The Sun Sets and the Moon Rises

Behind the wall displaying The Moonlit Night on the Dnieper was fabric wallpaper patterned with elegant blue-black floral motifs. Fan Ning reached out and gently brushed his hand over every inch of it...

He suddenly felt an uneven spot.

He dug his fingernail into it and shook it several times. One of the bricks loosened.

Fan Ning exerted some force, pulled the entire brick out, and tossed it onto the floor with a clang, making the corridor ring with a deep, hollow echo.

He had no time to worry about that. He reached inside and felt around every surface.

The brick beneath the loose one had been hollowed out, forming a large recess.

But...

Apart from feeling roughness beneath his fingertips, Fan Ning found nothing.

Empty?

Why is it empty?

If his father had indeed used some method to leave clues about the Remnant of the Musical Scale and the paintings, guiding him here, why was there nothing?

The Remnant of the Musical Scale...

The yellowed, coarse papyrus originals he had seen at the gathering in Teacher Anton's home resurfaced in Fan Ning's mind.

Their dimensions, and the approximate thickness of eleven sheets stacked together...

Could it be that the hidden compartment behind the painting originally held the Remnant of the Musical Scale, but someone took it away...? Fan Ning's expression turned strange.

That doesn't make sense. I had to obtain the remnant and deduce the information before I would take down this painting.

Who would lock the key inside the key cabinet...?

No, strictly speaking, I didn't take down this painting because of the information in the remnant.

It was because of that dream...

Fan Ning stood at the dark end of the corridor, his mind racing.

Suppose I hadn't obtained the remnant, or hadn't deduced the information about the missing sharp C.

Because that dream existed, I still would have come to the end of this corridor while searching the art museum.

Then what would I have done...?

Of course I would have examined the contents of these paintings. And the most unusual among them would still have been the painting I had seen in my previous life. I would have taken it down all the same!

Under this logic, placing the Remnant of the Musical Scale in the hidden compartment was not the same as "locking the key in the key cabinet."

The remnant was not the key. The dream granted by his subconscious was the key, while the remnant was the object he himself hoped to retrieve!

After sorting out this relationship, Fan Ning formed a hypothesis:

So the Remnant of the Musical Scale really was in the hidden compartment?

Had someone taken it? Had it merely ended up in Teacher Anton's hands by coincidence, allowing him to learn the information written on it anyway? Although the result had not changed for him standing here now, nevertheless...

Someone had taken it, which meant that someone—or some force—had noticed him!

Fan Ning's thoughts drifted into the empty darkness of the gallery, down the stairs, toward the first-floor reception hall, toward the door he had locked again, and toward the courtyard outside, the alleys, and the bustling streets of the East Mechelen District.

He felt that his circumstances, which had been slightly safer before, had now become dangerous again!

"I'll first check the living quarters on the other side of this floor, where my family used to live." Fan Ning leaned The Moonlit Night on the Dnieper against the wall and picked up the lantern again.

He retraced his path from the permanent exhibition halls and headed toward the short side of the "L." He pushed open the half-closed wooden door before him. This had once been his father's office.

The sound of the door opening was extraordinarily loud in the silent surroundings.

It was a large room of more than fifty square meters. The floor was paved with Barnton Fine Ceramic from the south, while a wooden shelving unit divided the room into two sections. The outer section served as a reception room, with three dark-colored, long leather sofas arranged in a U-shape and silk cushions scattered across the floor.

Fan Ning walked to the window and tried to open it, but failed, leaving his hand covered in rust flakes.

"The security measures are a bit excessive, but it makes sense. Father still had quite a few paintings left behind."

He walked straight into the office area in the inner section. The lantern in his hand slowly swept across the desk.

Two stacks of paper documents lay scattered across the desk. Under the lantern light, the topmost item was the Ufransel Review, published at the beginning of 910. Its headline reported on the government's legislation promoting the adoption of the Huo Sterilization Method throughout the dairy industry.

In one corner of the desk sat a square-patterned wooden box, atop which lay an upside-down black telephone receiver. A black cord extended downward and ended on the floor.

Apart from that, there was a medium-sized glass greenhouse box displaying something resembling a fern. It had naturally withered and fallen into ruin by now—this seemed to be one of the strange hobbies that had become popular among the residents of Ufransel over the past decade.

Most of the drawers were empty. The back of the office chair was also a shelving unit built into the wall, all of it filled with miscellaneous objects.

After finding nothing, Fan Ning returned to the reception room outside.

"There are paintings on both walls, too." He took off his shoes, stepped onto the old leather sofa, and raised the lantern to examine them carefully.

They included landscapes, portraits, and still lifes.

Flowers and Plaster Still Life, 70 by 90 centimeters, oil on canvas, signed Vincent van Ning, 896.

Dusk on the Mountaintop and the Wall, 70 by 90 centimeters, oil on canvas, signed Vincent van Ning, 906.

Washerwoman Hanging Clothes, 70 by 90 centimeters, oil on canvas, signed Vincent van Ning, 900.

River of Silver Mirrors, 70 by 90 centimeters, oil on canvas, signed Vincent van Ning, 905.

Fan Ning examined their contents one by one, but found nothing unusual.

"I have no leads from this direction. I'll think from the other end." Fan Ning decided to change his approach.

If the Remnant of the Musical Scale truly hid a code, what form did it take?

"The missing sharp C is a point-like form of code. It can help me make associations and identify the relationships between certain special things and sharp C."

"And the other form is..."

"The position in the sequence!" Fan Ning's eyes lit up. "Count the number of paintings!"

One, two, three... There were twelve paintings in total!

There were also twelve note names within an octave!

On a piano, ascending from left to right by semitones, they were white key C, black key sharp C, white key D, black key flat E, white key E, white key F, black key flat G, white key G, black key flat A, white key A, black key flat B, and white key B, before finally returning to white key C.

The black key sharp C was... second!

Fan Ning returned to the second painting, Dusk on the Mountaintop and the Wall, brought the lantern close, and examined it carefully.

It was a landscape. Withered grass covered the mountaintop, while the afterglow of the setting sun struck a section of white ruined wall, creating a strange play of light. Farther away were even more distant blue-green mountains.

"A normal original work wouldn't happen to be another case of hiding a secret compartment behind a painting, would it?" Fan Ning was puzzled.

He stepped onto the back of the sofa, took down Dusk on the Mountaintop and the Wall, then rose onto his tiptoes and carefully ran his hand over the wall.

Apart from the grooves and fasteners holding the frame in place, there was nothing on the wall covered in wallpaper with golden patterns.

"The content of Dusk on the Mountaintop and the Wall, broadly speaking, is a sunset landscape."

"Position two is now sunset..."

"But position two was originally sharp C, Moonlight Sonata. Moonlight?"

Sunset... moonrise...?

A sudden inspiration struck Fan Ning, and he remembered the painting at the end of the corridor—The Moonlit Night on the Dnieper!

Its dimensions were the same as well!

He jumped off the sofa, put on his shoes, grabbed the lantern, and hurried toward the permanent exhibition hall, completely ignoring the bumps and scrapes along the dark, twisting route—if he had not been worried about the tallow candle inside the lantern tipping over, he might have run.

Moving the painting to the office took quite some time. Since he had no free hand to carry the lantern, he could only move the light a short distance at a time.

Finally, panting heavily, he hung The Moonlit Night on the Dnieper in the original position of Dusk on the Mountaintop and the Wall.

"Why is it still..." Fan Ning had not finished muttering when he was suddenly interrupted by a continuous, muffled rumble!