Chapter 294: Posthumous Work (13)
The monster’s corpse hung suspended in the sky, blood continuously pouring down from it.
Though its body was pure white, the blood flowing through its veins was brilliantly multicolored.
All eight severed heads struck the ground at once, bursting into puddles of vibrant paint. Streams of rainbow-colored blood followed, cascading over the island below like a waterfall.
Anything touched by that blood—whether seawater or reef—melted like butter on a hot iron plate, dissolving before the naked eye into thick, viscous pools of paint. They surged toward the colored blood, where they were absorbed and assimilated.
Where the paint had been stripped away, the world instantly faded into irregular patches of white.
That was the world’s original form—
A blank canvas.
Flax fibers crisscrossed one another, forming a dense, tightly woven texture. Evenly distributed pores gave it exceptional affinity for oil paint. A brush needed only the lightest stroke to sketch bold, vividly layered contours.
It was upon such a canvas that Moonlit, the masterpiece representing Shelly’s greatest artistic achievement, had come into existence.
And now…
The creator of that masterpiece had become a Corruption, and little by little, with his own hands, he was erasing his life’s defining work from the canvas.
Did he truly understand what he was doing?
Why… why would he do such a thing?
Everly watched with eyes so wide they seemed ready to split apart. She hated her own weakness, hated that she had no way to take revenge on the monster before her.
Tap.
A dark blue-black shadow landed on the ground, transforming into the snake-tailed lamia.
She spread her arms, her long serpentine tail coiling around Everly several times as she used her own body to shield her from the tainted blood raining down from above.
“This place is extremely dangerous. You have to leave immediately,” the lamia said softly, bringing her damaged face close to Everly’s as she urged her.
Ever since the battle had begun, Lamia had circled overhead, intercepting the splashes of multicolored tainted blood before they could reach Everly.
As a result, large patches of the lamia’s body had lost their color. Here and there, they had faded into the stark white of an untouched canvas.
Everly knew all of this was because of her.
She clenched her teeth so hard that the faint taste of blood filled her mouth. Her hatred for Shelly burned so fiercely it bordered on madness.
But she also knew she had no choice.
She had to leave.
As the creator of the painting, Shelly was the unquestioned master of the painted world. There was no soil here, rendering her last trump card—the banyan bracelet—completely useless. Neither she nor Lamia stood any chance against him.
If she stayed, she would only become another burden for her mother.
But…
But…
They had only just been reunited.
Why did they have to be separated again so soon?
A wave of overwhelming sorrow welled up inside her. Everly threw her arms around the lamia, hugging her as tightly as she could.
As though she had seen through Everly’s thoughts, a gentle smile appeared on the lamia’s ruined face.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said softly. “I’m only a painting…”
Before Everly could react, the lamia suddenly pushed her away. She raised her razor-sharp claws toward her own abdomen, which had already turned into blank canvas. Her nails slashed downward, carving a deep gash through the white surface. Then she seized the curling edges of the wound with both hands and pulled with all her strength.
Riiip!
The harsh sound of tearing split the air.
A massive opening was ripped through the white canvas. Soft white light shimmered within the tear, vaguely outlining a passage.
The lamia bent down, her crimson eyes glowing faintly as she whispered her final words into Everly’s ear.
“Listen, Everly. If you want to return to the real world, you must find that special painting… find the door he hid away. Don’t be afraid. Swim forward. Someone will guide you.”
With that, she cradled Everly’s head in both hands. Curling her long tail beneath herself and arching her waist, she drew Everly close in what was almost an embrace—then thrust Everly’s head straight into the opening in her abdomen.
An overwhelming force of suction seized her.
Unable to resist, Everly was swept into the passage bathed in white light.
“Mom!”
Everly’s final cry had barely left her lips before she vanished into the passage.
“No! How dare you!”
A furious roar echoed across the sky.
The grievously wounded lamia gave no response.
A satisfied smile spread across her face. She released her grip on the tear in her abdomen and slowly swam back to the rock that jutted above the sea at its center. Coiling her tail beneath her, she tilted her head skyward and spread her arms wide, assuming the exact same pose as the statue in the painting.
A cold, grayish-white layer crept across her skin.
Her body turned to stone.
There, on the spot, the lamia became a battered, crumbling statue.
Crash!
The next instant, it was as though the Milky Way itself had burst its banks.
Countless torrents of rainbow-colored blood poured down from the heavens, swallowing the entire world. The island, the statue, even the moon hanging in the sky—all had their colors stripped away in an instant.
When the tide of paint finally receded, all that remained was an empty white canvas.
…
Everly emerged onto a vast, desolate plain.
The ground was an uncanny shade of white. Gullies and ridges crisscrossed the landscape, while fine, densely layered textures stretched as far as the eye could see.
Only one kind of plant grew across the plain.
They were enormous trees of a bizarre form. Their trunks resembled smooth white pillars that burst through the ground and soared skyward. The bare trunks rose perfectly straight without a single branch, only curling inward like a whirlpool when they reached a height of several stories above the earth.
At the very center of each spiral, atop the trunk, hung a single enormous spherical fruit.
Every tree bore only one fruit.
