Chapter 398 - 214: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Chapter 398: Chapter 214: One Hundred Years of Solitude

"Speak!"

The man ground out the single word through clenched teeth, his voice steeped in boundless hatred.

"Xie Luohe was only taken by the Darkness; she is not dead. However, to trade her out of the Darkness is a feat harder than ascending to the heavens. Only at the centennial convergence, when the Darkness and the Common World are at their closest, can you use the Painting Skill of an Innate Mystic. You must paint your longing, paint your days and nights with her, paint *her*... When that century mark arrives, you will be able to bring her back from the Darkness!"

"But I am not a Mystic!"

"Now, you are!" The National Preceptor laughed, and with a flick of his sleeve, a deathly pale, withered arm emerged, pointing at Gongsun Mo. The moment it touched Gongsun Mo, the arm seemed to come alive. It latched onto Gongsun Mo’s wrist with a death grip, snapping his hand off.

The severed hand, its five fingers curled like a gaping maw, bit down, crunching the man’s broken bones and devouring his flesh and blood.

After a bloodcurdling scream, the corpse-like severed hand vanished. On the back of his own hand, two twisted, black characters had appeared, like a birthmark.

"So it was you!"

「That night」

The man shed a layer of human skin. The skin turned to fine powder, covering the floor.

The man grew even thinner.

「The next day」

A long table was set up in the secret chamber. Around the man were stacked hundreds of piles of white paper, each sheet as tall as two men.

The National Preceptor’s voice echoed in the secret chamber.

"Jump!"

"Jump!"

"Jump!"

The moment he picked up the brush, SPLASH! He heard the sound of falling into water.

Ink and water formed bizarre and fantastical images in a warped world. Behind him were doors, one after another, already thrown open. At the end of a winding road was a cliff.

The man jumped.

It was an abyss.

He couldn’t remember how long he had been falling, nor how deep the fall was.

At the bottom of the abyss, there was a door.

He landed hard on the door, slamming it open.

’It is longing.’

’I cannot capture the Human Souls of the dead from the mortal world, but I can use my longing to paint them anew.’

’Xie Yunliu was right. A person’s third death is when they are forgotten by the world.’

’Since I can’t forget them, I can paint them.’

’They are alive.’

’Alive in my memories.’

The man’s gaze was bright, yet indifferent, as he coldly set his brush to paper.

He gently rendered Luohe, whispering onto the page love words that crossed worlds.

Who was it that painted the story,

thinking of her with every stroke?

Snow-capped mountains, the Great Desert, rivers and hills, the sun and moon, the Jianghu, the passage of years.

He painted every minute of every second.

Day and night, without rest.

When painting snow-capped mountains, he would smile. When painting the Great Desert, he would close his eyes. When painting a table laden with wine, he would grow drunk. When painting the National Preceptor, his heart would fill with hatred.

His paintings fell to the ground, one after another.

In every painting, there was her, and there was them.

As the scrolls landed, they twisted bizarrely, transforming into demonic apparitions.

He could no longer hear the sounds around him, nor see the scenery. He didn’t even notice when the National Preceptor came each day to take his paintings, or when he returned them after a time.

He didn’t eat, drink, speak, or sleep, growing thinner and thinner.

One year, two years, ten years, fifty years.

He was nothing more than withered bones.

His body gradually bent, his stooped back arching like a bow.

From a distance, his entire form... looked like a hand.

A hand that only knew how to paint.

A hand that looked just like it was made of bleached bone.

His fame grew throughout the world, earning him the moniker "Ghost Painter." But no one had ever seen the true face of the "Ghost Painter Gongsun Mo," as if he had truly become a ghost hidden from the world. His paintings were seen, but the man remained unseen. The legends surrounding him grew ever more sinister, and his paintings spread ever wider.

「In the blink of an eye, a century passed, and dynasties changed.」

No one knew that deep beneath the Imperial City, there lived the "ghost" the world called the Ghost Painter.

He was surrounded by piles of his demonic, ghostly works.

On his back, at some unknown point, a small "hole" had appeared.

The hole grew larger and larger.

By the hundredth year, it was the size of a palm.

「One day.」

The man’s withered palm pressed gently upon a blank sheet of paper.

In the secret chamber, the countless sheets of white paper trembled violently, flying from all directions into the man’s hand.

All the papers stacked one on top of the other. On their surface, the scenery shifted and changed—one moment a blazing sun, the next a raging blizzard; one moment a winding path, the next the yellow sands of the Great Desert, the next the red candles of a wedding night.

Finally, the scene settled into a mountain, a grave, and a figure seen from behind.

In the scroll, the graceful figure slowly turned. The woman’s lips curved into a smile, but where her eyes should have been, there was only emptiness.

’All that’s left... is to dot the eyes.’

The man closed his eyes, his breath faint as he murmured, "Back then, I still owed you a painting. Now, my debt is paid."

He bit his finger, forcing out a final drop of his lifeblood. On the tip of his brush, a single, crimson point moved slowly toward the blank face, guided by the man’s trembling hand.

Just as he was about to dot the eyes, the man stared at that blank face, shuddered, and froze completely.