience user to voluntarily withdraw his ability, while at the same time not revealing any fact that he was experiencing severe stomach pain.

This was a gamble; if he failed, he had other ways to fail, but clearly he succeeded.

He could end all of this once he got the Water Ghost's heart. The subsequent performance was purely to weigh whether or not to kill this experience user. As the saying goes, life or death is the experience user's own choice. Apart from the sliver of Yu Xing still harbors towards the experience users, they are actually enemies. If an enemy has undisguised murderous intent, he must nip it in the bud to prevent the enemy from retrieving the ability and sacrifice later, which would require a great deal of effort to kill.

Yu Xing glanced back at the female Water Ghost's body, which was quietly floating in the water. When he received the heart, he also received the complete story of this heart: she was a pitiful person.

After taking one last look, he swam upwards like a fish, then easily reached the shore. Standing on the bank, he shook off the water, and when he looked up, he saw the old fisherman standing there dumbfounded and his companion, the now-dead experience tester, in shock.

Zhao Yijiu looked at him calmly, while the girl in the white dress on the opposite bank seemed quite interested.

He took his heart out of his pocket and soaked it on the dry ground in the distance. The world in the painting trembled instantly, as if the paint was peeling off and splitting into pieces.

Everyone's appearance changed from that of a young girl to their own true form.

"It's over."