Like brilliant red gemstones, they hung heavily from the towering trees, adding the only splash of color to this monotonous white world.
Everly fell out of one of those fruits.
Like a newborn infant entering the world, bathed in crimson juice, she squeezed through a narrow crack in the fruit’s skin and tumbled awkwardly onto the tree trunk.
The fruit, now drained of its juices, visibly shriveled before her eyes. The branch supporting it withered as well, letting out a strained crack before breaking apart into dead limbs that tumbled to the ground below.
Everly expected to fall with them.
Instead, she floated weightlessly in midair, as light as a wandering spirit.
She looked down at herself in bewilderment before glancing at the distant ground far below.
After the giant tree collapsed, the pit it had left behind suddenly bulged upward. Something round rolled beneath the surface for a moment. Then a slit split open at the center of the mound, and the earth on either side peeled back like eyelids.
A gigantic blue eyeball—large enough to rival a pavilion—was revealed beneath.
It stared unblinkingly upward at Everly.
That has to be Shelly’s eye!
Only then did Everly suddenly realize that the land below, both in color and texture, bore an uncanny resemblance to human skin.
Could it… actually be made of human flesh?
The thought sent a wave of revulsion through her, making her scalp tingle.
Realizing her position had been exposed, she awkwardly paddled her arms and legs, wobbling through the air for a moment before instinctively figuring out how movement worked in this strange world.
Like a nimble fish gliding through the sea, Everly kicked her legs and shot forward at incredible speed.
A door… I have to find the door…
But what does a door even look like? This world has nothing but trees and fruit. Could the door be hidden inside one of those fruits?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a series of sharp whoosh, whoosh sounds slicing through the air.
She turned her head.
Several black-and-crimson tentacles had viciously speared the spot where she had been only moments earlier.
They had erupted from the ground below.
After missing their target, the tentacles immediately retracted. The next time they appeared, the entire cluster had seemingly teleported several meters ahead, directly into Everly’s path in relentless pursuit.
Without even a moment to rest, Everly could only keep paddling with all her strength, swimming onward to evade the endless barrage of tentacle attacks.
Along the way, she passed several more of the giant trees.
As she drifted past the fruits hanging from their tops, she examined them closely. Their surfaces resembled curved screens, each displaying a different scene:
A snake-haired lamia being decapitated by a hero…
A blonde woman brushing her hair before a mirror…
An egg-shaped creature receiving the devout worship of white, toad-like monsters…
Everly had seen the blonde woman before in Old John’s photo album. She was Rachel, Everly’s biological mother.
As for the scene of the toad-like creatures worshipping the egg-shaped being, she had also seen it at Shelly’s posthumous art exhibition.
It was exactly as Everly had guessed.
Every fruit atop these colossal trees corresponded to one of Shelly’s paintings.
As a painter, Shelly had created countless works over the course of his life. Looking down from above, the vast plain stretched endlessly to the horizon, covered with an innumerable forest of giant trees. Their sheer number was enough to make one’s heart sink.
Everly had no idea how she was supposed to find the one special painting.
There were simply too many. Searching them one by one would take an enormous amount of time. Worse still, aside from the images displayed on the fruits, the trees themselves looked almost identical. Unless she approached each one, there was no way to tell whether she had already examined it. Without any reliable landmarks, she would soon become hopelessly lost in the endless plain.
But she remembered the lamia’s final words.
Don’t be afraid. Swim forward. Someone will guide you.
Lamia possessed the gift of prophecy, the ability to see the future. Everly trusted her words without the slightest doubt.
So she followed that instruction faithfully, gliding tirelessly through the sky.
Several times, the tentacles erupting from the ground ambushed her, but each attack was deftly avoided as she weaved past them with agile movements.
“Why do you keep running…?”
“If only I had you as well… the Door could finally be opened completely.”
Perhaps failing to catch Everly after such a long pursuit had driven Shelly into a rage.
The ground split open once more, revealing a gigantic mouth whose very appearance seemed to assault one’s sanity.
Where a tongue should have been writhed a thick tentacle covered in suckers. As the monstrous mouth spoke, its two rows of ghostly white teeth opened and snapped shut. The enamel on each tooth gleamed with a crystalline sheen, and enlarged to such an impossible scale, the sight was inexplicably horrifying.
Everly had no time to pay attention to Shelly’s rambling.
Steadying her breathing, she swam deftly through the air, weaving around every ambush and obstacle that crossed her path.
Shelly’s tentacles launched several more sneak attacks.
Every one of them missed.
When he spoke again, frustration was unmistakable in his voice.
“Why? Why? Why?! Why won’t you just obey me?!”
“Do you have any idea how much I’ve done for you? The one who was chosen was me—me! It was I who refused to keep that great honor to myself. I gave you and Thomas the chance to become sacrifices as well!”
Then, without warning, his tone softened into one of almost fatherly tenderness.
“Do you know that when you were only a few months old, you and I were both supposed to die? It was I who defeated cruel fate. I twisted the very fabric of space-time and changed the course that had already been decided.”
“You… and Thomas… your lives exist only because of my grace.”
“So why can’t you simply listen to your father?”
“Be a good girl… my dear daughter…”
