Cabin

Black feathers drifted down from the circling Crows, gathering into a tall, slender woman.

The woman wore a red cheongsam, identical to the red clothes worn by the woman in the painting. Her limbs were equally thin and elongated, like withered branches, bearing traces of being mechanically stretched.

Most bizarrely, both of the woman's hands had been cleanly severed at the wrists, and ink kept seeping from the wounds.

"She's here!!"

"Run!!"

Li Yang let out a shriek.

The Red-Clothed Female Ghost tilted her head, like a sparrow often did.

Li Yang had only taken two steps when he suddenly stiffened like a stroke victim. His limbs convulsed, and he crashed face-first to the ground, white foam spilling from the corner of his mouth.

Several Crows tore through his mouth and crawled out.

The whole process took less than ten seconds.

The killing was clean and decisive. Not a word of nonsense was spoken.

Zhang Ze immediately realized.

This was the ghost he had been looking for.

The true owner of the Murderous Painting, the holder of this door, and also the first Red-Clothed Vengeful Ghost Zhang Ze had encountered.

Just as Old Zhou had said before.

Where Crows gathered was where the woman in red would appear.

Little Zhou had also mentioned that if someone spent too long in contact with Little Bear, they would see the woman in red as well.

They had met both conditions, so naturally, they had drawn the true owner here.

"You take Little Zhou and run."

"If you die here, you die in reality."

"Run!!"

Old Zhou shoved Little Zhou into Zhang Ze's arms. The next second, as if he had made some difficult decision, he resolutely stepped into the path the woman in red had to take.

Zhang Ze looked at the woman in red.

Like a Crow's, her eyes were completely black, without the slightest trace of white. Yet her porcelain-like face was deathly pale and bloodless. Rather than a person, she looked more like some kind of bird.

He thought seriously for one second.

He felt that Chen Ge's reform-through-kindness approach would be useless here.

Talking someone down with words...

That should be reserved for ghosts willing to listen to reason!!

"Brother, why are you running?"

"Big sister is very nice. She won't hurt me..."

Little Zhou wanted to say more, but Zhang Ze gave him no chance. Instead, he hoisted Little Zhou onto his back and ran down the path east of the forest.

Hanjiang City.

Western Outskirts.

Peaceful Apartment.

Having just finished speaking with Wang Qi, Chen Ge sat on the crude bed in the guest room and typed the words "Fuan Apartments" into his phone.

Only after speaking with Wang Qi did Chen Ge learn that Peaceful Apartment had once been called Fuan Apartments, and that something major seemed to have happened there.

<A family of four brutally murdered; the killer vanished into thin air!>

<Accident or murder? What caused the fire at Fuan Apartments?>

<Bodies hidden in the building reveal a case within a case!>

After browsing the information for a while.

Suddenly, algorithmically recommended articles appeared at the bottom of one news report:

<Siblings unite, and their descendant turns out to be an artistic genius? What work left art academy masters full of praise!>

<Genius dies after having her hands severed; killer charged with sixteen counts, including domestic violence, murder, and abuse!>

<Killer dies unexpectedly before trial, determined to have died of excessive fright—the cause was a Cursed Oil Painting!>

Chen Ge raised an eyebrow.

Out of curiosity, he gave them a quick glance.

This was not particularly recent news. Like the reports on Fuan Apartments he had been viewing, it was old news from Hanjiang City several years ago.

In the Western Outskirts of Hanjiang City, inside a small cabin in a remote urban village, an older brother from a family fell in love with his younger sister. They married and had a girl who was born deformed.

The girl had long limbs, especially her neck, which was just long enough to make people shudder. Her fingers were also abnormally slender, and from an early age, she displayed astonishing talent for artistic creation.

When the girl had just turned three, her kindergarten teacher, a professionally trained art graduate, began teaching her to draw.

The first time she held a paintbrush, it was as though she had been skilled with one for years. Color, perspective, human anatomy—she mastered everything with consummate ease.

When the kindergarten teacher saw it, he could scarcely believe his eyes and reported it to his mentor at the art academy...

From then on, the girl became increasingly famous, practically becoming an overnight sensation.

She excelled most at painting birds: magpies, swallows, partridges, and especially Crows. Her paintings were lifelike. When she entered a competition for the first time at age five, even the judges exclaimed that her work rivaled the Preface to the Pavilion of King Teng.

Because of her astonishing talent, her father had her paint portraits for people who came seeking her out. Every painting sold for tens or even hundreds of thousands.

As time passed.

The girl's talent became increasingly mediocre. Combined with the fading aura of a child prodigy and her growing older, although she was still a radiant eighteen-year-old, no one came to ask her to paint anymore.

But her father had long grown used to making money from her.

When he lost that easy path to wealth, her father flew into a rage.

He swung a kitchen knife and chopped off his daughter's hands, blaming her for spending too much time painting what she wanted instead of making more money for him.

She completed her final painting in a pool of blood.

By the time she was sent to the hospital, she had already died from excessive blood loss, beyond saving.

Her father was taken away by the police. However, strange things began happening from then on. Inside the detention center, he constantly muttered to himself, banged his head against the wall, and often slurred out pleas for mercy.

Until the day of the trial.

The father was found dead on his bed in the detention center, his face twisted in terror. The cause of death was cardiac arrest. The coroner ultimately determined that his heart had stopped from excessive fright.

From then on, the urban legend of the Cursed Oil Painting spread far and wide.

In the Western Outskirts of Hanjiang City, especially near that urban village, almost everyone had heard the story of the female ghost in the painting. Whoever bought that painting would be taken into another world...

"Ah." Chen Ge sighed. "Evil reaps evil. Those who deserve to die received their due punishment, but it's a pity the innocent person who died because of it can never come back to life."

"Hmm... wait."

"Wasn't I looking at news about Fuan Apartments?"

Coming back to his senses, Chen Ge hurriedly exited the article page, while silently cursing those unscrupulous news outlets for producing nothing but clickbait and making him waste a precious minute...

Deep in the forest.

Zhang Ze carried Little Zhou without daring to look back. Eventually, the trees around them grew sparser, and an open stretch of land appeared ahead.

Not far away, he could see a fenced yard. Inside stood two small cabins. One appeared to be a warehouse, piled with lumber and containing a forklift and a pickup truck.

The other was a normal cabin meant for people to live in. Two strings of dried corn and chili peppers hung beneath the eaves, while the lucky-character paper pasted on the windows had faded white, giving the place the impression of having been abandoned for years.

"This is Uncle's house." Little Zhou said.

"I know. Just like that tree hollow, at least it's somewhere we can stay." Zhang Ze said. "The monsters are all in the forest. There can't possibly be anything in this house, right?"

"Let's hide for a while, in case that woman catches up."